Regular readers of this site may have noticed occasional negative references to the police -- in particular strathy polis and it’s benevolent Brother Guide leader Nelson Telfer. Due to recent changes in policing and what constitutes “a joke on the internet” we will be making changes to our editorial policy.

Jokes on the internet? THAT'LL BE 20 YEARS IN A LABOUR CAMP

This is in specific reference to the 12 month social network ban, 120 hours of community service, year long youth rehabiliation order and 3 month curfew given to a 17 year old for saying  ”It’s about time we stood up for ourselves for once. So come on rioters – get some. LOL.”

This is obviously an unforgivable crime, and in light of new regulations, we thank our Dear Leader Nelson Telfer for his consistently wise, benevolent and top class policing. You are the sun of a million stars Nelson, and we will die to protect you.

DEFEND STRATHYCLYDE POLICE. A MILLION VOICES FOR THE DEAR LEADER, DESTROY ALL THE UNACCEPTABLE FACEBOOK GROUPS WITH YOUR QUALITY POLICING

Heroic polis -- serving and protecting our scran (but not civil liberties or Lulz on tinternetz

SSY is going swimming with Lorenzo, while the police have the authority to carry out inquiries

All conflict dies in the brotherhood of flags

After last weeks multiple days of consecutive rioting, there’s a chance now for some calm, measured discussion on the upheaval that saw the capital and several English cities burn, high streets looted and alleged gangster Mark Duggan shot dead -- with three others killed defending their property. The key word being “chance”, the same way there’s a chance you’ll win the lottery or Michael Bay will decide to stop making movies -- what’s predictably actually happened is talking heads, politicians and newspaper editors have demanded martial law/the death penalty/the return of Maggie Thatcher/Saddam Hussein to crush the thousands of young people who live in the shadows among us waiting to strike again like a Tottenham based Vietcong.

One Newspaper has demanded the return of national service, safe in the knowledge that teaching thousands of young rioters basic firearms skills would have no possible down sides. Other newspaper polls have asked if Blackberry messager should be banned -- following in the footsteps of other strongmen leaders who thought cracking down on people communicating would solve all their problems. If the responses on how to stop the riots again have been a bit daft it’s nothing compared to what some folk have blamed the riots on. David Cameron predictably said the riots were down to “sheer criminality” -- but why didn’t all these criminals strike earlier if their only motive was theft? Looters obviously took advantage of clashes with the police to go out and get a new telly, but what was it they took advantage of? More on that later. Historian David Starkey has blamed the riots on rap music and black culture in general, saying white folk have become black, like Michael Jackson in reverse with less moonwalking and more firebombing. The BBC have obviously went straight for the insider voices into why urban black youth in London might riot, by asking the 66 year old Royal Family historian from Kendal his views. Continuing this new line of reporting, BBC Four have asked Tinchy Strider to front a 4 part series on the Tudors.

But the BBC didn’t just ask old bigots like Starkey why the riots started -- they did ask a black man as well, fulfilling their broadcasting guidelines. Except when they interviewed Darcus Howe about why the riots started, and he gave a response that didn’t blame BBM/Jeremy Kyle/Welfare State/Ali G In Da House, but said people might be angry cos a man was shot dead and the police lied about the circumstances the interviewer didn’t like it too much and accused him of being a rioter. It’s all part of a concerted effort by the press and politicians to make people stop thinking, and instead accept that people rioted because they’re animals -- literally “feral youth” as the BBC described them.

So how did the riots start? On the 5th of August Mark Duggan was followed in a taxi cab by armed members of the Metropolitan Police. After what was claimed to be a shoot out, Duggan was shot dead by the Met. After his death his family and friends started a protest demanding answers about his killing. When a 16 year old girl approached police lines, in accordance with the Met’s community engagement agenda, she was beaten with batons. The combination of Duggan’s killing and police thuggery at the demo sparked an uprising from young people in different parts of London against the police. Outnumbered and caught by surprise, the police were forced to retreat and leave parts of the city in the hands of rioters. Like any spontaneous riot, unlike a planned insurrection once you force the police out people take advantage of having no authority at all. That can range from drinking in the street, to stealing new pairs of trainers, to mugging folk. And if you’ve grown up on the broo with no hope of employment -- 54 people chase every job going in Hackney -- getting all the consumer kicks you’re supposed to have is much easier to do when there’s no polis around.

