Vindictive Cruelty.

 

    To lots of people, the state of Canada has managed to create around it the illusion of a civilised country, possibly because of comparisons with it nearest neighbour America. However, like all developed capitalist countries it has within its institution the savage claws of authoritarianism, and has no qualms about useing them. Ask its indigenous population, they will be able to reel off a catalogue of cruel and savage injustices perpetrated on them by the state for centuries.  

        Another section of the population of Canada, that continually feel the effect of those claws of authoritarianism is the prison population. This report from Quebec tells its own story. Across the world during this Covid19 pandemic, prisons have been one of the places where their populations have been left to rot. Callous, vindictive actions resulting in unnecessary deaths.

This from Act For Freedom Now: 

 

     Noise Demos Outside Montreal-Area Prisons Following Death of Prisoner and a Hunger Strike ,Canada.

Read also : Bordeaux Hunger Strike
Manifesto of Bordeaux Prisoners
Family Members and Advocates Call for Action after the Death of a Prisoner at Bordeaux

       10 May, Montreal – At 2pm today, a caravan of over 30 vehicles visited the Federal Training Centre prison in Laval and the Bordeaux jail in Montreal, demanding the immediate release of all prisoners in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The vehicles, decorated with slogans such as, ‘Prison Should Not Be A Death Sentence,’ & ‘Free All Prisoners,’ honked their horns, made noise, and held banners in solidarity with those inside.
      “We’re here today to show people inside these prisons that they’re not forgotten and that we’re out here working for their release,” said Ellie Santon, a participant in the demonstration. “What’s happening in these prisons is a crisis created by the government. If they wanted to, they could solve all this tomorrow. For some reason they seem intent on letting people die.”

      On May 5th, Correctional Services Canada (CSC) announced that a prisoner held inside Laval’s Federal Training Centre had died from COVID-19, the second death inside a federal prison due to the pandemic. 138 prisoners have now tested positive for COVID-19 in the Federal Training Centre, making it the largest outbreak in a Quebec federal prison.
      “The government has spent months refusing to act and now the virus has exploded inside prisons and people are dying,” said Virginia Boucher of the Prison Support Committee. “There is no justifiable reason for this. People should be released from prison, now. People in halfway houses should be allowed to live at their own homes full time. Everyone released should have access to safe housing and healthcare.”
      On May 5th, prisoners in Quebec’s Bordeaux jail also began a hunger strike that has since spread to multiple sectors of the institution. There are over 60 cases of COVID-19 associated with the Bordeaux jail, where 75 percent of prisoners are being held pre-trial, making it the 2nd largest outbreak in a provincial prison.
      “I’m worried about my partner, who is in one of the infected sectors,” said Jean-Louis Nguyen, a participant in the demonstration. “He finally got tested on Friday, but we don’t know the results, and his parole hearing just got postponed by two weeks. Quebec needs to provide public information about what’s happening in its prisons and expedite bail and parole hearings to get as many people as possible out of prison and back with their communities.”
      “Quebec’s jails now have the highest infection rate of any province, but they’ve refused to act,” said Ted Rutland of the Anti-Carceral Group. “Provinces like Ontario and Nova Scotia have released thousands of prisoners by speeding up bail hearings and releasing people close to the end of their sentence, but Quebec refuses to follow their example.”
       Social distancing is impossible inside prisons and prisoners are at high risk of contracting COVID-19. Health care in prison is abysmal. Guards have employed pepper spray and force against prisoners across the country who have taken action to protest their situation. There are now over 500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 linked to prisons across Canada.
#liberezlestou.te.s
#grevedefaimbordeaux
#bordeauxhungerstrike
#FreeThemAll
#FreeThemAllCaravan
#FreeThemAll4PublicHealth

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Organise Now.

       Now that our lords and masters believe that they have got you all eager to get back to get their tills ringing again, their thoughts are shifting. They and their partners the financial Mafia are now turning their thoughts to how you will pay for all those billions borrowed and given, to their corporate friends to keep them afloat.

