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.)
Imagine
living in a world where you could get arrested for saying “Don’t kill
the children!” because it might hurt the feelings of the killer.
Imagine
living in a world where all children are cherished and taken well care
of, always have enough to eat, a safe place to live, access to a decent
education, and medical care whenever necessary.
Imagine
living in a world where your country uses your tax dollars to provide
the armaments, bombs, planes, and bullets for a genocide of innocents
and won’t allow you to speak out against these war crimes upon pain of
prosecution.
Imagine
living in a world where you are free to speak your mind about the
immorality of genocidal war crimes no matter how it casts a dark shadow
upon the reputations of those in power, the oligarchs, their political
henchmen, and their celebrity endorsers, and your tax dollars go to
support programs that actually serve the public.
Imagine
living in a world where proxy wars have become commonplace and your tax
dollars go to finance these conflicts in order for wealthy CEOs in the
oil industry, the military-industrial complex and related industries to
make even more billions at the expense of millions of lives.
Imagine
living in a world where the polluting fossil fuels industry is no more
because clean and plentiful sources of green energy from the sun, the
wind, the tides, and the geothermal activities of the Earth itself have
been developed and made available to all, thus making the need to start
wars for oil and other resource grabs entirely unnecessary...
To imagine what life would be like living in a better world, please continue reading the rest of this
article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link:
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This
article is the 524th blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began
in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading,
sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another ten years.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
--H.L. Mencken
Make History—Don’t Repeat It!
by C.A. Matthews
I have to stifle my giggles whenever an acquaintance goes on about how “Trump is the worse president ever! He’s supporting a genocide in Gaza! He’s taking away our freedom of speech! He’s trying to steal Greenland! No other president has ever done such horrible things!”
(Yes, I know that Biden also supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza among other horrendous things, but to these poor dears, Joe Biden is a kindly old man who likes licking ice cream cones and playing with little girls’ hair. He’s some sort of saint apparently in Dem circles. No kidding.)
The reason I want to giggle—actually I want to laugh out loud in their faces—is because it’s just too obvious how well our government’s propaganda works. These people are clueless! Any US history classes they may have taken in high school or college were woefully inadequate. Their instructors obviously never went into depth on certain topics, and the textbooks used in those classes didn’t waste much print on those topics, either.
It’s as if American powers-that-be don’t want to air our dirty laundry to the working masses. If American workers really learned about their country’s actual history, they might get ideas. Bad ideas. Ideas and examples of how Americans stood up against oppression, intolerance, bigotry, and outright theft of land, labor, and resources in the past.
InA People’s History of the United States, historian Howard Zinn doesn’t beat around the bush. He tells things straightforwardly, without the narrative spin that always seems to make the wealthy, white, occasionally slave-owning male elites the heroes in your average US history book. From now on, whenever somebody says a silly thing like Trump is the “only president to support a genocide,” I will point them to Zinn’s classic tome.
Here’s what Zinn has to say in the seventh chapter of A People’s History about one particular incident of genocide that was not only supported by the United States government, it was actually committed by the US government against several groups of indigenous people...
To learn more about US history that doesn't bear repeating,please
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This
article is the 513th blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began
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It’s not every day that I say something like this, so please take note.
The Founders (a.k.a. "The Founding Fathers of the United States of America") had a good idea when it came to making a permanent separation between church and state. It may have been one of only a handful of good ideas they ever had, being handicapped with their white, wealthy, Eurocentric, males-only, slavery-is-good-for-business worldview. But it is impressive that they foresaw a day when the need to be a strictly secular state (government) would be to their—and consequently our—benefit. So, for this insight I heartily thank them.
I
do believe there were “Founding Mothers and
Others-of-the-Non-White-Male Variety” as well, but in this case, we're
sticking with the "Fathers" who wrote our founding documents. I was reminded of their wisdom concerning church/state separation when Dr. Jill Stein gave one of the most brilliant rebuttals of all time at the recent Free and Equal Debate.
