The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a major source of cobalt, vital for battery technology, an industry dominated by Japanese, South Korean and Chinese manufacturers. The actual mining is done by an indigenous workforce whose continuing poverty, and depredated environment, is an exemplar of capitalism at its rawest.

In her article for ‘Black Agenda Report’, Ann Garrison wrote,

‘Huge Chinese corporations so dominate Congolese cobalt mining, processing and battery manufacture that one has to ask why a communist government, however capitalist in fact, doesn’t at least somehow require more responsible sourcing of minerals processed and then advanced along the supply chain within its borders?’

Actually, Ann Garrison answers her own question by her oxymoronic linking communist and capitalist with the Chinese government. Delete ‘communist’ from her statement and she describes precisely how an avowedly capitalist government can be expected to act. It can do no other. Whatever the governing party calls itself. Profit is paramount.

D. A.  

Suff(e)rage

With votes, like fortune’s lots, having been cast,

What does the following count amount to?

Omniscient autocrats can accrue

More votes than voters, just by playing fast

And loose with democracy, for nation,

Or God, or both. With destiny fated,

Opposition can’t be tolerated;

An image is a fragile creation.

Yet, where there’s left, right and centre et al,

Parties compete with vainglorious boasts

To purloin lucrative government posts,

But won’t impinge on the rule of capital.

Whether blatant or subtle, all depends

Upon market forces and dividends.

D. A.

40 Years On

Just forty years on from the Iron Lady

Disavowing coal. Deep in the shadow

Of abundant stockpiles, the wealth below

Was to be forfeited for a shady

Deal between politics and capital,

Anathema of organised labour

Had to be vanquished, by setting neighbour

Against neighbour if at all possible,

Coalfield against coalfield, trade against trade.

Solidarity undermined, derided.

By keeping the working class divided,

The very notion of class was gainsaid.

Coal mines and the Iron Lady are long gone,

Yet nothing’s been resolved forty years on.

D. A.  

Barbarism or Socialism?

A hundred, more, gangs on Haiti shows,

Under idyllic Caribbean skies,

The true nature of raw free enterprise

Untroubled by any effective laws.

Wherever the market determines goods,

Drugs or guns or both? And then nothing stirs

Unless so willed by armed entrepreneurs

The poor look up to as their Robin Hoods.

While terror roams the streets in four by fours

The limits of government are revealed,

The power of profit’s no longer concealed,

As the powerless huddle beyond their doors.

Barbarism or Socialism? The voice

Of Red Rosa echoes still with that choice.

D. A.

Rochdale Cowboys

(Apologies to Mike Harding)

It’s not hard being a cowboy in Rochdale,

Despite what a song once suggested. Just

Look at those canvassing for the trust

Of voters, with policies bound to fail.

Labour have disowned their own candidate

For claiming the murderous Hamas attack

Israel green-lighted, so it could strike back,

Condemning Gaza to its dreadful state.

There’s an exMP who’s making a play

As representative of Old Labour,

Standing against the ‘woke’ present Labour

On behalf of UKIP, Reform UK.

With the Green off colour, the choice is sparse,

Voters might consider ending this farce.

D.A.

Clear Vision

A veil of ignorance and illusion

All too easily and widely taken,

Vision obscured or even forsaken,

Reinforcing a sense of seclusion,

Being distracted looking left or right.

With the view unsettled and unsettling,

Taking a step forwards is disturbing,

Could be wonderful, there again it might

Be safer and best to simply stay put.

Or maybe cast a glance backwards, because

There’s comfort in a scene that never was,

Better still, perhaps, keep eyes tightly shut.

Human potential remains retarded

Until and unless the veil’s discarded.

D. A.

14th February, 2024

This day past gangsters gunned down their rivals,

Aiming to further their enterprises,

Protecting the profit that arises,

Quite careless of who their ambition kills.

Almost a century on and it is still

The way rival gangs contend for power,

Only now they’re not mobsters, but dour

Faced leaders, claiming it’s their national will

Excusing the vile slaughter that ensues,

Relentless carnage, merciless campaigns,

With no refuge wherever terror reigns;

Deaths of innocents all over the news.

Amidst ruins and rubble children play,

A grim new meaning for this Ash Wednesday.

D. A.

Kitchener’s Finger

Lord Kitchener is flexing his finger,

A beckoning to come hither once more,

Inducing young men and women to war.

In the cenotaph memory lingers,

Although it appears amnesia prevails

When a call to the colours comes their way

And they sleep-march towards their beds of clay;

Too often, it seems, humanity fails.

Enough now of the lame old excuses

For yet another bellicose mission,

When it’s rivalry and competition,

And the prospects of profit seduces.

A radical change is required because

The price of peace is capitalism’s loss.

D. A.

Kitchener’s Finger

Lord Kitchener is flexing his finger,

A beckoning to come hither once more,

Inducing young men and women to war.

In the cenotaph memory lingers,

Although it appears amnesia prevails

When a call to the colours comes their way

And they sleep-march towards their beds of clay;

Too often, it seems, humanity fails.

Enough now of the lame old excuses

For yet another bellicose mission,

When it’s rivalry and competition,

And the prospects of profit seduces.

A radical change is required because

The price of peace is capitalism’s loss.

D. A.

Kitchener’s Finger

Lord Kitchener is flexing his finger,

A beckoning to come hither once more,

Inducing young men and women to war.

In the cenotaph memory lingers,

Although it appears amnesia prevails

When a call to the colours comes their way

And they sleep-march towards their beds of clay;

Too often, it seems, humanity fails.

Enough now of the lame old excuses

For yet another bellicose mission,

When it’s rivalry and competition,

And the prospects of profit seduces.

A radical change is required because

The price of peace is capitalism’s loss.

D. A.