     If you all opt for returning to "normal" then you are in for a very nasty shock. If you think that the last 12 years of austerity was brutal in stripping down the NHS and social services, well you ain't seen nothing yet. The amount that the government borrowed in 2008 from the financial Mafia simply disappears into insignificance compared to what they have borrowed this time round. Make no doubt about it, the financial Mafia will demand their money back, and you and I will have to pick up the tab, just like the last time. 

    A little taster of what could be on the cards is what the Egyptian Government is implementing. They are taking 1% off everybody's salary and 1/2% off all pensions, that's just for starters. We can expect similar plans here, plus what they call "cutting Government spending" this will be savage slashing of social services and NHS spending, stopping any pay increases to public sector workers, increased privatisation to rise cash, good by public libraries, hello private library. It is difficult to get inside their money infested minds, but rest assured they will have plans you never thought of to get every penny of your tax payments into their coffers and making sure it is not spent on the general public, despite it being your money.

    This is what to expect if we are foolish enough to go back to their "normal". Surely we have learnt something from this pandemic, the state system and capitalism doesn't work for the benefit of the people. It is a failed system in creating a decent society for all. We turned to mutual aid during this crisis, as it was the only way for many of us to survive and it worked. We have to continue this success by bring it into our mainstream lives. What we mustn't do is run back to the dependency system of perpetual growth and consumerism while grafting to make the tills of the parasite class ring faster.

      Organise within your communities on those foundations of mutual aid and skill sharing, organise to take control of all necessary working spaces, and distribution centres, organise to share between communities. Free ourselves from the corporate greed machine and its profit motive that has shackled us for generations, and is destroying our planet. The decisions have to be made now, next month or next week could be too late. Remember, they are organised, but not for your well being.

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Failed System.

        I always find SubMedia, informative and interesting, I'm looking forward to their new series which starts in June, below is the trailer to get you interested.

      The crew at subMedia have been hard at work for the past few weeks on our new show concept, which will be dropping early next month.  Until then, check out our first teaser trailer.

System Fail:

      It’s a time of pandemic and universal anxiety. The economy is in free fall. The geopolitical order is in flux. And as the old world burns, a 5G-fuelled cybernetic dystopia waits in the wings.
        Buckle up, comrades… this is going to be a bumpy ride.

Website: https://sub.media/video/system-fail-trailer/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKKxVQjeRvo
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/421093896

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Scrap Normal.

       Now that the minders of the large corporations, the state, have decided that you the ordinary people should get back to work, as their buddies tills haven't been ring much over the last few months, it is time we all done some real serious thinking. Most of you will be obliged to use public transport, those who dictate the return will not. Are you positive that your boss will have in place all the necessary safety precautions for your well being and good health? Of course not, so why rush back? The only reason you are being urged to get back to work is to save the shareholders from losing any more money. They don't give a damn if you die or carry the infection into your home and loved ones. The economy is more important to them that your well being. Let the tills stay silent, let the shareholders sweat as their little world of profit and exploitation dwindles.

       Over the last couple of months you have got used to not rushing to the shops to buy their very latest crap, only to be told in a few months that it is now out of date and you need to up date.

     There are so many unknowns in this rush to feed the shareholders. Let's assume you go to a clothes/shoe shop, you wish to try on some of those clothes/shoes. You go to the fitting room, has it been properly disinfected since that last person used it? The clothes you are about to try on, how many people have tried them on before you? Are you willing to take that chance for some sweatshop created item? Public transport, even with social distancing, that seat you sit on, was it disinfected since the last few people sat on it. Remember hard surfaces hold the virus for days, handrails etc.. People will be entering and leaving hundreds of times on each journey, you'll have no idea what surfaces they handled and whither or not they carried the infection.
     For you own and family and loved ones safety, tell them you're not interested in saving their greed driven economy at a risk to you and your family. Concentrate on mutual aid, and taking control of your communities and work places. We can run this country better without the parasite money class and their profit orientated, planet destroying, ideology.

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Short Sleeves.

    Well, well, what a beautiful day, how could you not want to get on your bike? It was warm enough for me to do a wee cycle in my favourite dress mode, cycling shirt with short sleeves. It has been quite a while since I was able to do that, felt great.

