This post will eventually consist of a report on a meeting facilitated by NoBorders London - Resistance in the UK 's Detention Centres [http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/401807.html] [programme posted below] held on 24th June and links to to some of the materials circulated at the meeting covering the recent history of hunger strikes, revolts and organising within detention centres in the UK.

The industrial and mining towns on the Eastern outskirts of Johannesburg are unlovely places. They’re set on flat windswept plains amidst the dumps of sterile sand left over from old mines. In winter the wind bites, the sky is a very pale blue and it seems to be all coal braziers, starved dogs, faded strip malls, gun shops and rusting factories and mine headgear. All that seems new are the police cars and, round the corner from the Harry Gwala shack settlement, a double story facebrick strip club.

But even here the battle for land continues.

We are standing on the brink of an immense revelation. The revelation of people to states. In the UK – the surveillance workshop of the world – people are becoming increasingly visible through IT projects like the Electronic Patients Record and the National Identity Register, as well as a forthcoming points-based immigration regime premised on the ability to identify subjects and then track and cross-reference their data as never before. Joining-up data, and hence governance, is the name of the game.

Where the struggle for migrants’ rights can be risky and divisive, informal organising by ‘illegals’ is a means to ensure survival. But both formal and informal organising can combine to protect an essential buffer zone of invisibility for undocumented workers — writes Unterschreber

Jaya Klara Brekke talks to four UK based groups working to improve conditions for migrants and asks ‘how does one organise in the dark?’

Strong analysis of state repression from A Murder of Crows (http://www.geocities.com/amurderofcrows1/), via libcom.org.  Makes the crucial connection between spectacular 'emergency' measures (SWAT teams, anti-terror laws etc) and the racially differentiated class war waged every day as 'community policing'.  

Repression as state strategy - A Murder of Crows

Repression is a topic that is often discussed in the revolutionary milieu, but unfortunately it is a subject that is not well understood.

The Australian government is thinking of formalizing its de facto power to close the border to medical undesirables, in this case those with 'HIV or leprosy'.  No nation-state seems more determined to demonstrate the literal validity of Agamben's biopower-concentration camp thesis.  Here Mute contributor Angela Mitropoulos notes the source of John Howard's theatre of outrage in the 'normal' regulation of labour and its reproduction.  More proof if it were needed that bio-identity tracking (eg health profiling) is not a mere 'civil liberties' issue of abstract 'privacy'.&