Our Streets.

        The following article is from The Hague, but if you live in, or visit a city, then this the pattern you will be experiencing or about to experience. The march of capital to turn our cities into nothing more than profit producing entities. Cities are rapidly becoming places where only those with large disposable incomes can congregate. They are no longer places where ordinary people live, meet, hang out and socialise. In these new sanitised city centres, if you enter and are not in that group of "well-to-do", you will treated as suspicious, and probably deemed to be "up to no good". The controllers of the new cities don't want you unless you can spend "big time", or you can work as the minions that serve as attendants to the money spenders. You will have the opportunity to have a crap job with crap wages, and zero hours contracts. Is this the new cities we want? Our cities must be our streets, places we built and places where we wish to live, not simply money making machines for the corporate beast and the financial Mafia.

         The following from Enough is Enough:

 

       The Hague. Netherlands. On Friday and Saturday 31st of July and 1st of August, HOUSING ACTION DAYS will take place in The Hague. The theme for Friday is social housing and precarious modes of housing, and the theme for Saturday is the selling out of the city and gentrification. During these two days we will make a collective fist against precarity and the housing shortage.

Originally published by Woonactiedagen.

      In the past couple of years the city has become the stage of a social struggle. Capital is increasingly controlling housing and public spaces. The city is transformed into a revenue model, a new apparatus for a select group to accumulate wealth. This has drastic consequences for many of us. De waiting lists for social housing are ever lengthening, rents are already way too expensive and the political unwillingness to take up these issues is stifling. In the inner city, one loft gets restored after another and only expensive private sector housing is built. Hip coffeehouses and their terraces are spreading like an oil spill.

     We don’t want a city merely for consumption but a city in which we can live!

Paired with the gentrification, the state’s net to control public spaces tightens. Concurrently to being forced to pay increasingly high rent for increasingly small spaces, we are being dispossessed of the streets: hanging out in the street is perceived as suspicious and will get you castigated for gathering. The only places where you can still gather in public are parks or sports field – but never without the supervision of cameras. Our living spaces are shrinking, we will no longer put up with this shit anymore!

For this reason, let us meet on 31st of July and 1st of August, to take action against the selling out of our cities and our lives. We invite everyone to come to The Hague, the belly of the beast, to struggle for the right to live and to the city!

Mail: woonopstanddenhaag [at] riseup.net

Twitter: @woonopstand070

More information: woonactiedagen.wordpress.com

You will find posters and leaflets here: https://woonactiedagen.wordpress.com/info/promomateriaal/

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Class.

 
     Those on the right of the political spectrum will always spout that there is no such thing as class, we are all able to do well in this capitalist system, if we just work hard enough. Sadly there are those on the left of the political spectrum who claim that class is an out modded term and doesn't apply to today's social structure. Nothing could be further from the truth, class is the only way to show clearly the two sides of this exploitative system, and to explain clearly which side you are on in this struggle for justice and equality. 

      One class may have differing variations of wealth but still belong to that class which is has no real power in how the system works and are open to the exploitation of the wealthy and powerful controlling class, and will always have to struggle and fight just to have a half decent quality of life with millions failing to even reach that level. The other class will always have wealth and power, and defend it with what ever means are necessary, no matter the poverty of the many that there actions invariably cause.
      Determined and constant struggle, organisation, solidarity and direct action to bring down this capitalist exploitative system, in other words, a full scale class war, will bring an end to the gross inequality and injustice that plagues the lives of the many,

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

We Are Many.

      Ever since the police public execution of George Floyd, the world has seen mass uprisings and protests. Everything from peaceful protests to violent confrontation with the state's enforcers, looting and the destruction of the symbols of this system of oppression. What has also been obvious that there are those on the supposed "left" who stand against all that is happening, except orderly, controlled peaceful protest. They have failed miserably to grasp the lessons of our history. In most cases peaceful protests procure little or no change to our freedoms or conditions. Only when the state feels that the protests are getting out of hand will it concede some ground and legislate to try and appease the anger of the people. If you want a better world for all, don't approach your adversary with a bunch of roses, for you will be met with batons and teargas. That's the nature of the beast, you're dealing with a system that relies on violence for its survival.

