Shafted.

Image courtesy of 124News.

 

            This government seems to find it easy to come up with money for any of its pet schemes. Take our Monarch Charles III at present he gets a present annually of tax payers money to the tune of £86.3 million, obviously struggle to keep up his standard of living, the state steps in and for 2025 he will receive an wee boost of tax payers money to the tune of £38.5 million, bring his tax payers gift to a tidy £124.8 million annually. Does he need it? Is he struggle to get by on a taxpayers gift of £86.3 million? Recent research shows that Charles III's personal wealth is in the £2 billion region. Who else in this country has a personal fortune in the region of £2 billion and receives a tax payers annual gift of £124.8 million? Obviously there is no shortage of tax payers money to help out billionaires, but not any for struggling health workers, teachers homelessness, child poverty, and others struggling to maintain some standard of living.

Image courtesy of Amnesty International.

 

 

         In another field where the government is extremely generous with your money is in what they call the "defence" budget, in actual fact it is a "war" budget. I can't think of a country on the planet that has any plans to invade the UK, except perhaps America, if we don't do as we are told in supporting U$A's endless wars.
         Our war budget for 2021/22 was £45.9 billion and our £800 million Prime Minister has stated we will "ramp up" "defence investment" (war preparation). Of course he doesn't mean with his money, but with yours. The war budget has in 2020 received a £24 billion "cash boost", again, your cash, and they want to feed it more of your money.
         When do we wake up to the fact that we are day and daily being continually shafted by the rich and privileged parasite class. While in public they shed crocodile tears about our dire situation, and privately laugh at us as they sip their champagne doing deals of pillage and plunder.

Image courtesy of Big Issue.

 

         That better life for all means we have to bring this whole stinking edifice to greed, corruption and self indulgence, this capitalism and state, joined at the hip, insanity, to an end.

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info      

Shafted!!

          If you are one of those who are still trying to work out who this government and system works for perhaps the following wee article will help you make up your mind.
         While the powers that be repeat their mantra that there is not enough money to pay NHS workers and others a decent wage, they can find plenty of money for propaganda for UK imperialism. Take Queen Elizabeth II's funeral, tax payers forked out £162 million of tax payers money for that pompous circus to please the parasite class. Then shortly after that we had the pomp to celebrate British imperialism with the circus coronation of Charles III costing the tax payer somewhere in the region of £100 million +. On the matter of this extortionate over the top lavish pomp and circus, Cabinet Officer minister Oliver Dowden had the audacity insisting the government and the king were 'mindful of ensuring that there is value for the taxpayer' and there will not be lavish or excess. So this is his idea of modest normality. All in all the The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) estimated that the addition of an extra Bank Holiday weekend would cost the Government £2.39 billion. Of course you have to factor in the cost of the massive security operation that these two circuses required in the eyes of our lords and masters.

No wonder they are laughing.

 

Image courtesy of GraziaDaily.

         Of course the parasite class are boasting about the fact that The British Beer and Pub Association estimates the coronation will generate an extra £120 million for pubs across the country with the hospitality industry also expecting a significant boost. So be happy, your money has helped the hospitality industry as it will gain immensely from you generosity.
       Away from the imperialist propaganda machine, other facts on who this system supports. While we all struggle to pay our bills and heat/fed our families, ASDA is consulting on cutting the wages of 7,000 workers, BT is paying off 55,000 workers and replacing them with AI.

      With a crumbling NHS, a decaying education system, a totally broken social service system, an increase in poverty and the an increase in the resulting mental illness, where in this jamboree of spending and job/wage cuts do you see anything that is for you benefit or well being? Enough is enough, we must support all workers taking strike action, their fight is our fight. We have to create that better society that is based on fairness, mutual aid, and freed from the profit motive that sees to the needs of all our people. 

 

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Bent Knee.

 

           Now that the £250 million circus of ridiculous pomp paying homage to the UK imperialist past and parasite class, is over, and all paid for by you and I, I thought I would just make my opinion known. Only a fool or a coward bends their knee to another human being.

No Gods

No Kings

No masters

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Heil!!

 

        

          The crown, £2.5 million and gold trimmings could go some way to paying the nurses a decent increase.

Image courtesy of Focus.

