The Revolution Continues blog is news, views, opinion and other expressions of hope from a leftist point-of-view. (We are not affiliated with any candidate, political party or organization. All are welcome.)
This beautifully produced short video (above) spoke to me this week. Watch it and see what I mean.
Entitled Escaping the Duopoly Nightmare: A Tribute to the Fearless! the video gives one hope that there is a large enough percentage of Americans out there who actually “get it” and who are escaping the nightmare of the faux US democracy established and maintained by the billionaire oligarchs. These folks aren’t crying into their beers/coffee cups. They’re making plans on how they’ll fight back, and it could lead to building a strong alternative party that represents the working class, not the one-percent, in the near future.
To put this in the vernacular: Smart voters ain’t buying into the rich dudes’ lies anymore. They’re taking their business elsewhere. They’re starting their own workers’ party, far away from the brain dead, bought-off Red and Blue MAGAts. They’re going to put the people in charge, not the corporations.
Amen to these brave visionaries! Could the Revolution be just around the corner?
To discover who else is escaping nightmares, please read the rest of this article by clicking on this Substack link: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com. There
you'll see related article and video links, all the graphics,
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“Ours is a world of nuclear giants
and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace,
more about killing than we know about living.” -- US Army General Omar Bradley, Armistice Day 1948
Whee! Let's Start World War 3!
By Coast Watcher
Capitalism loves
war!And it loves it with a passion Romeo and Juliet could only have dreamed of.
The profits that roll in from the vast military industrial complex’s
sales to nations around the world alone
are
far greater than the GNP of most countries. Of course, in order to
sell armaments there needs to be an actual war—or at least
the threat of one. Armed
tension is a great incentive for weapon sales. That
way all those potent weapons systems can be bought and deployed immediately or at least stored
until they could be used or sold on to others by their use-by date.
US corporations are rather practical-minded when it comes down to things such as working with Nazis. They figure making a buck means a buck made--whether or not it comes from your side or the other in a conflict.
Computer-related hardware sales are another major factor when it comes to starting a war, but sometimes the banging of
war drums fails to achieve the desired effect. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s
recent controversial
visit to Taiwan caused China to end trade in microprocessor chips of
the kind that fit in the American Javelin missile system, the very weapon
currently being sold by the US to Ukraine. Production of the weapon is now suspended
until another supplier can be found.
Oops.
Pelosi’s
visit is a classic example of an insider stock-trader capitalist seeking to profit from
war or near-war conditions. (For even more eye-opening insight into how deeply America's and China's economies are intertwined, check out this NPR story.) The Pelosi family’s investment in
Taiwanese industry is a matter of record. Whether it’ll ever yield them profits is debatable since her provocative visit to the island has
goaded China into action.
The
Chinese government warned Biden that the Speaker’s visit would “cross a red line.” Biden retorted that he didn’t recognize red
lines—something he also said prior to Russia’s similar warning about Ukraine's bombing of the Donbass region. Their intervention to defend ethnic Russians is nearing the
point where over a quarter of the country is now under control of the Russian Army.
It’s
quite reasonable to assume it won’t be long before negotiations are
begun in earnest to end the Ukrainian war. What’s left of Ukraine will remain a poor
relation in Europe, saddled with immense debt to the United States for
generations. There are even rumors that parts of the country
will be given to Poland as a reward for supporting the NATO forces in
this entirely preventable conflict.
Pelosi's visit to Taiwan heralds the US military industrial complex's next money-generating event. Biden's recent remarks and Pelosi's trip have provoked the Chinese Navy to conduct exercises geared toward a possible intervention in their breakaway province. Naval exercises are to take place in both the island’s “national waters” (which aren’t
officially recognized by any maritime nation) and in the Taiwanese
Straits.
Biden has warned China that the latter move is violating a
previous understanding about the Straits. This is a clear indication
that the US is contemplating military action to protect Taiwan from
invasion from the mainland. It’s
practically a given that conventional military exchanges between the US and China could
escalate to a full-on nuclear war, one that could annihilate the entire planet.
Could it be the capitalists' answer to global warming is a nuclear
winter?
The super-rich somehow believe they’ll be safe, tucked away in their
luxury bunkers in the south of New Zealand. But who will wash their dishes and grow their food if the rest of the world's population succumbs to radiation poisoning?
Has
capitalism gone too far in its greed for new opportunities for weapon sales? Indications
are that it has. Are the US and the West in general ready and prepared to wage an all out nuclear war, the final military conflict on Earth?
US plans to cope with a nuclear holocaust have been in
place for decades. New York recently ran a series of public service announcements on TV showing what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.
From the procedures outlined in the ads it amounts to little
more than the old “duck and cover” ideas of the 1950s and are
about as effective (read: not very). Experts agree that the best response to an attack with
modern nuclear weapons is to put your head between your knees and kiss
your ass goodbye.
Most
people dwell in a blissful mental state of denial, a place where the
prospect of all out nuclear war is but a remote possibility. To these deluded folks today
will be the same as yesterday. Tomorrow, of course, will be the same as today.
There’s food to buy, a roof to keep over your head, work to think
about... Existence as we know it and all life on Earth can’t possibly come to an end because of the simple and malevolent greed of the military industrial complex.
BIO: Coast Watcher is beginning to wonder if everyone isn't a little bit suicidal. Or maybe, just maybe, average people have been fooled into thinking that their MIC corporate-owned political leaders actually care about their safety and nuclear holocaust is necessary? Either way, we've got to wake up and toss these 1% warmongers out and fight like hell to build a safer and healthier world.
In
1955, 10 years after the U.S. dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima
(Japan), the Turkish poet Nâzim Hikmet wrote a poem in the voice of a
7-year-old girl who died in that terrible act. The poem was later
translated into Japanese by Nobuyuki Nakamoto as “Shinda Onnanoko”
(“Dead Girl”) and frequently sung in commemorations of that atrocity.
Given the harshness of war and the escalation of conflict, it is
worthwhile to reflect once more on Hikmet’s beautiful, haunting lyrics:
I come and stand at every door But no one hears my silent tread. I knock and yet remain unseen For I am dead, for I am dead.
I’m only seven, although I died In Hiroshima long ago. I’m seven now as I was then. When children die, they do not grow.
My hair was scorched by swirling flame. My eyes grew dim; my eyes grew blind. Death came and turned my bones to dust And that was scattered by the wind.
I need no fruit, I need no rice. I need no sweets, nor even bread. I ask for nothing for myself For I am dead, for I am dead.
All that I ask is that for peace You fight today, you fight today So that the children of the world May live and grow and laugh and play.
The only people who are applauding the Democrats are the ones financially and physically healthy.
— Jacob 🌹⸸ 🏴⚛️︻╦╤─ ☮️🏳️🌈💚 (@JacobPenn13) August 6, 2022
So, the Democrats passed an Inflation Reduction Act that will have minimal impact on inflation and a Climate Bill that will make things significantly worse...and now we're supposed to believe those are good things?
True dat. The satanic heartless slave-drivers use all the means at their disposition to maintain the ‘world order’ that is always rigged to profit only the 1% status quo. In the #US 1/2 of all the tax money is used to protect & defend the global 1% https://t.co/V5sEM0Lyznpic.twitter.com/ySVq6W6d0l
— Robert Reed, MLIS | 🍀🍀#freeAssange !🍀🍀 (@RobertR41182121) August 8, 2022
When Will Foreign Leaders Start Asking To Speak To America's REAL Government?
"We can see that the empire moves the same way on important matters regardless of who we elect by simple naked-eye observation of the empire's behaviors from year to year."https://t.co/zc5nz3IaBf
Sometimes I'm not sure what presents a greater threat to humanity, nuclear war or the colossal stupidity that has made it possible. --Caitlin Johnstone
Manufacturing Consent for the Apocalypse
by C.A. Matthews
Many online bloggers and podcasters have been posting stories this week about when they first learned of the horrors of nuclear war. I'm not going to scare you with gory, nightmarish details from my dreams. I'm perhaps different in that my childhood experience of discovering the mystery of nuclear war is fairly benign, and it happened about twenty years earlier than most others.
I remember a simple black and white commercial that pictured a little blond girl of about four or five years of age. The little girl resembled me, so I felt an instant identification with her. She is shown playing in an open field, picking daisies and counting the petals, a pastime that I also enjoyed doing. All of a sudden there's a big bright flash and some clouds and the little girl is simply gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Then there are some words saying something about LBJ and the commercial ends.
That's pretty much how I remember it. At the time I had no frame of reference to understand what had happened to the little blond girl, but it was worrying. She was playing with daisy petals and then she disappeared, possibly because of a big bright flash in the sky. Did her mommy and daddy ever find her? Did her entire family and her cat and dog and bunny rabbit disappear as well? It was only years later that I realized this political ad had an anti-nuke message.
I started having nightmares about nuclear fallout during the Reagan era. Every time Reagan mentioned the "Evil Empire" I got the chills and recalled the little blond girl ad. Reagan seemed set on goading the then Soviet Union into unleashing their nuclear missiles onto the United States. He didn't seemed overly concerned about them starting a chain reaction and creating a "nuclear winter," either. The nuclear apocalypse was graphically demonstrated in several movies released about this time to add to my nightmares. (The Day After and Testament were the most talked about films of 1983.) The message they gave was clear: Radiation and the aftermath of nuclear attack would extinguish all life on the planet, including life in the suburbs.
Of course, by this time I also had learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the H-bomb testings in the Pacific, and the radiation leaks from nuclear reactors at Three Mile Island and then Chernobyl. Fictional scenarios about nuclear war aren't half as frightening as watching documentary films and reading about human beings experiencing the real thing. Any intelligent, compassionate person wouldn't wish this kind of suffering on anyone else.
And yet… the United States' government has kept its nuclear arsenal intact and has built more warheads and refurbished them in recent times. It hasn't shut down its aging, inefficient nuclear plants and replaced them with safer power alternatives such as solar panels and wind turbines. It continues to posture and poke at other nuclear powers through direct or proxy armed conflicts whenever it sees something it likes (or doesn't like), very much like a toddler who can't use his words to ask nicely for what he wants.
Our government officials never act worried that one day nuclear weapons might be used by accident or by design, destroying all life on Earth in one big bright flash in the sky. Perhaps that's because they know where Dr. Strangelove's radiation blast-proof tunnels are located under Washington DC? Perhaps they've made reservations on a flying saucer--or with Jeff Bezos--for a ride off the planet in case of nuclear Armageddon?
Let's be honest here. Our government officials don't care about you or me or the little blond girl playing in the daisy field as long as they've got their own asses covered.
And now it has gone a step further. Our government wants ordinary Americans like you, me and the little blond girl to cheer on a proxy war over shutting down a liquid natural gas pipeline by encouraging direct military engagement by NATO with a nuclear super power. You probably know which one I'm talking about. It's the country the US promised in 1991 that we wouldn't ring in with NATO bases, but with the help of other NATO countries we have. The witless American public is instructed to demand a no-fly zone over Ukraine so we can possibly ignite this proxy war into an active war between nuclear powers, a World War III.
Keep your eyes peeled for the big flash of light in the sky, folks!
The US government certainly seems eager to bring about the Apocalypse. What could be so special about Ukraine that our government is willing to manufacture consent in its citizens to support a possible nuclear conflict, to do the unspeakable? Why has the mainstream media drummed up such an intense hatred for all things Russian in such a way that ordinary people in the West are cheering for nuclear annihilation?
Journalist Sara Founder sheds light on the possible motivation:
Why is EU/Russian trade and integration so threatening to US imperialism?
The EU is the biggest investor in Russia. A new and larger double
pipeline, called Nord Stream 2, was built to carry cheap natural gas
from Russia through the Baltic Sea and into Europe. It was supposed to
provide fuel for EU industries and heat for millions of homes, while
avoiding a reliance on high-polluting coal and oil. German Chancellor
Olaf Scholz suspended the project Feb. 22.
Energy comes to 62% of the EU imports from Russia. It costs much less
than gas from the US, which is the largest exporter of fracked LNG
gas. This is a challenge to opening new markets. With war and sanctions,
US gas and oil corporations will immediately profit from skyrocketing
prices for fuel and guarantee their future control of the European
market.
The clash is larger than just a gas pipeline. The US economy is
focused on military production. It is the largest exporter of weapons
systems. But US imperialism is unable to match China’s Belt and Road
development plans. More than 138 countries have signed on for new ports,
railroads, industrial hubs and low-interest loans.
China’s Belt and Road development loans are far more attractive than
US weapons systems and the harsh austerity plans that are attached to
IMF and World Bank loans. --Sara Flounders, US Threatens Nuclear War Or Sanctions
This blurb caught online gives some more insight into what makes Ukraine "special" to warmongering capitalists:
For those who ask: "Why does Ukraine matter?" This is why Ukraine matters. It is the second largest country by area in Europe by area and has a population of over 40 million - more than Poland. Ukraine ranks: 1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores; 2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves; 2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world's reserves); 2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons); 2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves; 3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters) 4th in the world by the total value of natural resources; 7th place in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons) Ukraine is an important agricultural country: 1st in Europe in terms of arable land area; 3rd place in the world by the area of black soil (25% of world's volume); 1st place in the world in exports of sunflower and sunflower oil; 2nd place in the world in barley production and 4th place in barley exports; 3rd largest producer and 4th largest exporter of corn in the world; 4th largest producer of potatoes in the world; 5th largest rye producer in the world; 5th place in the world in bee production (75,000 tons); 8th place in the world in wheat exports; 9th place in the world in the production of chicken eggs; 16th place in the world in cheese exports. Ukraine can meet the food needs of 600 million people. Ukraine is an important industrialized country: 1st in Europe in ammonia production; Europe's 2nd’s and the world’s 4th largest natural gas pipeline system; 3rd largest in Europe and 8th largest in the world in terms of installed capacity of nuclear power plants; 3rd place in Europe and 11th in the world in terms of rail network length (21,700 km); 3rd place in the world (after the U.S. and France) in production of locators and locating equipment; 3rd largest iron exporter in the world 4th largest exporter of turbines for nuclear power plants in the world; 4th world's largest manufacturer of rocket launchers; 4th place in the world in clay exports 4th place in the world in titanium exports 8th place in the world in exports of ores and concentrates; 9th place in the world in exports of defense industry products; 10th largest steel producer in the world (32.4 million tons)
And this bit of info ties it altogether:
That the U.S./NATO-instigated war in Ukraine could result in a third
world war is of major concern for all of humanity, especially workers
and oppressed people who ultimately bear the brunt of any war. Yet for
some global billionaires — today’s ‘masters of war’ — this conflict is
seen as an opportunity to further boost profits.
Among those already reaping gains are companies involved in the
production and sale of weapons, planes and other military hardware. This
includes 14 of the world’s 20 largest “defense” companies headquartered
in the US Topping this list are Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon
Technologies, which had combined arms sales in 2019 nearing $100
billion. --Betsey Piette, Lockheed and Raytheon--Today's Masters of War
It's obvious. It's pure greed along with pure arrogance on their parts to think that they--the government officials, the billionaires and their lackeys--can survive a nuclear conflict, and it will be well worth it to their bank accounts in the end.
Don't give your consent to this sickness of disaster capitalism. Don't let ordinary Ukrainians and Russians suffer anymore for the greed of the fossil fuel billionaires worldwide who are squabbling over a natural gas pipeline. Just say no to all wars and yes to ending this conflict before it's too late for every living creature on this planet.
Don't be fooled into following these malevolent, selfish fools down the road to radioactive hell.
P.S. And xenophobic, knee-jerk reactions like this don't help either:
Putin is bad so Yuri Gagarin didn't go to space and Tchaikovsky wasn't a good composer and Dostoevsky
was a lousy writer and Sputnik was designed by Lockheed Martin and
Anton Chekhov was Welsh and Khabib Nurmagomedov was born in Minnesota. -- Caitlin Johnstone
Zelensky banned 11 opposition parties and every news channel except for one, but he hasn’t banned the Azov neo-nazi battalion. Tells you everything you need to know about Democrat’s new “hero.”
Just had a nightmare where the President of The United States and the Speaker Of The House were both bent on WWIII and also too out of their minds to speak coherently.
So basically media & our government want us to believe that in order to be opposed to the war in Ukraine, you have to support sending missiles & guns to the war & putting us all at the brink of nuclear war??
What is more likely: US politicians really caring about Ukrainians or US politicians using Ukrainians as cannon fodder to feed the military industrial complex?
The Ukrainian people are cannon fodder in this proxy war between the US and Russia. ...If you don't understand that sentence, then you have been too thoroughly indoctrinated by mainstream media & US government propaganda.
