#political imprisonment

[bedforddanes75]

im not american but some of you guys are just fucking stupid ong what do you MEAN youre not gna vote because you disagree with like one part of what youre voting for. like okay me when im fucking thick

[fiercynn]

disturbed by the number of times i've seen the idea that calling gaza an open-air prison is not okay because "that implies that gazans have done something wrong", the subtext being unlike those criminals who deserve to be in prison. i'm sorry but we HAVE to understand criminalization and incarceration as an intrinsic part of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, because settler states make laws that actively are designed to suppress indigenous and racialized resistance, and then enforce those laws in even more racist and discriminatory ways so that who is considered "criminal" is indelibly tied up with who is considered a "threat" to the settler state. that's how law, policing, and incarceration function worlwide, and how they have always functioned in israel as part of the zionist project.

talking about prison abolition in this context is not a distraction from what's happening to palestinians; it's a key tool of israel's apartheid and genocide. why do you think a major hamas demand has been for israel to release the palestinians in israeli prisons? why do you think israel nearly doubled the number of palestinians incarcerated in their prison in just the first two weeks after october 7? why do they systematically racially profile palestinians (particularly afro-palestinians, since anti-blackness is baked into israel's carceral system as well, like it is in much of the world) and arrest and charge 20% of palestinians, an astonishingly high rate that goes up even higher to 40% for palestinian men? why are there two different systems of law for palestinians and israelis, where palestinians are charged and tried under military law, leading to a conviction rate of almost 100%? why do they torture children and incarcerate them for up to 20 years just for throwing rocks? why can palestinians be imprisoned by israel without even being charged or tried? why do they keep the bodies of palestinians who have died in prison (often due to torture, execution, or medical neglect) for the rest of their sentences instead of returning them to their families?

this is not to say that no palestinians imprisoned by israel have ever done harm. but incarceration worldwide has never been about accountability for those who have done harm, nor about real justice for those have experienced harm, nor about deterring future harm. incarceration is about controlling, suppressing, and exterminating oppressed people. sometimes people from privileged classes get caught up in carceral systems as well, but it is a side effect, because the settler colonialist state will happily sacrifice some of its settlers for its larger goal.

so yes, gaza is an open-air prison. that doesn't means gazans deserve to be there. it means that no one deserves to be in prison, because prisons themselves are inherently oppressive.

[reportwire]

Imprisoned Russian activist honored with human rights award

Imprisoned Russian activist honored with human rights award

GENEVA — An imprisoned Russian opposition activist who was honored by a human rights advocacy group dedicated his award to the thousands of people who have been arrested or detained in Russia for protesting President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. UN Watch, a Geneva-based organization that promotes human rights and tries to ensure that the United Nations does, too, gave Vladimir Kara-Murza its…

[reasonsforhope]

Paywall-Free Article

"In one of its first big decisions, Britain’s new Labour government on Friday [July 12, 2024] announced the early release of thousands of prisoners, blaming the need to do so on a legacy of neglect and underinvestment under the Conservative Party, which lost last week’s general election after 14 years in power.

With the system nearly at capacity and some of the country’s aged prison buildings crumbling, the plan aims to avoid an overcrowding crisis that some had feared might soon explode.

But with crime a significant political issue, the decision is a sensitive one and the prime minister, Keir Starmer, a former chief prosecutor, lost no time in pointing to his predecessors to explain the need for early releases.

“We knew it was going to be a problem, but the scale of the problem was worse than we thought, and the nature of the problem is pretty unforgivable in my book,” Mr. Starmer said, speaking ahead of the decision while attending a NATO summit in Washington...

Under the new government’s plan, those serving some sentences in England and Wales would be released after serving 40 percent of their sentence, rather than at the midway point at which many are freed “on license,” a kind of parole.

The even earlier releases will not apply to those convicted of more serious crimes, including sexual offenses, serious violence and terrorism. But Mark Icke, vice president of the Prison Governors’ Association, told the BBC that the plan could remove from the system “between 8,000 and 10,000 people,” providing “some breathing space.”

[Note: And more importantly - breathing space for thousands of people who have been unjustly imprisoned for minor offenses, as well as their families.]