      The following from Acorn:

      Another political fault line has been opened up by the rapidly spiralling events of 2020.
        As we wrote yesterday, the Covid scare has found us sharing the anti-authoritarian analysis of people beyond the usual anarchic spheres, while many supposed comrades are bizarrely supportive of the official state narrative. However, the current street uprisings across the USA, sparked by the murder of George Floyd, have revealed a peculiar limit to some people’s opposition to the nascent global police state.
      Unlike us, they have not found hope in the sight of thousands upon thousands of people of all races reclaiming the streets of dozens of cities, overturning police cars, setting on fire the buildings used to oppress them. They apparently don’t think that it is reasonable, or helpful, to come together and physically resist the state and its hired thugs! In taking this stance, they reveal that they have understood nothing about the system which has controlled and exploited us for so long, and which is now dropping its liberal mask to reveal its true totalitarian nature. They have not grasped that its so-called “democracy” is fake, that the “reforms” it sometimes offers us are illusory, that the avenues it provides for us to try and change things are all time-wasting dead-ends. Most of all, they have failed to see that the whole of the system’s control of us is built on violence.

       As this article explains: “The capitalist state was created by violence, is maintained by violence and is always prepared to resort to all the forms of violence at its disposal to resist challenges to its power. “The ‘law’ itself, that foundation of its control over the population, is the flag of convenience under which this violence is carried out.
       “Physically attacking someone is violence, even if you happen to be dressed up in some fancy clothes provided by the state. “Physically confining someone in a locked space, with the constant use and threat of force, is also violence, even if you put on a stupid wig to announce what you are going to do to them. “Bombing someone is violence, as is shooting them, torturing them, spraying them with chemicals. “Wearing down someone’s resistance, forcing them to follow your rules, to live the way you tell them to, by means of a permanent, lifelong threat of violence if they step out of line is also, needless to say, violence”.
       We cannot hope to win our freedom by obediently playing by the rules the system has written to protect itself from us. We have to break through the barriers it has built to keep us in our place, not least the psychological ones. One of these barriers is the idea that it is “wrong” to resist state oppression, that “the law” must be respected. This deeply conditioned response even leads some to assume that breaking the law to fight the system must necessarily be some kind of cunning trap into which we must diligently refuse to fall!
      The biggest barrier of all is the notion, implanted in our minds virtually from birth, that we can never defeat the system. Resistance is futile, they tell us. There is no alternative, another world is completely impossible. There is nothing you can do about this. Stay home, shut up, submit.

        But this is a complete lie! If it was true, why would they invest so much effort into policing us, surveilling us, imprisoning us, constantly devising new laws and techniques to chain us?
       It is because the tiny ultra-rich elite, who run the system for their own selfish benefit, are very aware that they are hopelessly unnumbered. They are scared of us! They know full well that if ever we broke through the barriers of fear and disempowerment with which they surround us, if ever we overcame the divisions with which they separate us, we would be able to bring their capitalist prison-world crashing down.

We are many, they are few. We will be victorious!

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Destroy The Prisons.

       A little time ago I posted two articles about the Turkish state looking the other way while two prisoners died from the effects of hunger strike. I said at the time that the Turkish state is not alone in this barbaric inhumanity of looking the other way while a prisoner in their cages dies.

     This report is of another callous indifference to another human's suffering and their unmoved inhumanity as that human dies. This time the murder is in Naples, but the name or location makes no difference,  these barbaric acts are part and parcel of the states toolkit for repression and control of the population. Freedom can never flower in a society that has prisons as part of its control mechanism. The following is from Anarchists Worldwide.

      Our friend Andreas is dying… (July 2, 2020)
        … and everyone is watching. What has been happening to Andreas in jail in Naples for at least a year is a result that both the German and the Italian state are responsible for. In spite of his poor health, Andreas is denied adequate medical care despite promises to the contrary by the hospital management. He is brought to a hospital every hour for questionable or senseless examinations and then back to prison.
        Andreas was diagnosed with cancer at least a year ago, it spread all over his body and he had unspeakable pain. He can hardly walk anymore, just eat more baby food, he loses blood and is often unconscious for days. His Italian lawyer is fighting at all levels, but transfer to house arrest has now been refused.
         Andreas is doing very badly, suicide seems to be the only way out for him in the current situation.
       Both the Italian and the German state know Andreas’ state of health. Nobody lifts a finger, fundamental human rights do not seem to apply to prisoners. What happens here is murder. And every suicide in jail is nothing else, because behind bars there are no free decisions.

