A city built on the bones of prisoners
Komsomolsk-na-Amur is an industrial city in the Russian Far East. Founded in 1932, it was from 1937 unmarked on maps and off limits to foreigners – not just in Soviet […]
Category Archives: prisons
The slave forts of Ghana – Notes from a visit to West Africa, Part 1
In December and January, I visited Ghana, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso. The next few posts on this blog will be drawn from the notes I made on that visit. […]
Trotsky and Ukrainian independence
“The Ukrainian question, which many governments and many “socialists” and even “communists” have tried to forget or to relegate to the deep strongbox of history, has once again been placed […]
This is what a moral crisis looks like
Two staggering statistics illustrate the fact that the crisis afflicting the capitalist world is not just an economic crisis but a moral crisis as well. In the United States today, […]
So this is our banned testimony – Pelican Bay prisoners statement to legislators
Originally posted on Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity:
We are prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison who have all lived for over 15 years locked 23 hours a day in small windowless…
Prisoners in the US assert their humanity
Workers wanting to fight back find ways and means no matter what situation they face. In 2013 the leading role in the international workers movement was taken by workers in some […]
Greatest hypocrite of them all
Among the bourgeois politicians who lined up to eulogise Nelson Mandela over the past week, the competition for Awards in the categories Most Convenient Amnesia and Greatest Hypocrite Of All was fierce. […]
Their Mandela and ours
Their Mandela was a saintly figure, whom they first recognised in the early 1990s. His chief characteristic was the ability to forgive unspeakable crimes – their crimes. He was prepared to […]
“We have broken stronger wills than yours”
Some of the most impressive struggles by working people this year have been fights by those in the most difficult of circumstances, the workers behind bars. With few means for […]
Attacks on democratic rights – real and imaginary
After considerable public outcry over the misogynist comments on air by broadcasters Willie Jackson and John Tamihere, during the debate on the Roastbusters question, their show has been taken off […]
A worker at large 