    It was just the usual wee spin round my home patch circling and figure eight, trying to remind the legs what they used to do. Happily the answered not too badly at all. Though if you saw the last couple of wee videos you will have noticed the increase in traffic on the road. Sadly it looks like it is all coming back.

    Tomorrow is forecast to be another fine day, might manage out two days in a row. Wow.

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Let's Hear You.

       Everybody should by now be aware that the reason the UK has more deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, than most countries in the world, was simply due to Neo-Liberal policies, orchestrated austerity to suit the financial Mafia, gross ineptitude of the government for more that a decade. The evidence is everywhere, hospitals with staff shortages, equipment shortages, shambles of a testing program, neglect of care homes, and an unbelievable chaotic system of ordering essential PPE. All this adds up to dereliction of duty resulting in untold misery and avoidable deaths, especially among the poor and vulnerable.
       I received the following from a very reliable source, for obvious reason wishing to remain anonymous. Whistle blowers can and do receive a forceful backlash from the powers that be. Front line workers are supposed to be submissive and keep silent, the opposite should be the case. Let's hear your voice.

News from the Front Line.

      As an front line NHS worker who was unfortunate enough to catch the Covid19 virus and was laid low for 4 weeks, it became obvious that the continued cuts to public health and social care over the last three decades was beginning to take its toll on the population.
      This coupled with over a decade of Tory “austerity” cuts has devastated the vulnerable, the poor and the elderly.
      The total unpreparedness of the NHS to deal with an emergency has been highlighted by the outbreak of the corona virus and the chronic under-funding of public health and social care departments has meant that staff in all sectors have been put in an impossible position of trying to care for patients and clients without the benefit of protective equipment or a lot of personal equipment that was out of date.
     And while the virus tore through the elderly in care homes (the vast majority now privatised after Thatcher’s “Care in the Community” programme, putting private profit before public health) Boris and co. sat on their collective hands, and did nothing.
     The crocodile tears of the Tory government, who don’t forget had voted and CHEERED last year about not giving public sectors a wage increase in England, beggars’ belief. Their hypocrisy of Clapping for the NHS is an absolute disgrace as they have been part of a government Cabal since the 1980s to run down Social Security and destabilise the NHS for privatisation.
     When the threat of the virus has finally taken its toll on our poorer and most vulnerable, lets again take to the streets and tell them hands off of our NHS and lay the foundations down to control our workplaces and communities.

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

Healthy Cities.

       There is no doubt that this pandemic has brought about lots of changes in the way people think and act. Of course some of that will disappear after this covid19 thing is behind us, but some will stay. hopefully we will start to put together that better world we all talked about, and hopefully organised for, while our lives were suspended to a degree. Of course for our "frontline workers" life was never suspended, it was thrown into warp speed.
      One of the changes that came about during this lockdown was the booming cycle business. People started taking to their bikes big time, new bikes old bikes all started to be seen streaming through our streets and parks. If that continues it instills a wonderful feeling of joy, as we start living in cities and towns where we can breathe much cleaner air, and see a healthier population. Of course that is only one small change we will have to make to get to the better new world we want.
     As a keen cyclist can applaud this short piece from Not Buying Anything, it has started a little glow of hope that perhaps we are seeing the demise of the car jammed roads, each vehicle belching out poison and turning our living spaces into poison pods. Here's hoping, it's a start to that better world.

Overheard the other day:
     "What is something you are looking forward to doing after the pandemic is over?"
     "Continuing the family bike rides that we have started while staying at home."
        Does anyone else feel the Earth moving under their feet?
Is that the rumble of people giving up driving for riding? Right now car sales are down, and bicycle sales are up. Guaranteed no one saw that one coming just a short while ago.
       Not only are bike sales up, bike servicing is as well as people drag old bikes out of basements and garages and bring them in for a tune up.
       Whether it is to get out of the house, get exercise, spend more time with family and friends, or have a less expensive way to commute that doesn't involve being in close proximity to other commuters, people have been turning to the glory that is the bicycle.
One of the best headlines I have read recently is "Bike Business Booming During Pandemic". That booming you feel is a mass turn toward simplicity.
        The acquisition of a bicycle, after all, is one of the most simple (and wonderful) acts a modern person can engage in.
          To alter the H.G. Wells quote a bit, I can say that, "when I see an adult get set up on a bike, I no longer despair for the human race".
And when I see large masses of adults buying new bikes, and repairing old ones, I start to think, "Hey, we might actually turn this thing around."
        Here's to riding our way to a new, better world.

