My wee rant will be stilled over the next couple of days. It's my daughter's birthday and she and her family have booked a wee cottage in Auchterader in Perthshire for the weekend and we are invited.
Auchterarder main street, the longest main street in Scotland.
It will be interesting to see what memories it will bring back. During the war, WW2, not WW1 as some people might think when looking at me, I like many other school kids from Glasgow were "evacuated" further north away from the risk of bombing in the cities. I and two of my sisters ended up living on a farm just outside Auchterarder. For a wee Glesca lad it was a wonderful and very pleasant experience. The farmer treated me like a son and I have fond memories of those days.
Will I find the farm I lived in? Will I find the house that was the school? Who knows, what has changed and what has remained, fascinating.
Housing has become one of the many crises in our money orientated society. Our system has always pushed the illusion that we all should have a safe home to live and bring up our families. However for the ordinary people it is becoming obvious that it is indeed an illusion. We have always struggle to keep a roof over our heads, rents have always increased and sometimes shot up. Now however houses are financial assets to large financial institutions, things to be packaged and traded among the financial Mafia. There is no thought to what a house actually is, a place to have a decent life, a safe place to lay your head.
A housing shortage keeps demand ahead of supply and therefore keeps prices rising, all music to the financier's ears. Rents keep out stripping income, homelessness keeps rising and the financial Mafia keep laughing all the way to the bank, to their luxury yacht, and to their opulent mansion. That's capitalism for you.
It is encouraging to see that in some places people are taking action against this brutal exploitation of what is a human right, a safe place to lay your head. In Germany there is a movement to break this landlord rule over their lives. Others perhaps could take note and follow suit.
Berlin’s spatial dynamics and organized working class show how to secure
liveable spaces and combat the financial nature of housing: socialize
them.
Over the last few decades, housing in cities around the world has
undergone unprecedented financialization and artificial speculation.
Investors have never been richer. The worldwide value of the current
real estate market is$217 trillion, 36 times worth the value of all the gold ever mined.
Profits
from the commodification of the housing market have skyrocketed in step
with the enclosure of spaces and the fixing of financial value to them.
Living spaces are now complex financial products that can be packaged
up into investment funds and swapped by companies across the world.
As
Raquel Rolnik, former special rapporteur to the UN on adequate housing,
attests, “In the new political economy, centered around housing as a
means of access to wealth, the home becomes a fixed capital asset whose
value resides in its expectation of generating more value in the future,
depending on the oscillations of the (always assumed) rise of
real-estate prices.”
Berlin has been the epicenter of the emerging
struggle against capital, giving birth to a rebellious housing
movement. A city-wide referendum is underway to expropriate
“mega-landlords” with 3,000 apartments or more. If successful, the
campaign could tip the scales away from speculation and essentially
decommodify 250,000 apartments. In Berlin, tenants and housing activists
are building upon shared struggle to break capital’s control over the
home and democratize how and where we live.
Migrants don't get the cover from our media that the used to get, does this mean all is quiet? Have people stopped fleeing poverty, destruction, death, persecution and started to accept their lot midst the storm of deprivation that surrounds them? No, it just means that they are no longer a item to be used to create a sensational article, so the media turns the focus elsewhere.
When ever they do get coverage in the media, it is never the face of ordinary people. We are sometimes shown "camps", "detention centres", filthy living conditions, remember the "jungle". It was "dispersed", that doesn't mean they are all settled and contributing to the community. Most are probably in detention centres or sleeping rough. They are displayed as shadowy figures scurrying about in the dark, trying to get a free ride on a truck, or breaking through fences. No attempt is ever made to show them as ordinary people like you and I. Remember Bulligdon Club Boy Cameron, referring to them as a "swarm"? They are seen as an inconvenience to our business, they cause delays to our travel. Never are they ordinary people fleeing the cauldron of chaos and savagery spawned by the foreign policy of Western imperialism in their home region. Heaven forbid that we should see them as desperate human beings in need of help.
How do people become "migrants". Migrants are never people giving up a decent life to face a long and hazardous journey that often ends in death, just for the hell of it. But as long as we have imperialist power blocks building borders to proclaim "their" territory, and battling to expand their power, we will have people fleeing in desperation. State borders and power blocks are an anathema to freedom and justice, a hindrance to a civilised world, a blight on the face of humanity. States, borders and power blocks have to be destroyed before we can call ourselves a civilised species.
There is at the moment a lot of talk about turning our economic system into ethical capitalism. Appealing to our governments and corporate bodies to join the green and ethical revolution. What a naive fantasy, an illusion, a blind alley that will only end in total disillusionment for it followers, and disaster for the rest of us. Capitalism's foundations are exploitation, it is based on making money from somebody else's efforts, how do you make that ethical? Let's hope those pursuing that path wake up in time to see the folly of their ways, go for real change, a real ethical and green society and the total demolition of capitalism. Then perhaps we can start to build that ethical and green society freed from the cancer of profit and exploitation.
As usual, calm words of common sense from one of my favourite sites, Not Buying Anything.
The term Ethical Consumerism is an oxymoron. It is a dream, a fantasy that business as usual types hope will extend current harmful ways of doing things. Don't be fooled by this industrial strength green washing. In order to have ethical consumerism we would have to have an ethical supply chain. First there would have to be ethical resource extraction. Mining companies would no longer be able to hire thugs to murder indigenous activists blocking the mining sites that are destroying their livelihoods. Fomenting violent coups in order to mine resources such as lithium would definitely be out. Then there would need to be ethical manufacturing. If made ethical, companies would have to put people and the planet before shareholder interests, and the selfish motives of CEOs. Retail interests would also have to act ethically. No more cooking the books, or fleecing workers to pad the bottom line. At every stage corporations would have to do the ethical thing and take responsibility for any damage done while conducting their business. A study done showed that most, if not all, corporations would go bankrupt if they had to pay for the damage they do. And what about marketing? Can you imagine ethical advertising? Neither can I. Advertisers wouldn't be able to lie anymore. Or manipulate us with things like "nudging" and neuromarketing manipulation. The entire industry would crumble when they could no longer manufacture desire through the use of nefarious methods of mind control. The very greenwashing that brings us something as outlandish as ethical consumerism would become illegal. Greenwashing, and ethical consumerism would disappear into a void of lying blackness, never to be seen again. Let us not forget the ethical banking system that would be needed to support all the other ethical endeavours. What would that even look like? No interest to be paid, or charged, because getting something without working for it is unethical. Also, no more money laundering, or other dirty tricks. Wouldn't we also need an ethical tax regime? Large corporations and the uber wealthy would actually have to pay their fair share in such a system. And to guide it all, we would need ethical governance at the local, state, and federal levels. How is that going these days? Is propaganda ethical? Is jailing whistleblowers ethical? Is interfering in the business of other countries ethical? At best, ethical consumerism would lead to the end of consumerism. And along the way it might take down capitalism and the state, too. There is nothing ethical or logical about the greed, waste, corruption, and selfishness of our current system. Let them fail in a creative destruction the likes of which the world has never seen. That would be a welcome outcome. Anything less is a fantastical dream, because current ways can not go on for much longer.
No, it hasn't gone away, one year on and the Yellow Vests are still on the streets of France in their thousands. Though you would never know this from our mainstream media. Of all the mass protests going on across the world, France is the nearest to us here in the UK. but we hear very little, if anything, about what is going on across the channel on the streets of France, but lots of what is going on in Hong Kong, Why?
The Yellow Vest Movement, is planning a massive protest with strikes across France, on the 5th. December, they deserve our support and solidarity. What they are fighting against is the same problems we have here in the UK. deteriorating living standards, destruction of social services, increase in poverty and homelessness, gross inequality, evaporating working conditions and blatant corruption. All this midst unimaginable wealth, splattered around in the shape of luxury yachts, private jets, opulent mansions, limousines and bank accounts stashed away in tax havens. This is our world, it is only right that we should take to the streets to end this control of our lives by the greedy, wealthy and powerful.
Thousands of protesters stream across the river, November 16th.
