Western countries see the rest of the world as their playing field fit only for exploitation.— Pramoedya Ananta Toer in conversation with Andre Vltchek, in Jakarta, 2004 The “global playing field” is “level” only from the perspective of the west.— Robert H Wade
The success of Bong Joon-ho’s film Parasite (2019) has drawn attention to his back catalogue, in particular his first mainly English-language film, Snowpiercer (2013).
Snowpiercer is a fast-paced movie about a train on a global circular train track, set in the future after a climate change engineering experiment goes wrong. Ice cold temperatures freeze the world into a new ice age. The train is designed and run by the magnate Wilford to circumnavigate the planet perpetually. The passengers, the earth’s only survivors, are segregated: the elites in the luxurious forward cars and the poorest in the grimy tail compartments.
The tail-enders, led by Curtis, decide to revolt and make a plan to get through the fortified doors of each carriage to take over and control the train. However, after battles with the train guards take a heavy toll on the insurgents, a select few are brought to the front of the train to meet Wilford.
This doesn’t come out of nowhere. We had British nationalist fascist thugs sending bullets and parcel bombs through the post in 2011. We had threats to journalists writing about their beloved fitba club in 2012.
We had British nationalist fascist thugs attacking peaceful independence supporters in 2014. We had British nationalist fascist thugs attacking Irish republicans in 2019.
And in 2020 we have seen British nationalist fascist thugs run rampage in the centre of Glasgow, because they know that they’ve got away with it before, and they’re convinced they’ll get away with it again. For far too long the authorities in Scotland have appeased them, covered up for them, tried to blame ‘both sides’ when it’s only British nationalists fascist thugs who are guilty of violence.
And for generations we’ve had institutionalised anti-Irish racism masking itself as sectarianism, as a problem for the fitba, as a problem for the West Coast.
Yet again British nationalist fascist thugs have rioted in the centre of Glasgow, and yet again we see the intimate connection between racism, anti-Catholic bigotry, so-called loyalism, and British nationalism. And yet again the Conservative party in Scotland is conspicuous by its silence. For all the hand wringing about the independence movement, Scotland’s racism is tightly bound up with British imperialism. For far too long the media and establishment in Scotland have turned a blind eye to Scotland’s problem with British nationalism. It’s time that ended
And generation after generation, year after year, it goes on and it goes on because the media and authorities in Scotland are too afraid to call this out for what it is. This is not a Scottish problem. This is not an Irish problem. This is a problem with British nationalism and its violent entitlement.
Let’s be clear. The violence in George Square is not Scotland’s shame. This is a problem which belongs to British nationalism in Scotland. This is a British problem. Britishness owns it. Sectarianism and racism are a disease of British nationalism. Rule Britannia is the song that they chant while they’re kicking our heads in.
As police violence intensifies alongside the inequalities it exists to enforce, some communities are mobilizing to defend themselves, while others have yet to understand why this is necessary. In response, we’ve prepared this poster stressing the structural role the police play in maintaining capitalism. A large full-color poster printed on white book paper to decorate the walls of your city! The back contains the essay Seven Myths about the Police.
This week far-Right and vigilante violence against Black Lives Matter demonstrators ramped up.
We’ve got reports of someone shot at a statue protest in Albuquerque, New Mexico by a militia member;
Proud Boys attacking someone in Seattle, WA;
violent Trump supporters clashing with a rural Black Lives Matter demonstration in Ohio;
neo-Nazis pulling a gun on people outside of Pittsburgh;
and a Unicorn Riot reporter attacked by white vigilantes while the police watched and then threatened to arrest the reporter for “inciting a riot.”
Meanwhile, a Boogaloo PR manual has been leaked, a slew of arrests have taken place following previous far-Right incidents and attacks and we got doxxes of Operation: Werewolf, the Three Percenters, and more!
note> the Twitter posts and videos don’t reproduce here or without media.. see original HERE>This Week in Fascism
Without further ado, let’s begin!
News
Albuquerque Militia Member Opens Fire at Protest Calling for the Removal of Spanish Conquistador Statue, Injures One
Protesters attempting to pull down a statue of Conquistador Juan de Oñate, a brutal colonial governor who oversaw Spanish rule and the 1599 Acoma Massacre, faced off against heavily armed members of the New Mexico Civil Guard today. At one point, a counter-demonstrator took out a pistol and was pushed away from the statue by demonstrators, after which he opened fire, injuring one person who was taken to the hospital.
#Albuquerque activists IDing shooter as son of former sheriff who once ran for City Council because he “felt compelled to seek his first elected office out of fear [of] the community… becoming a “third world country.” Also attended #GOP convention in 2016 as an alt-delegate. https://t.co/mAX3Mk2MEGpic.twitter.com/uzMENWgfg
Why are we squatting? We, women and queer people, feminists, precarious, exiled and marginalised on several levels, are occupying a building in Strasbourg that has been abandoned for several years. Since February 27th 2020, La Pigeonne has become a squat for housing and organization in a selected mix (without cisgender men*). Originally published by Squat Net. As…
Mutual aid initiatives have rapidly spread during the coronavirus pandemic. But as the crisis is only likely to change and not abate, can community-led action stay the course? Argentina may well have the answer.
Illustrations by Michelle Pereira, for The Correspondent
On a sunny Thursday afternoon in April, an estimated 500,000 senior citizens across Argentina opened their doors to receive a freshly prepared meal, delivered entirely free of charge. It was a simple, yet touching gesture that showed the recipients that their need to feed themselves despite living under compulsory isolation had not gone unnoticed.
This impressive logistical feat was not carried out by the government. Instead, the initiative, involving 2,000 community-run kitchens across the country and support and funding from small businesses from butchers to bakeries, was the brainchild of the Argentinian grassroots social movement, Barrios de Pie.
It is just one example among thousands of acts of compassion, solidarity and voluntary cooperation that have been making headlines around the world. This groundswell of activity – which falls under the banner of “mutual aid” because it comes from within communities themselves and is geared long-term, as Barrios de Pie put it, at social justice and societal transformation – has, in many instances, outpaced state-led attempts at volunteering.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that humans are kind. After all, this is the case Russian author, nobleman and anarchist Peter Kropotkin, who came up with the term, makes in his 1902 essay in which he writes: “Besides the law of mutual struggle there is in nature the law of mutual aid, which, for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual contest.”
Hypersonic nuclear-capable missiles will return us to the madness of the Cold War
By Karl Grossman
The United States is seeking to acquire “volumes of hundreds or even thousands” of nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles that are “stealthy” and can fly undetected at 3,600 miles per hour, five times faster than the speed of sound. In unveiling the plan, Trump called the new weapon a ‘super-duper’ missile. But with even less time to respond to a potential threat, will this lead to a deadly misjudgment?
Why so many? A Pentagon official is quoted in the current issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology as saying “we have to be careful we’re not building boutique weapons. If we build boutique weapons, we won’t—we’ll be very reluctant to—use them.”
The article in the aerospace industry trade journal is headlined: “Hypersonic Mass Production.” A subhead reads: “Pentagon Forms Hypersonic Industry ‘War Room.’”
On March 19, 2020, the U.S. conducted its first hypersonic missile test from its Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii.
“Fast and Furiously Accurate” is the title of an article about hypersonic missiles written by a U.S. Navy officer which appeared last year on a U.S. Naval Institute website.
The piece declares that by “specifically integrating hypersonic weapons with U.S. Navy submarines, the United States may gain an edge in developing the fastest, most precise weapons the world has ever seen.”
“Hypersonic weapons,” explains the article by U.S. Navy Lieutenant Andrea Howard, “travel faster than Mach 5—at least five times the speed of sound, around 3,600 mph, or one mile per second….They are similar to but faster than existing missiles, such as the subsonic U.S. Tomahawk missile, which maxes out around 550 mph.”
“While hypersonic weapons can carry conventional or nuclear warheads, they differ from existing technologies in three critical ways,” writes Howard. “First…a one-kilogram object delivered precisely and traveling multiples of the speed of sound can be more destructive than one kilogram of TNT. Second, the low-altitude path helps mask HCMs [Hypersonic Cruise Missiles] when coupled with the curvature of the Earth” and so “they are mostly invisible to early warning radars. And third…they can maneuver during flight; in contrast with the predictable ballistic-missile descend, they are more difficult to intercept, if even detected.”
An early hypersonic cruise missile engine, developed in 2002, traveled at Mach 6. (Photo courtesy DARPA/ONR/NASA Langley Research Center.)
“By offering the precision of near-zero-miss weapons, the speed of ballistic missiles, and the maneuverability of cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons are a disruptive technology capable of striking anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” declares the Navy officer.
The article also notes that Russian “President Vladimir Putin unveiled six new” what he called “invincible” hypersonic missiles as part of a March 2018 “state of the nation” speech. “Russia has successfully tested the air-to-ground hypersonic missile” named Kinzhal for dagger, “multiple times using the MIG-31 fighter.” It’s “mounting the Kinzhal on its Tu-22M3 strategic bomber.” The article also says “China, too, is working on hypersonic technologies.”
The Free 