Gegen die grenzüberschreitende Kriminalisierung politischer AktivistInnen!
Für die Abschaffung der polizeilichen Datenbankgesellschaft!

Contre la criminalisation trans-frontalière des militants politiques!
Pour la fin d’une société fondée sur les bases de données!

Against the crossborder criminalisation of political activitsts!
For the abandonment of the police database society!

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“Machines do not win wars, people do”
Mao

Transportable Autonomous Patrol for Land Border Surveillance (TALOS) is a robotic system which is to be implemented to address the ‘problems’ of surveillance along the large land border of the EU. The aim of TALOS is to help in detecting persons trying to cross the land border. Like existing surveillance systems, TALOS is going to use sensors to detect, track and intercept people, vehicles and hazardous substances crossing the unregulated land border between existing border crossing points.

However these sensors will be carried by unmanned robotic ‘drone’ vehicles having a high degree of ‘autonomy’. TALOS is an international research project co-funded by the EU. The main objective of TALOS is to develop and field test the innovative concept of a mobile, autonomous robotic system for protecting European land borders. The conventional border protection systems are based mainly on expensive ground facilities installed along the entire length of the border used only to observe, detect and warn. This infrastructure is complemented by motorized and foot patrols. The system developed within the TALOS project aims to observe the border, and improve communications, enabling Border Guards to react quicker.

Some ideas on migration, capitalism and social revolts

I. INTRODUCTION

This text comes from practical questions linked to the tenure of an ECOFIN meeting (European financial ministers gathering from the 30th September to the 1st October) and of a n European Trade Union demonstration (on the 29th September) during the No Border Camp in Brussels (25th September- 3rd October). During discussions, we questioned our position with regard to this summit. Our reflexions quickly went to « the » current crisis and his social and political effects, in the meantime increase of racist politics and behaviours, and of social revolts and mass-movements. Questions on these effects are finally the main reason for this text, with the last September week in Brussels as background. From a radical position against borders and for freedom of movement, we propose here a few ideas on the « No Border movement », on relations between anti-migration and economic European politics, and on the actual blooming of social revolts. Ideas which aim to bring reflections, discussions … and actions.

II. ABOUT OUR LIMITS

To begin with, we thought about how the “No Border activists”, in a larger sense, connect usually migration policies to economical policies. In these discourses we can distinguish two main poles, in between a variety of discussions and positions against borders are taking place.

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Since the crisis of Greece and the euro in early May, the European Union has become a political zombie: its neoliberal and monetarist brain is damaged, but it continues to create havoc and disaster. Merkel, whose inaction has escalated the cost of the financial crisis from €45 to €450 million, is imposing her mantra on Europe: Austerity, Austerity, Austerity. Cuts in public spending and wage freezes are imposed on a society already made precarious by the Great Recession. Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium: nobody is sheltered from the attack on the european welfare state by global finance.

Barroso (Commission in Brussels) and Trichet (Central Bank in Frankfurt), although they would like to handle the crisis themselves instead of national governments, concur that only swift cuts can restore the faith of financial markets in the euro. International banks and speculators are demanding that all of us foot the bill for the deficits created two years ago to save their asses. Austerity will worsen the crisis, which has already made millions of precarious unemployed, and plunge the european economy into deflation, in a vicious circle of recession and unemployment, mounting xenophobia and nationalism.

5 years Frontex – 5 Years Ceuta Melilla

5 years ago in May 2005, Frontex, the European border agency, started its work with a few pilot projects. Today, Frontex is permanently involved in militarized sea- and land-operations against refugees and migrants on the European border as well as in the coordination of charter-deportations. Frontex is the driving force on different levels intensifying the repressive system of migration-control even beyond EU-borders. In their mission, to combat so-called illegal migration,  Frontex is willing to accept the death of thousands of refugees in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. Thus Frontex represents one of the main counterparts in our struggle for freedom of movement.

5 years ago in October 2005 migrants and refugees have been shot to death on their way to Europe – trying to overcome the fences of the Spanish exclaves in Ceuta and Melilla. The collective storm with self-made ladders against Fortress Europe was met by the use of rubber and even live bullets of the Spanish and Moroccan border guards. Thus Ceuta and Melilla visualize and symbolize the brutality of the European border regime against flight and migration.

Undermining the European Border regime! No one is illegal!

Inside and outside Europe, refugees and migrants move from one country to another one, looking for a better future and a secure life, refusing the forced order of capitalist exploitation and modern apartheid. Movements of flight and migration challenge the system of global injustice and undermine its racist hierarchies and differentials.

Regulation of migration and the systematic denial of rights go against the demand for equality, justice and freedom. All human beings have the right to decide on their own where and how they want to live, regardless of their origins or their identities.

WELCOME TO EUROPE!

Stop Deportation, along with other groups in Europe, are proposing a
European Week of Action Against the Deportation Machine, with a focus
on joint European mass deportation flights and Frontex. The proposed
date is the first week of June 2010, 1st-6th.

The idea is that groups and campaigns throughout Europe organise
their own direct actions, demos and marches against forcible
deportations from European countries, which are increasingly carried
out through joint coordinated ‘operations’ involving private
contractors and shadowy agencies like Frontex and the IOM. Protests
will inevitably take a variety of shapes but a series of coordinated,
decentralised actions and protests would make the message clearer and
louder. A week, rather than a day, of action would allow groups more
flexibility to do what they want to do.

By trying to widen the scope and diversity of the groups involved,
we also want to draw attention to the fact that anti-deportation is not
a ‘single issue campaign’. People choose or are forced to migrate for a
variety or reasons, from wars and armed conflicts fuelled by the arms
trade and western interests, through poverty, exploitation,
discrimination, gender oppression, domestic and state violence, to
climate change.

If your group/campaign would like to get involved, whether through
helping coordinate or publicise the week of action or by organising
your own action or protest in your local area, please get in touch
(needless to say, if you’re planning an unaccountable/arrestable
action, you probably wouldn’t want to get in touch!). The machine is
growing and getting stronger, and so must the resistance against it!

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