The Constitution Party candidate, Randall Terry, had just given the most sick and twisted rant imaginable. I don’t know much about the Constitution Party, but if this is their pick for president, I really don’t want to know anything more about them. Terry’s diatribe went along the lines that Americans should believe as he does (seemingly he’s an ultra-conservative, Zionist “Christian”) and that those of the Muslim faith are dangerous terrorists and deserve to be killed in Gaza (and elsewhere). He actually sounded like he would start another Crusade if he ever got into the White House. His verbal vomit of sheer naked bigotry sent shivers down my spine.
Dr. Stein’s reply to Terry’s steaming pile of Islamophobia was eloquent and to the point. Watch a clip on X/Twitter or on You Tube:
Randall Terry’s rant and Jill Stein’s rebuttal starts at approx. 1:20 and goes to about 1:24.
To find out what else would make the Founders proud...
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February 20, 2024 is a date that could very well live in infamy.
Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange could be extradited from the UK to the US on that date or the next day. He’d be transferred from Belmarsh, one hellhole of a prison to another similar lock-up across the Atlantic. Locked up ever deeper away from the prying eyes of the public and kept far away from the loving arms of his wife and children and his father and brother who have fought so hard for his release. And why? Simply for publishing the truth.
Why all the fuss over one journalist? It’s not like it’s the end of the world if he dies in prison, is it? In a way, it is. Julian Assange has become a world famous icon signifying free speech. He is the man who defied the corrupt system, the establishment or status quo. He fearlessly published the Collateral Murder video demonstrating just how craven our rulers really are and how little they care about civilians killed in their endless wars for oil, wars they lied our way into in the first place.
It can’t be overstated just how angry and vengeful Assange’s revelation of the truth has made the powers-that-be. Mere words cannot expressed how worried they are that Assange would do it again in a heartbeat if he could. He’d expose their bloodthirstiness over and over again to the public, and other journalists and publications would follow suit and, before you knew it, the whole world would be in the streets, demanding justice. The workers would be pulling these villains who rule us out of their mansions and dragging them from their luxury yachts and marching them off to the gulag or up the steps toward the guillotine.
Yeah, Julian Assange and what he stands for—freedom of expression—is that dangerous to the powers-that-be.
Actual journalism is not what our rulers want. It’s best to keep us working drudges in the dark, ignorant of the transgressions they commit regularly in our names in any number of military conflicts, proxy wars, or genocides worldwide. And so Assange must be held accountable for committing the crime of journalism—real journalism and not simply pumping out propaganda such as CNN and other mainstream media outlets are known for and even now are being exposed for doing so by their own staff.
Call your representative and senators today at (202) 244-3121 and tell them to sponsor H.Res. 934 to drop the charges and free Julian Assange. Freedom of speech cannot be allowed to die along with our hopes for democracy.
#FreeAssange
If Assange were free today, I’m certain he would be publishing stories to expose the genocidal machinations of the Netanyahu regime in Israel. He would expose the complicity of Biden and the US government in supplying arms to fuel the genocide in Gaza. No doubt about it. Assange implored us to learn all we could of what is being done in our names by our so-called elected officials. It shouldn’t have taken a court proceeding at the International Court of Justice at The Hague to determine Israel has “plausibly committed acts of genocide.” A free press should have yelled this fact out from day one.
In a world filled with journalists doing their jobs instead of doing what they are told to do by the CIA and corrupt governments, it would have been made more than obvious what the Zionist regime’s intentions toward the Palestinian people were from the start. The point would have been driven home repeatedly. Instead, independent publications and journalists that attempt to share the viewpoints of the Palestinians are forced to crowd fund to keep their operations working. They’re forced to fight for bandwidth and social platform space as the Ministry of Truth finds excuses to force them offline so its propaganda can continue to cloud the issues and confuse the public.