We cannot stand by, although we are infinitely sad and angry and have no ideas what to do.

Continue reading →

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FREE Open Source Software.

        FREE open source software, FREE open source software, Free opensource software. Why wouldn't you shout it from the roof tops, you're braking the chains that bind you to the big internet beasts, like, Google, Apple and Microsoft, you're keeping your personal details personal, and it's Free.
         This little video makes it quite clear why you should dump the big internet beasts and go for FREE open source software.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

"I"

 

      We live in a critical era, a crossroads, a turning point. A world where we fall under the shadow of the opinion forming, desire creating, mass media, while struggling to find something more personal, more us. There is another world on the horizon, but it is difficult to see it clearly. The danger of course is we become an all important "I", forsaking the other, with equally disastrous results.

     This short poem is by Adrienne Rich, from her book Dark Fields of The Republic. In it she alludes to the folly and dangers of the world of "I", and how simple it would be to enter that world.

In Those Years.

In those years, people will say, we lost track

of the meaning of us, of you

we found ourselves

reduced to I

and the whole thing became

silly, ironic, terrible:

we were trying to live a personal life

and, yes, that was the only life

we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged

into our personal weather

They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove

along the shore, through the rags of fog

where we stood saying I

Adrienne Rich. Dark Fields Of The Republic.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Clapping Crap.

      So another "clapping session" for the NHS staff, I suppose you all feel better. Why do people fall for this ruse, it takes the focus off the real problems in the NHS and the stress the workers are under. They can't pay bills with claps, they can't feed their kids with claps. It is nothing more than a paracetamol, it might make you feel better but in no way cures the problem. I'm sure our lords and masters are very happy that we are out on the streets all laughing and clapping, instead of displaying our righteous anger. Why can't we all take to he streets and instead of clapping, shout in anger about the real problems in the NHS. The continuing slicing bits off to hand to the corporate profit machine, health for profit in any society can't be acceptable. Shout out about the slashing of services, due to "austerity" a deliberate policy forcing the NHS to privatise some of its services, the gross shortage of staff and having to hire from private profit greedy "recruiting agencies", the cap on NHS staff wages, the ever increasing waiting lists, and so the catalogue of deliberate government policies decimating the NHS and adding immensely to the stress the staff have to work under, goes on and increases.

     Clapping will not save them form the results of an extremely stressful working environment. It will not protect them from infection, long hours, and shortage of equipment. However it will make us all feel that everything is fine and we are doing well and also giving reward to those front-line workers. They need much more than than clapping, let's look at the real situation and see how we can really remedy that creaking system that is our NHS. We shouldn't sit back and watch it being sold off piece by piece to the friends of the pampered privileged class. They don't have your welfare at heart, it is profit that they are after. 

Visit ann arky's home at htpps://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Bloody Friday.

      Sometimes I feel a poem can say in a few verses more than a book can in several chapters.

 Troops at the docks in Glasgow, January, 1919.

      This this short poem is from Adrian Mitchell's book of poems, Heart at the Left. I believe this poem looks back at Glasgow's "Bloody Friday" 1919, when the police attacked a peaceful protest in George Square, resulting riots and soldiers being posted on the streets of Glasgow and at all dock entrances and elsewhere about the city. Obviously hinting that the British state would have no hesitation of doing it all over again.

As far as I'm aware, these tanks were stationed in a warehouse in Gallowgate,  in Glasgow's East End, January, 1919.

Divide and Rule for as Long as You Can.

Glasgow.
Trade Unionists march through the square
Towards the City Chambers.

Police. Police. Police.

And in the streets leading off the Square---
Scottish soldiers with rifles.
Live ammunition,
They may be ordered to shoot into the crowd.

And behind the Scottish soldiers---
English soldiers with rifles.
Live ammunition.
If the Scottish soldiers refuse to shoot into the crowd
The English soldiers will be ordered
To shoot the Scottish soldiers.

Oh, but that was log ago.

That was in the future.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Mutual Aid.