More information then came out about Duggan’s death -- that the bullet in a police radio was in fact “police issue”, and that the IPCC “may have misled” the public about how he was killed, stating there was no evidence he fired a weapon the police claimed they found at the scene. By the time this information came out the riots were in full swing and it probably would not have made much more of a difference -- but it did confirm the unaired suspicions of thousands of black and asian youth in London, that the police had lied about the circumstances of Duggan’s death. The bullet in the police radio is especially fishy -- while Met police have an itchy trigger finger, they’re just about clever enough to avoid shooting each other. Could the Met have killed Duggan illegally, and then put a bullet into a radio to make it look like he had responded? It’s a very cynical thought, almost like believing they’d be in cahoots with a major newspaper to cover up massive phone hacking scandals.

After three days of consecutive rioting -- which had spread from London to Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Manchester, Salford -- the combined weight of thousands of extra polis/nothing good left to loot brought the riots to an end. After a rather unpleasant shock, the legal system has responded with draconian sentences against rioters -- one guy was sent to jail for 6 months, for stealing bottled water. Another woman was sentenced to 5 months for accepting goods that were stolen, not actually stealing them herself (better avoid that guy round the Barras with the new Planet of the Apes DVD eh?). Under any other circumstances these people would be let off with a caution for shoplifting, or at worst a fine. Now they stand to face jail time and a criminal record for petty crimes which did far less damage to society than what the legal system is doing to them and their families. Alongside these sentences for theft others have even got jail time for just for swearing at the police -- and one guy’s even been sent down for four years just for a facebook event.

The reason there’s been such a massive crackdown is that the establishment is desperate to ensure a riot on the scale of last week never happens again. But they’re at a permanent disadvantage in that they don’t know why the riots started, and they don’t want to know why -- that’s why the media has asked everyone from aging home counties historians to Tory cabinet ministers about why they think people are rioting -- people they have about as much knowledge of or link to as they do with martians. Nowhere has the media tried the most simple and obvious way of determining why people rioted -- actually asking the young folk in these cities. Where the BBC have done it, it’s been at best a soundbite -- but it’s a soundbite that’s worth more than the endless hours of droning from talking heads. Two young girls from London spelled things out pretty clearly -- folk rioted because they wanted to show the police and the rich they could do what they want. No one in the media or the political establishment is prepared to engage with that argument because they live in a bubble where they can’t fathom why people would be angry at the rich or the police -- so they create lots of alternative explanations like blaming rap or BBM for rioting.

actual reason folk rioted above

There’s plenty of poor areas in the UK that didn’t riot though -- Alex Salmond has been at pains to remind the BBC these riots aren’t UK wide, there was no looting anywhere in Scotland despite the Scottish Polis’ efforts to invent some. And some of the poorest constituencies in the whole UK are in Scotland. So are riots just down to poverty? The answer is no, riots don’t just happen when communities are poor -- they happen when they’re poor and are under attack, or have suffered an injustice. In Britain and the USA this injustice is generally police brutality motivated by racism -- like the Rodney King case, the murder of a grandmother that sparked the 1981 riots and now the police killing of Mark Duggan. This -- and not black or “gangster” culture -- is why riots have taken off.

These riots are also happening at the biggest pillars of authority in British society are collapsing -- the banks have stolen from everyone and are now getting paid off, with the wages of nurses, teachers, carers and the benefit claims of the disabled. Instead of being prosecuted bankers still receive bonuses larger than most young people will earn in their entire lifetime. The MP’s who are calling for strict prosecution of the rioters are thieves that make last weeks looters look like angels in comparison -- Tory Minister Michael Gove, who lost his temper when Harriet Harman argued cuts were behind the riots, has stolen £7k from the public purse to do up his house. When he was caught out, he simply repaid the money. Will folk who say they want to riot on facebook get let off if they delete the page? No, they’ll get four years. The forces trying to crush the riots -- the Met -- have also been exposed as massively corrupt, with backhanders taken from News International in exchange for covering up phone hacking. This is as well as being able to kill with impunity -- there’s been over 300 police deaths in custody, but not one single conviction.