“I am not ashamed to feel afraid from time to time. I keep on coming, but I understand those who don’t come any more because they’re too frightened”. So spoke Antoine, a 75-year-old Gilet Jaune marking the first anniversary of the Yellow Vest movement in the southern French city of Montpellier on Saturday November 16. This was just one of many protests and occupations across the country (notably in Paris) marking the birthday weekend and paving the way for a big day of strikes and actions on December 5. Antoine explained: “I’ve been here from day one and I’ve escaped police batons by a whisker on several occasions, even though my only weapons are my whistle and my gilet jaune!” The last of these alarming encounters had come just the previous week in Montpellier, he said, when the “forces of order” had attacked the demo right at the start. He had seen a riot policeman from the CRS bearing down on him, baton raised, but fortunately for the pensioner it was another protester who took the blow. I had already noticed that the majority of the demonstrators gathering in the Place de la Comédie were not wearing the trademark yellow singlets, in the stark contrast to the last time I reported from Montpellier, and Antoine said this was because of the massive police violence which protesters had been facing over the months. He was sure this was a deliberate strategy on behalf of the French state and felt that the previous week’s brutality was intended to dissuade people from taking part in the anniversary protest we were attending. Julian, an observer with the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, a human rights organisation, confirmed to me that the previous Saturday’s police behaviour had been particularly bad. “There was kettling and teargassing right from the start, for the first time here and without there having been any violence”, he said. “The state really wanted to stop the demo. It was kettled for an hour and a half”. He said there were some police who did their job properly, but others who certainly didn’t, particularly the plain-clothed BAC (Brigade anti-criminalité) units and the CDI (Compagnie départmentale d’intervention) for the Hérault area. With this in mind, it was quite a relief when the demo, a couple of thousand strong, was able to form up and leave the elegant main city square without any visible police presence. To the sound of drums, music and singing, we headed away from the narrow medieval city streets where the police would have been expecting us. But as we surged in the bright Mediterranean sunshine across a bridge over the River Lez and into the suburbs, the seagulls circling overhead were accompanied by a police drone tracking our movements. The protest paused for a moment at Place Ernest Granier, blocking cars and trams on this important intersection and then moved off again. It was now clear that the target was the south coast motorway which runs through the outskirts of the city and, an hour after the march set off, it was met with a line of riot cops blocking the road ahead. Not content with merely blocking the way, they advanced towards us and soon were raining volleys of tear gas cannisters down on the retreating protesters. Quickly, a Plan B was hatched and hundreds of us streamed across a small park surrounded by housing estates to seek out another route to the motorway. “Joyeux anniversaire!” sang the Gilets Jaunes in celebration of a whole year of joyful rebellion across the whole of this country. Again, police vans turned up to block the way and more tear gas filled the air. Despite successful attempts to create traffic jams to halt the police’s progress, they caught up with us again a mile or so later and this time the protest was cut in two, with hundreds caught in a kettle. The front part of the march ploughed on, still with the idea of blocking the motorway in mind, and came across the Village Jaune, a birthday-weekend occupation of the roundabout at Prés d’Arènes. Here there were tents, a large gazebo, trestle tables, banners, yellow balloons and an astonishing level of honking and waving from passing motorists, confirming once again that this movement enjoys high levels of support from the French public, outside the dominant metropolitan elite. What to do next? Some wanted to keep going for the motorway, some seemed happy to be on the roundabout and others wanted to head back and help out the part of the march kettled by police. In the end, there was little choice. Police advanced at speed from two directions, the tear gas began coming again and protesters scattered. The first year of this revolt has been a story of non-stop police repression, combined with the relentless sneering hostility of the corporate media. Can it succeed in the face of all that? “Yes,” one Gilet Jaune, Ingrid, told me. “I am quite sure of that, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. We have to have hope. We want people to have a life, we want nobody to be sleeping on the streets, we want wealth to be