Despite some early releases under the previous government, the strain on the prison system has been relentless. In England and Wales, the prison population stands at 87,505 — very close to the maximum capacity of 88,956 — according to the latest official data...

In its first week in power, Labour has said that it is grappling with a difficult inheritance after years of restraint in spending on public services under the Conservatives. In one of her first acts in government, the new chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has ordered a review of Britain’s public finances.

Before Labour had won the election, it identified the strain on Britain’s prisons as a potentially major problem. The issue was cited on an internal list of key concerns; others included the strain on the overburdened health care system and financial pressure on municipalities and universities.

The prison population of England and Wales has doubled over the last 30 years, despite a decline in crime rates, and it has increased by 13 percent in the past three years...

Rory Stewart, a former Conservative prisons minister, said that Britain had incarcerated too many people, including for minor crimes such as repeated failure to pay council tax, which is levied by local authorities for municipal services.

According to Mr. Stewart in remarks to the BBC, imprisoning people for minor crimes “doesn’t protect the public. It doesn’t help these people get away from offending. And it creates these violent, filthy, shameful places which our prisons have become today.” The Conservative and Labour parties, he added, had “competed with each other on being more and more ferocious in demanding longer and longer sentences.”

Mr. Starmer has raised hopes among those who want to change that policy by appointing a prominent advocate of overhauling the prison system, James Timpson, as prisons minister. Mr. Timpson, a businessman, has a record of employing former prisoners in an effort to give them a second chance."

-via The New York Times, July 12, 2024

[anti-workshop]

Hey US friends! Ok, so obviously the voting discourse on here is vile. We don't know who's a psyop, who's a bot etc. Also people are legitimately pissed at the failures of the system to actually represent us in any meaningful way, and livid about the myriad ongoing genocides being committed with our money, in our name.

So, I'm not going to tell you what to do in November.

Before November, after November, NOW, for the love of God, please fucking organize at your jobs. That is probably the only place you can actually exercise real, direct power.

Voting is one very very small way to exercise indirect power. It's saying, "ok I am giving power to you, other person/people, now please do what you said you would that enticed me to give you this power in the first place."

Direct power is saying "Fuck you, no. We're doing this." and then doing that.

Organizing is hard and it takes time and you have to learn how to do it well, or it doesn't work. But when it works it works really fucking well. And when we organize a lot of us, we can win everything.

Y'all know I'm in the IWW. Right now the union is struggling with some administrative bs, same old story it's always been a messy organization. Doesn't matter. Branches and Unions in the IWW are autonomous to organize how they want to. It's a structure you can use if you want, to organize well. That's the route I'm taking because I trust and respect the people in my local, and I desperately want to help build worker power in my city and I'll do anything to help that.

You don't have to join an org, but please take a training on organizing and start organizing. The IWW has an intensive, 16 hour training that is free called the OT101. We feed you 4 meals and teach you how to organize to win. The training is even fun!

If there are unions in your area, or a labor council, reach out to them too, they regularly have organizing trainings! Theirs are more geared to getting contract negotiations, which in my opinion isn't the main goal, but training is always good and helpful.

But please please please, you have to organize your jobs. That's where we have them by the balls. They need us to run this shit, everything runs because we make it run.

Yes, they can fire you if you organize or get uppity. Yeah, right now that's illegal but probably won't be for long. Guess what, they have to hire someone to replace you! If that worker is also organizing, the bosses are fucked and we win!

The other thing is everyone can organize! My ass is disabled, decrepit, a major depressive and I can do it! You can too! You're not alone! That's the whole point! We can't do shit alone, we need each other and when we have each others' backs we can get shit done.

We all can see with our own eyes that shit is bad, it's been bad forever and it's going to get worse before it gets better and the only way it gets better is us making it better.

If you're in Milwaukee, or Wisconsin, or fuck generally the Midwest feel free to reach out to me and I will personally get you set up in an OT101 here. Get yourself here and we'll put you up somewhere, feed you, train you, get your connected to people in your area who are also organizing and build through from there.

Solidarity is where we have power, so let's use it.

[sacchiri]

Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.

Ein wunderliche und erschröckliche Hystori von einem großen Wüttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen

A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Oh man. The Imprisoning War lore that I’m making is absolutely getting out of control and it’s really fun haha

[mugiwara-lucy]

Oh wow!

