We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

A new kind of barbarism: the ‘non-people’ of Patras

Click here to access article by Matt Carr from Ceasefire.

This article reveals how the brutal methods of fascism in this age are applied very selectively to certain populations who are deemed to be surplus labor or throwaway human beings that capitalist ruling classes no longer need to fuel their engines of wealth generation. The author illustrates these inhuman practices by focusing on...
the brutal persecution of undocumented migrants in the Greek port-city of Patras, a continuum of violence that spans militarised law enforcement, the policing of protest, immigration control and the battlefields of the "war on terror"'.
Although the globalization phase of capitalism has removed national barriers for the One Percents in their never ending quest for wealth, on the other end of the class structure we find all kinds of barriers being erected to control the movement of people who desperately search for a means of survival. 

See also an excellent 23:52m video from Al Jazeera about US immigration policies and practices.
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