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Land Of The Free!!

      This is an extract lifted from arrezafe it's from a book written in 1992, and things have deteriorated since then, poverty has increased significantly. Also this is a translation from English to Spanish and back to English, it is not the original English copy, though full English copy can be read here: http://www.michaelparenti.org/HiddenHolocaust.html thanks Loam for the link. The richest and most developed capitalist nation on the planet, and this is the miserable life it produces for millions of its citizens. What chance have the rest of us got if we follow the same Neo-Liberal policies of the capitalist master.

From the book Dirty Truths , [1992], by Michael Parenti
Translation from English: Arrezafe
       "I have seen strong men tear the floor, begging for a job. With some of them we have to do our best to avoid suicide. Many say they just want to die," says Charlie Tarrance, director of a private social agency. . Their task is to deal with the growing queues of desperate people looking for work, housing and food. The place is Gadsden, Alabama, but it could be anywhere in the United States.
      It could be Washington DC, at a Safeway supermarket just a mile from the White House, where an old man holding a can of dog food is crying. When asked what is wrong, he replies: “I am hungry. I'm hungry."
     It could be New York City, where a woman yells at the landlord to evict her from her home along with her children, whom, to her greatest distress, the Office of Child Welfare takes away. Desperate and sobbing, she is rushed to a New York psychiatric hospital to be treated by all-knowing psychiatrists and diagnosed as "paranoid schizophrenic."
      How much misery and cruelty on earth. As American leaders move decisively toward their Final Free Market Solution, stories of hunger, grief, and despair abound. Such tragedies exist a long time ago. Social pathology is part of this society as much as crime and capitalism. For a multitude of people, life becomes increasingly difficult.
Some grim statistics
      Conservatives like to proclaim how wonderful, happy, and prosperous our nation is. The only thing that coincides with their love for the country is the remarkable indifference they show towards the people who live in it. For them, the anguished cries of the dispossessed are nothing more than annoying whimpers of discontent. Those who criticize the existing living conditions are labeled as "complainers" and that we show some concern for our fellow citizens. But the dirty truth is that there is an alarming amount of inequalities, difficulties, abuses, afflictions, diseases, violence and pathologies in this country. The figures reveal a list that reaches millions of victims. Consider the following estimates for any given year:

