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Anti-Empire
The Saker Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Lockdown Skeptics
Voltaire NetworkVoltaire, international edition
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The Coolies of the American Empire national |
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news report
 Friday December 13, 2002 17:50 by vngelis
 Role of Immigration in the British and American Empire When the British Empire expanded into Africa it utilised the transport systems of the time to intensify the rate of exploitation of the poor and colonial world. So as to ensure their cargo was guaranteed they built giant railway networks which are still standing to this day. They exported labourers from one part of the Empire (Indians from India to Africa) and they exclusively were allowed to build the railway tracks. The reason was simple. If labour is imported it is easier to control, it is easier to subdue and it is easier to manipulate with promised riches, which on the whole never materialised. By spending millions of dollars in building the infrastructure for the export of raw materials the British also created mass resentment to their rule in the same manner that today the multinational corporations bring in imported labourers to set up export processing facilities or raw material extraction. Foreign managers are all over Africa setting up, running oil projects to exporting red roses. Many times they employ African labourers from countries which disintigrated from civil wars and other IMF sponsored disasters. Zambia has countless of immigrants from the collapse of the Congo. South Africa the same. The modern coolies are also making their appearance in the imperialist centres. Whole swathes of previously owned transport companies, from the trains to the buses are now directly importing labour either from North Africa or Cetral and South America depending on whether you are living in London or New York. The aim of this policy beyond the decrease in wages and working conditions as 9/10 these operations become open shop (non-unionised) is to play divide and rule. From the moment workers are taken to a new location, the language, culture and customs are difficult to get used and this process may take years. Bosses in the meantime are able to extract the maximum labour from these new coolies of the American Empire. But the coolies of old sufferred if one looks at the example of the British Empire in Africa. They were considered to be colonial servants par excellence and when the great anti-colonial revolutions shook Africa to its core in the 1950's and 1960's many ran for cover or were forced to return to where they came from, for example the Asian Indians in Uganda. History cannot be deceived. Privatisation, deregulation and the sub-contracting of the labour force doesn't lead to a better transport system. On the contrary it leads to a form of generalised collapse. The difference between the present and past is that whilst the British Empire reserved most of its coolies for the outer reaches of the Empire, today it reserves them for its own shores. No one is safe from the declining rate of profit. Workers who still have a job, the new coolies and those that will replace them as each successive replacement leads to worsening of conditions and a worse service. The collapse of the American Empire will probably take the form of what happened to the British in Africa: generalised rebellion by the indigenous black masses against both colonialism and their puppets.This process has just started in Latin America |
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Comments (2 of 2)
Jump To Comment: 1 2I was last in Ireland two years ago; the papers were all saying "Walmart is comming" or "sam's club is comming"...When I asked the locals in Kerry what they thought of a huge, discount chainstore comming to town, most just said "its lovely, yea, isn't it?" or "cant wait; I'll save loads of money".. The biggest problem with these stores is that they will basically shut down all the small, mom and pop run shops in every small town in Ireland..Ireland is already starting to look alot like the USA. Every gobshite walking down the street is yappin away on a bloody mobile phone; everyone driving cars; People working themselves to death to buy all this shit; it seems like the Irish cant wait to ape the worst aspects of the USA...
Don't think Ireland is any different my friend...
Regarding cell phones, they were more popular in other countries I think before they were here. I saw people walking around on phones long before they became so ubiquitous here. In Japan, even more so. So I don't think that habit is an American import.
As far as the Wal-Mart and Sam's Club horror (gasp!), I don't think every town has to be a strip mall if it doesn't want to be. When I lived in Asheville, NC in the mid-1980's, there was nothing, but malls. Downtown was a dead zone. The smaller shopping areas of small mom and pops were empty too. Within 10 years, downtown is a bustling hip scene with a lot of little shops, coffee houses with music etc. It was always a cool place (for a small town, the Civic Association would get the Bolshoi Ballet to visit) that was real country, with some sophistication downtown, now it has a bustling amateur art and small business community. They still have malls, but now there are alternatives. The community made that happen.
Where I live now in Queens, NY, there are tons of little mom and pops and I like being able to walk the dog and do my shopping and catch up with my butcher Eddie and dry cleaner Paul and NOT have to look for a parking place.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
KKB1