As a gay woman finding out EVERYTHING Joe Biden has done for Gay people REALLY warms my heart!

Here's a couple of snippets down below:

And that's not even ALL of it! Here's the FULL LIST DOWN BELOW!

Credit to @batboyblog so thanks!!

Now compare this to Trump who wants to do away with all of the progress the LGBTQXIA+ have gained in this country so if you need a reason to vote....it's to keep ALL of the protection the LGBTQXIA+community have gained so PLEASE VOTE BLUE THIS NOVEMBER!

Again I've stressed this and WILL CONTINUE TO STRESS THIS; NON VOTING AND THIRD PARTY VOTING ARE INDIRECT VOTES FOR TRUMP AND HIS CAMP SINCE THIS PAST WEEK HAS SHOWN THEY WILL VOTE FOR HIM NO MATTER WHAT!

Thank you.

[ammg-old2]

I last saw my old professor Abduqadir Jalalidin at his Urumqi apartment in late 2016. Over home-pulled laghman noodles and a couple of bottles of Chinese liquor, we talked and laughed about everything from Uighur literature to American politics. Several years earlier, when I had defended my master’s thesis on Uighur poetry, Jalalidin, himself a famous poet, had sat across from me and asked hard questions. Now we were just friends.

It was a memorable evening, one I’ve thought about many times since learning in early 2018 that Jalalidin had been sent, along with more than a million other Uighurs, to China’s internment camps.

As with my other friends and colleagues who have disappeared into this vast, secretive gulag, months stretched into years with no word from Jalalidin. And then, late this summer, the silence broke. Even in the camps, I learned, my old professor had continued writing poetry. Other inmates had committed his new poems to memory and had managed to transmit one of them beyond the camp gates.

In this forgotten place I have no lover’s touch Each night brings darker dreams, I have no amulet My life is all I ask, I have no other thirst These silent thoughts torment, I have no way to hope

Who I once was, what I’ve become, I cannot know Who could I tell my heart’s desires, I cannot say My love, the temper of the fates I cannot guess I long to go to you, I have no strength to move

Through cracks and crevices I’ve watched the seasons change For news of you I’ve looked in vain to buds and flowers To the marrow of my bones I’ve ached to be with you What road led here, why do I have no road back home

Jalalidin’s poem is powerful testimony to a continuing catastrophe in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Since 2017, the Chinese state has swept a growing proportion of its Uighur population, along with other Muslim minorities, into an expanding system of camps, prisons and forced labor facilities. A mass sterilization campaign has targeted Uighur women, and the discovery of a multi-ton shipment of human hair from the region, most likely originating from the camps, evokes humanity’s darkest hours.

But my professor’s poem is also testimony to Uighurs’ unique use of poetry as a means of communal survival. Against overwhelming state violence, one might imagine that poetry would offer little recourse. Yet for many Uighurs — including those who risked sharing Jalalidin’s poem — poetry has a power and importance inconceivable in the American context.

[jgffkek]

authsoc sablin that’s all

[bagellu]

As if we needed any further confirmation of what a horrible, fascist woman she is, here is the UK home secretary, Suella Braverman, saying being gay in places where you can be prosecuted for it isn’t enough to claim asylum.

This isn’t just a UK thing either, she is due to speak in Washington D.C. to state that current asylum regulations should be updated to support this. Vile stuff and article below (sorry it’s the bbc)

[secretmellowblog]

Another parallel between Valjean and Javert is that they’re eerily silent when captured or threatened.

Jean Valjean being captured by Patron-Minette:

The silence preserved by the prisoner, that precaution which had been carried to the point of forgetting all anxiety for his own life, that resistance opposed to the first impulse of nature, which is to utter a cry….

Javert being captured by Les Amis:

Javert had not uttered a single cry.

The other police spy who’s captured at the barricade— Le Cabuc— is not like Javert, in that he behaves like a normal person. He cries out in pain and anger and fear; he begs for mercy; he prays. But Javert is inhumanly tranquil, and reacts to his death with indifference.