That’s the problem with saying all that’s necessary to stop the riots is law and order -- there’s virtually no law or order when it comes to regulating the abuses and crimes of those at the top of society. The corrupt political establishment don’t care about the communities that rioted, either because they think they’ll always vote for them no matter what (Labour) or because they’ll never vote for them (Tories). During the boom years of British capitalism, these poor areas of London were left to rot because the rich demanded cheap labour. Now that the same rich have destroyed the economy these areas which have nothing are being asked to pay up with money they don’t have -- weeks before the riots, massive cuts to Haringey’s youth budget was announced. People who say the riots are mindless have got it massively wrong -- people are now at least talking about why these areas have been abandoned. A few weeks ago they’d never make the headlines. Riots are the one desperate way to grab attention from people who have access to no other means of political power. If you want to avoid riots in the future you can’t keep demanding “order” but have no order in the economy, society, or politics which allows 50% of young people in many parts of London to be unemployed -- otherwise people will find their own ways of striking back whether you think it’s healthy or not.

One week on after the first night of rioting, and the reactionary backlash is in full-swing. The courts in some English cities are operating at full-pelt, churning out disproportionate sentence after disproportionate sentence. Cases have ceased to be dealt with on an individual basis, amid a flurry to imprison as many as people for as long as possible as quickly as possible, which has seen any concept of justice and a fair trial disregarded. Meanwhile, the ruling class are at loggerheads with one another over who exactly is to blame for allowing the riots to develop and spread across the country: the cops blame the politicians, the politicians blame the cops, the media blame both, and everyone blames a dehumanised criminal underclass of hoodrats, thugs and scum.

We’ve seen the emergence of an archetypal moral panic: young people, hoodies, anarchy, single parents, PC brigade, thieving, arson, gangs, MODERN COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY, Grand Theft Auto, water cannons, SEND IN THE TROOPS… the list goes on. Fortunately for us, in this time of grave national crisis, help is at hand. A grouping of selfless celebrities, led by Wayne and Coleen Rooney and backed up by a supporting cast including Max Clifford, Simon Cowell and Peter Andre, alongside Big Brother winners, some twat from Kasabian, David Cameron and ’stars’ of the The Only Way Is Essex, have come together in their noble fight to make Britain be back British, free of the rioting ’scum and thugs’ that have brought shame on our once great nation. The celeb crusade to ‘Reclaim Our Streets’ was hailed on the frontpage of two national “newspapers” on Saturday, the Daily Star and the Express.

Britain's moral compass: The Star & Express

Readers of both papers, and other participating media outlets including OK! Magazine and Channel Five, are invited to donate whatever they can towards this cause – via mysteriously monikered charity the ‘RD Crusaders Foundation’ – which has already seen contributions pouring in from the above celebrity figures.  It’s been orchestrated by none other than moral crusader, millionaire pornographer, mad fascist and media baron Richard Desmond, owner of the participating media outlets.

Taken in isolation, the campaign and fundraising drive – apparently for the benefit of families and businesses affected by the riots – seems fairly standard fare for a populist tabloid newspaper. But within the context of the Star and Express’s persistent and vociferous racist populism, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant hysteria and open support for the English Defence League, it’s a worrying development. Indeed, it was the EDL who were out on the streets of north London last week, attempting to put the rhetoric of ‘reclaiming our streets’ into action (even if they did end up just bottling the police)

The language employed in the Star’s campaign is particularly telling. Much in the same way that the Express Group have sought to dehumanise and demonise Muslims and asylum seekers, the same tactics are now being used against a perceived criminal underclass who exist as non-citizens, apart from ‘the nation’. Hey kids, it’s fascism-lite, this time with some smily celebrity faces behind it! A similar discourse has been created with the social media led ‘riot clean up’, which this article analyses in depth.

Richard Desmond’s states that his fundraising drive is to help the “families burned out of their homes and shopkeepers left penniless”.  But the end result is a bizarre crossover of celeb culture, tabloid populism, patriotism and quasi-fascism that sets a scary precedent as we head into a period of serious struggle against austerity and spending cuts.