27,000 Americans commit suicide.
5,000 suicide attempts. Some estimates are higher.
23,000 are killed.
85,000 are wounded by firearms.
38,000 of these die, including 2,600 children.
13,000,000 are victims of crimes including assault, rape, armed robbery, theft and arson.
135,000 children carry weapons to school.
5,500,000 people are arrested for various crimes (not including traffic offenses).
125,000 die prematurely from alcohol abuse.
6,500,000 use heroin, crack, speed, PCP, cocaine, or some other hard drug on a regular basis.
37,000,000 , one in six Americans, regularly use medical drugs to control their mood. Users are mostly women, medical sponsors, pharmaceutical company providers: astronomical profits.
2,000,000 outpatients receive powerful mind control drugs, sometimes described as "chemical straitjackets."
5,000 die from psychoactive drug treatments.
200,000 are subject to treatments of electrical shock damaging to the brain and nervous system.
From 600 to 1,000 people, mostly women, are lobotomized.
25,000,000, or one in 10 Americans, seek help from psychiatric, psychotherapeutic, or medical sources to address mental and emotional problems, at a cost of more than $ 4 billion annually.
6,800,000 turn to non-medical services, such as clergy, welfare agencies, and social counselors, for help with their emotional problems. In total, some 80,000,000 have sought some form of psychological counseling in their lives.
1,300,000 suffer some form of treatment-related injury in hospitals.
2,000,000 undergo unnecessary surgical operations, 10,000 of which die as a result.
180,000 die from adverse reactions to medical treatments, more than those who die from combined plane and car accidents.
More than 14,000 people die from overdoses of legally prescribed medications.
45,000 die in car accidents. However, the number of cars and highways is increasing while funding for safer forms of public transportation is shrinking.
Of the 1,800,000 victims who suffer non-fatal injuries from car accidents, 150,000 suffer permanent disabilities.
126,000 children are born with significant defects, mainly due to insufficient prenatal care, nutritional deficiency, environmental toxicity, or drug addiction by the mother.
2,900,000 children are subjected to gross neglect or abuse, including physical torture and willful starvation.
5,000 children are killed by their parents or grandparents.
More than 30,000 children are permanently physically disabled due to abuse or neglect. Child abuse in the United States affects more children each year than leukemia, car accidents, and infectious diseases combined. Cases of abuse by unemployed parents are increasing dramatically.
1,000,000 children run away from home, mainly due to abuse, including sexual abuse, of parents and other adults. 83 percent of fugitive children sexually abused come from white families.
150,000 children are reported as missing.
50,000 of these simply disappear. Their ages range from 15 to 15. According to the New York Times, "Some of these children are dead, perhaps half of them, buried annually in this country, are unidentified children."
900,000 children, some as young as seven years old, are engaged in child labor in the United States, serving as underpaid farm workers, dishwashers, laundry, and housework for up to ten hours a day in violation of child labor laws.
From 2,000,000 to 4,000,000 women are battered. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury and the second leading cause of death for American women.
700,000 women are raped, one every 45 seconds.

And so the list goes on read the full list HERE: 

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

Open Door!!

      Since this covid19 pandemic I, like lots of others, have been reading articles on how we should tackle it and the problems that it has thrown up in the running of this society. What I find very disappointing is that a tremendous amount of articles, even some from the so called "left", keep advocating what the government should be doing and how it can solve this problem better than it seems to be doing at present. It seems to be impossible for some people to think and act outside the the rule book they have been handed, and they also fail to realise that the government and the large corporations are one and the same thing. To discuss how the government can solve this problem in favour of the ordinary people, is a bit like asking you gaoler to help you escape.

      To me the first step is to throw away the rule book which is based on a growing economy, stop playing the game to their rules. All solutions to our problems must be human based, not corporate balance sheet orientated. The present economic model is there to serve the millionaire/billionaire parasite class, why should we, the ordinary people, do anything to preserve such an unequal exploitative system. Let's not forget, all that money that is being thrown at big multi billion pound corporate businesses is your tax money. One way or another we will be asked to pick up the bill. Our future will be tied that that mountain of "debt" for generations to come with the resulting austerity demanded to reduce the debt and balance the books. You've heard it all before.

I need a taxpayer's bailout to keep this thing going. 

 

     Our answer lies not in getting the economy growing again, but bring it crashing down. What we need we should be the owners of that production and the distributors, and doing it for our selves and our communities, not shoveling the wealth we produce into the coffers of that millionaire/billionaire parasite class that grow fat off your effort and sweat.

      Sustainability, human needs based, mutual aid, co-operation between communities, taking control of our work places and distribution centres, and free from the profit motive, are the only foundation stones of a truly civilised society. Anything else is walking back into your cell when the door was open to leave.

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

Quiet Cruelty.