The vast majority of Americans actually believe that Israel is full of war criminals committing genocide against the Palestinians. The numbers rise in every poll in spite of all the US government propaganda and narrative spin by the mainstream media pundits. Amazing how the truth will come out even when evil minds work hard to keep it from being revealed! Without a free press, or a free online forum of ideas and independent journalists, the story that Palestinians are the victims of Israel's genocidal aggression instead of the other way around—that Israelis are eternal “victims of Arab terrorists”—would never have been able to reach the public's ears.
Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the freedom of independent journalists and publishers to cover all angles of a story are all important “weapons” in the struggle to protect the human rights of indigenous peoples everywhere. Without the world knowing what is going on in Gaza—an open air concentration camp under fire—would the world have overwhelmingly taken the side of the Palestinian cause? The professional journalists and the citizens journalists alike who have lost their lives in this cause are to be admired and their names honored by all who value honesty.
It’s hard to remain optimistic during times like these. True journalism is portrayed by the American regime as a crime punishable by life imprisonment. Being born a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank is seen as a crime punishable by death by the Israeli regime. Is there any light at the end of this tunnel full of doom and gloom?
Who knows? In the meantime we need to keep our spirits up and our minds focused on important tasks at hand. An online acquaintance mentioned how difficult it was repeating the same facts and stories to others in order to convince them of the truth of the genocide happening in Gaza. I agree. It is difficult. Very difficult.
I found myself without words earlier this week, unable to think clearly, feeling tired and foggy-brained just like our foggy morning air. I didn’t know what to write about for this week's post. And then I was encouraged by comrade activists to write a poem for a Palestine-inspired poetry read at a local coffee house.
Writing poetry helped to lift my mental fog. Just doing something different with words can help your mind reset and refocus. Instead of trying to hammer coherent sentences together, I focused on what I was feeling about what is happening in Gaza. A different style of writing cleared away the fog. I found I could write prose again after crafting a poem to share what has been hurting me deep in my heart.
Here is a poem I wrote as I realized how my recent daily ritual was connected to the sorrow and shame I was feeling for those trapped in Gaza:
Dust From Gaza
The air quality index is higher than it's ever been The particulate count is sky high No fires burning in California or out west currently Could this be dust from Gaza?
I breathe in the air full of particulates and cough and groan Where has all the oxygen gone? Has it been burned up in thousands of fires caused by Israeli bombing? Could this be caused by dust from Gaza?
It is said that matter is neither created nor destroyed That we are breathing in air that was once breathed out by pharaohs and kings That every speck of soot clinging to our car windows isn't original Could these gray motes be dust from Gaza?
Every morning I check the air quality index Every day since October the number has been in the moderate to unhealthy range Once a day I take my asthma medication and think-- Am I breathing in dust from Gaza?
What air do Gazans breathe in? What air do Zionists breathe in? Are we all not breathing in the same air? Why are Americans allowing the IDF to disintegrate an entire people, turning them to dust? For our penance this Ash Wednesday we should be covered in dust from Gaza
Yeah, I know it's not going to win me any poetry contests, but writing this poem helped me come to terms with the frustration, the sadness, and the anger I’m feeling. I think writing poetry inspired by Palestine helped others at the poetry read deal a little bit with their overwhelming emotions, too.
No matter what fate awaits us, we must free our minds and remain vigilant to keep them free. We are living witnesses to the events happening here in our communities and over there in Gaza. We owe it to ourselves and posterity to never forget, to never let them forget, to never let genocide happen ever again—to anyone, anywhere.
#FreeYourMind (And don't be afraid tell the world what you're seeing and feeling. Your viewpoints are valid and needed. History will cherish them.)
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The
very last post of the year for the past couple of years has been a review and
summarization
of events that happened in that year. And so it will be again. Why
mess with success?
If
there’s one short, pithy phrase that summarizes everything that has
happened in the year 2023—and I believe future historians will
agree with me—it’s this: Silence equals death.
Looking
at the first half of the year, death was occurring in the usual
places where it had been in the year previous: In Ukraine, at the US
Southern Border, in US prisons and jails and at the hand of the
police in their never-ending crusade to terrorize people of color for
the sake of satisfying the bourgeoisie class.
Silence factors into each of these events in the manner that nothing
was done to prevent the deaths of countless civilians and innocent
bystanders. In the conflict between Russia and Ukraine over the
protection of ethnic Russians in the Donbas region, a potential peace
negotiation hosted by Turkey was revealed that would have taken place
in March of 2022, a mere month after the hostilities began. The US
dismissed it summarily, the US military--Congressional-industrial
complex being the primary supplier of armaments to Ukraine, of
course.
To think
a peace deal could have been made within a month of the conflict’s
start, saving the lives of thousands of Ukrainians and Russian
soldiers and civilians. So many needlessly killed in the twenty months
plus afterward because the US egged on the fighting for its own gain. There was no need for so much loss of life and destruction
to have been leveled on that part of the planet. The two sides could
have worked things out at the negotiation table.
Only
the greed of the US war machine and the ethnic bigotry of Zelensky and his
Azov Battalion has kept this war going for so long, and now that
they’ve had their war usurped by the genocide going on currently in
Gaza, they’ll most likely have to to give in to the Russians of the
Donbas region who they hate so much. Twenty months of death and for what? In
the end, nothing but chaos in a country that will be enthusiastically
“rebuilt” by BlackRock and its subsidiaries at a very nice
profit.
The US
could have spoken up at any time and ended the weapons dump,
encouraged the Ukrainians to avail themselves of the peace
negotiations offered in March 2022, but instead it chose to do
nothing and say nothing.
Silence
equals death.
The
horrors of a barbwire floating “wall” in the middle of the Rio
Grande exemplifies the US immigration policy in 2023. While many in
the immigration advocacy field (myself excluded) thought they could
“push Biden left” to improve some of the most heinous aspects of
our immigration laws, nothing got better for immigrants in 2023.
In many
ways, things stayed the same or got even worse than they were under the
previous administration. Human beings fleeing terror and
discrimination in their homelands weren’t allowed to step on US
soil and claim asylum, as is their right under both US and
international law. After the “Title 42” policy expired, a
new way to thwart asylum seekers was initiated, the “CBP One app”
program. Poor and technologically disadvantaged asylum seekers cannot
access CBP One from outside the US, therefore, they cannot apply for
asylum in the US.
Insult
to injury, wealthier, more connected immigrants can step off a plane
and plead for asylum without going through the onerous CBP One app
process. Money and political popularity with the present
administration means doors to immigration open far more easily for these migrants, such as the blue-eyed, blond Ukrainians, but not so much for Haitians, Hondurans, and other persons of color.
If
the drownings of men, women and children in the Rio
Grande, along with the heat exhaustion/suffocation of immigrants being smuggled into the US in shipping containers on trains and
semi-trucks doesn’t convince you the US government doesn’t care
one
bit
about those fleeing persecution caused by US funded coups d’etat
and economic sanctions in
the Global South,
then what will? What
will make you speak out against these injustices?
Silence
equals death.
Here are some of the blog articles from the first part of 2023 covering these subjects:
Police Violence
Targets On Our Backs https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2023/01/targets-on-our-backs.html
The
second half of 2023 proved no less bloody. More migrant lives were
lost in the deserts and in the Rio Grande, the fighting needlessly
continued on in Ukraine, and many pundits forecast a war breaking out
between the US and China over its runaway province of Taiwan. Nobody
else in the world seemed overly enthused about taking on the Chinese
outside “the Five Eyes” nations who had momentary lapses about
who their largest trading partner really was. (Hint: It’s not the
US.)
Nuclear sub deals made between US and Australia helped the
Aussies to forget and to deny imprisoned publisher Julian Assange as
being one of their own, leaving him to slowly die in the UK’s infamous Belmarsh Prison while awaiting extradition to the US this
coming February. Once in the US, he’ll be locked up in solidarity
confinement and never heard from again. All this evil committed
against one individual simply because Assange had the audacity to
publish the truth about US war crimes during the Iraq War. It's almost as if Westerners don't want to hear the truth and take comfort in state propaganda.
