In the early 90's I was introduced to the squat scene, Radical Dance Faction. The asset stripping of families and communities by the neo-liberal agenda. I was radicalised. I was only in my early 20's but I'd already been to Chiapas and felt the authenticity of the Zapatistas. I started practising my own form of Zapatismo along with my fellow malcontent's. Dj's , Musicians, a book shop owner. The book shop was the Book Cellar in Lancaster and sold the usual array of Anarchist and social change books along with international and national leafleting campaigns.

We Reclaimed the Streets and agitated for change using peaceful means, introducing people to information that the sell-out media will never tell them. We had many parties and had a damn good time, the world was changing and nothing could stop us. Then the nightmare began.

It started with the national police intelligence unit turning up at a Reclaim the Streets action. They wore their sexy black attire and had expensive cameras, looking like students on a situationist day out who had read too many sci-fi novels. Then my Brother was being targeted in London for his association with anarchists and squatters. He was victimised by the Police and even his family. Committed to a "Mental Hospital" as dissidents in the former Soviet Union used to be. I thought I was safe but the method had already begun. The deliberate increasing of paranoia. The coercion of family and friends into the sick lie that "I needed help". Read ... we don't like your politics so you must die.

Suddenly I was back in Chiapas in 1994 although I did not know it then as I was whisked off and drugged with megaton dose, sleep inducing hypnotic drugs. But the results were the same. Poor people were not lying at the side of the road shot, as I had seen in 94 on the front of local newspapers but the results and reasons were the same. People were standing in the way of the massive financial interests that run the drug war, that fuel arms sales and the corruption of politicians. They were in danger of exposing the running of laundering companies and the asset stripping of our communities, families and friends, so they had to be silenced. One need only look at expose articles available since the millennium to find the truth. Written by brave and courageous true journalists, they are hard to take for the average citizen bought up on fast food information and the the daily lies. But as Catherine Austin Fitts says in her article Narco-Dollars for Beginners (  http://narconews.com/narcodollars1.html ) ... "my pastor says, "If we can face it, God can fix it."

The horrors I saw in these places - no different from the beatings and murders reported from South America - shocked me enough to set-up a local protest organisation (  http://lancaster.mindfreedom.org.uk/ ). It is only now, four years after the worst of this nightmare ended, that I can pick up the pieces and see this truly for what it is. Yes, truly, the destruction of social liberation movements is alive and well in the UK and people, not just governments, have become rather good at destroying them. But that only works when you refuse to call a spade a spade. From the Zapatistas and to all the other social emancipation movements, the same struggle is here in the UK complete with the same torture and brutality that can only ever radicalise and insure the victory of human dignity over suffering and the betrayal of society and our loved one's.