Workers Know Your History, Frank Little.

         To some 100 years seems a long time, but when you are approaching 84, it doesn't seem that far back. It was 100 years ago in 1917, that Frank Little was brutally murder, by what was probably collusion between the American mine owners and the US state. Frank's crime, he stood steadfast in organising and supporting striking miners, and was out spoken against America's entry to WW1. He advocated that the people of America should fight capitalism, not German workers. His life is an example of just how vicious the system of capitalism is, and how the state will always come down on the side of big business against the desires and aspirations of the ordinary people.

This extract is from Freedom Socialist, Voice of Revolutionary Feminism:

        Legendary labor leader Frank Little was assassinated 100 years ago to stop him from doing what he did best – organize workers. His life was defined by an unshakable conviction that you had to fight tooth and nail for the working class.
      Little was a child when his parents joined thousands who jumped at the chance of grabbing 160 acres in the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush. An extended drought, coupled with a global economic crisis, made keeping a family farm difficult to impossible for many. As the Populist Party wrote in its 1892 Omaha Platform, “The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few. ... From the … prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed two great classes — tramps and millionaires.”
       By the time Little was twenty, he abandoned farming and followed his brother Walter to California where they mined for a living. Little discovered mine owners had only one objective — the acquisition of excessive profits in any way possible. They paid miserable wages. They spared every expense that might have made this work safer. They overworked the miners, squeezing out every last ounce of blood and sweat.

       Learning the hard way that capitalism was brutal, vicious and unforgiving, he threw himself into organising against this callous savage system. He paid dearly for his dedication to his class, the ordinary people, suffering beatings and eventual a horrible sadistic brutal death.

       His last days. In 1917, Frank Little travelled to Butte, Mont., to help the miners striking against the powerful Anaconda Mining Corporation. Tensions were high. Miners were waging a militant strike, furious about the recent Speculator Mine fire that killed 168 men. Additionally, the Russian Revolution, along with the U.S. entry into World War I that same year, had prompted a ferocious pro-war, anti-communist campaign by the U.S. government and big business.
       Though crippled as the result of a vicious attack in Texas, Little vigorously supported the Butte miners and continued to speak out against U.S. workers joining the war effort. He urged workers to “fight the capitalists but not the Germans.” On the night of Aug. 1, six men kidnapped him from his boarding house room. They roped him to the bumper of their car, dragged him across cobblestone streets and then hanged him above the railroad tracks with a note pinned to his chest, “First and last warning.” No one was ever convicted of this heinous crime.
        On Aug. 8, 1917, one week after his murder, ten thousand people filled the streets of Butte for Montana’s largest funeral procession in history. They knew who was on their side, who had put his life on the line. The city fathers forced mourners to carry the U.S. flag in the procession. But once away from the city, the flag disappeared, leaving only the IWW banner to honor this brave Wobbly’s life. On his tombstone is carved, “Slain by Capitalist Interests for Organizing and Inspiring His Fellow Men.”

Read the full article HERE: 

 
   

Bombs Or Butter?

       Everybody knows that America is a very wealthy nation, a super imperialist power that dominates the world. According to the IMF, (International Mankind Fuckers), 2015 figures, by GDP America is the second richest country in the world, slightly behind China, UK is ninth.

      However that leader of the capitalist world, USA, up to its armpits in wealth, and like all capitalist countries doesn't spread that wealth around its people. In the citadel of capitalist wealth, 46.2 million of its citizens live in poverty, slightly more than 14%. The figures for 2013 state that 1.5 million children lived in shelter or emergency accommodation. The number of households, in 2014, living with "food insecurity" was a staggering 1 in 7. The numbers living in poverty are multiplied when you add those just managing to keep themselves above that magic line of poverty. Where does all that wealth go? Well according to recent figures, approximately 50% of the federal budget goes on killing and the necessary equipment for that activity.

     This recent article from Freedom Socialist, Voice of Revolutionary Feminism, throws up some interesting facts.

One F-35A fighter jet — $157 million*
Ten new elementary schools — $148 million.
*This does not include research and development; the total cost of the F-35 program so far is $1.5 trillion.
Sources: Defense Industry Daily; Reed Construction Data

        Though hardly front-page news, the proposed federal budget for 2016 boosts funding for the Department of Defense. Obama earmarked $534 billion to these U.S. warlords. Their base budget in 2000 was around $300 billion. His proposal keeps baseline “defense” spending at its typical 20 to 30 percent of the total budget.

       This $534 billion does not include the Department of Energy allocation to build nuclear bombs. Nor does it cover an additional $51 billion for operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, etc. This money comes under the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) — authorized, unaccountable hush money which exempts the Pentagon from the spending restrictions of the 2011 Budget Control Act. Social services programs are barred from such exemptions.

         When the war-related share of the federal debt is added in, nearly 50 percent of the total federal budget goes to militarism!

            With social programs legally defenseless and the Pentagon now well-protected, the GOP announced its proposal to cut food stamps by 34 percent over the next decade. Obama’s budget would cut Medicare by $400 billion over the same period.

         This Republicrat frenzy for more guns and less butter is an assault on working people everywhere. An effective fightback requires that we understand where it’s coming from.

Read the full article HERE:

       The insanity of this system is there for all to see, a system where unbelievable wealth is created and vast amounts of it are spent on destruction, with the bulk of the rest of that wealth ending up in the off-shore accounts of a small greedy bunch of parasites. Do you have any ideas how better to distribute that wealth we create?

 Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

In Capitalism, Oil = Blood.

       Is the root of Ukraine’s problem the fact that rich oil and gas deposits were discovered there early in 2013. So naturally, opposing imperialist camps vie for control, and once again as imperialists squabble over control of a country's rich resources, it's the people that suffer. Though oil could and probably will, transform Ukraine, it is at present one of the poorest countries in Europe. Sadly it has recently been given the kiss of death, by the usual vampire, the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers). That means it takes on a massive debt to hand to the corporations to exploit its country, and proceeds to pay back that debt, by massive cuts in social spending, and massive privatisation of public assets. It has to decimate the lives of its people and destroy what social fabric exists, in order to satisfy the blood suckers in the bank of Western imperialists, the IMF.
 

      Imperialists, of what ever shade, always manage to get workers to pick up guns against workers, they always get some to run with one flag and others to run with yet another. They manage to play the patriotic game, or the ethnic game, in an endeavour to gain control. Though they themselves are never patriotic, the sink their ill gotten wealth in any country that will pay the right dividend. You'll not see many “oligarchs” running in the streets with a Kalashnikov, They tend to be sitting with their banker guarding their thieved pile.
 

      And so it is at the moment in Ukraine, ordinary worker fighting and killing ordinary worker, to see which imperialist gets the goodies.

This from FREEDOM SOCIALIST (Voice of Revolutionary Feminism).

       The truth is Ukraine’s economy depends on both Russia and Europe. But each side wants to exclude the other. Meanwhile, Ukraine has signed its new loan deal with the IMF, accepting severe cuts to public spending, privatization of public resources, and other austerity measures. Ultra-rich oligarchs continue to loot the country.

     Volodymyr Ishchenko, an anti-capitalist sociologist in Kiev, puts it in a nutshell. “The crazy, irrational capitalist system that inevitably produces competing imperialisms … this is the root of the problem — not only for Ukraine, but for the entire world.”

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk