The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia … The world’s champion of democracy and human rights has sidled up closer to it than any other friends. Abby Martin, The Empire Files: Inside Saudi Arabia: Butchery, Slavery and History of Revolt, Youtube 2015
Cutting lots of people’s heads off with swords right in the middle of the street … Executed more than a hundred people in the first six months of 2015. ibid.
Beheading, firing squad or stoned to death. Non-violent drug offences count for a shocking 43% of all executions. ibid.
Accused offenders have their limbs amputated and dissenters are severely lashed. ibid.
‘Saudi Arabia continues its outrageous repression of human rights activists’. ibid. Washington Post article
‘Thousands of people have been arrested and detained in virtual secrecy, while others have been killed in uncertain circumstances. Hundreds more people face summary trials and possible execution’. ibid. Amnesty International report
The King’s personal wealth is $18 billion. ibid.
At least 20% of the population lives in abject poverty. ibid.
The Arabian-American oil company was formed to cash in on the bubbling profits … owned by American companies. ibid.
‘The defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States.’ ibid. F D Roosevelt
1953: Workers of Aramco went on strike demanding a union. ibid.
Israel responded with unspeakable repression: it deployed around 80,000 combat soldiers to crush the uprising of more than half a million Palestinians across the territories … An iron-fist policy of breaking the bones of Palestinians at protests: this was implemented by the army on a massive scale. Abby Martin, The Empire Files: Silencing Palestine: Prison & Repression, 2017
This is my country. And this is the way it’s been for more than 40 years. I only remember a few weeks when things were any different. In 1988 I was just a little boy. But that’s when everybody in Burma got into the streets. They’d had enough of military rulers. They wanted change. It was the students who led the demonstrations … At the end of the day 3,000 people were killed in the streets. And it was all over. Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country ***** 2008
We have no more people to die. ibid.
I feel the world is forgetting about us. ibid.
I followed very close and saw them throw the demonstrator on the truck. ibid.
The movement is bigger and bigger. ibid.
‘The whole world must know that the monks are on strike.’ ibid. head of monks
The monks protected the reporters. ibid.
‘Today up to 100,000 people took to the streets of Rangoon.’ ibid. news
‘They beat them up and dragged them on to trucks.’ ibid. witness
‘We’ve seen amazing scenes of defiance on the streets of Rangoon today.’ ibid. BBC news
‘Soldiers beat up and arrested the monks.’ ibid. witness
They are shooting. ibid.
The monks were gone. Only the students were left in the street. Just like 1988. And military trucks were going round the city to chase them down. ibid.
‘I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.’ Plutocracy: Political Repression in the USA I: Divide and Rule, Jay Gould, 19th century American railroad developer, 2015
Each mining town was a feudal dominion with the company acting as lord and master … The laws were the company’s rules. ibid.
1907: The most deadly mine disaster in US history occurred when an explosion killed 361 men and boys in a West Virginia coal mine. ibid.
Accidents in American mines were double that of Germany, three times more than England. ibid.
‘Freedom from industrial feudalism … freedom from the terrorism inflicted by hired gunmen … and the struggle for liberties promised in the Bill of Rights.’ ibid. American Labor History Theme Study
In 2012 coal miners in Kanawha County in West Virginia issued a list of demands including a shorter workday, the right to organise, recognition of a worker’s constitutional rights to free speech and assembly, an end to the blacklisting of union organisers, and alternatives to company stores. The requested pay raise would have cost the company fifteen cents per miner per day. Instead of negotiating, the company hired a private militia to break the strike. ibid.
[Mother] Jones had been declared The Most Dangerous Woman in America. ibid.
Union organisers were blacklisted and beaten. ibid.
The West Virginian mine wars were part of a broader conflict between the forces of labour and the forces of capital. A struggle that claimed the lives of thousands of American workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; thousands more were beaten, maimed, imprisoned, tortured and sent to early graves due to poor working conditions and dismal safety standards. ibid.
‘In all civilised countries the people fall into different classes having a real or supposed difference of interests … There will be particularly the distinction between rich and poor.’ ibid. James Madison
The ability of the wealthy to buy their way out of military services caused rage among the poor. ibid.
Irish immigrants were mocked for their accents, their religion and their overall impoverishment. They were also amongst the first ethnic groups in the United States to form labour unions. ibid.
‘You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.’ ibid. Tom Watson, populist leader
Jim Crow laws enforced segregation and curtailed African-American voting rights. During the same time period poor white voters were also disenfranchised. ibid.
In California a genocidal campaign had reduced the indigenous population from 150,000 in 1846 to 30,000 by 1870. ibid.
The robber barons took every opportunity to bribe politicians and crush their competitors. ibid.
Congress became known as the Millionaires Club. ibid.
By 1900 something like 20% of all American workers were under the age of 18. ibid.
Police were also used to discipline the working class. In Tompkins Square, New York, 1874: 7,000 workers protested unemployment only to be savagely attacked by police. ibid.
A spirited labour press emerged in all of the major cities. ibid.
Unions around the country were becoming increasingly militant. ibid.
‘Anarchy is on trial … Make examples of them, hang them … save our institutions, our society.’ ibid. Julius S Grinnell, prosecutor of anarchists
One in eleven steelworkers died while on the job, often from a lack of sleep. ibid.
When Chinese railroad workers went on strike in 1867 demanding higher wages, shorter working hours, a ban on whipping, and the right to quit their jobs, almost no-one came to their aid. ibid.
The New Orleans strike was emblematic of a growing spirit of solidarity between workers. ibid.
‘My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want … We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.’ Plutocracy II: Solidarity Forever, Mother Jones
In the late 19th century a brutal class-war was underway in the United States. And as in all wars the poor suffered the majority of casualties. ibid.
American industry had the highest job accident rate of any country in the industrialised world. ibid.
Presiding over society was a small group of industrialists and bankers nicknamed the Robber Barons. ibid.
The National Guard came to the Pinkertons’ rescue protecting strike-breakers and defeating the union. ibid.
Among the targets were the Molly Maguires … a secret society of Irish immigrants … during the 1870s, victims of perilous working conditions. ibid.
One of the most important labor struggles in the late 19th century was the Pullmans’ strike of 1894. ibid.
Chicago 1894: 12,000 US army troops were sent in to attack their own citizens. ibid.
Day of Blood at Lattimer! Lower End Mine Strike Takes a Terrible Turn … They fire on Marching Strikers with Terrible Effect … Deputies Use Rifles! … 16 killed 70 wounded. ibid. newspaper report
Working class prisoners were used as virtual slaves … More African/Americans died under the convict-leasing system than during slavery. ibid.
The link between wealth and voting rights sometimes caused unrest. ibid.
The Women’s Movement was also plagued by the same class and racial bigotries that afflicted labour unions. ibid.
‘I cannot think it probable that [working people] will be permanently contented with the condition of labouring for wages as their ultimate state. To work at the bidding and for the profit of another, without any interest in the work … is, not even when wages are high, a satisfactory state for human beings.’ ibid. John Stuart Mill
‘The IWW was openly anti-capitalist.’ ibid. Historian