Resistor’s Gulag

The Empire (read Dave Dubya list its many elusive qualities) determines life or death, trial or life imprisonment, not just for those in Gitmo, but you’re only a living saintly troop while you obey mechanically. As the Democrats pass war and neoliberal continuity measures, imperialism the only true value.

Courage To Resist:- At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, AWOL soldiers find themselves detained for months under difficult conditions in an extended legal limbo they cannot escape.

Dustin Stevens is one of about 50 soldiers being held at Fort Bragg awaiting likely AWOL and desertion charges that seem like they will never arrive, he says. A former soldier who refused to continue military service seven years ago because he did not want to fight a war, Stevens says that he and his colleagues are being held in legal limbo – a no man’s land of poor living standards and arbitrary punishments – while awaiting charges and possible court-martial.

Stevens has been in a holdover unit for five months without charges, and he says that others have been held for up to a year in conditions he describes as harrowing.

The unit is overcrowded and filthy, he says, with four people to a room. The command verbally abuses the soldiers, with one commanding officer proclaiming, “We should just shoot you all,” according to Stevens. Troops are not receiving the medical and mental health care they need. “People around me are literally going crazy. I hear people threaten suicide on a daily basis,” says Stevens. “They won’t give us leave passes unless it’s a dire emergency, so we’re just sitting here, day by day.”

The command offered the soldiers a free pass if they agreed to deploy to Afghanistan, according to Stevens. About ten people took up the offer, he says. Those who decline must find a way to endure.

Laser Guided Spin

Gareth Porter’s latest (excerpts)-

(IPS) – At his confirmation hearings two weeks ago, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said reducing civilian deaths from air strikes in Afghanistan was “strategically decisive” and declared his “willingness to operate in ways that minimise casualties or damage, even when it makes our task more difficult.” Some McChrystal supporters hope he will rein in the main source of civilian casualties: Special Operations Forces (SOF) units that carry out targeted strikes against suspected “Taliban” on the basis of doubtful intelligence and raids that require air strikes when they get into trouble.

 But there are growing indications that his command is preparing to deal with the issue primarily by seeking to shift the blame to the Taliban through more and better propaganda operations and by using more high-tech drone intelligence aircraft to increase battlefield surveillance rather than by curbing the main direct cause of civilian casualties. U.S. officials at a NATO conference in Brussels last Friday were telling reporters that “public relations” are now considered “crucial” to “turning the tide” in Afghanistan, according to an AFP story on Jun 12.

<…>

But McChrystal hinted in his confirmation hearing that he hoped to reduce civilian casualties by obtaining more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. Petraeus confirmed that approach to the problem in remarks at the CNAS conference last week, announcing that he was planning to shift some high-tech intelligence vehicles from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Petraeus referred to “predators, armed full motion video with Hellfire missiles”, “special intelligence birds”, and unmanned intelligence vehicles called Shadows and Ravens, which fly 24 hours a day.

 Although such intelligence aircraft may make U.S. battlefield targeting more precise, Petraeus’s reference to drones equipped with Hellfire missiles suggests that U.S. forces in Afghanistan may now rely more than previously on drone strikes against suspected Afghan insurgents. Given the chronic lack of accurate intelligence on the identity of insurgent leaders, that would tend to increase civilian casualties.

Worst Pun Ever

Oh BBC, the article is not so bad, (even if it glosses over the violent racist extremism of the settlers and the state’s complicity), but who perpetrated that pun atrocity?

SOAS 9 Cleaners

• Keep checking freesoascleaners.blogspot.com
• The occupiers have scored a victory, but you can still help by writing to the Home Office- sample letter. UKBApublicenquiries at UKBA.gsi.gov.uk (replace at with @)

The BNP/Loyalist Crossover Forces Romanians From Their Homes

The BNP base their ‘call centre’ in Belfast where Jim Dowson — a top BNP fundraiser and a militant anti-abortion campaigner who has a string of criminal convictions and has had links to mass-murderer Michael Stone (the loyalist terrorist)– runs their operations. Nick Griffin visited there secretly just before the European elections-

BNP leader Nick Griffin made a secret trip to the Belfast base less than two weeks ago to film a propaganda video. Our exclusive picture shows Griffin pictured at the Belfast HQ flanked by two members of staff, whose identity we have protected.

However in most reports the origins of these racist crimes are rather vague, they balk at mentioning it is linked to fringe loyalists let alone the relationship between loyalists and the BNP. While the remnant Loyalist leadership condemn the attacks it appears the younger ones are feeling their oats and turning their hatred temporarily from Catholics onto Romanians and Poles, all of course encouraged by the BNP and Combat 18 Nazism who share the bigotry that includes hatred of Catholics (including insane theories such as the Islamic/Catholic/EU/Sinn Fein/IRA plot to destroy the UK with Catholic immigrants!).

