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@angryeveryday-blog
February 3rd: Palestine's water
An excellent infographic from Visualising Palestine on how the Israeli occupation exploits Palestinian water resources to an absurd degree. The occupation is, like all colonial projects, partially a question of resources and profit. Free Palestine.
February 2nd: 'free speech' again
I've expressed by disdain for the liberal concept of free speech before, and since my post calling out the hypocrisy of the Charlie Hebdo free speech crowd that situation has become even more absurd. People have been arrested for sharing a cartoon which mocks the death of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists; distasteful, perhaps, but no more distasteful than the Hebdo cover it is a satire of, whch mocks the death of several hundred Egyptian pro-democracy protesters. French police have just arrested an 8 year old child for 'supporting terrorism.'
In Britain, a study ranking universities on how well they faciliate 'free speech' has rather ironically demonstrated exactly how bullshit and oppressive the liberal fetishisation of 'free speech' is; it lists as threats to free speech:
Academic and cultural boycott of Israel
Banning payday loan sharks from advertising on campus
deciding not to sell The Sun newspaper on campus
Student Union policies against hate speech including homophobia, racism, sexism, transphobia
Attempts by protesters to 'no-platform' fascists
All seem like pretty good policies to me, consistent with the struggle for a free, liberated society.
February 1st: Michael Sparks and the DWP
If you were wondering just how terrible the Tory mission to force disabled and terminally ill people into work at all costs was, I give you this tale from the frontlines of privatised work capability assessments:
A man who had part of his leg amputated was turned away from an interview for disability benefit because he was in a wheelchair.
.... He said he had waited 40 weeks for the appointment after applying for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) - the benefit replacing Disability Living Allowance - despite being told there was a 26-week wait.
... "Why have their offices in a building on the first floor if it's for disability assessment?"
... Mr Sparks, whose foot was amputated in October after he contracted a bone infection, said he was not warned about the access issues. He had been living on savings until his application for employment and support allowance was approved in November.
As a friend of mine put it: "Good to know we don't actually have a government, just a bunch of fucking charlatans paying other charlatans an enormous amount of money to shit on people"
January 31st: 'scroungers'
The rich love to blame their failings, and the collective structural failings of capitalism, on those with the least power or responsibility. This move is pretty despicable. The right-wing press and political establishment does something even more depraved though: they get some of the most exploited people to also believe this about their fellow proletarians. The exploitation, casualisation, and alienation of work is used to legitimate it as a disciplinary mechanism. Rather than saying 'fuck my job' or 'fuck my boss' the average person is taught to project their hatred of that work onto those who are unemployed - 'why is she being allowed to live without working as hard [read: suffering as much] as I am.' A particularly tragic symptom of this is that among UK benefit claimants:
Up to 212,000 have been physically attacked because they’re on benefits 6% say their children have been bullied at school because the family gets state aid 16% of claimants have been turned down for a home, and 11% have even been shunned by their own families
January 30th: UKIP
The rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party is what happens when there's no serious left response to a crisis of capitalism. The only way to deal with them is to organise and provide an alternative, by which isn't necessarily meant electoralism (though a successful Syriza govenment would certainly undermine the appeal of Golden Dawn, for example), but rather leftist and autonomous social movements employing a diversity tactics to fight austerity, capitalism, and the rise of far-right and neo-fascist groups. UKIP's MO is to blame the EU, migrants, the working poor, for the economic woes of Britain; we can debate whether UKIP is crypto-fascist all day, but it remains true that Farage's strategy of scapegoating is straight out of the fascist playbook. His party unfortunately gains credibility when he talks about the very real decline in living standards, even in the context of the return of economic growth.
Proving the bigotry and economic barbarism of UKIP is an easy task, it simply requires quoting their members, MEPs, leaders, and spokespeople.
Just two days ago a UKIP parliamentary candidate was caught commenting positively on a statement on the BNP website calling gay people "fascist perverts," he is also sympathetic with other far-right groupings: "well done EDL." Last saturday it was revealed that the UKIP general secretary made a speech equating the NHS and British social democrats with Nazi Germany; his speech was also incredibly transphobic, saying to an American audience that: “Socialists think that if somebody wants to reassign their gender the state should pay, they think that’s how the world works. So if you love she-males come to the United Kingdom, if you love freedom – stay here.”
Nigel Farage has played into very dangerous Islamophobic tropes recently with the claim that Muslims represent a "5th Column" in British society. To suggest that a particular religion minority are inherently treacherous is a disgusting statement, it incites anti-Muslim racist violence and further legitimates government surveillance and repression measures like the proposed CTS Bill.
The stories I've mentioned are only the most recent examples of UKIP's harbouring of bigots and the repeated revelations of ties to more openly fascist groupings. To go through the whole history of UKIP bigotry would take a much longer post.
UKIP forms part of the matrix of racist propaganda and violence in British society which extends from Labour's 'British Jobs For British Workers' rhetoric, to cross-party consensus on the imprisonment of asylum seekers and policing efforts to find and deport undocumented migrants, to the racist harassment and violence by the police, to the right-wing media's constant litany of smears against Muslims, people of colour, migrants. These provide the soil from which any successful British fascist project will grow.
January 29th: Leelah Alcorn
On December 28th last year 17 year old trans girl Leelah Alcorn committed suicide. She was driven to this by our transphobic society; specifically her highly religious parents attempts to isolate her, deny her identity and force her to take part in 'conversion therapy.' The truth became clear as Leelah's mother posted an announcement of Leelah's suicide, misgendering her even in death, that the Alcorn's loved their 'son' but lacked the capacity to love their daughter. There are many things I could write about this heartbreaking story, how it fits into a patriarchal and binarist society, what I think of her parents, but I will leave her words to speak for themselves:
If you are reading this, it means that I have committed suicide and obviously failed to delete this post from my queue. Please don't be sad, it's for the better. The life I would've lived isn't worth living in ... because I'm transgender. I could go into detail explaining why I feel that way, but this note is probably going to be lengthy enough as it is. To put it simply, I feel like a girl trapped in a boy's body, and I've felt that way ever since I was 4. I never knew there was a word for that feeling, nor was it possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told anyone and I just continued to do traditionally "boyish" things to try to fit in. When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn't make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don't tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don't ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won't do anything but make them hate them self. That's exactly what it did to me. My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help. When I was 16 I realized that my parents would never come around, and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any sort of transitioning treatment, which absolutely broke my heart. The longer you wait, the harder it is to transition. I felt hopeless, that I was just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my 16th birthday, when I didn't receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep. I formed a sort of a "fuck you" attitude towards my parents and came out as gay at school, thinking that maybe if I eased into coming out as trans it would be less of a shock. Although the reaction from my friends was positive, my parents were pissed. They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little straight christian boy, and that's obviously not what I wanted. So they took me out of public school, took away my laptop and phone, and forbid me of getting on any sort of social media, completely isolating me from my friends. This was probably the part of my life when I was the most depressed, and I'm surprised I didn't kill myself. I was completely alone for 5 months. No friends, no support, no love. Just my parent's disappointment and the cruelty of loneliness. At the end of the school year, my parents finally came around and gave me my phone and let me back on social media. I was excited, I finally had my friends back. They were extremely excited to see me and talk to me, but only at first. Eventually they realized they didn't actually give a shit about me, and I felt even lonelier than I did before. The only friends I thought I had only liked me because they saw me five times a week. After a summer of having almost no friends plus the weight of having to think about college, save money for moving out, keep my grades up, go to church each week and feel like shit because everyone there is against everything I live for, I have decided I've had enough. I'm never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I'm never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I'm