shared. “The government will give way. We just don’t know when!” A fellow protester, Manon, said: “We’re still here because we have to keep on fighting. They are destroying everything. “We have to do this despite the police repression. We are fighting for another world and this is what we find ourselves faced with. It’s totalitarian neoliberalism. “We are fighting for people’s dignity. It is the same struggle everywhere, in Chile for example”. Manon said the strength of the Gilets Jaunes movement was the way it brought together people from all sorts of backgrounds. “We have created something completely different, a new generation of protesters. People have come together who would never have done so before”. Antoine, who had spoken to me about the way police violence was scaring some people away from protesting, said he didn’t think it would work in the long run. “I consider myself to be here as a representative of ten other people who have told me they are with me. Most people I know support the Gilets Jaunes. “The aspects that motivate me are social justice and human rights, which exist less and less from one Saturday to the next. “The Gilets Jaunes are much more representative of society as a whole than other movements I have been involved in, such as the trade unions”. There were even people involved who considered themselves to be on the political right, he said, although he questioned whether this self-designation was accurate, given the nature of the cause they supported. “The real right is that infernal couple of Macron and Le Pen”, he added, noting that Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, had abandoned her early pretence of supporting the Gilets Jaunes and had since reverted to form by allying herself with a fascistic police trade union which defends the use of violence againt protesters. Asked whether the movement could succeed, he insisted: “It has already succeeded, by bringing together people from very different backgrounds, which is something in itself”. This last point was reinforced by my conversation with Damien, a 74-year-old who explained that he was a retired policeman who had once been part of the notorious BAC units which have been in the forefront of the recent repression. He said former colleagues he had spoken to were now more or less just going through the motions, doing the minimum their job required. Damien said he was involved from the very start of the Gilets Jaunes revolt. “I’ve come back for the anniversary,” he added. “I’m still very unhappy about what I’m seeing”. Macron had managed to hold on to power by dividing people, he said, and by buying their collaboration. “Personally, I have nothing to complain about because I have got a good pension. But I can’t stand seeing people working all their lives and having nothing to show from it. “I am doing this for everyone. This is a movement which came from below. It was a little revolution and it needs to keep going, starting with December 5”.
Spirit of Revolt Archive hold lots of outreach events, where we try to bring the people to the archive, and bring their history to the people of Glasgow/Clydeside area. Some of these events are held in the Mitchell library, others in various venues across the city. Our most recent event was "Workers City" where we tried to bring to a wider public some of the flourishing activism in Glasgow of the period 1988-1993.
you can view it here and perhaps it will encourage you to delve a little deeper into our vast collection historical documents, serials, letters, pamphlets, posters, photos, memorabilia, our audio and video collection and much much more. It is your history, a history you should be very proud of and share.
A display of material from Spirit of Revolt collections and a
discussion, led by Tommy Kayes with James Kelman, Brendan McLaughlin,
Billy Clark, Michael Donnelly, Ruth Gillett, Paul Anderson, Euan
Sutherland and others on the formation and actions of the Workers City
group (1988 - 1993).
From the Blythswood Room, 5th Floor, The Mitchell Library, Glasgow.
There is no doubt that this year is different. Yes, there has always been protests in this unjust economic system, but this year there are many more and they are more intense with greater numbers on the streets, and they go on much longer, months, and still continuing. Have The people of Iran joined this world wide revolutionary movement?
The Anarchist Union of Iran and Afghanistan believes that the Islamic
Republic of Iran’s regime will not hesitate to massacre millions of
Iranians, like it has done in Syria and Iraq as well as in Iran these
these last few days. Therefore, the Anarchist Union of Iran and
Afghanistan is prepared to declare that it will cooperate with all
Kurdish, Arab and Baloch armed opposition forces. With respect to the
widespread repression of defenseless people in Iran, we must be able to
provide them with the right tools to defend themselves, before there are
more dead and the people’s movement has been permanently suppressed.