       A little more on self-organising and mutual aid. It's not a new invention, it has been the backbone of human development since we started to walk the earth. However we do need to refine it to suit the disaster that we seem to have created on this same earth we walked all those generations ago. 

      Communities across the planet are more and more turning to this human resource of mutual aid, experimenting, refining and developing as they grow. We can all learn from one and other, that's the basis of mutual aid, mutual co-operation.

      The following extract is from an article taken from Open Democracy: 

   Dance festival as part of the month-long program, called “Celebration of Life”: members of a Zapatista community are enacting life after 1994. Signs say “Education,” “Health,” and “Collective Work.” | Photo: Anya Briy

       As the COVID-19 pandemic has undermined healthcare systems and economies of even the most advanced nations, mutual networks and self-organizing efforts have sprung up across the world in a show of pandemic solidarity. With the police murder of George Floyd, the U.S. has seen further spread of self-organizing: from bond and mutual aid funds for protesters to citizen patrols in Minneapolis and a police-free autonomous zone in Seattle. As the first attempt to abolish police and replace it with community-based, transformative justice are underway in the U.S., we may want to look at the communities that have been experimenting with self-organization without recourse to the states that oppress or dispossess them, such as Rojava in North East Syria, Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi and Zapatistas in Chiapas. Zapatistas, in particular, have spent the last 26 years organizing their communities autonomously from the state across all spheres of life—from police and justice system to health care, economy and education. As we witness the limits of the imaginable being radically shifted, the Zapatista experience is more relevant than ever.

Read the full article HERE:

Thanks Loam for the link.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Prepare.

 

       The Covid19 seems to be on the decline here in UK, though we should still be very cautious on how we conduct ourselves in public. However, I think we should be shifting our main focus on the aftermath. We are facing massive unemployment and that of course, will hit the ordinary people hard. The list of companies planning to pay off workers grows by the day. Yes, we will get the usual rhetoric from our bungling political ballerinas  about how they will put in place schemes to help get the unemployed back to work. This usually translates into giving big business millions of tax payers money to employ some more people. The money will be taken up, but the jobs will be minimal. 

     With the downturn in employment there is a downturn in tax revenue to the state apparatus, this added to the monumental debt that the government has run up, will mean a savage cut in government spending. You all know what that means for the ordinary people of this country. A freeze of public sector workers pay, possible cuts, or having to do more work for the same pay, as the government cuts staff levels. more zero hours contracts, decimating working conditions, there's a queue waiting to take your job, drastic cuts to all social services, closure of public facilities, libraries, swimming pools, etc. and of course more privatisation as the state farms out more services to the private sector and sells of public assets to its corporate buddies, to help raise cash. Under our economic system there will be no quick fix, we the ordinary people will have to grin and bear it for some considerable time to come.

 I'm a very rich banker, trust me!!

    Or of course, we can start to organise our communities around mutual aid, that grows independence and solidarity across our communities and at the same time frees us from the dependency of the profit making market place of capitalism. There are a multitude of ideas from swap shops, clothes, books, toys, etc. to skill sharing schemes. I'm sure our imagination and skills can come up with a catalogue of ways we can enhance our lives and at the same time, short circuit and undermine, the corporate beasts that would rather you starved than they run without a profit.

   There is a storm coming, we can prepare to defend ourselves, or we can appeal to our rich and wealthy lords and masters, to please help us and give us a wee handout.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

My Homeland.

      What better way to start your day than with pleasant music, with an emotional content that you wish to endorse. Translations are never 100% accurate, but you get the meaning.  Lifted this from Arrezafe.

They say the homeland is
a rifle and a flag.
My homeland is my brothers
who are tilling the land.

My homeland is my brothers
they are tilling the land
while here they teach us
how one kills in war.

Oh, I don't shoot, no,
oh, I don't shoot, I don't
Alas, I don't shoot my brothers.
Oh, I was throwing, yes,
oh, I was throwing, yes,
against those who drown the people in their hands.

Prepare us to fight
against the workers
bad lightning strike me
if I attack my companions.

The war they fear so much
it does not come from abroad;
they are proletarian struggles
like brave miners.

Oh, I don't shoot, no,
oh, I don't shoot, I don't
Alas, I don't shoot my brothers.
Oh, I was throwing, yes,
oh, I was throwing, yes,
against those who drown the people in their hands.

When a general dies
they carry it on a harmonic,
the one who kills himself in the mine
the coal itself buries it.

The one who kills himself in the mine
two companions carry it,
stone charcoal pain,
mourning of brave miners.

Oh, I don't shoot, no,
oh, I don't shoot, I don't
Alas, I don't shoot my brothers.
Oh, I was throwing, yes,
oh, I was throwing, yes,
against those who drown the people in their hands.

If my brother gets up
being in the barracks
I take the gun and the blanket
and I go to the mountains with him.

Officers, officers,
you have a lot of courage
we'll see if you are brave
when our day comes.

Oh, I don't shoot, no,
oh, I don't shoot, I don't
Alas, I don't shoot my brothers.
Oh, I was throwing, yes,
oh, I was throwing, yes,
against those who drown the people in their hands.

Oh, I don't shoot, no,
oh, I don't shoot, I don't
Alas, I don't shoot my brothers.
Oh, I was throwing, yes,
oh, I was throwing, yes,
against those who drown Spain in their hands.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Unhealthy Profit.

        We have come through the start of the industrial age and moved on to the hi-tec age, but every move into every industry comes with its on particular problems. Practically every industry is linked to an industrial disease. We have silicosis, lung disease prevalent among stone masons, potters grinders etc.. Then there is pneumoconiosis, mainly among coal miners, caused by breathing in fine coal dust and carbon dust. Arc-welders are at risk of manganism, manganese poisoning brought on by exposure to the toxic effects of the fumes from welding rods melting as the are used. Painters are at risk from neurological deficits from solvent‐exposure, which include impaired colour vision, cognitive defects, tremor and loss of vibration sensation. There are many more links with occupation and disease, but we are seldom told of these dangers when you apply for the job. Health and safety regulations go some way to protect workers from these dangers but usually these measures are re-active and only come after years of suffering and campaigning.
      As a young man starting my trade in the Clydeside shipyards in the 1950’s, I was ignorant of the dangers of asbestos, and as it was widely used, all of us were exposed to the horror of death from mesothelioma, an asbestos induced incurable cancer. It was not that the dangers of this substance wasn’t known, medical papers had been written about the danger from asbestos exposure as far back as the 30’s, but it continued to be used up to and including the 60’s. The employers didn’t abandon asbestos willingly, it took campaigning and legislation to finally attempt to get rid of this killer substance. That is the pattern in most of industries, its dangers are only restricted by campaigning and legislation. The profit motive drives industry, not the well being of the employee. Most industries can be made safe, but it usually requires investment in safety equipment and training and that costs money which in turn cuts into the profit. So safety in industries will always come lower down the ladder, and as times get harder, corners are cut in safety to prevent cuts in profit. The economic system we have at present does not lend itself to the welfare and well being of the workers, only when the workers control all the industries will their well being be at the fore front of production.

      I wrote that wee article away back in 2013, but think it is always well worth reposting. Though we have mainly moved away from the diseases of the "heavy industries" era, your occupation should still come with a health warning. You just have to think of couriers cycling through busy traffic and breathing their deadly fumes, as one example of modern occupational diseases. sedentary jobs, being immobile for hours, day after day, confined space and pressure and other forms of health hazards. The hi-tec era jobs are not necessarily healthy jobs, and never will be as long as profit is the driving motive for that industry.

More recent research from PubMed:

         There was executed the analysis of morbidity and disability rate in workers with occupational diseases (poisoning) of the Republic of Bashkortostan for the period from 2010 to 2014. There is reflected the sectoral distribution of the relative indices of the occupational morbidity. There are selected factors of labor and the labor process, promoting occupational diseases (OD). The leading place in the structure of primary morbidity is held by OD related to physical overload and functional overexertion of certain organs and systems; the second - by diseases associated with exposure to physical factors; the third - by diseases from exposure to workplace allergens. This is followed by illness (intoxications) caused by exposure to chemical factors, industrial aerosols. The share of OD from exposure to biological agents and professional tumors in total accounts for about 2.0% of all cases of OD revealed for the first time.

Also: 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22Occupational+Exposure%2Fadverse+effects%22%5BMAJR%5D

      Your health should never be sacrificed  for the benefit of the rich, but always will be, if we stick with the present economic system. 