        May 6th. the UK enters a new era, we are expected to participate in a display that is reminiscent of Germany in the 30's where hordes were gather together to shout allegiance to the imposed leader Heil whoever, Heil whoever. In this case in UK the allegiance we are supposed to regurgitate is to someone who has unimaginable inherited wealth, power and privilege, and has never done a days work in his entire life. May 6th will mark the crowning of a privileged individual who because of his birth and the system of monarchy and imperialism that has festered in this country for centuries, lives in a bubble of opulence and privilege. The meaningless words that we are all supposed to shout out are "I swear that I will pay true allegiance to your majesty" A crowning ceremony that will cost you and I £100 million of our tax money, while nurses and doctors are refused a wage that reflects there training, skill and dedication. All of who have worked very hard to get to the position they are in, unlike this pompous individual who will get everything free just because of his birth.
       Will the people behave like sheep and shout Heil Charles, Heil Charles, or will they see through this circus, this edifice to British imperialism the bulwark of the system of power and privilege to the wealthy. Surely this shouting allegiance is so ridiculous so obvious a pantomime that the average person will have a laugh it its stupidity and instead shout Not My King, and work hard at seeing this whole pomp and ceremony of power and privilege ends up where it belongs, in the dustbin of history. 

 Image courtesy of Morning Star.

Keelie 35.

 

          Hi all, the Glasgow Keelie 35 is out, as usual it is packed with what's going on in our city and further afield, comments on the Truss menagerie and its incompetence and blatant attack on the ordinary people in our society. You'll find the Keelie at picket lines, demos, on the street, in pubs and cafes. Make sure you watch out for it and grab yourself a free copy. If you think you could distribute some copies among your mates, then contact us and we can arrange to get them to you.

Read the Keelie on line.

 

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Sabotage.

           There has been a united parrot voiced opinion from the West that Russia sabotaged its own Nord Stream gas pipe lines. There has no dissenting voices in this chorus, yet the evidence is there to suggest an alternate view. Also the CIA suggested that there could be an attack on the Nord Stream pipe lines, I'm always suspicious when the CIA suggest something like that and it happens. 

Image courtesy of Le Monde.

            The following is an extract from an interesting article on Arrezafe. Well worth reading the full article.

             It cost billions of dollars to install the Nord Stream 2 pipeline across the Baltic Sea, from near St. Petersburg to the port of Greifsfeld in Germany. The idea was to guarantee a secure supply of natural gas to Germany and other European partners. avoiding its passage through troubled Ukraine, known for being willing to use its transit rights to extract gas for itself or blackmail customers.
           Ukraine, of course, was always vehemently hostile to the project, as were the United States, Poland, and the three Baltic States, Finland, and Sweden, all keeping an eye on what was happening in their seas.
The Baltic Sea is an almost closed body of water, with narrow access to the Atlantic through Danish and Swedish straits. The waters around the Danish island of Bornholm, where the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged by massive underwater explosions, are under constant military surveillance by these neighbors.
            “It seems completely impossible that a state agent could carry out a major naval operation in the middle of this densely monitored area without being noticed by the countless active and passive sensors of the coastal states; certainly not directly in front of the island of Bornholm, where the Danes, Swedes and Germans meet to monitor surface and underwater activities,” writes Jens Berger on the excellent German website Nachdenkseiten.

           ABC News @ABC · Pres. Biden: "If Russia invades...then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." Reporter: "But how will you do that, exactly, since...the project is in Germany's control?" Biden: "I promise you, we will be able to do that."Video link HERE:

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Iran!

   

 

      We should be firing up support and solidarity with the people of Iran. Perhaps it is time to marry those two slogans, one from Iran, "We are no longer scared" to ours, "We will no longer be poor". The courage of the women of Iran surely inspires the desire to set about changing our society. They face a very brutal authoritarian regime, shackled to the blind dictate of religion. We cannot let their struggle be in vain.

An extract from Enough is Enough.

 

Is it a feminist revolution

Is it a feminist revolution because they’re burning their hijab

Is it a feminist revolution because it was started and is led by women

Is it a feminist revolution if men are taking part

Is it a feminist revolution if nothing changes

What does hair have to do with the revolution

Glory and power to the women in Iran.

            If we’re lucky, women are semi-colons in the stories written by men and other egomaniacs and “revolutionaries” who think we don’t know that they don’t know what they’re doing; who think we don’t know that they just want some more of that power that the State monopolizes and not liberation for us all.
           Glory and power to the women in Iran who have seized the narrative and become object and subject. Women are too often the afterthought of a revolution, rarely its reason for being.

Listen to their chants: Jin Jiyan Azadi/Women Life Liberty!

           Glory and power to the women in Iran for serving us this challenge: If women (and men) in one of the most perfect police states are this unscared, then what are you doing to fight your oppressors?
          The thing about revolutions is that you can never unsee them. You can never see people who are no longer scared rise up.
          Their courage will set your very guts on fire. And put you on notice that you are next, whether you are an oppressor with a small o or a big-O Oppressor.
          Glory and power to the women in Iran who have seized the narrative and become object and subject.
           In too many revolutions women have died, been beaten, shot at, and sexually assaulted, fighting alongside men to rid their countries of that uppercase Patriarch yet so many lowercase patriarchs still oppress us.

We are no longer scared.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Freedom?

      The price you pay for not dressing according to the dictate of  authoritarian religious.

                                            Image courtesy of Iran Human Rights.

        Are the people of Iran finally going to throw off the shackles of authoritarian religion? Are they going to grasp the jewel of freedom, free from the rigours of patriarchy? Time will tell, but it is looking extremely positive in what the people are doing on the streets of Iran.

       The flames of uprising are once again burning in Iran. Yet, it seems different this time. A revolution is afoot, a feminist revolution.
      The first sparks of the revolution started in Saghez of Kurdistan, the home town of Mahsa Amini. Mahsa Amini was a 22-year-old Kurdish girl who was beaten to death by the police for “improper Hijab.” Mahsa was better lnown as Zhina among friends and family. In the Kurdish language, Zhina means life. The Islamic Republic of Iran snuffed out her life and countless others as sacrifices to the altars of Patriarchy, Religion, Racism, & Capitalism.
       The original sparks of revolt started by the chants "Jin, Jiyan, Azadi," "Woman, Life, Freedom" are now a evolution spreading to all 31 provinces and hundreds of cities. Even the ideological strongholds of the regime, Qom and Mashhad, are revolting. For the first time, the police are the direct target of people's ire. The Police have been driven back, beaten, and killed. Police cars flipped, burned, and destroyed. Police stations taken over and set aflame. People are no longer scared of them.
       The revolution is bearing fruits. Oshnavieh is the first city liberated and in full control of people on September 24th. We are but one step away from overthrowing the death cult that is Islamic Republic of Iran. It has yet to be seen if we would take that final step. But, the people of Iran have already proven that they shouldn't be underestimated.

A co-production between Antimídia, Federation of Anarchism Era and subMedia.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Rebellion.

 

    

         Riots, mass protests, open rebellion against the state and its bed partners from the corporate world of greed, these are daily occurrences across our beleaguered planet. Most of it fails to make the news with our mainstream media, they are much more tied up with imperialist pomp, sex scandals and the shenanigans of the celebrity world, a daily feed of bubble gum and popcorn.
        So we should be grateful to SubMedia for the regular rendering of that other world, the world of struggle of the ordinary people for justice and a decent life. Spread the word far and wide, the world is in revolt, justice can be ours.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Stuart.

      The latest rendering from The Kate Sharpley Library, as usual interesting stuff, always fascinating and informative.

       From our comrades at the Stuart Christie Memorial Archive (now open!)
KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 106, September 2022 has just been posted on our site.

Contents:
         Union-Bashing Economics [1975] by Albert Meltzer "It is the language of myth called in to justify power – an economic myth to replace the patriotic myth, but in this case using the same ‘national necessity’ ploy as in war."
         Remembering Stuart, two years on "Copies of A Life for Anarchy: A Stuart Christie Reader arrived in the UK at the very end of June 2022... We’d like to see copies in libraries: have you asked your local library to get one?"
         A ‘good example’: A Life For Anarchy: A Stuart Christie Reader [Book review] by Mark R. "There is undoubtedly, a new world waiting to be built, and from those members of that ‘strange, unknown, unappreciated tribe’ who came before us, and in whose ranks Stuart Christie now stands, we can find the inspiration to fight on; for as another of those fighters once said; ‘we are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that.’"
         A living book : 'A Life For Anarchy: A Stuart Christie Reader' [book review] by Richard Warren "A life for anarchy is a proper reader – not a dry memorial, not a dusty headstone, but a living book to keep handy, to dip into repeatedly and to relish."
        Immense enthusiasm and optimism : 'A Life For Anarchy: A Stuart Christie Reader' [book review] by Chris Ealham "I was impressed by his literary references, which ranged from obscure Scottish poetry to popular culture; this was always very natural, lightly worn, in no way jarring or artificial. He also displayed immense enthusiasm and optimism. Many of these admirable traits are attested to in the final section, which consists of tributes paid to Stuart by his comrades, friends and loved ones, although the frontiers between these categories were very fluid."
        The use and need for a union by Léa Wullschleger "Certainly, if they cannot fight against the bosses with the same weapons as them, capital, since they don’t own any, they can achieve anything through numbers and organisation; since we are no doubt the more numerous."
         Joe Thomas [obituary] by Albert Meltzer "he was (to the surprise of his many friends in the trade union movement) a good friend to revolutionary anarchism and to the practicalities of anarcho-syndicalism (to the dismay of his Marxist friends)."
         Audrey Beecham [1915-89] by Albert Meltzer "She was a good friend to Miguel Garcia and myself. I took back from Barcelona this October many messages of greetings from Spanish friends both of the ‘thirties and ‘sixties, which will never now be delivered."

Anarchist history roundup Aug. 2022
          Advice to My Anarchist Comrades (1901) by Élisée Reclus (and Stuart Christie) "What then should we do to maintain our intellectual vigor, our moral energy, and our faith in the good fight?"
          You can read the bulletin via https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/dv43bp The PDF is up at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/xpnxzt

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Class War.

            Well people of UK, now you know, with Kwarteng's massive-mini budget we face raw capitalism, capitalism with the gloves off. No sham, no illusions, feed the rich and keep the poor poor, to give the poor money would only feed inflation. While we struggle with astronomical energy bills and struggle to feed our families adequately, millions of pounds are thrown at the very rich. In the UK there are 19,000 who earn more than £1million a year, the chancellor has just handed them a further £55,000 a year to play around with. If you earn £20,000 a year, the chancellor's tax cuts will give you the princely sum of £1.43 a week more to spend. Well Kwarteng tells us the rich with all that extra money will invest in giving you high paid jobs. My bet is that they will now consider a larger yacht or a bigger super car. What will you do with your fabulous windfall of £1.43 a week? Well not a lot, as it and much more will be gobbled up with your new energy bill come October. While you struggle spare a thought for those poor bankers who have had to survive on annual bonuses of just twice their annual salary. Kwarteng has seen their plight and abolished the cap on bankers bonuses. The man's sympathy knows no bounds, well except for the poor.
          With this comes suggestions that the 48 hour week could be scrapped, and new legislation to curtail strike action. Well if you want to survive this cull on the poor we had better get organised now. Increase strike action before they put the hems on it. Once the legislation is in place it will be a much harder struggle. Don't wait for the extra chains to be put round your ankles, act now, end this jamboree of power, privilege and wealth, end this onslaught on the ordinary people, end this drive to accumulate more wealth for the pampered, privileged few.

 

Image courtesy of Mail Online.

 

Image courtesy of Trussell Trust.

Quote from Institute of Fiscal Studies:

Paul Johnson, IFS Director, said: 

          “Today, the Chancellor announced the biggest package of tax cuts in 50 years without even a semblance of an effort to make the public finance numbers add up. Instead, the plan seems to be to borrow large sums at increasingly expensive rates, put government debt on an unsustainable rising path, and hope that we get better growth. This marks such a dramatic change in the direction of economic policy-making that some of the longer-serving cabinet ministers might be worried about getting whiplash.
          Mr Kwarteng has shown himself willing to gamble with fiscal sustainability in order to push through these huge tax cuts. He is willing to shrug off the risks of inflation, and to invite significantly higher interest rates. And he has avoided scrutiny by presenting a Budget in all but name without accompanying forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Bookfair.

 

             It is great to see that anarchist bookfairs are still regular and popular in the UK. Most are very successful and long may that be so. They are also very useful in bringing together those who see anarchism as the road to that better world. So remember remember the 5th of November, for that is the date of the Manchester Salford Bookfair, an excellent date with history in mind. Make this event a must, spread the word far and wide. Bookfairs are a must for those lovers of meet-ups, discussions, chat, meeting new friends and catching up with old comrades and getting a handle on what is happening around the country. 

 https://bookfair.org.uk

https://facebook.com/anarchistbookfair

 

https://twitter.com/abookfair

https://instagram.com/abookfair

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Opposites.

          Now that the over extravagant, way over the top extravaganza of a funeral is over, will the royals do what other families in this country do after a funeral, pay the bill? Or will that fall to Joe Mug, the tax payer. This whole extended period of mourning was a ostentatious show of pomp, power and privilege, a gross display of inherited plunder wealth. Yet millions turned up to fawn and weep in front of a class that don't give a monkeys about them. This entourage presides over a nation with millions living in poverty, children going hungry to school, elderly that can't heat their homes. This whole class of parasites wallows in obscene opulence and yet we have those who some how, hypnotised by the gloss and glitter show, believe they are part of that world. View some of the opulence HERE. This lavish circus, this Hollywood production of brutal British imperialism will have cost millions to perform, I doubt if the royals will pay a penny towards the performance. Millions spent in a couple of weeks, but no money for the poor, the elderly, the infirm. Another sickening aspect of this whole performance was that they were handing out blankets to those deadheads standing in the queue, when will we see such generosity to the homeless and the poor. 

Image courtesy of The Metro.

Image courtesy of Celebrity Land.  

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

A Flag!

 

       A poem can often say in a few verses what a book takes several chapters to say. So with all the recent fawning at the feet of that symbol of British brutal imperialism, I thought the following lyrics from a song by The Wolfe Tones. The lyrics of The Butcher's Apron originate from a poem written by Henry Dupre LaBouchere.

 

The Butcher's Apron

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there!

It waits upon blazing hovels where African victims died, to be shot the explosive bullets or

wretchedly starve and die, and where the pirate hammers the isles of southern seas, at the

peak of the hellish vessel the English flag is free!

The Maori often cursed it with his bitterness dying breath, and the Arab hath hissed his hatred

as he spat at its folds in death, and the helpless Hindu feared it, and the Kenyan did the

same, and the Irish blood hath stained it, with a deep indelible stain.

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there!

It is floated on scenes of pillage, it is flaunted on deeds of shame. It has waved o'er fell

marauders, as they ravished with sword and flame, it has looked upon on ruthless slaughter,

and massacred dire and grim, and has heard the shrieks of victims drowning the jingo hymn.

Where is the flag of England? Seek lands where the natives rot. Where decay, and assured

extinction must soon be a people's lot. Go search for once glad islands where death and

disease are rife, and the greed of colossal commerce now fattens on human life.

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there!

Where is the flag of England? Go sail where rich boats come. With shoddy and loaded

cottons, and beer and Bibles and guns. Go where brute forces triumphed, and hypocrisy

makes its lair. In your question you'll find the answer, it was and still is there!

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info     

History.

        

Just a reminder that when the British arrived in 1700s, India had 27% of global GDP. But after 200 years of theft and millions starved to death, by 1947 India had 3% of global GDP, 90% living below the poverty line, a literacy rate of 17% and life expectancy of 27. Ashok Kumar.

          Over the last week or more we have had a wall to wall master class in propaganda drumming up support for the symbol of brutal imperialism.  The media failed to give a dissenting voice a space. I thought, there must be dissenting voices against this cavalcade of pomp privilege and power, against this adoration of the symbol of imperial brutality. So with that in mind I publish in full this article from  

                                                Image couresy of Slavery Images.