Jean Valjean, when captured by Patron-Minette, is similar. He acts eerily “calm,” and inhumanly “silent.” Of course in Valjean’s case, he has to be silent, because he’s aware that the police would only hurt him if they arrived; his politeness is also a survival strategy. Knowing how to behave in a superficially polite solicitous way to avoid punishment from authority is clearly something he’s had to learn to survive prison.

This parallel feels like another way the trauma of prison has affected both of Valjean and Javert’s lives. Javert spent time in prison as a child, Valjean spent nineteen years serving his sentence— and both of them have now learned to silence “the first impulse of nature” to cry for help. They know instinctively how to behave in situations where they are trapped in another person’s power and have no autonomy. They are able to remain calm and tranquil and even “polite” even when they’re threatened with death.

[weirdstrangeandawful]

Whumpee imprisoned in a glass cell panicking over video calls at first because it feels the same even though they know it isn’t.

[reportwire]

Iran officials say Tehran prison blaze has been extinguished

Iran officials say Tehran prison blaze has been extinguished

CAIRO — A towering blaze at a notorious prison housing political prisoners and anti-government activists in Iran’s capital injured at least nine people but was extinguished after several hours and no detainees escaped, state media said Sunday. Flames and smoke rising from Tehran’s Evin Prison had been widely visible Saturday evening, as nationwide anti-government protests triggered by the death…

[shattered-pieces]

“Down with the war in Ukraine. Down with the fascist Putin regime. Freedom for all political prisoners. Freedom in general for all prisoners,”

— Pavel Kushnir on his last YouTube video, who died yesterday in prison

https://t.me/politzekinfo/6360

Somehow the Russians who speak out about the war don't matter and don't count and die in prison without anyone noticing

[thedreadvampy]

Yes people are fucking dying and no I don't ever feel like. Great about people being killed in missile strikes.

But I also don't feel great about decades of civilians, including over 2,100 children in the last 20 years, being killed both by missile strikes and by being shot or beaten to death in the street.

250 people were killed in the Hamas rocket attacks on Saturday, which is around the same as the number of Palestinian people the Israeli security forces had murdered this year before Saturday, and significantly less than they've killed since Saturday.

look the people are not the state and despite Israel being an apartheid colony, being an Israeli citizen doesn't necessarily imply 100% agreement. It's been 70 years and 3 generations since Israel was established as a state and the majority of Israeli civilians now didn't choose to come, they're living in the country they were born (although the same is not so much true for people living in Gaza who have recently occupied the stolen homes of Palestinians). Israelis are human people with lives and hopes and passions and deaths of any person are tragic.

BUT.

Palestinians are human people with lives and hopes and passions and their lives matter just as much and are snuffed out without the international community batting an eye - I remind you again. 212 Palestinians including 38 children were murdered this year before this weekend's missile strikes and if you didn't give a shit until Hamas killed the same number of Israelis at which point everyone went OH MY GOD THE HUMANITY HOW COULD PALESTINIANS DO THIS (while Israel killed 300+ more Palestinians in under 24 hours) that's bc uhhhh you're fucking racist and don't think Palestinian lives are as important as Israeli ones

so like. sure we can acknowledge that 250 Israeli civilians' deaths are a tragedy, if we can also agree that the 300+ Palestinian civilians killed in retaliatory strikes are a tragedy and most importantly if we can agree that the 200+ Palestinians killed in 2023 before the Hamas strikes this weekend are not just a tragedy but a deliberate atrocity.

in January the Israeli government made it vocally clear before the UN than not only do they consider the occupation of Palestine permanent, they are explicitly focused on taking over as much Palestinian land as possible in perpetuity. Since then this whole year there have been a total of only FOUR (nonconsecutive) FULL WEEKS in which NO Palestines were killed by Israel (compared to only 8 weeks in which Israelis WERE killed, of which 2 incidents were friendly fire from another IDF member)

It's legitimately tragic when people are killed. And Israel has been systematically killing Palestinians to the degree there are Palestinian casualties recorded about 3 days in every 5 this year, usually multiple, with displacements, demolitions, injuries, arrests and beatings recorded almost every single day. I do not know how LITERALLY anyone can look at the numbers from this year, let alone the last 75, and conclude that Israel is the victim of unprovoked violence.