WHEN THE TIME-BOMB GOES OFF.

The bike just sits there,
dust covering its lovely sheen,
puffing up the Fintry Hills
well, it’s no longer my scene.
Y’see, as a Clydeside apprentice
I proudly learnt the tradesman’s skill,
little did I know then
the price, asbestos lungs that kill.
Now I just sit here through the painful day
gasping each mouthful of air, wondering
how can I make the bastards pay.
They new it was a killer
a time-bomb in our lungs
but, because it was so quick and cheap
they firmly held their tongues.
So what, if it cost the workman’s life,
there’s always a couple of new workers
in the care of the worker’s wife.
Please try to understand my anger
as I and others bear their cost,
a slow death from asbestos lungs,
a vibrant life lost.
Anguish for family and friends,
all in the name of profit;
now that really does offend.
Our anger without direction
is a blind archer behind the bow,
we have to use our anger
to smash the status-quo.

       Poem written many, many years ago when I was diagnosed with pleural plaques, known as the asbestos footprint. Thankfully I'm still cycling, my problems with my cycling are more age related than pleural plaques.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Keelie 9.

        The rebellious little rag the Glasgow Keelie has now put out its issue No. 9 for you to peruse. Topical, critical, informative and FREE. Well it used to be freely distributed around Glasgow's pubs, cafes etc, but covid19 means for the time being, it is available to read online.

        Go on, have a read and let us know what you think.

http://glasgowkeelie.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/keelie-9-REVISED.pdf

The Glasgow Keelie Home:

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

People Power,

        Civid19 has woven a strange new world, the worst of it has yet to unfold. Unemployment, poverty, slashing of social services, cutting back on working conditions, increase in zero hours contracts and part-time jobs. All siting on the near horizon. Sorry if I depress you, but I don't see an alternative, unless we smash the existing system and think again but building one fit for purpose, of seeing to the needs of all our people, with fairness and justice. As long as we tolerate pampered privilege based on wealth and hereditary status, having all the power, we are going to repeat the viciousness of this economic system inequality and injustice.

We Have The Power.

Empty streets,with empty shops,
queues forming at the job centre,
doorway beds and hungry children,
watched over by mean eyed cops,
Food-banks growing by the hour.

City razzle-dazzle just rusty remnants,
shopping malls now empty caverns,
home to starlings, pigeons, magpies,
zero hours, part-time workers, live in
homes where ambition fails to flower.
Shiny politicians peddling illusions,
grin and bear it, there’s pie in the sky,
follow the Messiah, he’ll get you there,
quietly swallow their empty promises,
so they can live in their ivory towers.
This world exists by our acceptance,
blindly following their biased rule-book,
failing to realise that we the people,
builders of the world by sweat and pain,
are the ones who really hold the power.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Concessions Or!

 

        The "Black lives Matter" movement is not unique to this era, it has been part and parcel by black Afro-Americans for generations, under different names, as they struggled for justice and equality. This time round it is probably the largest of those movements, as it has spread across borders, not just of states, but of countries. Despite the apparent resistance from the establishment, like in the past, there will be concessions granted to take the insurrectionist element out of the movement. On the streets to lots of people white power matters, but to the established corporate body that rules America and else where, what really matters is that power remains with that corporate body and the present economic system survives. Black white halfway in between, makes little difference to the massive corporations, what matters is power, control and the survival of their sacred system of economic exploitation of all humanity.
       The past "Black lives Matter" movements have brought about changes, black Mayors, black officers in the military, and even black millionaires, but the real power still lies with the corporate oligarchs and the economic system that they live by, who see groups of people as a source for exploitation and will gladly play up one against the other.
        This time round, will the "Black lives Matter" settle for more steps towards equality with their exploited whites, or, and it looks more encouraging, will it, linked to all shades of human colour, evolve into a real movement for change by bringing down the corporate monster that lives by this economic system of exploitation.