Information Clearing House,

            As millions of Britons and admirers the world over mourned Queen Elizabeth II’s death Thursday, others — especially in nations formerly colonized by the British Empire — voiced reminders of the “horrendous cruelties” perpetrated against them during the monarch’s reign.
          “We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth, because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history,” declared Julius Malema, head of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters party in South Africa.
          “Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952, reigning for 70 years as a head of an institution built up, sustained, and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanization of millions of people across the world,” he continued.
          “During her 70-year reign as queen, she never once acknowledged the atrocities that her family inflicted on native people that Britain invaded across the world,” Malema noted. “She willingly benefited from the wealth that was attained from the exploitation and murder of millions of people across the world.”“The British royal family stands on the shoulders of millions of slaves who were shipped away from the continent to serve the interests of racist white capital accumulation, at the center of which lies the British royal family,” Malema added.
         Larry Madowo, a CNN International correspondent from Kenya, said during a Thursday broadcast that “the fairytale is that Queen Elizabeth went up the treetops here in Kenya a princess and came down a queen because it’s when she was here in Kenya that she learned that her dad had died and she was to be the queen.”
        “But that also was the start of the eight years after that, that the … British colonial government cracked down brutally on the Mau Mau rebellion against the colonial administration,” he continued. “They herded more than a million people into concentration camps, where they were tortured and dehumanized.”
        In addition to rampant torture — including the systemic castration of suspected rebels and sympathizers, often with pliers — British forces and their local allies massacred unarmed civilians, disappeared their children, sadistically raped women and clubbed prisoners to death.
        “And so,” added Madowo, “across the African continent, there have been people who are saying, ‘I will not mourn for Queen Elizabeth, because my ancestors suffered great atrocities under her people that she never fully acknowledged that.”
         Indeed, instead of apologizing for its crimes and compensating its victims, the British government launched Operation Legacy, a massive effort to erase evidence of colonial crimes during the period of rapid decolonization in the 1950s-’70s.
        “If the queen had apologized for slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism and urged the Crown to offer reparations for the millions of lives taken in her/their names, then perhaps I would do the human thing and feel bad,” tweeted Cornell University professor Mukoma wa Ngugi. “As a Kenyan, I feel nothing. This theater is absurd.”
         Aldani Marki, an activist with the Organization of Solidarity with the Yemeni Struggle, asserted that “Queen Elizabeth is a colonizer and has blood on her hands.”
        “In 1963 the Yemeni people rebelled against British colonialism. In turn the Queen ordered her troops to violently suppress any and all dissent as fiercely as possible,” he tweeted. “The main punitive measure of Queen Elizabeth’s Aden colony was forced deportations of native Yemenis into Yemen’s desert heartland.”
         “This is Queen Elizabeth’s legacy,” Marki continued. “A legacy of colonial violence and plunder. A legacy of racial segregation and institutionalized racism.”
         “The queen’s England is today waging another war against Yemen together with the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.,” he added.
          Melissa Murray, a Jamaican-American professor at New York University School of Law, said that the queen’s death “will accelerate debates about colonialism, reparations, and the future of the Commonwealth” as “the residue of colonialism shadows day-to-day life in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean.”
           Numerous observers noted how the British Empire plundered around $45 trillion from India over two centuries of colonialism that resulted in millions of deaths, and how the Kohinoor — one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, with an estimated value of $200 million — was stolen from India to be set in the queen mother’s crown.
           “Why are Indians mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II?” asked Indian economist Manisha Kadyan on Twitter. “Her legacy is colonialism, slavery, racism, loot, and plundering. Despite having chances, she never apologized for [the] bloody history of her family. She reduced everything to a ‘difficult past episode’ on her visit to India. Evil.”
           An Indian historian tweeted, “there are only 22 countries that Britain never invaded throughout history.”
          “British ships transported a total of three million Africans to the New World as slaves,” he wrote. “An empire that brought misery and famine to Asia and Africa. No tears for the queen. No tears for the British monarchy.”
          Negative reaction to the queen’s passing was not limited to the Global South. Despite the historic reconciliation between Ireland and Britain this century, there were celebrations in Dublin — as a crowd singing “Lizzie’s in a Box” at a Celtic FC football match attests — and among the Irish diaspora.
           “I’m Irish,” tweeted MSNBC contributor Katelyn Burns, “hating the queen is a family matter.”
            Welsh leftists got in on the action too. The Welsh Underground Network tweeted a litany of reasons why “we will not mourn.”
             “We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the protection of known child molesters in the family,” the group said.
              “We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the active destruction of the Welsh language, and the Welsh culture,” the separatists added.
             Summing up the sentiments of many denizens of the Global South and decolonization defenders worldwide, Assal Rad, research director at the National Iranian American Council, tweeted, “If you have more sympathy for colonizers and oppressors than the people they oppress, you may need to evaluate your priorities.”

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info