And if that isn't enough, our earth's warming is accelerating at such a rate it soon could be at the point of no return. Facts like this aren't stopping oil drilling operations like the Willow Project any. Big Oil and the US government acts as if we have all the time in the world.
Silence equals death.
Perhaps
the single worse incident in 2023 of people remaining silent while
thousands are being slaughtered in real time on social media is the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Every country on Earth knows what is
going on there apparently except the US and Israel, as it has been openly acknowledged by the United Nations and international human rights
organizations. The Israelis
continue to pay huge sums of money in
order to
purchase billboards in
Times Square and ads on social media—as well as paying for “false flags” on US college campuses—just to keep their “victim
card” current while playing the role of the only ethnic group to suffer a holocaust while
perpetrating an ethnic cleansing. US
politicians (such as Rep. Marcy Kaptur) play dumb (not stupid per se,
but by not talking) while their constituents plead with them to call
for a permanent ceasefire.
It
must be that by never calling what the UN and every
human rights group on
the planet
call a “genocide” an actual genocide then it never ever
happened. It’s
not happening, so
we can all just forget about the unpleasant photos and videos of dead
Palestinian children and
their families
lying in the bombed out rubble of their homes. We can forget all
about those horrible images of tiny babies lying dead in their
incubators where Israeli soldiers sentenced them to die all alone by
forcing their doctors away
from
the hospitals they were bombing. What
we don’t acknowledge or witness can’t be happening, right?
Oh,
well, never fear—Israeli real estate mavericks have already started
selling off Gazan beachfront property. It’s not like the land had
ever been occupied by 2.2 million indigenous Palestinians. It’s
“always” belong to Israel—even before the 1948 Nakba…
whatever that was.
Silence
equals death.
So,
we come to the end of another year of Biden’s “Nothing will
fundamentally change” administration and nothing has changed except
for the rapidly increasing death count of Palestinians slain by
US-backed Israeli forces, more deaths of asylum seekers to the US
along our Southern Border, more Ukrainians and Russians dead who all
could have been saved back in March 2022 if the US hadn’t forced
Zelensky to continue the carnage, more Americans dead because they
cannot afford health care, food, fuel and rising housing prices… while the world continues to heats up because of fossil fuel burning.
What’s
on tap for 2024? More of the same most likely. US hegemony knows no
bounds and
has zero empathy for the poor, the indigent, the immigrant, the
indigenous peoples of the globe. It just wants more war, more war
profits along with more grabs for oil and natural gas.
The
only way things could get better in 2024 is by following my practice,
what I call “The New Litmus Test,” when it comes to whom to vote
for or follow in any matter whatsoever. (I recommend using this
litmus test for everyone or else you could wind up with some nasty
surprises such as the ones I encountered in “How Do We Live With Ourselves?”) Because if we don’t get brutally honest with
ourselves about how horribly we’re treating our fellow human beings
and the planet that sustains us all, then we don’t really deserve
to be here in the first place, in my humble opinion.
Silence
equals death—but speaking out and taking action can sustain our
consciences and sustain life. We can stop a genocide. We can stop a
useless conflict over natural gas sales to Europe around a peace
negotiation table. We can offer sanctuary to those seeking protection
and asylum. We can protect journalists who tell the truth—no matter
how “harmful” the military-industrial complex thinks revealing
their war crimes are.
Support
those who speak up even louder when those in authority shut them
down. Don’t
choose death or silence. Choose
life.
Here are some of the blog articles from the second part of 2023 covering these subjects:
On Tuesday Israel killed a Palestinian baby girl who was born during the IDF bombing campaign on Gaza. They’ve been killing children so aggressively for so long now that they’re starting to kill children who were born after the child-killing began.
Seventeen days. Al-Amira Aisha got seventeen days on this planet before being crushed to death by an Israeli airstrike on her home in Rafah, alongside her two year-old brother Ahmed and 25 others who’d been living in the same apartment building. She never knew a day of peace.