       The following is an extract from an interesting article from It's Going Down:

       A third reason that Black Awakening is important, and the one I’m most concerned with here, is that it includes an invaluable discussion of ruling-class responses in the face of mass upheaval. In the broadest terms, Allen argued that

“In the United States today a program of domestic neocolonialism is rapidly advancing. It was designed to counter the potentially revolutionary thrust of the recent black rebellions in major cities across the country. This program was formulated by America’s corporate elite—the major owners, managers, and directors of the giant corporations, banks, and foundations which increasingly dominate the economy and society as a whole—because they believe that the urban revolts pose a serious threat to economic and political stability. Led by such organizations as the Ford Foundation, the Urban Coalition, and National Alliance of Businessmen, the corporatists are attempting with considerable success to co-opt the black power movement” (17).

Allen saw this program as emerging in the context of “several interlocked responses” to the rebellions from different sectors of the white power structure:

On the one hand there was the orthodox liberal who prescribed more New Deal welfarism as an antidote to the riots… [Another was] the shrill voices emanating from the embattled metropolises–voices demanding more policemen, more troops, more weapons, heavier armor, and tougher laws…. But between these two camps, there has arisen a third force: the corporate capitalist, the American businessman. He is interested in maintaining law and order, but he knows that there is little or nothing to gain and a great deal to lose in committing genocide against the blacks. His deeper interest is in reorganizing the ghetto ‘infrastructure,’ in creating a ghetto buffer class clearly committed to the dominant American institutions and values on the one hand, and on the other, in rejuvenating the black working class and integrating it into the American economy. Both are necessary if the city is to be salvaged and capitalism preserved” (194).

One of the architects of the neocolonialism program, who receives special attention in Allen’s study, was McGeorge Bundy. Child of an elite Boston family, Bundy spent five years as national security advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, then left in 1966 to become president of the Ford Foundation. With this job change, Bundy shifted from a leading role in designing U.S. political-military operations in Vietnam to a leading role in designing establishment responses to the Black Liberation Movement.

Bundy quickly set a new tone as Ford Foundation president. In August 1966 he told the National Urban League’s annual banquet, “We believe that full equality for all American Negroes is now the most urgent domestic concern of this country. We believe that the Ford Foundation must play its full part in this field because it is dedicated by its charter to human welfare.” With Bundy as its head, the foundation broadened its grant-giving from relatively tame civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and Urban League to the more militant Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Allen explains that CORE appealed to the Ford Foundation because it talked about revolution but offered an “ambiguous and reformist definition of black power as simply black control of black communities,” fortified by increases in government and private aid. “From the Foundation’s point of view, old-style moderate leaders no longer exercised any real control [in the ghettos], while genuine black radicals were too dangerous” (146-47). In Cleveland, Ford financed a CORE-led voter registration and voter education campaign, which in November 1967 helped Carl Stokes win election as the first Black mayor of a major U.S. city.

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State Control.

       Recently all the focus of street protests have been on police brutality and rightly so. The recent police killing in Glasgow of an asylum seeker, has shifted some of that focus to how abysmal is the life of asylum seekers here in the UK. However what we should be aware of is that police brutality and the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and migrants are not two separate issues, they are both organised aspects of the state apparatus. The police are recruited, funded, trained and protected from any real accountability to the public, by the state and its mouthpiece the media. Likewise, asylum seekers are the product of the state policy of, we are different, the British way of life, the spirit of "we brits" therefore better than those others over there. The states create borders and to help protect them the breed patriotism, the barrier to unity, and will expect you, or coerce you, into laying down your life to protect those imaginary lines drawn in the Earth. The fact that people leave their homes, family and loved ones, usual to get away from deprivation, persecution and death, make an extremely hazardous journey half way across the world and when they arrive here, they are deemed to be different, lesser, so need to be herded up, stored in inhumane conditions, robbed of their basic human rights, while their "betters" scrutinize their suitability to stay, is just another aspect of the state's injustice and inhumanity. Police brutality, asylum seekers and migrant, camps, detention centres, call them what you will, but barbaric prisons would be a better title, are necessary functions of the state in its never ending desire for control over a submissive population. 

Photo courtesy of RawStory.

     Somehow we are supposed to believe that teachers, bar staff, office workers, labourers, bus drivers, students from places like war torn Syria are different and inferior than teachers, bar staff, office workers, labourers, bus drivers, students, who happen though an accident of birth, live here in this collection of islands called the United Kingdom.

      You wish to end police brutality, and the abhorrent treatment of migrants, then you can highlight these injustices, but to remedy these problems you will have to get rid of the root cause, the state system and its economic master the capitalist system. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk