#seekers globally

[hussyknee]

Pitchbot Hall of Fame tweet 💀💀

(alt included)

[allthegeopolitics]

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has vowed to step up deportations of rejected asylum seekers after it emerged the suspect in Friday's knife attack was a Syrian who was due to be removed. Mr Scholz made the remarks while visiting a makeshift memorial site for the victims of the attack in Solingen, which saw a suspected Islamic extremist stab three people to death and injure eight more. The man, who turned himself in on Saturday night, was supposed to be deported to Bulgaria last year, as that was the first EU country in which he set foot. But according to German media reports, the deportation never happened because he disappeared for a period.

Continue Reading.

[craig960114]

why craig are take over world

essay by me (craig)

As much as Craig may seem like a simple doodle of a cat, his potential for world domination should not be underestimated. Despite his crude appearance, Craig embodies the essence of adaptability and resilience, traits that are essential for any aspiring ruler.

Firstly, Craig's simplicity works to his advantage. Underestimation is a powerful tool in warfare, and many would dismiss Craig as inconsequential. However, this oversight allows Craig to operate in the shadows, biding his time until the perfect moment to strike.

Secondly, Craig's lack of defined features makes him a versatile symbol. He can represent anything from innocence to cunning, depending on the narrative spun around him. This ambiguity allows Craig to appeal to a wide range of followers, from disillusioned citizens seeking change to opportunistic power-seekers.

Thirdly, Craig's handwritten signature adds a personal touch to his endeavors. In a world increasingly dominated by digital signatures and impersonal interactions, Craig's handwritten mark harkens back to a simpler time, fostering a sense of nostalgia and authenticity among his followers.

In conclusion, Craig may appear unassuming at first glance, but beneath his simplistic exterior lies the potential for world domination. Through adaptability, versatility, and a personal touch, Craig has the tools necessary to rally followers and reshape the world in his image. Beware the power of Craig, for his ascent to global dominance may be closer than we think.

[head-post]

Number of forcibly displaced people worldwide reaches 120 million in 2023 over 12 years – UNHCR

The number of people forcibly displaced worldwide has risen sharply for the 12th consecutive year, reaching 120 million in 2023, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The UNHCR stated on Thursday that the new figure represented “historic new levels.” It claimed the data reflected both new and changing conflicts and “failure to resolve longstanding” crises.

The figure would make the global displaced population equivalent to the 12th largest country in the world, around the size of Japan.

The agency pointed to the conflict in Sudan as “a key factor driving the figures higher, as since April 2023, more than 7.1 million new displacements have been recorded in the country, with another 1.9 million outside.” At the end of 2023, a total of 10.8 million Sudanese had been uprooted from the country.

Furthermore, the report revealed that millions of people were displaced from their homes last year as a result of brutal fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar. Citing estimates by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), UNHCR stated that “catastrophic violence” had displaced up to 1.7 million people in the Gaza Strip.

However, it noted that Syria remained “the world’s largest displacement crisis.” 13.8 million people had to move in and out of the country. Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, said:

Behind these stark and rising numbers lie countless human tragedies. That suffering must galvanize the international community to act urgently to tackle the root causes of forced displacement. It is high time for warring parties to respect the basic laws of war and international law.

The largest increase in the number of displaced persons was due to persons fleeing conflict but remaining in their country of origin. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, that number had risen to 68.3 million. This represents an increase of almost 50 per cent over the past five years.

The report showed that globally, more than five million internally displaced persons and one million refugees returned to their places of origin in 2023.

Solutions are out there – we’ve seen countries like Kenya lead the way in refugee inclusion – but it takes real commitment.

Read more HERE

[anotherpapercut]

something I will never ever forget as long as I live is seeing a post in 2020 that was like "I don't care how you feel about Biden, you HAVE to vote for him NO MATTER WHAT because Republicans don't care what their candidate does. they'll vote for a rapist just because it says Republican after his name!!" like within weeks of credible assault allegations against Biden surfacing lol. like can you guys at least TRY to pretend you're not advocating for the exact same thing you claim Republicans are doing

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

The United Nations' Committee against Torture has urged Australia to end mandatory detention for all illegal arrivals, including children.

In a review published on Friday, it also called for Canberra to raise the legal age of criminal responsibility, currently set at 10.

The UN committee voiced concerns that detention continues to be mandatory for all unauthorised arrivals and that "the law does not establish a maximum length for a person to be held in immigration detention, reportedly resulting in protracted periods of deprivation of liberty".

The committee called on Australia to abolish all legislation "establishing the mandatory and indefinite detention of persons entering its territory irregularly" and that unaccompanied minors as well as families with children are not detained "due to their immigration status".

It also slammed Australia for the practice of handling asylum claims offshore, highlighting the island state of Nauru and the Christmas Island detention centre, and called for all migrants to be transferred to mainland Australia.

The committee also voiced serious concerns over the country's "low age of criminal responsibility", which is set at 10 years of age, and called on the government to raise it as well as ending the practice of solitary confinement for kids.

Indigenous children and children with disabilities were disproportionately affected, according to the review, which also looked into countries such as Chad and Somalia.

Indigenous people in Australia are significantly more at risk of being incarcerated, making up some 30 per cent of the country's prison population, while only representing 3.2 per cent of the total population, according to the UN committee.

The committee urged Australia "to identify the root causes of the overrepresentation of indigenous people in prisons and revise regulations that led to the high incarceration rates".

[in-sightpublishing]

Humanists UK condemns far-right violence

Publisher: In-Sight Publishing Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014 Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada Publication: Freethought Newswire Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/08/05/humanists-uk-condemns-far-right-violence/ Publication Date: August 5, 2024 Organization: Humanists UK Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name…

[sharkspez]

Tumblr Biography: Julian Assange 🌐

As Assange 📝 registered the 🌐 domain wikileaks.org in 1999, he set in motion a chain of events that would challenge 🏛️ governments 🌍 worldwide. But at what 💲 cost?

[prosearchgroup]

Navigating Talent: Insights into Finance and Healthcare Recruitment Strategies

Recruitment within the finance and healthcare sectors is a dynamic and multifaceted endeavor, driven by a confluence of industry-specific trends, evolving skill requirements, and broader economic forces. In this section, we delve into the current landscape of recruitment in these critical fields, highlighting the key trends and the most sought-after skills and qualifications.

Current Trends in Finance and Healthcare Recruitment

The recruitment landscape in finance and healthcare is continuously shaped by several pivotal trends. In finance, technological advancements are revolutionizing the way organizations operate and recruit. The rise of ProSearchGroup, into financial systems have created a demand for professionals adept in these cutting-edge areas. Financial institutions are seeking candidates with not only traditional financial acumen but also the technical prowess to navigate and leverage these innovations.

Regulatory changes also play a significant role in shaping recruitment strategies in finance. As governments and regulatory bodies introduce new compliance requirements, there is an increased demand for professionals skilled in risk management, regulatory compliance, and ethical governance. These changes necessitate a workforce that is both adaptable and knowledgeable about the latest regulatory landscapes.

In the healthcare sector, the recruitment trends are equally compelling. The rapid advancements in medical technology, telemedicine, and electronic health records (EHRs) are driving the need for healthcare professionals who are tech-savvy and proficient in these new tools. Additionally, the ongoing global health challenges have highlighted the critical need for specialized healthcare practitioners, from epidemiologists to critical care nurses, underscoring the importance of a robust and responsive recruitment strategy.

Economic factors further influence recruitment in both sectors. Economic fluctuations can lead to varying levels of demand for financial services and healthcare, impacting hiring trends. In times of economic uncertainty, financial institutions might prioritize hiring risk analysts and financial strategists, while healthcare providers might focus on recruiting frontline medical staff to manage increased patient loads.

Skills and Qualifications in Demand

The evolving recruitment landscape has led to a distinct set of skills and qualifications that are highly sought after in finance and healthcare.

In the finance sector, there is a growing emphasis on data analysis and risk management. Professionals who can interpret complex data sets, identify trends, and provide actionable insights are in high demand. Expertise in financial modeling, forecasting, and strategic planning is also crucial as organizations strive to navigate volatile markets and economic conditions.

Moreover, the integration of AI and machine learning into financial operations requires a new breed of finance professionals who are not only proficient in traditional finance but also have a strong foundation in technology. Skills in programming, data science, and cybersecurity are becoming increasingly valuable as financial institutions seek to protect their assets and enhance their technological capabilities.

Healthcare, on the other hand, demands a unique blend of clinical expertise and technological proficiency. With the increasing adoption of telemedicine and digital health platforms, healthcare professionals must be comfortable using these technologies to provide patient care. Additionally, there is a significant demand for specialists in critical care, mental health, and geriatrics, reflecting the changing demographics and health needs of the population.

