The Pleasure Of Phil Woolas

Posted on September 22, 2009

Today French riot police surrounded and dismantled the Calais migrant camp known as ‘the Jungle’, taking the residents, who are mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan into custody.

New Labour immigration minister Phil ‘I’m not a racist’ Woolas told BBC radio he is ‘very pleased’ and, brazenly ignoring the connection between wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the flow of refugees, went on to praise the British soldiers ‘doing an incredibly important and brave job’ so that ‘we’re able to deport people to those countries — we do deport to Afghanistan and Iraq now, and that’s partly because of the efforts of the soldiers — and quite right too.’ This statement comes only a few days after dozens of Afghan villagers were incinerated in a NATO airstrike. The squalid little bureaucrat was boasting about the deportation of people to countries where they face persecution, torture and death, like a Gauleiter gloating about the number of trains he had sent east that day.

The government’s immigration policy is not only a national shame, it is an international embarrassment, with Pakistani pipe bands and trade delegations being refused entry to Britain. Woolas likes categorising people. He refers to ‘boat people’ as if they have anchors instead of arses, but the worst indignity of all is that he calls human beings who do not have the right skin colour or passport ‘illegal people’, ie people who are themselves illegal, totally dehumanising them. They are lumps of meat. Illegal meat. Unwanted meat to be discarded.

End the incarceration of migrants — No One Is Illegal

Defend The Four Campaign

Posted on August 27, 2009

Four members of Unison who distributed a leaflet critical of union leadership and what they allege is a lack of internal democracy, have been banned by a Unison disciplinary committee from holding office in the union for 3-5 years. All four are members of the Socialist Party. The witch-hunt is reminiscent of the ‘Loony Left’ expulsions of the Kinnock era. The four were counter-accused of distributing ‘racist’ material, namely a cartoon of the fabled ‘three wise monkeys’ on their leaflet¹. The message to members is clear: do not go against the neo-liberal New Labour consensus.

You can lend your support at: www.stopthewitchhunt.org.uk

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¹ If the monkeys look like anyone, they are quite ‘Blairite’ in appearance.

Sri Lankan Executions

Posted on August 25, 2009

Britain’s Channel4 News has broadcast video obtained from Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka. The shocking footage shows what appears to be Sri Lankan government forces summarily executing bound, blindfolded and naked Tamil prisoners near Kilinochchi. There are many more bodies lying around, all of whom look to have been shot in the head. JDSL say that the video was taken in January, in the ‘conflict zone’ from which the international media was excluded by the Sri Lankan government. The murders were carried out well out of sight of what one apologist derided as ‘queasy neo-pacifism and defeatism’ of ‘surrender monkeys .. human rights lawyers, NGOs and the media’.

The Sri Lankan government, which has imprisoned 300,000 Tamils behind razor wire in squalid concentration camps since the ‘end’ of the conflict, has issued a rote denial.

Costantina, You Are Not Alone

Posted on August 24, 2009

The following is from a paper circulated by Greek feminists about the vicious acid attack on Costantina Kuneva, General Secretary of the Janitors Union (PEKOP-All Attica Union for Janitors and Home Service Personnel).

On the 22th of December 2008, in Petralona, an old working class neighborhood of the city of Athens, Bulgarian immigrant worker Costantina Kuneva, General Secretary of the Janitors Union (PEKOP-All Attica Union for Janitors and Home Service Personnel), was the victim of an attack using sulphuric acid while returning home from her workplace. She was seriously wounded, losing the use of one eye and of her vocal chords and she is still in a hospital intensive care unit. Almost three months after that scandalous attack, the Greek unions complained that the “investigations to locate the perpetrators are effectively at point zero, in stark contrast to the dazzling speed of the authorities in cases against workers and strike action!” Neither eye witness reports nor laboratory tests have been used in this case. The victim’s statement has not yet been recorded, despite the fact that she can now communicate in writing.

“Costantina you are not alone” has been the core chant of an emerging solidarity movement to the female militant labour activist and migrant worker Costantina Kuneva that was attacked and is incapacitated. This paper locates the solidarity movement at the intersection of the women’s, anti-racist and the precarious workers labour movement. This is one of the few times in recent Greek history of social movements we have the interconnection of the all three movements. The interconnection of gender, race/ethnicity and class along with the impunity of the transgressing employers and the complicity of the government are the main reasons that motivate activists bringing them together to the solidarity movement. Thus the solidarity movement to Kuneva incorporates struggles against all forms of oppression. This presentation through the example of the movement will aim to answer certain theoretical and practical questions that we think will be useful to all of us who theorize on or/and participate in social movements.

Indefinite Detention

Posted on August 23, 2009

The Sri Lankan government’s propaganda attempts to shroud Sinalhese-supremacist genocide in a cloak of respectability by claiming ‘shared victory’ in the civil war for Sinhalese and Tamils, are exposed as cynical lies by the continuing detention of Tamils over three months after the ‘end’ of the war. Sampath Perera reports that the Sri Lankan goverment continues to block access to a staggering 300,000 Tamils imprisoned in ‘welfare villages’ surrounded by troops and barbed wire.

On the pretext of preventing “terrorist� attacks, the government has imprisoned hundreds of thousands of civilians indefinitely without charge or trial. Inside the detention centres, hundreds of young people have been questioned by security personnel then sent to unknown prisons for further interrogation and possibly torture. In many cases, their relatives have been given no information about their whereabouts.

Gog Magog

Posted on August 23, 2009

If there was remaining doubt that George W Bush was ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’, former French President Jacques Chirac says Bush told him why Iraq must be invaded.

Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.

This news accompanies revelations about the activities of the private ‘security company’ Blackwater/Xe in Iraq, and allegations that the head of Blackwater/Xe views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,â€� and that his companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.â€�

Employer Offensive Against Workers

Posted on August 12, 2009

A German factory worker has been summarily dismissed for ‘stealing’ 0.014 cents (less than one-seven thousandth of a euro) of electricity, charging his mobile phone, after previously being docked half an hour’s wages for taking a photograph of the machine he worked on to show to his young son.

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