Weaponizing Free Speech

 

This is the dystopia you were warned about. A mind-controlled populace thinking, speaking, shopping, moving and voting in accordance with the will of the powerful. All that's left now is to secure the few dissidents on the fringes and keep bolstering the mind control matrix.

This doesn't mean it's hopeless, it just means we've got to acknowledge reality and start working from where we're at. The biggest obstacle to real freedom is the belief that we already have it. --Caitlin Johnstone, The Empire of Hypocrisy

 

Weaponizing Free Speech

by C. A. Matthews

Most Americans believe that no one has ever gotten into trouble simply for speaking their mind. No matter how much you might disagree with a fellow American, you probably agree that they have the right to free speech. You believe that freedom of speech is a basic right protected by our Constitution. You feel confident that all Americans have the right to believe and express themselves as they deem fit. 

Sorry to break it to y’all, but you really don’t.  

Free speech is not guaranteed, as demonstrated by the latest US government shenanigans. The feds have charged four African Americans simply because they are members of the African People’s Socialist Party and expressed opinions that don’t align with the current administration’s viewpoint. 

According to the Black Alliance for Peace: 

The unsealed indictment states that on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, a federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida, levied charges of “conspiring to covertly sow discord in U.S. society, spread Russian propaganda and interfere illegally in U.S. elections.” While no evidence of conspiracy, propagandizing, or interference has been presented, the APSP and its members have the right, as all US citizens do, to freely criticize U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

Not since the Palmer Raids of the early 20th century, nor since the indictment of W.E.B DuBois in 1951, or the confiscation of Paul Robeson’s U.S. passport during the anti-communist “McCarthyist” era, has there been such a hysterical response to African people asserting their rights and freedom of speech in the United States.

The Department of Justice claims APSP members had “weaponized” free speech by expressing solidarity with the Russian people and “conspiring to interfere” with US elections. Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen in the DOJ's press release regarding the indictments stated, “The department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt US elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are US citizens or foreign individuals abroad.”

Quick translation: The DOJ is prosecuting US citizens for political speech and related activities because they’re worried that more and more Americans don’t agree with the status quo of the uniparty and might not support the incumbent in the upcoming presidential election. The grand jury alleges that a Russian national "directed" these Americans to "publish pro-Russian propaganda" and "information designed to cause dissension in the United States." 

HandsOffUhuru.org

(Watch this excellent short video to learn more about the case: https://youtu.be/fvwhHouTZh0. Omali Yeshitela, APSP co-founder, voices how the US government apparently doesn't believe that African Americans are intelligent enough to come up with a socialist philosophy all on their own or know if they're being used by a foreign power. Obviously the FBI feels scared enough of an 82 year old African American man that they had to use violent tactics to break into his home to handcuff him and arrest him.)

I take all the Biden administration's legal mumbo-jumbo to mean that the Dems can’t afford to have any real competition running against the corpse of Joe Biden for a second term because he and his war in Ukraine are that unpopular. They must shut all dissenting voices down no matter how fascistic it makes them look. I suppose the white supremacists at the FBI couldn't wait to do something this evil, too.

(Did I just say that part out loud about Biden being a corpse and the FBI being Klansmen? Should I be watching out the window for the feds to arrive any minute on my doorstep carrying flash bang grenades?)

I do believe in “The pen is mightier than the sword,” and “The truth shall set you free.” But when an army’s worth of federal agents can show up at your front door and take you away simply because you’re an 82 year old African People’s Socialist Party member who doesn’t agree with the US government's racist and warmongering actions, can anyone ever too be careful speaking their mind? Will believing in the truth and the power of free speech save us from government abuse?

It's not reasonable for the government to just dismiss the First Amendment on the grounds that it is being "weaponized". You can't have your government dictating what speech is valid and what counts as "agitprop" and "disinformation", because they'll always define those terms in ways which benefit the government, thus giving more power to the powerful and taking power away from the people. -- Caitlin Johnstone

Speaking of abuse, although this is nothing quite as horrific as what’s happening to the APSP members, I was accused of using “weaponized” free speech this past week as well. I found myself a victim of corporate censorship. For the first time in eight years of writing and editing this weekly blog, a warning appeared at the top of the Blogger posting page. It read:

Your post titled "Who Is Stealing Our Election? " was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and have unpublished the URL http://bernie2016.blogspot.com/2016/05/who-is-stealing-our-elections
making it unavailable to blog readers.

Say what? What could we have published that was so heinous that it had to be hidden from public view now? Why was Google (who owns Blogger) all of a sudden so upset that it had to censor the post, “Who Is Stealing Our Election?” after seven years? The post was published in early May 2016, long before Trump and his followers’ denials of the 2020 election results began. The date of the post should have been a dead giveaway about whose election was being “stolen” and by whom.

Flashback: Bernie Sanders was being royally screwed over by the Hillary Clinton campaign in early 2016. The trolling of “Berners” online was dreadful. As editor of what was then known as The Bernie Blog, I gladly published almost every decently written submission sent in by Bernie supporters. A short piece called, “Who Is Stealing Our Election?” was the first of two short pieces that I edited and published that week, so I titled the entire posting with that catchy question.

Who would have thought that seven years later a bunch of neoliberals would get their knickers in a twist (or panties in a bunch) so much that anything that sounds remotely like something a Trump supporter might say about the 2020 election must be completely blocked from public view, censored forever?

After a quick edit or “self-censoring” of the title, Blogger allowed the post to go live again. I didn’t change a word of the posting, just its title. Somehow that change made it acceptable to Google for public consumption. The English-speaking public once again has been saved by the brave censorship of private agents working behind the scenes for the US government, or, in this case, the Joe Biden re-election campaign.

And what exactly are we being saved from by corporate censorship? What didn’t you have the right to read because the powers-that-be wanted to protect your delicate sensibilities? From what I can gather from the Blogger policy page, it’s most likely this:

Misleading Content

Do not distribute content that deceives, misleads, or confuses users. This includes:

Misleading content related to civic and democratic processes: content that is demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in civic or democratic processes. This includes information about public voting procedures, political candidate eligibility based on age / birthplace, election results, or census participation that contradicts official government records. It also includes incorrect claims that a political figure or government official has died, been involved in an accident, or is suffering from a sudden serious illness.

Now, why would anyone have any doubts about Joe Biden based on his “age” or from“suffering from a sudden serious illness,” such as having a stroke or dementia or that he hasn't "died" already and is simply a walking zombie? It's not like he's ever been seen babbling like an idiot on camera or wandering off a stage or looking to shake invisible hands, is it?

I apologize if we’ve ever mislead you with the content here at The Revolution Continues or made you not trust in “civic or democratic processes,” but that was never our intent. The post from seven years ago was simply a Berner’s lament over how the Clinton campaign had “stolen” Bernie’s primary wins. Well, we live and learn and move on, don’t we? The Dems haven’t “stolen” any primaries from their rightful winners since 2016, right? And it's not like they're cancelling the Democratic Party primaries and debates in 2024, either!

(If you believe those last two statements, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, or its equivalent in the Midwest. Your choice!)

Free speech is a right no American should ever take lightly. People have fought and died for your right to express yourself freely. People have been imprisoned around the world for expressing themselves and sharing important—and sometimes embarrassing and incriminating—information about governments. 

  

One such journalist springs to mind: Julian Assange. This week marks the fourth anniversary of Assange becoming the guest of His Majesty King Charles in England's Belmarsh Prison. In other words, an Australian journalist has been imprisoned in the UK because of his “crime” of journalism that has made the US government very angry. Assange dared to publish on his online platform, Wikileaks, the infamous “Collateral Murder” video. He exposed the lies of many governments, but he was particularly prolific in sharing information about the US involvement in the bloody war in Iraq and the tortures of detainees at our super-secret base at Guantanamo Bay. And, so far, nothing Wikileaks has ever published has been proven false.

 

Assange is being charged under the 1917 Espionage Act. His case raises troubling questions about whether it breaches both the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution. The Espionage Act criminalizes journalism by ignoring the fact that the First Amendment makes an exception for a journalist possessing and informing the public about state secrets that reveal government crimes and corruption. 

 

Assange’s indictment should be dismissed on the ground that the Espionage Act’s overreach is an existential threat to First Amendment freedoms. For a US court to do otherwise is to undermine due process and threaten the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press. But we will see. This administration's paranoid take on free speech being used as a "weapon" seems to be the driving force in his continued imprisonment.

Just like the APSP members speaking their minds, and our blog posting a short piece with an incendiary title implying that elections can actually be stolen in the US, Julian Assange is being actively censored. He is by being blotted out of human memory, locked up to wither away behind bars without trial, his reputation smeared by Western governments because they didn’t like what he had to say, and they don’t want the rest of the world to know what he has yet to say. 