Interpersonal skills, empathy, and the ability to work under pressure remain paramount in healthcare. The ability to communicate effectively with patients, families, and interdisciplinary teams is essential for delivering high-quality care and ensuring positive patient outcomes.

In summary, navigating the recruitment landscape in finance and healthcare requires a keen understanding of current trends and the ability to identify and attract candidates with the requisite skills and qualifications. By staying abreast of industry developments and aligning recruitment strategies with these evolving demands, organizations can build a workforce capable of driving success in these critical sectors.

[makingcontact]

Borders: What are they good for?

White text reading “Borders: What are they good for?” superimposed on top of a greyscale background showing the jagged border between two sides of a sand dune. Credit: Original photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash. Digitally altered by Lucy Kang. What are borders, and why do we have them? And how is violent border enforcement at the US-Mexico border connected to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza?…

[rodaportal]

French Immigration Bill: "Expelling All Foreigners Who Commit Crimes"

Join the dialogue on France's new immigration bill! Explore the intricacies and debates surrounding the proposed legislation in our latest YouTube video, 'France Immigration Bill: "Expelling All Foreigners Who Commit Crimes"'. 🌍✨

Discover the impact on migrant rights and the delicate balance between security and human rights.

🔍 Watch now to stay informed:

Like, share, and let your voice be heard! Your engagement shapes the future. 🗣️✊ #france #frenchnewbill #migration #asylum

[yodasec-expose-news]

What are the fundamental principles underlying YodaSec Expose exposing worldwide corruption?

What are the fundamental principles underlying YodaSec Expose exposing worldwide corruption.? Sources What is corruption? – Transparency.orgtransparency·1Grand corruption – Our priorities – Transparency.orgtransparency·2Anti-Corruption and Transparency – United States Department of Statestate·3 Answer The fundamental principles underlying YodaSec Expose’s mission to expose worldwide…

[feckcops]

Solidarity across borders

“The Rule 39 Initiative promotes the effective use of interim measures to protect migrants’ rights, including through pro bono lawyers supporting groups across Europe. The collaborative project has helped 260 people, including 48 children, in ten countries. Key wins include first-of-a-kind decisions on the pushback of migrants from Greece and securing relocation for migrants, including asylum seekers stuck in Ukraine, during active conflict. We’ve also supported cases concerning sea rescues and fighting against pushbacks at several European borders …

“Just as the Rwanda plan was inspired by Australia’s inhumanity, opposition to it can draw on Australian responses. Australia’s policies were designed to keep its victims silent and out of sight. Getting the voices, stories and images of people detained to the public has been critical to shifting opinion. It is essential to defend the right of protest and communication and to support the activism and leadership of those most affected. People subject to the policy have mounted the most powerful resistance to it, including leading unceasing action – from protests to vigils to riots – in detention centres in Nauru and PNG …

“We experience criminalisation as an integral part of efforts to hinder solidarity structures. However, its ability to deter or even paralyse lies in its effectiveness as a source of fear at the individual level. Yet instilled fear can also bring about anger with the potential to strengthen and mobilise political action – thus making repression ineffective. When authorities want to intimidate us, we must reply with determination and preparedness, not to avoid legal consequences but to endure them. This is because, ironically, the criminalisation of our political actions proves their effectiveness.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

FCC strikes a blow against prison profiteering

TOMORROW NIGHT (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

Here's a tip for policymakers hoping to improve the lives of the most Americans with the least effort: help prisoners.

After all, America is the most prolific imprisoner of its own people of any country in world history. We lock up more people than Stalin, than Mao, more than Botha, de Klerk or any other Apartheid-era South African president. And it's not just America's vast army of the incarcerated who are afflicted by our passion for imprisonment: their families and friends suffer, too.

That familial suffering isn't merely the constant pain of life without a loved one, either. America's prison profiteers treat prisoners' families as ATMs who can be made to pay and pay and pay.

This may seem like a losing strategy. After all, prison sentences are strongly correlated with poverty, and even if your family wasn't desperate before the state kidnapped one of its number and locked them behind bars, that loved one's legal defense and the loss of their income is a reliable predictor of downward social mobility.

Decent people don't view poor people as a source of riches. But for a certain kind of depraved sadist, the poor are an irresistible target. Sure, poor people don't have much money, but what they lack even more is protection under the law ("conservativism consists of the principle that there is an in-group whom the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group whom the law binds but does not protect" -Wilhoit). You can enjoy total impunity as you torment poor people, make them so miserable and afraid for their lives and safety that they will find some money, somewhere, and give it to you.