Racists who forced Romanians to flee their homes threatened to cut a baby’s throat, it emerged today. Over 100 men, women and children were this morning taken to the Ozone complex in Belfast after they spent the night in a church hall following sustained attacks by a racist mob claiming to be from the fascist group Combat 18.

Thugs who target migrants in Northern Ireland for racist attack are guilty of ethnic cleansing, a community worker said today. Large parts of south Belfast are in danger of becoming no-go areas after 20 Romanian families were forced to spend the night at a church hall, Patrick Yu added. Bricks have been thrown through windows in the Protestant working-class Village area with increasing frequency in recent weeks.

Now the BNP have two MEP’s I think it is incumbent on the media to ask them directly their views on the attacks and to see if they will condemn them and demand all members and associates cease any activity they may be involved in. Will political journalists on TV have the guts to confront fascism on the air? It should also be asked how the police allowed it to get this bad, given their historic ties to loyalists and their paramilitaries should we deduce they ignored the victimisation of Romanians as those doing it had links to Loyalist groups gangs? Is the bias in British media in favour of Loyalism not allowing the true picture of bigotry to emerge? Many in the community though are far more courageous and if their lead had been followed this refugee crisis could perhaps have been averted, if the hardcore violent fascists had been dealt with by the police-

One family fled from their home in Belgravia Avenue. Another family, with a newborn baby, has been left terrified after their home at Wellesley Avenue came under attack just days after they were forced out of another property.

Their south Belfast homes came under sustained attack from Thursday evening, with their windows smashed and doors kicked in by crowds of thugs gathering outside shouting racist slogans. 

A number of local residents last night stood guard outside their new home in a bid to protect them.

One local resident, Paddy Meehan, said: “About 12 of us worked in shifts to defend the house last night. Local residents think these people have to be defended. These thugs have been shouting that they are Combat 18 and they dropped a letter containing text from Hitler’s Mein Kampf through the letterbox of one of the properties.

“This has been going on for several nights. Sometimes there is about 20 of them gathering outside the properties. There is a hardcore of maybe six or seven shouting abuse and kicking doors down.These families are terrified, so are all their young children. They feel very isolated which is why the local community is gathering around them to support them,” he added.

The PSNI said police in south Belfast are investigating a number of racist attacks and criminal damage to properties and a car in Wellesley Avenue and Belgravia Avenue on a number of occasions between June 11 and 14.

A spokeswoman added: “A crowd gathered on each occasion at the properties and a number of windows were smashed. Police have not received reports of any injuries.”

Major hat tip to Lancaster Unity.

The extent to which the true roots of this racist violence are obscured will determine its spread and increase in severity elsewhere. Because of the soft spot for loyalists in the British establishment there is the danger of it not being dealt with and spreading. Or as Dave Osler puts it-

The Six Counties has always been a case apart from the rest of the United Kingdom, if I can be permitted to use the two geographical expressions in the same sentence. Just because something happens in Belfast, that doesn’t mean that it must necessarily happen in Burnley.

But sadly, it does not take too much of a leap of the imagination to see that if bricks can readily fly through immigrant windows in Belfast, the tactic may yet be duplicated in many English towns. If the bricks are one day followed by firebombs, then yes, we will be talking about pogroms.

In Refugee Week Support The SOAS 9

Refugee Week is in part funded by the Home Office/Border Agency. While its Simple Acts are worthy, only one out of twenty suggest joining a ‘campaign in support of refugees‘ and none suggest direct action helping migrants & refugees currently under attack by the government and the racist thugs of the Border Agency. So may I suggest adding the Simple Act of supporting the SOAS cleaners- 3 are currently disappeared, whereabouts unknown and 6 have supposedly been deported by force already, one of whom is six months pregnant. All because they won the fight for fair wages, their employer ISS [contracted by the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS)] responded by arranging an ambush with over 40 immigration officers in full riot gear and had those without proper papers bitte hauled away to the immigration gulag. Clearly their immigration status was only an issue when profits were threatened. It also does not speak well of the values of the SOAS. Maybe they could get someone in to teach fairness and basic common decency to those who run it.

Keep checking freesoascleaners.blogspot.com

Rally Wednesday 12pm outside SOAS

Join occupiers, staff and others for a rally to show SOAS management that the fight for justice for the SOAS 9 continues! Demonstrate the campaign is growing and we won’t give up till management meet our demands!

Sign this petition.

And Facebook.

And some on the spot citizen journalism from HarpyMarx.