Therefore the need to form an armed revolutionary front to support and
defend the people against the Islamic regime’s executioners is urgent
and necessary. If it is possible to transport weapons to people inside
Iran, you should not hesitate for a moment to prevent more people from
being bled and buried. The duty of the revolutionary and radical
opposition outside of Iran is to provide logistical and strategic
support to the struggles and resistance of the people inside Iran
I don't agree with everything in the following article but it is an excellent source to see the extent of these prolonged mass protests and gives hope that they will be joined by others rather than morph into some sort of formal agreement with the various states. Our support and solidarity could help immensely in preventing this morphing from happening. From Democracy Without Borders:
Youth celebrating the Lebanese revolution in 2019. Photo by Vicken Vincent Avakian with kind permission (source)
This
year has seen an extraordinary number of significant mass protests in
over twenty countries or territories, many of which in a national
context represented the biggest in recent times. They are often
spontaneous, with a distinctly revolutionary nature. In many cases
protesters would face a serious risk of arrest, injury or death. The
ruling class, government or even the whole system of government, are the
targets. Corruption, authoritarianism and/or austerity are their key
motivators. ------
And:
-------Obviously protests occur constantly, and we haven’t done a thorough
data analysis comparing this year with historical averages. However,
it’s generally accepted that the current protests aren’t normal. CNN’s
Fareed Zakaria called them “this autumn of protest”,
and noted that “the politics of each of these movements seems quite
distinct. But they are all occurring against a worrisome backdrop: a
collapse of [global] economic growth”, which is now at its lowest point
since the 2008 crash.
We can take the line of thinking further and
note that these various uprisings are in fact different theatres of the
same conflict.
Protesters may be waving their national flags,
and speaking of national rebirth – not global justice, but as the
example of Ecuador especially shows, these national transformations can
take place, but they must currently do so in spite of the
prevailing global system, which is institutionally incompatible with the
needs of the world’s population, captured by an undemocratic,
ahistorical ideology which fetishises the balancing of national budgets
with same year tax revenues which effectively prohibits effective
development strategies, such as the provision of basic services or
redistribution.
Two pieces of information I recently read, to me highlight the dreadful state of our world today. The first is the human savagery that results in the fact that every ten minutes a Yemeni child under 5 years of age dies of hunger. The other is the state to which we have driven the planet, the recent Australian fires have more or less wiped out the Koalas, having destroyed 80% of their habitat.
There is much more, millions of people across the globe are on the streets fighting to end inequality, injustice, corruption and state brutality. We have devised a system that perpetuates wide spread poverty, injustice and corruption. A system that spawns wars and all the misery, death and destruction that goes with those wars. A system that has driven life on our planet to the edge of extinction. None of this was an unforeseen accident, nor was it inevitable, it was driven by blind greed and deliberate exploitation. If we continue down this road, sadly those driving this human tragedy will not be the only ones to suffer as the inevitable collapse unfolds.
It may already be too late, even so, humanity that desires that decent world for all, must continue and re-double every effort, and find new imaginative ways to destroy this economic disastrous system and halt this man made disaster. We just can't throw our hands in the air, continue as we are, and watch our grandchildren's future disappear in a brutal man made extinction.
The following quote is one answer to our problem:
"You
want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can't get there
obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters,
imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can't get
there kneeling before robed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent
up their venerable sleeves. So isn't disobedience the challenge of our
age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our
souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth." Richard Grossman
An event to mark in you diary, Thursday, 5th., December. One of Glasgow's literary sons and life time activist James Kelman has a new book being launched on that date. Obviously an event not to be missed.
Details:
thi wurd presents the launch of James Kelman’s new book ‘The Freedom to Think Kurdistan’ at The Admiral Bar, Glasgow, Thur, 5th December 7-10pm. With James Kelman. Music from Eugene Kelly,The Dirt Roadsters. Fiction from thi wurd. £5 on the door.
There are lots of people in this country and else where who are unaware of the fierce state brutality against the people of Chile who are protesting in there hundreds of thousands against the poverty, deprivation and outright barefaced corruption of the Chilean state. The reason being, our mainstream media don't bother to report it in any detail. Their silence makes them complicit. Those of us who do know about this brutal state repression cannot stay silent or we also are complicit in this brutality against a cry for justice.
To raise awareness of the struggle of the people of Chile, a piece of Chile came to London, I'm sure they would be welcome in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and any other city in this country. The people of Chile's Struggle is our struggle, the poverty, deprivation and corruption that blights their life is alive and thriving here in our patch of the planet, it is all a matter of degree.
Chileans and friends stage a flashmob performance of the folk protest
song 'El Pueblo Unido jamás será Vencido' (The People United will never
be Defeated) at St Pancras Station in London, Monday 4 November 2019.