Mexican cartels understand this. They do a brisk trade in kidnapping asylum seekers whom the US has illegally forced to wait in Mexico to have their claims processed. The families of refugees – either in their home countries or in the USA – are typically badly off but they understand that Mexico will not lift a finger to protect a kidnapped refugee, and so when the kidnappers threaten the most grisly tortures as a means of extracting ransom, those desperate family members do whatever it takes to scrape up the blood-money.

What's more, the families of asylum seekers are not much better off than their kidnapped loved ones when it comes to seeking official protection. Family members who stayed behind in human rights hellholes like Bukele's El Salvador can't get their government to lodge official complaints with the Mexican ambassador, and family members who made it to the USA are in no position to get their Congressjerk to intercede with ICE or the Mexican consulate. This gives Mexico's crime syndicates total latitude to kidnap, torture, and grow rich by targeting the poorest, most desperate people in the world.

The private contractors that supply services to America's prisons are basically Mexican refugee-kidnappers with pretensions and shares listed on the NYSE. After decades of consolidation, the prison contracting sector has shrunk to two gigantic companies: Securus and Viapath (formerly Global Tellink). These private-equity backed behemoths dominate their sector, and have diversified, providing all kinds of services, from prison cafeteria meals to commissary, the prison stores where prisoners can buy food and other items.

If you're following closely, this is one of those places where the hair on the back of your neck starts to rise. These companies make money when prisoners buy food from the commissary, and they're also in charge of the quality of the food in the mess hall. If the food in the mess hall is adequate and nutritious, there's no reason to buy food from the commissary.

This is what economists call a "moral hazard." You can think of it as the reason that prison ramen costs 300% more than ramen in the free world:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/20/captive-market/#locked-in

(Not just ramen: in America's sweltering prisons, an 8" fan costs $40, and the price of water went up in Texas prisons by 50% during last summer's heatwave.)

It's actually worse than that: if you get sick from eating bad prison food, the same company that poisoned you gets paid to operate the infirmary where you're treated:

https://theappeal.org/massachusetts-prisons-wellpath-dentures-teeth/

Now, the scam of abusing prisoners to extract desperate pennies from their families is hardly new. There's written records of this stretching back to the middle ages. Nor is this pattern a unique one: making an unavoidable situation as miserable as possible and then upcharging people who have the ability to pay to get free of the torture is basically how the airlines work. Making coach as miserable as possible isn't merely about shaving pennies by shaving inches off your legroom: it's a way to "incentivize" anyone who can afford it to pay for an upgrade to business-class. The worse coach is, the more people you can convince to dip into their savings or fight with their boss to move classes. The torments visited upon everyone else in coach are economically valuable to the airlines: their groans and miseries translate directly into windfall profits, by convincing better-off passengers to pay not to have the same thing done to them.

Of course, with rare exceptions (flying to get an organ transplant, say) plane tickets are typically discretionary. Housing, on the other hand, is a human right and a prerequisite for human thriving. The worse things are for tenants, the more debt and privation people will endure to become home-owners, so it follows that making renters worse off makes homeowners richer:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

For Securus and Viapath, the path to profitability is to lobby for mandatory, long prison sentences and then make things inside the prison as miserable as possible. Any prisoner whose family can find the funds can escape the worst of it, and all the prisoners who can't afford it serve the economically important function of showing the prisoners whose families can afford it how bad things will be if they don't pay.

If you're thinking that prisoners might pay Securus, Viapath and their competitors out of their own prison earnings, forget it. These companies have decided that the can make more by pocketing the difference between the vast sums paid by third parties for prisoners' labor and the pennies the prisoners get from their work. Remember, the 13th Amendment specifically allows for the enslavement of incarcerated people! Six states ban paying prisoners at all. North Carolina caps prisoners' wages at one dollar per day. The national average prison wage is $0.52/hour. Prisoners' labor produces $11b/year in goods and services:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

Forced labor and extortion are a long and dishonorable tradition in incarceration, but this century saw the introduction of a novel, exciting way of extracting wealth from prisoners and their families. It started when private telcos took over prison telephones and raised the price of a prison phone call. These phone companies found willing collaborators in local jail and prison systems: all they had to do was offer to split the take with the jailers.