Other independent journalists have been censored, mocked, and threatened recently. Remember Matt Taibbi and Seymour Hersh? We featured both on them on the blog not too long ago. They're also being harassed by the US government and their corporate media partners.  

  

Matt Taibbi is even being threatened with criminal charges of lying to a Congressional committee for a mistake made by a network propagandist who interviewed him on MSNBC. Seymour Hersh has been ridiculed and his Substack posts about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bombing have been blocked on Facebook and labeled as "disinformation." If you ever needed more proof that the US government doesn't believe in the public's right to know and practice free speech, the demeaning treatment of these two maligned journalists prove it.

To all of you who are still reading at this point, I have just one word of advice to you in case you ever feel compelled to censor yourself and not use your right of free speech as a “weapon” for good in the world.

 

Don’t.

 

No matter what the corrupt government threatens, no matter what the corrupt corporations that do their bidding threaten, nothing—absolutely nothing—is as important as free speech and your right to express yourself fully. It is your inborn right, and it is your duty to continue to speak and write freely. It is your inborn right and your duty not to believe, agree with, or even acknowledge the lies and propaganda put out by untrustworthy powers-that-be.

 

Because if you don’t believe in and practice free speech in spite of the risks, then who else will?

 

Related Links:

Why Is The Government Targeting Black Socialists? (video) https://youtu.be/fvwhHouTZh0

Indictment Of African People’s Socialist Party Is A Racist Assault On The Black Liberation Movement https://popularresistance.org/indictment-of-african-peoples-socialist-party-is-a-racist-assault-on-the-black-liberation-movement/

Biden DOJ Just Indicted 4 Americans For Free Speech! Who's Next? (video)  https://www.youtube.com/live/EzvJIBfIYu4

War on Dissidents: New DOJ Indictments Criminalize Dissent—Weaponizing the Russian Censorship Tactics They Condemned (video) https://youtu.be/uxa_BSMPf1Q

Biden DOJ Indicts Four Americans For "Weaponized" Free Speech
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/biden-doj-indicts-four-americans

Biden DOJ Charges Black Activists For Supporting Russia (video)
https://www.youtube.com/live/sbKT-MeY7kU

You're Not Immune To Propaganda (video) https://youtu.be/dl2fnWIlDZg

The Empire of Hypocrisy https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-empire-of-hypocrisy-notes-from 

The American Empire and its Media
https://swprs.org/the-american-empire-and-its-media/

1st Amendment Authorized Assange’s Possession of Classified Data
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/21/1st-amendment-authorized-assanges-possession-of-classified-data/

WikiLeaks: Collateral Murder (Iraq, 2007) https://youtu.be/HfvFpT-iypw (video)

Corporate Media Are The Anti-Wikileaks https://popularresistance.org/corporate-media-are-the-anti-wikileaks/

Facebook Brands Seymour Hersh Reporting As ‘False’ & What Does This Mean For A Free Press (video) https://odysee.com/@HardLensMedia:9/facebook-brands-seymour-hersh-reporting:2

Matt Taibbi: House Democrats Have Lost Their Minds
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/19/house-democrats-have-lost-their-minds/

MSNBC Host’s Lie Could Send Journalist to Prison! w/ Matt Taibbi (video) https://youtu.be/tWNh03Ma1SA

Digital McCarthyism  https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2023/03/digital-mccarthyism.html

Pay For Your Own Wars, Big Oil! https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2023/02/pay-for-your-own-wars-big-oil.html

Here Come the Militarized Robots (But There Go Our Civil Liberties) https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/18/here-come-the-militarized-robots-but-there-go-our-civil-liberties/

House Democrat Threatens Twitter Files Journalist with Prosecution and Imprisonment  https://leefang.substack.com/p/house-democrat-threatens-twitter

Today In Empire: War Machine-Funded War Games, Facebook Censors Hersh, And More  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/today-in-empire-war-machine-funded

Universal Public Services: The Power of Decommodifying Survival
https://popularresistance.org/universal-public-services-the-power-of-decommodifying-survival/

Fossil Fuel Giants with Most Emissions Paid $118 Billion to CEOs in the Last Decade https://truthout.org/articles/fossil-fuel-giants-with-most-emissions-paid-1-18-billion-to-ceos-in-last-decade/

You Won't Believe Who Got The Richest From The Afghanistan War
https://youtu.be/wEFTLIzGZ6M

 

The Average Billionaire

 

The Average Billionaire

by C. A. Matthews

How “average” would I feel if I became a billionaire? Since I’m nowhere close to becoming even a lowly millionaire, it’s a moot point really. Looking deeper into what it means to be a part of the highest echelon, some very uncomfortable truths are revealed.

There are only 2,640 billionaires on this entire planet of approximately 8 billion people according to Forbes’ yearly survey called The World’s Billionaires. Most American small towns average about 3,000 people. And yet… “These few billionaires together have ‘investment emissions’ that equal the carbon footprints of entire countries like France, Egypt or Argentina,” said Nafkote Dabi, Climate Change Lead at Oxfam in their report, Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people. The world's wealthiest individuals' investments account for up to 70 percent of their emissions, so presumable the other 30 percent is due to their lavish lifestyles.

According to Fortune magazine, the investments of a mere 125 of the world’s richest individuals have a carbon footprint equivalent to the entire emissions of France.

Excuse me? A tiny handful of human beings and their investments have carbon footprints the size of entire countries? Check out the population of the countries listed and prepare to be shocked.

Egypt has a population of 103,376,607.

France has a population of 68,042,591.

Argentina has a population of 46,044,703.

This is insane. A village worth of billionaires cause carbon emissions as much as 103,376,607 Egyptians or 68,042,591 French persons or 46,044,703 Argentinians, and we’re all okay with this?

I’m not.

But let’s not blame simply the small cadre of billionaires for why the climate catastrophe is worsening.The World Inequality Lab, led by the Paris School of Economics and University at California at Berkeley, found that the top 10 percent of polluters—about 770 million persons—are the climate equivalent of the world’s wealthiest 10 percent and are responsible for roughly 50 percent of all carbon emissions. The bottom 50 percent of the planet’s population make only 12 percent of the total emissions.

Furthermore, the richest 1 percent—the 60 million+ individuals who make more than $109,000 a year—are responsible for the fastest-growing source of carbon emissions. 

Okay, so it’s more than a small town’s worth of polluting individuals at fault for half the world’s carbon emissions. It’s the top 1 percent of the world’s population or approximately 60 million+ people who are the fastest-growing source of carbon emissions. If we could get the top 1 percent to cut back their carbon footprint even by half, the climate catastrophe would lessen appreciably and, perhaps, give us more time to revitalize plant and animal species hanging by thread over the chasm of extinction.

That sounds good and doable to me. Don’t you agree? We get slightly less than the population of France to cooperate and cut back their polluting ways to match or do better on carbon emissions than the bottom 50 percent and things will be looking up for all of us.

I know what’s causing some of you to hesitate. I hear folks saying, “Hey, I make over $109,000 a year! How can I be lumped together with the richest 1 percent on the planet? Why am I included in the evil billionaire class?”

 

Why indeed.
 
Go ahead and pat yourself on the back. Most human beings on our planet survive and have survived on far less income. Of course, they also survive/survived by utilizing fewer fossil fuel-using contraptions and vehicles in their lifetimes, too. Don't forget these are sizeable source of pollution.  
 
Don’t know what I mean? If you make $109K+ yearly, I bet you own a car. You may even own two or more petroleum burning cars, trucks or SUVs, the most polluting of personal vehicles. You might own a motorcycle, off-road buggy, lawnmower, motorboat, Skidoo or snowmobile, too. You probably own/are buying a house or a condo and possibly another home or vacation cabin or even an RV. You fly frequently for work or leisure and occasionally travel on cruise ships, right? Eat out more than once a month? Eat meat on a regular basis? Buy water in little bottles and then toss them away when they're empty?
 
Your actions demonstrate why you’re a part of the 1 percent. The rest of us aren’t quite as fortunate. We don't possess the means to participate in as many polluting activities.
 
And still… You’re not an average billionaire. You don't own nineteen vehicles or nine mansions yet. You’ll probably never become a billionaire, unless you inherit a large sum of money or marry into it. Don’t be sad—at least you’ve got a good chance of becoming a millionaire before you retire. Your lifestyle reflects your good luck, and it means you’re creating a lot of carbon emissions that add to the greenhouse effect and drive the climate change we're all experiencing.

Billionaires definitely own more homes than most of us, but more telling, they own a lot more cars and other vehicles, including diesel burning yachts and the yacht's newest iteration, the superyacht.

Remember that headline a year or so back about Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos' newly built yacht being too large to pass under a bridge in the Netherlands? They had to dismantle the historic structure just to squeeze the yacht through and get it out to sea. That's a superyacht. An average superyacht produces 1,500 more carbon emissions than a typical family car. By comparison, in the US the bottom 50 percent of Americans emit fewer than 10 tons of carbon dioxide, the middle 40 percent emit around 22 tons, and the richest 10 percent emit over 70 tons of carbon dioxide.
 
“Emissions from billionaire lifestyles, their private jets and yachts are thousands of times the average person, which is already completely unacceptable. But if we look at emissions from their investments, then their carbon emissions are over a million times higher,” said Oxfam’s Dabi.

According to Fortune:

The role of the super-rich in super-charging climate change is rarely discussed...These billionaire investors at the top of the corporate pyramid have huge responsibility for driving climate breakdown. They have escaped accountability for too long.

It’s true. We as a society have covered for the climate destroying billionaires long enough. Not only are they murdering our planet, they’re killing us as a people. Billionaire capitalists create dissension and divisions among the working class in order to make their obscene profits. We workers are kept busy blaming our equally struggling neighbors for a variety of imagined grievances instead of observing how it's the billionaires exercising their carte blanche to abuse the Earth however they please who are our true enemies. 

 

Let’s face it—billionaires own everything, including our politicians. The US Supreme Court gave them that right in their Citizens United ruling. Whatever billionaires say goes.

For example, Texas billionaire Harlan Crow had his companies purchase several properties in Savannah, Georgia, in 2014. What makes this real estate purchase interesting is that Crow bought these properties as a gift for his buddy US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his relatives.

It’s nice to have a billionaire for a friend when you’re seated in such a "lowly" position, a justice on the US Supreme Court, isn’t it? 

Of course, when you’re a billionaire (or even a hundred-millionaire) and fall into a patch of trouble, such as your bank becomes insolvent, you always have the US government to fall back on to bail you out. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bailing out. Right, Silicon Valley Bank? 

When’s the last time the American working classes were bailed out of such massive debt? We can’t even get our unfair student loan debts or medical debts forgiven outright, can we? Heck, we can't even get universal health care to cover all Americans regardless of income!

Before I must return to my day job, I want to leave you some thoughts to ponder. What would the planet be like if we didn’t have these 2,640 super-wealthy persons and their extreme carbon emitting, climate destroying, planet and people killing lifestyles? What if the resources of the top 1 percent were distributed to the bottom 99 percent of the population who make less than $109,000 yearly and pollute far, far less? What if the richest persons’ hoarded wealth were put to use to help fight the climate catastrophe, so we could leave our children a cleaner, greener planet and a brighter future?
 
Speaking of green things and bright energy, why not tax these billionaires (and actually make them pay their taxes for a change) so we can retire the dirty coal plants and leaky nuclear plants and erect more solar panels and wind turbines? Or would that upset too many of 1 percent who own shares in coal mining corporations? Should we really care if their feelings get hurt when our planet’s fate and our future as a species is in their hands?
 
After all, if the majority of human beings survive on less (much, much less) than $109,000 a year, why can’t the billionaires? Once the fossilized dinosaur remains are all burned up and the power goes out and the skies grow brown with blowing dust due to drought, we’ll all be living in the dark together, now won’t we? It's about time we learn how to cooperate and live alongside our neighbors.

 

Related Links:

A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person  https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person

Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/carbon-billionaires-the-investment-emissions-of-the-worlds-richest-people-621446/

The Huge Carbon Footprint of Billionaires https://impakter.com/billionaries-rich-carbon-emissions-ineqauility/

125 billionaires produce the same carbon footprint as the entire country of France  https://fortune.com/2022/11/08/billionaires-carbon-emissions-oxfam-report-france/

The World's Billionaires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires

Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-real-estate-scotus

The Silicon Valley Bank Bailout: The Purpose of Government is to Make the Rich Richer https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/02/the-silicon-valley-bank-bailout-the-purpose-of-government-is-to-make-the-rich-richer/

Does Endless Spending in Ukraine Cause Deprivations at Home?/System Update #68 https://rumble.com/v2hmj0s-system-u pdate-68.html

IMF Is Forcing Some Of Hardest-Hit Countries To Pay Unnecessary Fees  https://popularresistance.org/imf-is-forcing-some-of-hardest-hit-countries-to-pay-unnecessary-fees-on-loans/

US bank bailout benefited billionaires, exposing corruption: 'I understand why Americans are angry' https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/bank-bailout-billionaires-corruption

Michigan health care crisis: Billionaires cash in at the expense of nurses’ conditions
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/04/12/ilqz-a12.html

Richard Wolff Explains How Billionaires Exploit the 99%

 https://odysee.com/@SabbySabs:e/richard-wolff-explains-how-billionaires:3

 

Countries worldwide are dropping the US dollar: De-dollarization in China, Russia, Brazil, ASEA https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/de-dollarization-china-russia-brazil-asean/comments

Oxfam Slams Rich Nations for Artificially Inflating Their Global Climate Funding
https://truthout.org/articles/oxfam-slams-rich-nations-for-artificially-inflating-their-global-climate-funding/

Anti-Protest Laws Are Not About Safety, They Are About Silencing Dissent  https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/11/anti-protest-laws-are-not-about-safety-they-are-about-silencing-dissent-2/

13 Groups Sue the EPA for Failing to Update Regulations on Water Pollution  https://truthout.org/articles/13-groups-sue-the-epa-for-failing-to-update-regulations-on-water-pollution/ 

Student Debt Forgiveness is a Win-Win for Our Country

https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/16/student-debt-forgiveness-is-a-win-win-for-our-country-2/

Zelensky & Friends Embezzled $400 MIL | Lula goes to China https://www.youtube.com/live/yp0pt1zymBI

The Indiana fire disaster: Another case of US industry polluting and killing with virtual impunity https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/04/13/faie-a13.html 

  

Welcome to the CLASS WAR! - Why Capitalism SUCKS - Part 2  (video) https://youtu.be/pVCqOpM4UUw

 

Here's why capitalism SUCKS! -- and why it needs to end! [part 1]

 https://youtu.be/8aHvA0KHXqM

 

Seen on Twitter:

Welcome to the United States, the country where the average billionaire owns 9 homes and 19 cars, ex- presidents from both parties have mansions valued in the tens of millions of dollars - and hundreds and thousands of people sleep on sidewalks and under bridges. pic.twitter.com/yq6JoUvCOs

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) April 11, 2023

The creation of the concept of "middle class" was specifically designed to divide the working class. There is no such thing as middle class.

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) April 11, 2023

Good-bye, BlackRock! So Long, Petrodollar! Hello, Peace!

China must be stopped before it imposes totalitarian diplomacy on Ukraine and authoritarian peace in the middle east. --Caitlin Johnstone

 

Good-bye, BlackRock! 

So Long, Petrodollar! 

Hello, Peace!

by C. A. Matthews

 

I took only one economics course in college, but even I can understand enough about our screwed up capitalist economic system to see where we’ve gone wrong. We’ve placed greed before compassion and war before peace because of their profit-making abilities. Look where it’s gotten us—the US stands on the precipice of total disaster.

And that’s a good thing.

Can the destruction of our corporate-controlled government’s way of manipulating and exploiting other governments be a positive development in the quest for world peace? I think we’re witnessing the end of an era. Soon the United States will have to stop forcing “freedom and democracy” upon other countries via sanctions and bombings. 

This “War on Terrorism” era that turned the US into the world’s biggest economic terrorist is, at last, drawing to a close. China is taking the world stage as peacemaker, acting as a go-between to feuding neighbors Iran and Saudi Arabia. Other countries are being helped by China’s New Silk Road (officially, the Belt and Road Initiative) with its low interest loans that will help them build necessary infrastructure projects.

I can see that quizzical look on some of my readers' faces now. China? What do you mean it’s not forcing itself on others with economic sanctions and threats of “military interventions” the way the US does? It actually wants countries to get along so everyone can safely do business with each other and live in peace?

What a dangerous concept according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken actually claimed that brokering peace deals between countries wasn’t a good thing after China said it was willing to sit down with Russia and Ukraine and help them put an end to their disagreements and save lives.

The US refuses to accept these potential peace negotiations (even though we’re supposedly not even at war with Russia) because it’s not in our best interests according to Blinken. The US government’s stance is that it prefers the fighting continue—or is it our true masters, the military industrial complex, who prefer this proxy war go on forever? Endless warfare means they can sell an infinite amount of armaments to a steadily growing number of combatants. At least that’s the theory if the countries involved don’t run out of soldiers. I guess there’s always those nifty A.I. “robodogs” with machine guns for faces to take up the slack, right?

MIC capitalists can’t have peace and cooperation breaking out across the planet like crocuses breaking through the frozen soil in the spring. No, never! What would happen to their profits if people simply lived in harmony with each other? Oh, the horror!

Those Americans who continue listening to mainstream media propagandists (who actually work for the military industrial complex) will continue believing that “War is Peace.” Orwellian doublespeak makes them see the world through the eyes of capitalist warmongers and profiteers. They irrationally hate China and its diplomatic ways. They’ll continue screaming for billions of dollars more to be sent to Ukraine in order to prolong that conflict, in spite of the fact there are fewer and fewer Ukrainians left to do the fighting. They’ll insist on the US starting a war to nuke China over Taiwan, a break away province that hasn’t been sanctioned or bombed by its parent country. For capitalists, it’s America’s way or the highway, even if the highway is strewn with millions of dead bodies from conflicts that could have easily been avoided.

Fortunately, the vast majority of sane individuals on this planet aren’t falling for the capitalists’ lies about the necessity for resource grabs any longer. They don’t agree with the US policy of economic sanctions that cause hunger and chaos in their wake. African leaders told a visiting V.P. Kamala Harris that they’re not going to be bullied into using the American petrodollar to do business internationally anymore. India and Pakistan have purchased and sold oil recently from Russia using their currency and not the petrodollar. Many countries are applying to join BRICS, an association of nations willing do business with each other in their own currencies and not the “standard reserve currency” of the US petrodollar.

Upon hearing about the growth of BRICS and the use of other currencies, Senator Marco Rubio let slip in a news interview: “They're creating a secondary economy in the world totally independent of the United States. We won't have to talk about sanctions in five years, because there'll be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won't have the ability to sanction them." 

Oops!

That’s great news for heavily sanctioned countries like Cuba. Cuba, a country that came up with its own COVID-19 vaccine that it freely shares with others as well as a lung cancer vaccine than can cure millions. Cuba would prosper and be able to share even more of its people’s expertise freely without the economic roadblock of the US petrodollar. But Big Pharmaceutical corporations don’t want the “competition” that free vaccines and cures for cancer can give, so the US economic sanctions most likely will continue for the foreseeable future.

It’s nothing to be proud of. US economic sanctions and military interventions have maimed, starved, injured and killed more human beings in the last seventy years that in all the wars that have taken placed before that time. Most of the dead are children. 

Why, oh why? Don’t you capitalists have enough profits? Your CEOs are multi-billionaires already—do they have to become trillionaires at the cost of so much human suffering?

I've had enough of them. I say, “So long, petrodollar! Hello, world peace!” What about this“Good-bye, BlackRock” then?

French protesters—remember them from last week’s blog?—entered the Paris headquarters of BlackRock. BlackRock is an international corporation with assets worth somewhere in the vicinity of $10 trillion dollars. (Yes, that’s trillion with a “tr” and not a “b”.) If you are one of the millions of Americans who lost their home in the 2008 mortgage crisis, the bank or mortgage company that repossessed your home is probably controlled by BlackStone, which is owned by BlackRock. They hold a major share in thousands of corporations worldwide. Some of these corporations are major players in the US military industrial complex.

BlackRock has a lot of its investments in pension plans, perhaps even your own 401K, and it owns a lot of the French pension system as well. The French workers have told President Macron that they’re tired of the wealthy not paying their fair share of taxes and his unilateral raising of their retirement age. They are burning bank buildings because they realize their true enemies are not their fellow workers, or even people around the world who don’t look like them, but the capitalists who own and operate such obscenities as BlackRock. 

The French are also marching in the streets shouting at Macron to stop spending their taxes to fund a proxy war to control natural gas sales in Europe. They are anti-NATO, because everyone in France openly acknowledges that the Ukraine conflict was provoked by Western economies to break the Russian and its friends' economies. French workers want peace and justice for ordinary people, not only the multi-billionaires. 

 

Now you can see why Secretary Blinken doesn’t want China to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. There’s money to be made in conflict for his bosses in the military industrial complex, and peace would cause their profits to plummet. The petrodollar is on the wane, and he knows it. US economic sanctions won’t work much longer if there are other currencies being used to do business internationally between nations. The whole “terrorist threat” of US economic sanctions and endless warfare/coups d'état might be coming to an end much sooner than predicted.

It’s about time.

Let’s give peace a chance, America. Everyone will benefit. Even the goddamn profit-loving capitalists.

 

Related Links:

Geopolitical game changer: China's Iran-Saudi peace deal is big blow to petrodollar and US economic hegemony https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/china-iran-saudi-peace-petrodollar 

 

Countries Worldwide Are Dropping the US Dollar

https://popularresistance.org/countries-worldwide-are-dropping-the-us-dollar/

The Tragedy of US Diplomacy Pushing for War But Never Peace

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/the-tragedy-of-us-diplomacy-pushing-for-war-but-never-peace

 

Human Destiny In Ukraine

https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/09/human-destiny-in-ukraine/

On Biden Turning Down China's Push for a Peace Deal in Ukraine

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/china-peace-deal-for-ukraine

 

How the Global South Has Risen in the Face of US Sabotage

https://www.mintpressnews.com/how-the-global-south-has-risen-in-the-face-of-us-sabotage/284247/

French Pension Protesters Occupy BlackRock, Torch Restaurant https://popularresistance.org/french-pension-protesters-occupy-blackrock-torch-restaurant/  

 

UN Human Rights Council Condemns Impact Of Unilateral Sanctions  https://popularresistance.org/un-human-rights-council-condemns-impact-of-unilateral-sanctions/ 

 

While Everyone's Distracted, The Dollar Is Dying
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/while-everyones-distracted-dollar-dying

More and More Countries Are Ditching the US Dollar, Here's Why (video)  https://youtu.be/UcIPLGvwGF0

Question marks emerge over dollar supremacy
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/04/06/tokb-a06.html

Russia Writes Off 20 Billion In Debt To African Countries
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Russia-Writes-Off-20-Billion-In-Debt-To-African-Countries-20230320-0015.html

15 Million in the US to be Kicked Off of Public Health Benefits
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/07/15-million-in-the-us-to-be-kicked-off-of-public-health-benefits/

UN Human Rights Council Condemns Impact of Unilateral Sanctions https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/06/un-human-rights-council-condemns-impact-of-unilateral-sanctions/

Africa ‘All Out,’ 54-0, Against Joining Biden’s Proxy War on Russia
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/07/africa-all-out-54-0-against-joining-bidens-proxy-war-on-russia/

The West Has Been Planning to Crush China For a Very Long Time
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-west-has-been-planning-to-crush

Why China's Winning & The US Is Panicking (w/ Josef Gregory Mahoney) (video) https://www.youtube.com/live/MMkqeaTlVTA

Chinese Currency Displaces Euro In Brazil’s Foreign Reserves
https://popularresistance.org/chinese-currency-displaces-euro-in-brazils-foreign-reserves/

China’s Historical Destiny Is to Stand With the Third World
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/02/chinas-historical-destiny-is-to-stand-with-the-third-world/

 

Marco Rubio Accidentally Makes a Great Argument Against US Dollar Hegemony https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/marco-rubio-accidentally-makes-a 

 

Protesters Storm BlackRock (video) https://rumble.com/v2he81o-protesters-storm-blackrocks-offices-bidens-oil-drilling-orgy.html

Macron Fails to Persuade, So Opts for Coercion https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/08/macron-fails-to-persuade-so-opts-for-coercion/

French Protesters Storm BlackRock's Paris HQ (video) https://youtu.be/xqki_HI1ZRY

US Media Cheer as France Forces Old People to Work https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/08/us-media-cheer-as-france-forces-old-people-to-work/

Biden Knocking 15 Million Off Healthcare (video) https://rumble.com/v2h0lzq-trumps-plane-gets-more-media-than-biden-knocking-15-million-off-healthcare.html 

US Bank Bailout Benefited Billionaires, Exposing Corruption: ‘I Understand Why Americans Are Angry’ https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/10/us-bank-bailout-benefitted-billionaires-exposing-corruption-i-understand-why-americans-are-angry/ 

Seymour Hersh: The Nord Stream Ghost Ship
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/05/seymour-hersh-the-nord-stream-ghost-ship/

For The Record, NPR Absolutely Is US State Propaganda
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/for-the-record-npr-absolutely-is

French Revolution 2.0/American Revolution Nil https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2023/04/french-revolution-20american-revolution.html

Seen on Twitter:

French protestors have stormed the Blackrock HQ. It's not just about retirement reforms now. They know who their enemies are (and this is why the US gov want to ban you know what) pic.twitter.com/kJq1rl90yW

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) April 8, 2023

"Peace? You want peace??? 😡We will give you a 'piece' of this" -- US Navy sends a nuclear submarine loaded with missiles to the Middle East after Saudi Arabia makes peace with Iran, Syria and Yemen.

America is a crazy and dangerous hegemon unable to handle its decline amidst… pic.twitter.com/S8UVqzG6TN

— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) April 8, 2023

Same old story. During elections, Republicans and Democrats scream that the differences between them are so seismic, civilization itself hangs in the balance. Then on the most consequential actions they can take -- like hurtling into World War III -- they behave exactly the same pic.twitter.com/SSDNZuDD0m

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 6, 2023