The song, which originates in leftwing political movements of the 1960s
and 1970s and was made famous by the Chilean folk bands Inti-illimani
and Quilapuyún, has become an anthem for the current protests against
inequality and state brutality that have engulfed Chile in recent weeks.
Several singers wore white gauzes over their eyes to symbolise state
violence against protestors, many of whom have lost eyes to police
aggression. At least 20 people have died in the protests.
This month Spirit of Revolt's choice for "Read of the Month" is a pamphlet taken from ourKM Collection. It is one of a group of 11 Direct Action pamphlets produced by Syndicalist Workers Federation. It is called Syndicalists in the Russian Revolution, by G. P. Maximoff, written around the 1950's. We are sure it will be of interest to all syndicalists/libertarian-socialists/anarchists, and those associated with that grouping and many more outside that grouping. We hope this little taster will encourage you to delve deeper into the wonderful collections held in our archive. Enjoy and learn.
Not much in the news just now about the Turkish invasion into Syria aided and abetted by their jihadi friends, and given the nod by America. No mention of the destruction of an area democratically organised by the people, the area of Rojava. A small area being brutally and savagely destroyed by NATO's second largest army. No pictures of the suffering of those people at the mercy of a messianic dictator armed to the teeth with the latest and most powerful weapons. Silence in the presence of brutality is complicity. Since 2011 the people of Syria have seen their country obliterated, hundreds of thousands killed or maimed, and millions of the people displaced, and now Turkey wants to carve a slice of the country off for as its own, and still the silence. A people brought to deprivation, desperation and their infrastructure destroyed, all as part of the power game between the various power-blocks vying for control of the resources in that area. Let's stop electing leaders and playing their games to their rules, and make that decision, that for the peace of the world and the benefit all the people of this world, the entire system has to be destroyed, root and branch.
I think it is important now that our voices of Rojava, out of the
heart of that battle, are being heard. A fight for the life, for an
existence in dignity, for real democracy and for the freedom of all
women. I want to tell how the resistance of Serekaniye went on, how the
beginning was, how the end was and also what happened in between.
Serekaniye right now is in the hands of jihadist groups that are being
supported by Turkey, upon approval by the United States. At a time they
said there would be a five-day firearm rest…. we didn’t believe it for
one second. And that’s how it was – the attacks didn’t stop, maybe
they’ve been reduced, but they continued attacking us with heavy
artillery, bombings and airplanes. When there are bombings, there is not
much that can be done; hide behind a tree and hope, that they didn’t
see you running or that they found your place.
Those five days of supposed firearm rest actually have been decisive
for the United States and Turkey, to redefine the conflict, to realign
the situation of war, confrontation and resistance against our forced
withdrawal that no one expected. No one could believe it, after 11 days
of resistance, beautiful and very hard at the same time. Leaving the
city. The Turkish invasion of Serekaniye did start some days before, 8th
of October, with a bombing of our military post that hasn’t been
answered, for not to unleash what happened later anyway. It was an
attempt of the friends to protect the people and the society. But the
next day, about 3 to 4 pm, another bombing of a post of the YPG took
place, where 5 friends have fallen, and since then they bombed the whole
border.
The first days have been very chaotic. We tried to keep calm and to
prepare for the invasion. Yes, the last months of the preparation made
sense, it became reality. To realise despite all fear, what war actually
means, the bravery to assure oneself of a made decision, and at the
same time, there are the doubts, that everything will be silenced, that
no one in this world will hear about that barbarism. When war arrives,
it is a distant war, with a lot of unexpected bombings, that you’ll only
hear at the very last moment. When the bombs fall, they fall, when it
happens, it happens. After days you learn to acknowledge them, and at
the same time when the wounded friends start to arrive, along with the
feelings they awake in us; sadness at one hand, because the war
machinery is monstrous, and at the other hand the strength to also fight
for them. All the defending units, those that already have been here
and those that arrived when the Turkish aggression intensified, kept the
city safe despite movements of the jihadist groups and enabled the
transfer of the wounded to the city Til Temir. Until Turkey cut that
road and it wasn’t possible anymore to bring them there.
Some mornings I turn me face away from the world I live in, and try to see another world. This is a morning I turned my face to poetry, and pocked my nose into some of the poems of El Salvadorian poet Roque Dalton born 1935, murdered 1975.