With the advent of the internet, things got far worse. Digitalization meant that prisons could replace the library, adult educations, commissary accounts, letter-mail, parcels, in-person visits and phone calls with a single tablet. These cheaply made tablets were offered for free to prisoners, who lost access to everything from their kids' handmade birthday cards to in-person visits with those kids.

In their place, prisoners' families had to pay huge premiums to have their letters scanned so that prisoners could pay (again) to view those scans on their tablets. Instead of in-person visits, prisoners families had to pay $3-10/minute for a janky, postage-stamp sized video. Perversely, jails and prisons replaced their in-person visitation rooms with rooms filled with shitty tablets where family members could sit and videoconference with their incarcerated loved ones who were just a few feet away:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Capitalists hate capitalism. The capital classes are on a relentless search for markets with captive customers and no competitors. The prison-tech industry was catnip for private equity funds, who bought and "rolled" up prison contractors, concentrating the sector into a duopoly of debt-laden companies whose ability to pay off their leveraged buyouts was contingent on their ability to terrorize prisoners' families into paying for their overpriced, low-quality products and services.

One particularly awful consequence of these rollups was the way that prisoners could lose access to their data when their prison's service-provider was merged with a rival. When that happened, the IT systems would be consolidated, with the frequent outcome that all prisoners' data was lost. Imagine working for two weeks to pay for a song or a book, or a scan of your child's handmade Father's Day card, only to have the file deleted in an IT merger. Now imagine that you're stuck inside for another 20 years.

This is a subject I've followed off and on for years. It's such a perfect bit of end-stage capitalist cruelty, combining mass incarceration with monopolies. Even if you're not imprisoned, this story is haunting, because on the one hand, America keeps thinking of new reasons to put more people behind bars, and on the other hand, every technological nightmare we dream up for prisoners eventually works its way out to the rest of us in a process I call the "shitty technology adoption curve." As William Gibson says, "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" – but the future sure pools up thick and dystopian around America's prisoners:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

My background interest in the subject got sharper a few years ago when I started working on The Bezzle, my 2023 high-tech crime thriller about prison-tech grifters:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

One of the things that was on my mind when I got to work on that book was the 2017 court-case that killed the FCC's rules limit interstate prison-call gouging. The FCC could have won that case, but Trump's FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, dropped it:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/prisoners-lose-again-as-court-wipes-out-inmate-calling-price-caps/

With that bad precedent on the books, the only hope prisoners had for relief from the FCC was for Congress to enact legislation specifically granting the agency the power to regulate prison telephony. Incredibly, Congress did just that, with Biden signing the "Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act" in early 2023:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1541/text

With the new law in place, it fell to the FCC use those newfound powers. Compared to agencies like the FTC and the NLRB, Biden's FCC has been relatively weak, thanks in large part to the Biden administration's refusal to defend its FCC nomination for Gigi Sohn, a brilliant and accomplished telecoms expert. You can tell that Sohn would have been a brilliant FCC commissioner because of the way that America's telco monopolists and their allies in the senate (mostly Republicans, but some Democrats, too) went on an all-out offensive against her, using the fact that she is gay to smear her and ultimately defeat her nomination:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband/

But even without Sohn, the FCC has managed to do something genuinely great for America's army of the imprisoned. This week, the FCC voted in price-caps on prison calls, so that call rates will drop from $11.35 for 15 minutes to just $0.90. Both interstate and intrastate calls will be capped at $0.06-0.12/minute, with a phased rollout starting in January:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/fcc-closes-final-loopholes-that-keep-prison-phone-prices-exorbitantly-high/

It's hard to imagine a policy that will get more bang for a regulator's buck than this one. Not only does this represent a huge savings for prisoners and their families, those savings are even larger in proportion to their desperate, meager finances.

It shows you how important a competent, qualified regulator is. When it comes to political differences between Republicans and Democrats, regulatory competence is a grossly underrated trait. Trump's FCC Chair Ajit Pai handed out tens of billions of dollars in public money to monopoly carriers to improve telephone networks in underserved areas, but did so without first making accurate maps to tell him where the carriers should invest. As a result, that money was devoured by executive bonuses and publicly financed dividends and millions of Americans entered the pandemic lockdowns with broadband that couldn't support work-from-home or Zoom school. When Biden's FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel took over, one of her first official acts was to commission a national study and survey of broadband quality. Republicans howled in outrage:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/10/digital-redlining/#stop-confusing-the-issue-with-relevant-facts