never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I'm never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I'm never going to find a man who loves me. I'm never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There's no winning. There's no way out. I'm sad enough already, I don't need my life to get any worse. People say "it gets better" but that isn't true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse. That's the gist of it, that's why I feel like killing myself. Sorry if that's not a good enough reason for you, it's good enough for me. As for my will, I want 100% of the things that I legally own to be sold and the money (plus my money in the bank) to be given to trans civil rights movements and support groups, I don't give a shit which one. The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren't treated the way I was, they're treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say "that's fucked up" and fix it. Fix society. Please. Goodbye, (Leelah) Josh Alcorn
January 28th: Fortress Europe
The borders of Europe are incredibly bloody. Anti-immigration policies by states create immense suffering on the literal periphery of European society, and out of most Europeans' everyday thoughts. The conditions of the 2,400 refugees living in a makeshift camp at Calais are appalling and death rates are high. Throughout Europe, including in the UK, asylum seekers fleeing oppression are locked up in prison conditions, abused and held with no due process and then deported back to their home countries to be killed, tortured, or imprisoned. Large populations live in fear of a UKBA raid, splitting up families, destroying lives. Tens of thousands have died trying to get into Europe in the last couple of decades. Now a mission which saved over 100,000 migrants from drowning in the Med (Op Mare Nostrum) has been scrapped and replaced with a much more limited one - the governments of Europe are saving money by choosing to let thousands of desparate people drown. This is the reality of 'Fortress Europe.'
January 27th: alienation
Marx laid out the concept of alienation, which is the separation experienced by a person when they have no control over their work. They are unable to control what they produce, under what conditions, they are separated from their fellow workers. This is an inevitable outcome of wage labour - a relation in which workers are forced to sell their productive capacity as a commodity on the market. This necessity means that whatever freedom and rights are bestowed on citizens in liberal societies are given up in the workplace; to quote Marx, "Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we therefore take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face “No admittance except on business.”". Given people spend a large percentage of their life at work this has a major psychological impact. Even if work isn't actively dangerous or unpleasant it is seldom enjoyable or fulfiling; a global study found only 13% of employees worldwide were 'engaged' at work.
The sheer quantity of misery engendered by alienated work relations is staggering. From the millions of hours of boredom and stress endured by call centre workers, to tens of thousands of work-related injuries and deaths. Perhaps the most stark example of the impact of alienated work on the soul: Foxconn (Apple) factories in China had to install nets on their building after 14 successful suicides in 11 months.
January 26th: Detroit
The city of Detroit is an example of what happens when capital no longer needs a particular population. Once a thriving city, with the highest per capita income in America in 1960, Detroit has been eviscerated by restructuring of global capitalism - the well-paying jobs are gone, with it the relative prosperity. The city has had semi-dictatorial emergency managers, financial bankruptcy facilitating a suspension of democracy. The city is blighted by empty homes which are left to rot and often burn rather than allowing Detroit's large homeless population to have places to live. There is talk in the bourgeois press of a 'revival' of Detroit; in practice that means gentrifying businesses and affluent (white) individuals snapping up the devalued property of some parts of town. Displacement for working class African-Americans only increases.
In a region with abundant water resources citizens' water is being shut off when they can't afford to pay their bills. 27,000 households lost access to water last year. This is almost entirely striated by race and class - African-Americans get their water shut off, businesses and white people rarely if ever do. These shut offs have been condemned by the UN, and amount to a humanitarian crisis in the supposedly most 'advanced' capitalist economy.
Sources: UN officials criticise Detroit water shutoffs; Breaking the Set: Detroit, part 1 and part 2
January 25th: suicide in Greece
At the time of writing this exit polls suggest the anti-capitalist Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) may have not only won the most votes of any party in today's Greek election but in fact won an absolute majority. Greek exit polls are notoriously unreliable, so we will have to wait a while to find out the true seat count. Regardless of that, and regardless of how you see Syriza (are they radical? social democratic? can an electoral party ever seriously challenge capitalist social relations? will they last?) it is important to look at the conditions of human misery that led people to vote for them.
On this momentous day let's remember the cost of austerity - there is strong evidence of large numbers of suicides in Greece occurring 'solely because of fiscal austerity,' with economic retrenchment causing half (about 500) of Greek suicides in 2009. This is just one symptom of Greece's social collapse, sitting alongside massive unemployment and homelessness, and a rise in far-right violence against immigrants, people of colour and LGBTQ people.
January 24th: war propaganda
The release of Hollywood film 'American Sniper' has begun a much needed conversation about war propaganda in American cinema. There are well documented cases of collusion between the US Pentagon and Hollywood film studios - essentially the Pentagon provides advice and loans military hardware for films in return for altering elements of the script - this means that pro-torture, pro-imperialist films like Zero Dark Thirty get access to props unavailable to antiwar films. From anti-communism, to the modern 'War on Terror,' 'liberal' Hollywood has served a propaganda purpose.
American Sniper, based on the autobiography of former sniper Chris Kyle, has been criticised for misrepresenting his story and reality. Salon reports that a scene in the film implies that 9/11 and Iraq were linked, and that the film portrays the protagonist as racked with guilt, when in fact his memoir is triumphant and unrepentant. Chris Kyle reports that he considered Iraqis 'damn savages' and did not care about indiscriminately killing them, in fact finding it fun.
Chris Kyle killed more than 255 people, and claimed he killed dozens of people while deployed to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. While some have claimed the latter story is implausible, I'm inclined to believe it given his record of immense racism and the bloodbath that took place in New Orleans after Katrina.
23rd January: Saudi Arabia
Yesterday King Abdullah, the dictatorial monarch of Saudi Arabia, died. The Western media and political elites praised him as a 'revered leader,' a reformer, a lover of peace. The British government will be flying flags at half mast to mourn this man. John Kerry said that:
"This is a sad day. The United States has lost a friend, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, and the world has lost a revered leader,...He was so proud of the Kingdom's journey, a brave partner in fighting violent extremism who proved just as important as a proponent of peace."
Of course these statements are typical of the Western approach to Saudi. The kingdom is seen as a geopolitical ally and source of oil resources for the United States. This means that all the talk of democracy and secularism that usually serves as a major component of US imperialist discourse is set aside.
The US-Saudi alliance requires 1984-style levels of doublethink. The Saudis are a partner against Islamic extremism, yet they are primary funders of Islamism and their legal system is indistinguishable from the perverted form of Sharia practiced by ISIS. Stonings, cutting off of hands, flogging for blasphemy. The US policy in the Middle East includes military incursions justified as democracy promotion, yet Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy which has done its best to maintain neighbouring autocracies - most notably sending troops to help Bahrain crush its democratic uprising.
As former Labour Mayor of London Ken Livingstone put it:
"I just long for the day I wake up and find that the Saudi royal family are swinging from lampposts and that they've got a proper government that represents the people of Saudi Arabia."
January 22nd: revenge evictions
To an anti-capitalist, the idea of landlords in general is somewhat sickening. The concept of individuals and families owning dozens or hundreds of surplus houses that they then extract a profit on is typical of the inequality and exploitation that characterises capitalism - a human need is provided only if some rich bastard can extort money from it.
Revenge evictions take this to a whole new level. Theoretically, one of the things landlords do to justify their existence is to maintain the homes in a liveable condition for their tenants - fix faults, repair damage. But in Britain landlords have been simply evicting tenants when they ask the landlord to keep their side of the bargain. 213,000 people have been subject to 'revenge evictions' in the last year. The problem is strongly stratified by race and class - 10% of BME (black and minority ethnic) tenants, and 7% of those on housing benefit have been revenge evicted in the last year.
While revenge evictions may be possible to limit through legislation, the ultimate issue is that houses are a commodity and thus are subject to market imperatives at odds with human need. As the housing crisis in the UK worsens, a communist solution is more necessary than ever.
Source: 'Let's stop the scourge of revenge evictions'
January 21st: pay day
Recently I made a post about rising inequality, today I'm going to showcase a specific example - management pay in higher education.
Over the past few days education activists up and down the country have held 'payday' actions - symbolising the day, only a couple of weeks into the year, when their VC has made as much money as the lowest paid worker at the university makes in a year. For example, at Warwick it was the 14th of January.
Students held mock celebration parties, held demonstrations, and did other actions to mark this day. Bosses' pay continues to rise, while other staff face no rises, or pathetic wage offers in which any token 'pay rise' is more than eaten up by inflation.
This Novara article provides more detailed analysis.
January 14th: Swedish mosque attack
The image shows swastikas sprayed onto the front doors of a Swedish mosque. On Monday 29th December, 2014 another mosque was set alight in a suspected Islamophobic hate crime. This attack follows a Christmas Day attack on a mosque which injured worshippers and must be seen in the context of 13 arson attacks on mosques in Sweden this year.
A far-right Islamophobic party is currently making significant gains in Swedish politics, the Guardian reports that:
Sweden Democrats leaders have likened Islamism to Nazism, and the party wants to cut the number of asylum seekers by 90%. This month, the leader of Sweden’s Jewish community condemned as “good old rightwing antisemitism” remarks by the party’s secretary that Jews could not be Swedes unless they abandoned their religious identity.
The Sweden Democrats more than doubled their vote to 13% in September to become the country’s third-largest party; opinion polls suggest this month’s budget crisis further boosted support for the party to up to 18%.
These appalling developments in Sweden are part of a wider upswing in support for the European far-right, neo-Nazism and anti-Muslim bigotry as was seen in the European elections.
And antisemitism. You can say them both. Say it with me: antisemtism and anti-Muslim bigotry. They are not mutually exclusive. You can acknowledge both.
(it’s not a derail because there are antisemitic currents throughout the post, including Nazi symbolism, and a specific acknowledgement of antisemitic remarks towards Jews. On the contrary, to not name that as antisemitsm is irresponsible and whitewashing.)
-Z
Yes, sorry - I should have included both. Of course anti-Semitism is involved here too and it would have made sense to include that.
Again, apologies - I will try to do better in future.
January 20th: Apartheid's legacy
Naomi Klein titles her chapter on post-apartheid South Africa 'Democracy Born In Chains.' The 'chains' to which she refers are the constraints of the international market, and the capitalist bodies (e.g. the WTO) that regulate and enforce it.
In 1955 the anti-apartheid African National Congress carried out an incredible participative process to create a blueprint for a new South Africa. This became the ANC Freedom Charter. It proposed popular government, welfare, an ended to racial discrimination and no small measure of socialism. It stated that: 'The People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth;' specifying collective ownership of 'mineral wealth,' 'Banks and monopoly industry,' and division of land among 'those who work it.' The liberation struggle included many socialists, communists and other radicals.
However, the South African state has embraced neoliberalism and turned away from the radical demands of the Freedom Charter. The result being that though the 'petty apartheid' of legally enforced segregation is gone, the white descendants of the colonial and then apartheid bourgeoisies still control most of the country's wealth and means of production. Many black South Africans are economically worse off than under apartheid; as John Pilger puts it, in the title of an excellent documentary, 'apartheid did not die.'
Klein, writing in 2007, tells us that:
'Since 1994...the number of people living on less than $1 a day has doubled'
'Close to 1 million people have been evicted from farms'
'Of South Africa's 35 million black citizens only 5000 earn more than $60,000 a year'
The ANC has built 1.8m homes, but in the same period 2m have lost their homes.
The black unemployment rate doubled from 1991 to 2002
Maintaining this system of indignity and exploitation has not been done without resistance, but despite the consistent re-election of the once liberatory ANC this resistance has been met with immense violence, for example the murder of striking miners at Marikana.
(Klein, N., 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. London: Allen Lane.)