       Some people might say that I go on about prisons, but I probably do. They are massive institutions of human torture, cruelty and violence, sitting quietly in every city in the world and most people pass them by without much of a thought of what goes on behind those walls, a stain of our humanity. "Man's inhumanity to man" no sexism intend, it is a well know saying to highlight how some of us treat our fellow beings, is no better portrayed than in the state's prison system. Institutions where vindictive and arbitrary actions are the norm, and rules and laws are broken on a whim, all in an attempt to break the incarcerated into a submissive, member of their system.
     All of this is carried out by people in structures that they try to make you believe that they are doing it to protect you and I. However it is a strange human who accepts that locking up other humans under these conditions is something to be done voluntarily and for money.
    We could fill a large library with pages of this type of inhumane treatment handed out in these institutions, in country after country, on a daily basis. No matter the arguments put forward, their is no rational justification in a civilised society for these institutions to exist. They are simply institutions for the repression of dissent, a place where all means are used to bring to submission those who would dare oppose this system of inequality, injustice and greed. Even although, no matter where you look, they are over crowded, unhygienic and lacking in decent health care facilities, but thanks to the human spirit and desire for freedom and justice this doesn't always work.
      This is just another incident from one country, but it could be anywhere you care to drop a pin on a map.

      The following from 325: 

From the South isolation section of the Pagliarelli prison in Palermo
        We are two prisoners who have been thrown into the isolation section “South” of the Pagliarelli prison (in Palermo) without any judicial measure to justify it. We are Carmine Lanzetta (AS3 [detained in “High Surveillance 3” circuit]) from January in total continuous isolation started with the disciplinary isolation for 10 days that still continues, and Davide Delogu, Sardinian anarchist, from February in continuous isolation for reasons of order and security for which we should not do more than 15 days, held hostage with the revenge of total isolation.
       Both of us do not bow to the annihilation in which our torturers would have us and fight against the hellish misery of this infamous section to be closed, with the consequent transfer. In half of the section there are the two of us in cells with nothing inside, far from each other. In the other half they put the prisoners in precautionary quarantine and we all use the same shower and the same phone. So we became their guinea pigs. Someone even before us tried to make a complaint to the prosecutor and complain to the magistrate, but these instances are blocked or made to disappear. There is no response to our lawyers’ complaint send via PEC e-mail either; prison administration taking advantage of the emergency of Covid-19 so the lawyers can’t enter the prison to visit us. We are in a section of isolation that had been abolished since 2000 because of the inhumanity embodied there and which is still being put in place. The cells have nothing inside, are deprived of everything: TV, radio, bathroom door, window, rags, brooms and cleaning sticks, hot water with a mini sink always plugged, a walking space that is a cubicle without a bathroom, but there’s no shortage of excrement of any kind, something we don’t dwell on. They inflict all kinds of abuse without being able to subjugate us, however, does not change the antiphon. Those who hold power in this prison are dangerous people, starting with commander Rizzo who feels omnipotent and all the hierarchs who continue with their harassment, like the deputy director who inflicts disciplinary isolation with natural ease, even though he knows in what non-human conditions he leads people. And the director Francesca Vezzana is co-responsible for all this. All this must end and we demand the closure of this section of isolation “South” and our transfer to another prison.
      Therefore, from today, May 14th, 2020, we begin the food strike, refusing to go to the cubicles and unworthy walking spaces, trying to beat the bars every day for 20-30 minutes.
      Let’s start the strike permanently, for now let’s avoid the hunger and thirst strike in order to keep us strong for when we will lead more incisive forms of struggle, since by limiting ourselves to these we won’t go very far, so that we can face the squadrette [groups of guards specialized in beating and massacre prisoners] that abound here, to get what we want until the end.

 Updates will follow.

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

Now Six.

 

 Photo courtesy of MyPark

         A second visit to Springburn Park to see the swans and their five cygnets. At the last visit there were five cygnets but we thought the parents were still sitting on at least one more egg. Well today proved that to be correct, as there were six cygnets merrily paddling around their parents. It was interesting to see the parents drag weeds up from the bottom of the pond and drop it in front of the cygnets and watch them feeding on it. Another pleasant outing, Stasia as usual, was the hand behind the camera.

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Fascism Tomorrow?

       There's a lot of talk and thought about after this pandemic, perhaps not enough by the general public on how we can scrap the old system of inequality, injustice, and destruction of the planet for greed. If we don't come together to sort this out the way we want it, to a system that sees to the needs of all our people, based on mutual aid, equality, justice, respect for all and sustainability, we will end up in a worse state than we were in before this covid19 pandemic struck.

      To help to focus our minds on our future if we don't grab the initiative now, I nicked this poem from Tayside Wobbly's site, I'm sure they won't mind.

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Welcome Signs.

     For our pandemic permitted evening exercise today, Stasia and I went for a wee walk in a part of our quieter, cleaner air city. It was very unusual, instead of being wary of cars, it was watch out for the bikes. I reckon at the present time that there are more bikes on our city's roads than cars, to me a lover of cycling, a welcome sight. While ambling along it was also good to see that some of our friends had been about as well and left a few signs to say that they had been there before us. Nice to have met you friends.

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

Cages Are Cruelty.

      There can be no rationale for prisons in a civilised society, locking animals in cages is considered cruel, but we tolerate humans being lock up in cages.  Locking large numbers of people up in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions with poor or nonexistent medical facilities, more so during this coronavirus pandemic, must be considered a crime against humanity. Across the world we are talking about millions of individuals, a vast amount of them suffering from physical and/or psychological problems that should treated by the medical profession, but instead are lock up in what can only be described as state institutions of repression and torture. Recently the Turkish state stood callously by and watched two prisoners die, a week or so apart, from the results of a hunger strike, that is the way of states and prisons. Now the states across the world have turned society in to what it has always desired, a totally controlled environment a large open prison, where obedience and submission are seen as a duty. This is the true nature of any state. All those unfortunate enough to be enmeshed in the state's institutions of torture and repression deserve our fullest solidarity and support. 

    Freedom and justice cannot co-exist with prisons, such a situation is a contradiction, freedom and justice will only grow from the ashes of all prisons.

The following from ATHENS Indymedia:

SOLIDARITY WITH PRISONERS ALL OVER THE WORLD

CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION
         The existing health crisis and its management from governments until now, globally, has unmasked the real character of authority, which was hiding itself behind the democratic mask. This oppressive system imposed an ultimate control of life, forbidding everything. Now, all civil liberties have become senseless words. This extreme condition that we live in, reveals that the prison-model is the true capitalistic model of society.
       Prison is the most extreme form of bio-politics and extermination. Prisoners are under constant surveillance and control, something that, nowadays is happening to the whole society.
      In this period of time, prisoners in greek prisons are dying, one after another, from minor causes such as rotten teeth etc. Selim Zerolari and Azizel Demiroglou were two prisoners that we were informed about their deaths, this month. Mass media, of course, managed to conceal or distort these news. Furthermore, the state has grabbed the opportunity, due to the curfew, to move the most active prisoners, anarchists and others, into other prisons. Silence in the streets gives more power to the state to repress the voices of the imprisoned people.
      Incarceration has always been, and remains, a form of torture and a tool of submission for authority. If we don't resist to this modern totalitarianism, we will live in this prison-society, which states systematically impose.
     Throughout the planet, in the face of the corona virus threat, prisoners stacked in prisons and migrant concentration camps are shouting: We are prisoners, not death row convicts!

Korinthos migrant concentration camp, Greece: 1,200 migrants go on hunger strike, March ‘20

Italy, March ‘20: 27 prisons in revolt due to the corona virus, many prisoners killed in the clashes

Argentina, April ‘20: revolt in Concordia prison, guards respond with shootings

Palmasola, Bolivia, May ‘20: 2 prisoners left to die from the corona virus, prisoners revolt

Chile: stirke mobilization at high security prison in Santiago, May ‘20

Thebes prison, Greece: prisoners revolt after prisoner dies beause she was not taken to hospital, April ‘20

MEET ALL PRISONERS DEMANDS
FREEDOM TO ALL WHO ARE IN THE CELLS
PUBLIC HEALTH CARE FOR ALL – PRISONERS AND MIGRANTS
OPEN ALL CONCENTRATION CAMPS FOR MIGRANTS
AS LONG AS BORDERS AND PRISONS EXIST NOBODY IS FREE
CALL TO INTERNATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION IN SOLIDARITY WITH PRISONERS

29-30-31 MAY 2020

comrades, solidarians with prisoners’ struggles

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