STOP PRESS: Finish writing this. Have a look at tomorrow’s front pages. The Sunday Express – banner headline: BRING BACK NATIONAL SERVICE: Riot yobs should be forced to join the army to combat thuggery. Too predictable.

You almost have to feel for the police in Scotland over the past few days. Unable to spend their week beating up kids on bikes, shooting each other, executing men in taxis, and ensuring that teenagers are locked up for heinous crimes like stealing bottles of water from Lidl and swearing at cops, polis north of the border have faced something of an identity crisis, unable to join in the spree of attempting to justify their own existence as the upholders of all that’s good in society and thus undeserving of massive spending cuts.

However, to say that the lack of any riots in Scotland has left the polis sitting around twiddling their thumbs would be vastly underestimating their own resourcefulness. No, so eager were they for some of the action, they actually went out and invented some imaginary riots. And so it is that now a number of teenagers across Scotland are sitting in prison – remanded in custody for naively making Facebook pages  for “riots” in their hometown – with, in all likelihood, no intention of ever actually rioting, looting or doing anything more than pissing about on Facebook.

Few would dispute that making a Facebook page calling for a riot on your local high street is, in the current political climate, a pretty stupid thing to do. However, it’s also true that creating something that most people with any vague sense of how online social media works would construe as no more than a prank is not a crime worthy of potentially weeks of imprisonment.

But this clampdown – hailed in typically self-aggrandising fashion on the Tayside Police website – comes part of wider steps to control and legislate over social media and the internet, particularly in light of recent hysteria over encrypted Blackberry messages being used to co-ordinate disorder in English cities. This culminated in an announcement from David Cameron today that the government may seek to disrupt and disable social media networks including Blackberry messaging and Twitter during periods of civil unrest – on par with moves taken by faltering dictatorships in the Middle East over recent months. Of course, attempts to censor the internet are doomed to fail – if people are unable to communicate using one website, they’ll simply move elsewhere, and short of shutting down the entire internet and mobile networks, the authorities will struggle to stifle communications.

But it’s worrying the extent to which the Scottish judiciary have vastly overreacted to these cases, in their successful attempts to deny bail to, so far, two teenagers accused of inciting riots on Facebook. A further three – aged 14, 16 and 18 – will appear in Dundee Sheriff Court on Friday morning. Where perhaps some friendly guidance or a few stern words would’ve been appropriate, the police have instead opted to pin heavy charges on several young people who, we’re being led to believe, are criminal masterminds organising mass disorder from their bedrooms. If that seems fantastical, it’s because it is.

A moral panic has set in among the political and legal establishment across the UK, with any sense of leniency thrown out of the window amid a clamouring for dehumanised “looters” and “rioters” to be locked up, have access to welfare cut off and be evicted from their homes. This failure to even acknowledge that there are reasons for the riots beyond “criminality pure and simple”, as David Cameron put it, will only serve to increase antagonisms that whole layers of alienated young people feel towards the authorities and society at large.

The Facebook sweep this week does, however, reinforce the need for everyone – political activist, wannabe rioter or internet prankster alike – to be vigilant in what they post on all social networks. In the current climate, even an unauthorised demonstration could be viewed as inciting disorder, and in another classic case of old people not getting the internets, weeks in jail could await.

Last weekend saw young socialists from all over Scotland come together for the return of SSY’s annual summer camp, Camp Secret Squirrel. Despite patchy weather and turnout that was a wee bit down on previous years, the camp still saw about 25 people take the trip down to Galloway for a weekend of workshops, campfires and partying, SSY-style.

One particular highlight on the Saturday was a workshop from visitors from Coal Action Scotland, which examined the relationship between class and environmental activism, within the context of the open cast mines which devastate communities across central Scotland. It was an interesting discussion and we’d like to extend our thanks to the three activists from CAS who came down to facilitate the workshop.

Other workshops over the weekend included an in-depth look at internet and social media privacy, a talk on global drugs prohibition, and a discussion about how we can fight the cuts and the way forward for the radical left in Scotland.

But the camp was far from all workshops, with lots of other stuff – from making delicious meals each evening to collecting firewood – keeping us busy over the weekend. Not forgetting the now legendary CSS after-party, which kept most folk dancing into the wee small hours. The site we held the camp at was the same community-owned woodland where last year’s camp was held, so a big shout out to the folk who keep the place running, and hopefully see yous again next year!

What have Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse got in common? And no I’m not asking you to skim the surface of your brain and find the ‘obvious’ ‘members of the 27 club’ option. Please, dig a little deeper than that. In fact you’ll probably need to dig a lot deeper as the press very rarely ever speaks about the reason I’m looking for. Any ideas yet? They were all Junkies? Nope, not quite the answer I was looking for either.

The answer I was looking for is this: They were all people society branded as nothings. People who the media clung to in their darkest moments, not because it helped the sufferer, but because it helped keep the journalists pay cheques coming. People society pushed aside as worthless when they were the people who instead needed help most. I’m not sure the majority will ever see or even attempt to understand this side of the story. And what’s worse is they’re less likely to do so when the deceased was a celebrity.

I struggle to understand what goes through the minds of most. Does becoming famous these days automatically remove you from filing under the term ‘human being’? Last time I checked that wasn’t the case. So why should a celebrity death, if caused by alcohol or heroin, be deemed lesser than the death of someone who hasn’t been ‘blessed’ with fame? Fame doesn’t buy you a life of happiness and sanity. It’s sugar coated. Often sold to the less stable minded as an ultimate goal, a goal of happiness and fulfilment. The reality of it is sort of similar to a box of chocolates. When first opened you’re spoilt for choice but after you quickly scoff the contents you’re always left with the same end product. A box. An empty shell. Just because someone has made the ‘choice’ to become famous, which by the way often isn’t completely the case, doesn’t mean they’re now in a realm above the rest of our race. So now ask yourself this question, ‘What stable minded person would want ultimate fame?’ I doubt after thinking through everything that word represents you’d still want to jump on the celebrity bandwagon. So why do we have such high expectations of how these people should deal with addiction compared to the norm? If money can’t buy you happiness, it’s not going to be able to buy you sanity or the ability to think straight? If you’ve hit a low and can’t see a way out surely money will ultimately be your downfall, not your saviour. If you look at it that way celebrity addicts should actually be treated and viewed with the same eyes as others.

'The Scheme'

Take a look at ‘The Scheme’ for instance. These people who need the most support and help just get kicked to the kerb and deemed useless. Really they’ve little or no chance of changing their lives because society makes it nearly impossible for them to do so. Many of them turn to drugs because they’re so depressed and there is ‘nothing better for them to do’. The ‘go out and do something about it card’ can be played all you like but the bottom line is that for these people it’s probably going to do jack shit. Not because they’re not trying but because society doesn’t want to listen. Any of this sound familiar? If not I’d be willing to bet a tenner you’ve not actually read any of the article posted above. Although on the opposite ends of the scale money wise I think both circles are extremely similar. I don’t believe the celebrity lifestyle allows for a happier life. I’d almost be inclined to say the opposite. However, my point is this: Both circles are lonely and very difficult to get out of.

You could say that we’re unable to help these people, celebrity or not and I’d partially agree with you. We as a whole are unable to make anybody do anything. We can’t demand they go to rehab until ‘better’ and we certainly can’t do any of the leg work for them, but surely when we see a person in desperate need we can stop making circus shows out of them purely for our own entertainment. Selling a story about a persons downfall will always make more money but reading about how much of a mess, waste of space and shit head you are on a daily basis isn’t really going to help with self esteem and therefore really isn’t going to conclude with someone desperately trying to get clean. It’s a little disturbing to think that the human race is one of the only species – if not the only species – who’d rather see another fall in order to make oneself feel better about ones own situation. Doing so doesn’t physically affect our lives but it drastically and negatively affects another’s. So surely even we can see that parading those in most need of shelter isn’t helping anyone. Yet unfortunately it seems we just don’t, and let’s be honest here, probably won’t ever give a shit.

In the case of Amy Winehouse, and many others like her, there’s another factor in the equation, that factor being self-harm. What the media treat as a tasty piece of gossip and the majority treat as an act of an attention seeking nobody, is actually often a genuine cry for help. They are often left to suffer in silence due to the fact they’re led to believe their wellbeing/ existence isn’t at all cared for. Now, if you’re deluded enough to believe addicts are in it for the extreme high and happiness it brings them, the ultimate fucking party, then surely the addition of self-harm into the mix should spark some confusion, and ultimately a change in opinion? Why would somebody so high on life feel the need to attempt to self-destruct? Is there a possibility that the drugs are and were always part of the self-destruction process?

In today’s society addicts are viewed as people who should be shoved to the side, and eventually forgotten about. They’ve made their choice in life and should be left alone to pay the price. I think that the fact the masses believe this to be the case should prove society to be more of a demon than the drugs themselves. Drug problems will not be solved by pushing them under the carpet, and continuing to hide a real, often painful issue in plain sight isn’t going to improve matters. Until we realise this fact nothing will be bettered and addiction will continue to be a dilemma. During our lifetime we will all encounter highs and lows and have entirely different ways of dealing with them, celebrity or not. Whether the addict is rich, poor or famous, at the end of the day we’re all human.

Before commencing this article which comments on media coverage of recent events in Norway, SSY would like to express our solidarity with those in who have suffered due to these events, and our condolences to those who have lost loved ones.

In a conversation on Saturday night down my local, a Scandinavian friend of mine noted that as soon as the identity of the killer behind the bombing in Oslo and the attack on a youth camp in Utoeya had been revealed, words such as ‘terrorist’ – which had been bandied about by various people appearing in the media prior to the discovery of the killer’s identity – ceased to be used.  In light of this conversation, I was intrigued today by Charlie Brooker’s column, in which he notes that the initial Western response to both tragedies was keen to point the finger at Muslim extremists. When it transpired that the killer was in this case white, Christian and right-wing, the language of ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’ paled into the background, and in some cases disappeared altogether. This is in spite of the fact that the killer is being charged by Norwegian courts under anti-terrorism laws, which makes sense, since by all definitions of the word ‘terrorist’ he most definitely is one.

Nonetheless, what the sudden drop in frequency of words related to ‘terror’ in regard to the shooting/bombing suggests is that this sort of rhetoric is reserved for particular types of extremism – largely that conducted by extremist Muslim groups such as al-Quaeda. For the western media, the word ‘terrorist’ does not sit well when used to describe a white Christian (with the possible exception of the IRA, but the discourse surrounding them has its own, seperate factors). It is so difficult for the Western media to conceive of a white non-Muslim terrorist that invocations of al-Quaeda and 911 are required in several western tabloids in order to establish some sort of conceivable context: see here for the Guardian’s selected excerpts from the world’s press. In these extracts, taken from a variety of sources in a variety of cultures, there is a clear trend. Western print media constantly feels the need to evoke al-Quaeda and 9/11 when writing about acts of terror.

To continually refer to extremist Muslim terrorism in the same vein as anti-Muslim terrorism has a rhetorical effect which centres the discourse of terrorism around Islam. When Le Figaro prints: ‘it is worrying to see the legacy of Bin Laden taken up by fundamentalism from the opposite end of the spectrum’, it associates terrorism with a ’spectrum’ which ranges from anti-Muslim extremism to Muslim extremism. The killer’s other motivations, such as his desire to purge Europe of what he calls ‘cultural Marxism’ his hatred of the Norwegian government’s current immigration policy, and his hatred of immigration in general, are downplayed in comparision to his views on Islam (an example of this is today’s Telegraph, with its leading headline ‘Norway Killer: massacre was to save Europe from Islam’, where the only mention of the killer’s anti-Marxist motivations are included as a direct transcription of the judge’s ruling). The language of terror and terrorism has become the language of oppression, used to perpetuate a growing and misfounded association of Islam with extremism. The proof that this misfounded conflation between Islam and fundamentalism exists is manifest in the difficulty found by the Western media in conceiving of a terrrorist attack that is not linked to Muslim extremism.

It is therefore left to eastern news sources to point out the obvious: that extremists and fundamentalists are found in every religion and in none.