As of this writing, over 20,000 Gazans have been slaughtered, the vast
majority of them women and children. Over 1.9 million of the 2.2 million
population is now homeless, still subjected to relentless bombing, with
no protection, no shelters or anywhere to run to, as Israel continues
to pummel them like fish in a barrel. This campaign is not only allowed,
but actively supported by the United States, which supplies 2,000-pound
bombs to be dropped on the hapless Palestinians. More importantly, it
supplies a diplomatic umbrella that justifies and legitimizes what has
been described as an ongoing genocide of apocalyptic proportions, and
provides Israel relative immunity from international law, the
International Criminal Court and outraged international public opinion.
After all the lies and atrocities we’ve seen over the last two and a half months, everyone should be reflexively disbelieving any claims by the Israeli government and begging the forgiveness of Palestinians for not believing everything they’ve been claiming for generations.
If
western governments need to keep ramping up censorship, propaganda
and the persecution of journalists in order to defend western freedom
and democracy, is it really freedom and democracy? And, is it worth
defending? —Caitlin Johnstone
Canceling
Free Speech
by C.A. Matthews
The
best thing about being American, in my opinion, is The Bill
of Rights. The
best amendment in
particular is
the
First Amendment and the part where it says that We
the People have
the right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. But Americans
can’t even depend on that bit anymore, and
it sucks.
Thanks
a lot, fascists!
If
you don’t equate free speech with our right to assemble and
protest, then perhaps this recent incident involving arresting the
bail fundraisers for the Cop City (Weelaunee Forest) protesters in Atlanta won’t
upset you like it does me:
Rights
advocates warned Wednesday that the arrests of three board members of
an Atlanta-based bail fund could mark the beginning of a new era in
the United States’ treatment of peaceful protesters—one in which
both demonstrators and those who support them are targeted by law
enforcement.
...The
Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Atlanta Police Department
carried out the
arrests of Marlon Scott Kautz, Savannah Patterson, and Adele
Maclean of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund (ASF).
Atlantans
can’t exercise their right of free speech to protest the building
of a “Murder Academy” on the one remaining piece of virgin forest
in their region. They’ll risk arrest if they do, and then their
compatriots will be arrested when they raise funds to bail the
original protesters out of jail. Our government says murder by cops is okay, but the bailing out of peaceful
protesters isn’t to be allowed and those who do bail them out risk being locked up as
well.
So
much for the
First Amendment!
The
fact of the matter is that free speech has been weaponized. (Read
Weaponizing Free Speech for a sample or two of
what I mean.) Anyone expressing an opinion that isn’t sanctioned by
the status quo can expect to be censored, arrested, charged and/or
thrown into jail without even the possibility of being bailed out.
To
this black mark on the First Amendment and The Bill of Rights I say: God
bless America! Let “freedom” ring! (Yeah, right. *cough, cough*)
We’re
living in an era of “Cancel Culture.” Free speech isn’t seen so
much as a right as a suggestion. If
what you say doesn’t upset the powers-that-be and their sycophants and paid trolls, you’re okay, but
don’t you dare express an opinion they don’t like. Oh no. They can't have critical thinkers who can read between the lines, can they?
This
fascistic outlawing of protesters is not
just happening in the US—it’s a worldwide phenomenon. A recent
video from The Juice Media out of Australia demonstrates just how
inventive a “Five-Eyesdemocracy”
can
be when it comes to squashing voices of dissent.
This short video says it well. You
don’t like something your government is doing (or allowing a big
corporation to do) and you and
your friends get out in the streets to protest
it—you’ll
wind up in jail and totally bankrupt. “Cool and normal” as the
Aussies say. That phrase
translates
to roughly, “Bend over and take it,” in American English.
Freedom
of speech and freedom of assembly have
been effectively
canceled. God bless… the fascists, or so it seems.
Persons
of conscience are being
forced into making one of two difficult choices: Go along with whatever those
in charge of our “democracy” tell you is “correct thinking”
nowadays and shut up, or if you can’t “love it” you're told to “leave
it.”
But
where can we go? More importantly, why
should we
be forced from our homes because fascists desire endless wars for oil
and want us to cooperate with the immoral death machine, a.k.a. the
Military-Industrial Complex? Don’t we lovers of peace and harmony
deserve to live here as much as the warmongers?
God bless... those who don't believe the lies.
The
West sure loves to brag about its love
of “freedom
and democracy” and its “free press,” but it sure
doesn’t
act like it gives a flying Flag Day about them. Without independent
journalists and media outlets, we wouldn’t have
known
about the jailing of the
Atlanta protesters
and their bail bond funders. Without the indies' reportage, we wouldn’t know
about
the US national security apparatus funding and endorsing coups
d’etat
around the globe, would we?
Journalists
of integrity are fast becoming a rare and endangered species. They
find themselves harassed and threatened with prison. Journalist Matt Taibbi did after his Congressional committee
testimony concerning the Twitter Files. (Read Digital McCarthyismabout
how Taibbi was called a “so-called journalist” by members of
Congress.)
Reporters Veronica Coit and Matilda Bliss in North Carolina were actually arrested and charged with trespassing while covering the eviction of homeless people in Asheville’s Aston Park. During their trial,
Judge James Calvin Hill refused to acknowledge their press status or
that this was a First Amendment case. He found the duo guilty. In his
decision, Judge Hill stated, “They may be journalists, but there
was no evidence provided to the court that they are journalists.”
American reporter Gonzalo Lira is now sitting in a Ukrainian jail because of
his in-depth coverage of the war in Ukraine. When
asked if
the US
government
would help free Lira,
a government spokesperson wouldn’t say if US officials would
even consider
asking
their Ukrainian counterparts for his release. Our
so-called “representatives” are
okay with letting a journalist rot in jail.
No
precedence there, is there?
Meanwhile
in the UK, journalists can find themselves treated like terrorists,
grilled for hours, and their computer devices taken. This is what
happened to The
Grayzone’s
Kit Klarenburg.
As
soon as journalist Kit Klarenberg landed in his home country of
Britain on May 17, 2023, six anonymous plainclothes counter-terror
officers detained him. They quickly escorted him to a back room,
where they grilled him for over five hours about his reporting for
this outlet. They also inquired about his personal opinion on
everything from the current British political leadership to Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine. From British police detain journalist Kit Klarenberg, interrogate him about The Grayzone
Aw...the
smell of “freedom and democracy” wafting in on the early summer’s
air! It covers over the stench of those pesky truth-telling
reporters like Kit, Gonzalo, Veronica, Matilda, and Matt. Kit might even find himself locked up at Belmarsh Prison with fellow
truth-seeker Julian Assange if a judge decides he's “not a journalist.”I
sincerely hope not.
God bless... independent voices who keep reporting what's really happening in the world in spite of threats from the fascist state.
This summer isn’t particularly
a good time of
the year for
me.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy sunshine and picnics, because I do.
It’s
just that I’m
not that into American “patriotic holidays” like
Memorial Day, Flag Day, or
the
Fourth of July. There’s not much to celebrate when your mind
connects theseholidays
with endless wars for American hegemony, senseless killing for
profits, and locking up persons who protest violence and report on war. Others simply
associate
these holidays with hot dog eating contests, fireworks,
parades,
and apple pie, but I just can't anymore.
There’s
little joy to be found in any patriotic holiday pretending to be
supportive of our First Amendment rights like free speech and freedom of assembly while our so-called “elected representatives" are
ripping those very rights out of the people's hands. The fascists in power have ruined things for me. I honestly can’t
see myself wearing red, white, and blue and waving a little
flag while watching an Independence Day parade ever again.
I just
can’t, knowing what I know. I can’t approve of the evil status
quo hiding behind those once sacred symbols of the
flag
and The Bill of Rights. I’ll have to find myself another holiday to
celebrate this time of year.
Coming soon, the first book from The Revolution Continues blog: The Little Red Book of Revolution
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