The telecoms sector has been a rent-seeking, monopolizing monster since the days of Samuel Morse:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/18/the-bell-system/#were-the-phone-company-we-dont-have-to-care

Combine telecoms and prisons, and you get a kind of supermonster, the meth-gator of American neofeudalism:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-police-warn-locals-not-flush-drugs-fear-meth-gators-n1030291

The sector is dirty beyond words, and it corrupts everything it touches – bribing prison officials to throw out all the books in the prison library and replace them with DRM-locked, high-priced ebooks that prisoners must toil for weeks to afford, and that vanish from their devices whenever a prison-tech company merges with a rival:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

The Biden presidency has been fatally marred by the president's avid support of genocide, and nothing will change that. But for millions of Americans, the Biden administration's policies on telecoms, monopoly, and corporate crime have been a source of profound, lasting improvements.

It's not just presidents who can make this difference. Millions of America's prisoners are rotting in state and county jails, and as California has shown, state governments have broad latitude to kick out prison profiteers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/08/captive-audience/#good-at-their-jobs

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/19/martha-wright-reed/#capitalists-hate-capitalism

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[txttletale]

Hi! Do you think you could link me to some resources about the problems/ evils of the EU? Would love to find some but it's hard to know what's reliable when I have no base knowledge in this area + you seem very well informed :)

sure. let's start with what the EU does to its own member states--in 2009, the EU bailed the greek government out of severe debt on the condition that they establish brutal austerity measures, cutting public spending and welfare. these measures served to immiserate and destroy the lives of thousands of greek people:

Greek mortality has worsened significantly since the beginning of the century. In 2000, the death rate per 100,000 people was 944.5. By 2016, it had risen to 1174.9, with most of the increase taking place from 2010 onwards.

[forbes]

Since the implementation of the austerity programme, Greece has reduced its ratio of health-care expenditure to GDP to one of the lowest within the EU, with 50% less public hospital funding in 2015 than in 2009. This reduction has left hospitals with a deficit in basic supplies, while consumers are challenged by transient drug shortages.

[the lancet]

The homeless population is thought to have grown by 25 per cent since 2009, now numbering 20,000 people.

[oxfam]

the most brutal treatment, however, the EU of course reserves for migrants from the global south. the EU sets strict migration quotas and uses its member states as weapons against desperate people fleeing across the mediterranean. boats are prevented from landing, migrants that do make it to land are repelled with brutal violence, and refugees are deported back to countries where their lives are in lethal danger. these policies have led to many, many deaths--and the refugees and migrants who do survive are treating fucking inhumanely.

After a perilous journey across the desert, Abdulaziz was locked up in Triq al-Sikka, a grim prison in Tripoli, Libya. Why? Because the EU pays Libyan militias millions of euros to detain anyone deemed a possible migrant to Europe [...] A leaked EU internal memorandum in 2020 acknowledged that capturing migrants was now “a profitable business model” [...] in Triq al-Sikka and other detention centres, “acts of murder, enslavement, torture, rape and other inhumane acts are committed against migrants”, observed a damning UN report.

[the guardian]

Volunteers have logged more than 27,000 deaths by drowning since 1993, often hundreds at a time when large ships capsize. These account for nearly 80% of all the entries.

[the guardian]

Refugees and asylum seekers were punched, slapped, beaten with truncheons, weapons, sticks or branches, by police or border guards who often removed their ID tags or badges, the committee said in its annual report. People on the move were subject to pushbacks, expulsion from European states, either by land or sea, without having asylum claims heard. Victims were also subject to “inhuman and degrading treatment”, such as having bullets fired close to their bodies while they lay on the ground, being pushed into rivers, sometimes with hands tied, or being forced to walk barefoot or even naked across a border.

[the guardian]

In September, Greece opened a refugee camp on the island of Samos that has been described as prison-like. The €38m (£32m) facility for 3,000 asylum seekers has military-grade fencing and CCTV to track people’s movements. Access is controlled by fingerprint, turnstiles and X-rays. A private security company and 50 uniformed officers monitor the camp. It is the first of five that Greece has planned; two more opened in November.

[the guardian]

i could go on. i could cite dozens more similarly brutal news stories about horrific mistreatment, or any of the dozens of people who have killed themselves in the custody of border police under horrific conditions. the EU is a murderous institution that does not care about the lives of refugees and migrants or about the lives of the citizens of any member state that is not pursuing a vicious enough neoliberal political program