What is truly sad is that the constant invocation of 911 and Muslim extremism is now the focus of all self-conscious print-journalism – this article included – which thus continues to focus attention on the killer and his fascist motivations, a focus which is of no help or comfort (and most likely no interest) to those who have been affected by the deaths.

An emergency protest was held in Glasgow earlier today against a planned mass deportation of Nigerian asylum seekers, set to take place on a specially charted flight overnight tonight. Among those who have been detained by the UK Border Agency over the past week are three Glasgow-based asylum seekers, including one who has been resident in the UK for nearly 30 years, and John Oguchukwu, a Glasgow University student who has been here for nine years, having come to the UK fleeing religious persecution and torture following the murder of his family in Nigeria. Friends and neighbours of John were among those at today’s demonstration.

The move to deports dozens of asylum seekers from across the UK today comes as part of a crackdown over the past few years, with hundreds deported to Nigeria. This is due to the country being given ‘white list’ status for male asylum seekers by the Home Office, meaning applications are automatically dismissed regardless of whatever evidence is provided. And in their bid to rush as many asylum applicants as possible onto one charter flight, human rights go out the window – in the case of John Oguchukwu, he has ended up on the flight due to a  bureaucratic mix-up which has denied him his right to appeal to the Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights.

Contrary to the image that the right-wing media have managed to popularise, the fact is that the vast majority of asylum seekers are genuinely fleeing from persecution in their home country. Research has shown that most asylum seekers that arrive in Britain did not even set out with it as their planned destination – the idea that masses of refugees are pouring across the UK’s borders in order to ’scrounge off benefits’ is simply a myth.

Those fleeing persecution and violence deserve our support and should be made welcome, not treated like criminals, rounded up and deported to an uncertain future. Refugees are welcome here!

It’s now less than a month until the return of SSY’s annual summer camp, Camp Secret Squirrel. Over the weekend of Friday 5 – Monday 8 August, we’ll be returning to a scenic hidden location in deepest darkest Galloway for three nights and two days of sunshine, socialism, camping and partying. And, if you’re 26 or under, we want you to come along too!

Check out the facebook event page here, and if you’d like to come you can confirm your place by emailling scottishsocialistyouth@gmail.com

All your CSS questions answered:

How much is it? Despite runaway inflation and rising costs everywhere else, we’re keeping the price the same as last year! It’s the best value weekend you’ll get all summer – £10 unwaged, £15 waged. And that covers nearly everything – travel there and back, the camp activities and workshops, and all your meals! It’s a good idea to bring some extra money though.

How are we getting there? Most of us will be getting a coach from Glasgow city centre, leaving at 6pm on Friday, which will then return from the camp at 11.30am on the Monday morning. If you live more locally, we should be able to arrange to pick you up in Castle Douglas and get you to the site.

What’s happening at the camp? Over the course of the weekend, there’ll be lots of different workshops and activities happening on all sorts of topics. Expect workshops on subjects including the situation internationally and the economic crisis, climate change, feminism, football, drugs, direct action and much more! The full itinerary has still to be finalised though, so if there’s something you think should be covered, or even a workshop you’d like to run yourself, then get in touch via the comments below or send us an email. After a day of workshops and hanging about and maybe even swimming, each night we then throw the legendary CSS party. If you’ve ever camped at a music festival it’s a wee bit like that, but with less arseholes, better tunes and a big campfire!

Hopefully reading this has got you as excited as we are for this year’s camp, and by now you’re surely desperate to attend. Keep checking the blog and the CSS facebook event over the next few weeks for further details, and in the meantime keep the 5-8 August free, or live to regret it for a whole year until the next CSS!

It’s all gone spectacularly Pete Tong. The Murdoch’s have pulled the plug on the News of the World, the biggest selling English language paper. The Notw staff want to “lynch Rebekah Brooks”, 200 NotW journalists face the sack and Sun subeditors have gone on strike to support them. Oh, and Andy Coulson is getting arrested tomorrow.  Fortunately David Cameron has got his finger on the pulse of the whole thing – he’s at a police bravery awards ceremony tonight, hosted by the Sun.

Tomorrow’s super-soar away Guardian. WOULD THE LAST NEWS OF THE WORLD HACK TURN THE LIGHTS OUT?