IX Love Poem
The ones who widened the Panama Canal
(and were put on the silver roll and not on the gold roll),
the ones who repaired the Pacific fleet
at the military bases in California,
the ones who rotted in jail in Guatemala,
Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua
for being thieves, smugglers, scammers,
for being hungry,
the ever-suspicious ones
(‘I bring forth this individual
arrested for being a suspicious bystander
with the aggravation of being Salvadorian’),
the ones who filled the bars and brothels
of all the ports and capitals in the region
(The blue cave, The panty, Happyland),
the ones who grew corn in foreign jungles,
the kings of the crime section,
the ones who no-one ever knows where they’re from,
the best craftsmen in the world,
the ones who were mowed down with bullets while crossing
the border,
the ones who died from malaria
or scorpion or snake bites
in banana plantation hell,
the ones who cried drunk for the national anthem
under cyclones in the Pacific or snow in the north,
the freeloaders, the beggars, the potheads,
Salvadorian sons of bitches,
the ones who barely made it back,
the ones who were a bit luckier,
the eternal illegals,
make-all, sell-all, eat-all,
the first to pull out a knife,
the saddest sad people in the world,
my countrymen,
my brothers. This from Cordite Poetry Review:
As far as tragic poets’ stories go, Roque Dalton’s (El Salvador, 1935-1975) is perhaps the most tragic in Central America. In the 1950s as a Law student, he was the brightest of a literary movement which is now referred to as the Committed Generation, a group of militant leftist writers who saw art as a revolutionary act. ‘Commitment’ meant joining the cause of a communist revolution. Since any kind of dissent had been outlawed by military dictatorships in El Salvador since the 1930s, signing up to such an endeavour led to prison, exile or death. Dalton embodied the movement’s spirit of radical, experimental and bohemian writing – he is equally known for weaving uncompromising leftist politics into avant-garde free verse as he is for a life of drink and escapades in various soviet-aligned countries. He called some of his collections ‘literary collages’, by which he meant a combination of found poems (historical documents, news, old poems, etc) and his own poetry around a theme, whether it was Communism in Latin America, the history of El Salvador or life in exile. With a conversational style that reneged of the overly poetic (Dalton claimed to have ‘nothing to do with the Neruda family’) he borrowed from Salvadorian slang and celebrated a devious way of life with a brash sense of humour. His poems, though sometimes dated for the references to communism and revolution, still resonate with a common Latin American experience: a history of corrupt governments kept in power by a small group of wealthy families or the U.S. with the complacency of subservient middle classes and ineffective bureaucrats. Names of presidents and generals he mentions only need to be changed to current ones. In Roque Dalton’s world reality in El Salvador was so mad that your options were to laugh or join the revolution. Or both. Dalton joined the People’s Revolutionary Army (Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo or ERP), one of five clandestine groups that eventually formed the FMLN guerrilla in the 1980s, now the political party in government. The ERP was regarded as the most extreme faction of El Salvador’s left wing movement. The tragedy of Dalton came abruptly in 1975, when, after returning to El Salvador after years of exile or jail, he was murdered by his own comrades who accused him of being a CIA agent. The circumstances of his killing are sketchy due to the secretive internal workings of the ERP and the fact that his alleged killers, (the ERP leaders) have never stood trial.
The fact that the world is afire with mass protests against the present system of greed, inequality and corruption seems to be totally missed by our mass media. We get the usual 10/15 minute slot on Hong Kong, then we are launched into a similar time span on the affairs of a rather dim witted corrupt self centre parasite prince. This is then followed by another longish spell of the to two main contenders in the UK's latest crooks and liars competition. This is followed by a slice of the US pantomime of the Trump impeachment, "Greatest Show on Earth". This is your "news", as far as our media is concerned the rest of the world is just fine, so go and get on with your Christmas shopping and we'll keep you informed.
Most, if not all of these mass protests across the world, are against the system that our establishment wish to protect and preserve, and are being treated with the most savage and brutal repression from the various states, something that should be at the top of any true journalists note pad, but we have silence, because the media stooges only follow the narrative of their pay masters.
In Iraq for the last two months or so, thousands have been on the streets, ports have been blocked by strikers, and more and more people are joining them on a daily basis. This despite some of the worst state violence against its own people. Where are our media cameras and reporters? Why, outside Buckingham palace, The White House and in Hong Kong.
The death toll in the mass protests that have shaken Iraq for the
last seven weeks has risen to over 330, with an estimated 15,000
wounded. Young Iraqis have continued to pour into the streets in
defiance of fierce repression to press their demands for jobs, social
equality and an end to the unspeakably corrupt political regime created
by the US occupation that followed the criminal American invasion of
2003.
Most of those killed have been felled by live ammunition, including
machine-gun fire and bullets fired by snipers, both randomly into crowds
and at identified protest leaders. Others have suffered hideous fatal
wounds from military-grade tear gas grenades fired point-blank into the
demonstrators, in some cases with canisters ending up lodged in the
victims’ skulls or lungs. In addition, water cannon have been employed,
spraying scalding hot water into the protests. Forced disappearances have been reported, while families of victims
shot to death by security forces have been compelled to sign statements
acknowledging the deaths as “accidental” in order to receive the bodies
of their loved ones.
An
injured protestor is rushed to a hospital during a demonstration in
Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
This brutality has only succeeded in drawing ever wider layers of the
population, and in particular growing sections of the Iraqi working
class, into the anti-government mobilizations. In Baghdad, protesters
have succeeded in occupying three strategic bridges over the Tigris
River leading into the heavily fortified Green Zone, where government
buildings, top officials’ villas, embassies and the offices of military
contractors and other foreign agencies are located.
In the south of the country, demonstrators have once again mounted a
siege of Iraq’s main Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr near Basra, reducing
its activity by over 50 percent. Oil workers announced Sunday that they
were going on a general strike in support of the demonstrators, and
columns of workers organized by Iraqi unions poured into Tahrir Square
to back the protests. In the southern Shia heartland of Iraq, the
teachers unions have led a general strike movement that has shut down
most cities.
Only in the predominantly Sunni northern areas of Anbar Province and
Mosul, which were bombed into rubble during the so-called US war against
ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), has the protest movement failed
to bring masses into the streets. This is not for any lack of sympathy,
but rather the threat of a renewed military offensive against any sign
of opposition. Even those in the region who have expressed their
solidarity on Facebook have been rounded up by security forces, while
the authorities have made it plain that anyone there who opposes the
government will be treated as “terrorists” and ISIS sympathizers.
If anything approaching this level of both mass popular revolt and
murderous repression were taking place in Russia, China, Venezuela or
Iran, one can easily imagine the kind of wall-to-wall coverage they
would receive from the corporate media in the US. Yet, the Iraqi events
have been virtually ignored by the broadcast networks and the major
print media. This is certainly not for lack of popular interest in the
country.
I'm a day late with this, but then again our working class heroes should be remembered and honoured every day of the year.
Joe Hill, also known as Joe Hillstrom, his original name was Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, (born October 7, 1879, Gävle, Sweden) Joe Hill was a song writer and organiser for the IWW, Industrial Workers of the World, He immigrated to America from Sweden in 1902, and spent years drifting across the country seeking work where he could. In 1910 he joined the San Pedro, California local of the Industrial Workers of the World, becoming its secretary. In 1903, his most famous song, “The Preacher and the Slave” appeared in the IWW’s Little Red Song Book. This is sung to the tune of “In the Sweet Bye and Bye” and contains the words:
You will eat, bye and bye In that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
Joe hill was executed by firing squad on November 19th. 1915. His conviction was based on purely circumstantial evidence, and despite mass protests and appeals, and suggestions that his conviction was because of his radical views, his execution went ahead. The night before his execution he stated to IWW member Big Bill Haywood “Goodbye Bill. I die like a true rebel. Don’t waste time in mourning. Organize.”
Also on the eve of his death he wrote:
My Will is easy to decide
For there is nothing to divide.
My kin don't need to fuss and moan.
"Moss does not cling to rolling stone."
My body?—Oh!—If I could choose
I would to ashes it reduce
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my Last and Final Will—
Good Luck to All of you,
Joe Hill
