The Root Of All Evils

The Root Of All Evils

by C. A. Matthews

 

For the love of Big Oil is the root of all evils. —1 Timothy 6:10 

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve [both] God and Big Oil. —Matthew 6:24

Before you interject, “Hey! That’s not quite what those Bible verses say,” read this short article from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Here’s a blurb:

The Unrealized Potential of Palestinian Oil and Gas Reserves  28 August 2019

Oil and natural gas resources in the occupied Palestinian territory could generate hundreds of billions of dollars for development. 

Geologists and resources economists have confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) lies above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth, in Area C of the West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip, according to a recent UNCTAD study.

Let that information settle into your brain for a bit. You’re a smart person. (You’re reading this blog, aren’t you?) You’re intelligent enough to put two and two together and come up with five, right? What would you do to get your hands on 122 trillion cubic foot of natural gas along with an estimated at 1.7 billion barrels of oil?

More importantly, what wouldn’t you do to get a hold of such a resource?

I know many of my readers are supportive of environmental concerns and would state without hesitation, “I’d do nothing about those oil and gas reserves off the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The burning of fossil fuels is heating up our planet and causing catastrophic climate change—a change we may never be able to recover from as stronger hurricanes, larger floods, and long-lasting droughts become more common. Big Oil has enough blood on its hands already.”

I sincerely appreciate that response. It’s a commendable answer, but let’s venture into the hypothetical realm for a minute, shall we? Let’s pretend we’re not decent, planet-loving individuals but politicians from certain nations. (We discussed what kinds of politicians we generally have in the West in last week’s blog and why we need to get rid of these sociopaths.) Okay, ready to use your imaginations? Let’s go.

We’re politicians of large Western economies and their allies. Our countries are into burning fossil fuels big time, and we’re not planning to stop burning them anytime soon, no matter how often the climate scientists warn us about their downsides. There’s just too much wealth generated by Big Oil concerns to stop oil and gas exploration. We believe strongly in the superiority of capitalism and the making of big profits for our shareholders.

As an added bonus, Big Oil pays us politicos quite well for our work supporting their drilling and fracking. They don’t pay us directly, of course, but they pay us through their lobbyists and political action committees (PACs) that support our campaigns. We’re not about to forget there’s untapped oil and gas reserves off the coast of Gaza and in the West Bank region of what is now known as “Israel” because our bosses in Big Oil will keep reminding us. We’re going to do whatever we can to get our hands on those natural resources, and we’re not going to let anyone or anything get in our way.

To put this argument into the oil man’s vernacular: Drill, baby, drill!

Our minds are made up. We’re going to drill for that oil and gas that’s just sitting there asking for us to take it. We’ll need some land on which to build our oil refineries and start our new pipelines headed north toward Western Europe to sell our oil and gas products, too.  We might even put in a canal near the drilling site to circumvent having to pay another country to ship these products worldwide.

You do know why we need to sell natural gas in particular to Europe, don’t you? In case you’ve forgotten, we blew up a perfectly good liquid natural gas pipeline a year or so back in the Baltic. (More on that story here.) Doing so took out the competition for our oil companies’ gas sales to Europe. Without competition, our oil exporting country sold heating oil to places like Germany for four to six times the previous price they’d paid our competitor.

Unfortunately, shipping all this heating oil to Europe started making our own country’s heating oil and gas prices go through the roof, making our constituents none too happy. It also made them question the billions of dollars in military aid we were giving to a proxy army in order to bankrupt our biggest oil and gas competitor. Oops!

We told our friends in the mainstream media to keep pushing the narrative that our funding of this proxy war was all about protecting “freedom and democracy,” even if the leader of this proxy war had a long track record of absconding with funds. Some of the armaments we sold to him for this proxy war went “missing,” because we didn't keep track of them too closely. These missing armaments eventually ended up in the hands of other not-so-nice people around the world that we’ve said in the past were terrorists. Double oops!

So, we decided that we really have to stop selling so much of our own oil and gas to Western Europe and get the E.U. their fix via this new pipeline we planned to build in the Middle East.

But wait a minute! There are 2.2 million people living on this land where we recently discovered the oil and gas reserves. It’s one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, no less. And these people aren’t interested in us taking their fossil fuel resources from them. They actually want to keep their homes, schools, hospitals, historical landmarks, and houses of worship. They want to keep everything for themselves. Such selfish animals!

I know, I know… What else is new? Indigenous people are always crying over losing their land rights and having their mineral and petroleum resources stolen from right under them. But we in the Western nations know how to shut up indigenous people forever, don’t we? It’s what we’ve always done—we just use our military strength to overpower them and wipe them off the face of the earth or scatter them to the four corners of the globe. After all, we do what it says in the white man’s bible: Might makes right.

And it’s right for us to have control of all that untapped oil and gas, isn’t it? Our main trading currency, the petrodollar, is tied to the price of fossil fuels. We can’t afford to lose control of the world’s markets of oil and gas. We must have it, or else our economies will falter and collapse, and we politicians would be out of work and off the Big Oil gravy train before we knew it.

So, think again: What would you, as a sociopathic politician who is paid well by Big Oil, do to get your hands on that oil and gas? Would you go to war over it? Would you fund a proxy army in a far away country to stop another country from making profits from their own fossil fuels, especially if you could do so without using your own military and risking your own soldiers’ lives? Would you blindly support a Western “ally” in the Middle East, one that you regularly give billions of dollars in aid and military equipment to, and give them carte blanche to wipe out those pesky natives so you can get your oil men on the ground and start the drilling for all that lovely “black gold”?

Would you lose any sleep over exterminating the indigenous people who are in the way? (There's only 2.2 million of them, with half of them age 17 or younger. No big loss there since children can't drive yet.) We’re talking about 122 trillion cubic foot of natural gas along with an estimated at 1.7 billion barrels of oil. What does that amount of fossil fuel translate into dollars? You can't even imagine how much profit there is to be made!

And if your “partner” in this acquisition of petroleum resources first wants to wipe out those savages and bomb all their buildings into rubble so they can be razed? Well, that’s their business, not ours. It’s not like we’ve set a sterling example on how to deal kindly with the indigenous peoples of our own white-settler colonizing project over the past three centuries, now have we? Racists gotta live and make money, too.

I know some of you will balk and say something along the lines of, “But I would never sanction ethnic cleansing just to steal land and drill for oil!” But put yourself into the shoes of the sociopathic leaders of the Western nations and Israel and ask yourself the questions again. You know now what all is at stake, and how much you’ve already invested into this scheme. 

The Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank area are considered racially inferior by Israel, your partner in this oil deal. You have no problem with the Israeli take on these indigenous people. They feel they rightfully deserve to have control over that oil and gas. So, there's no problem taking it from the Palestinians, is there?

Ask yourself the questions again: What would you do to get your hands on 122 trillion cubic foot of natural gas and 1.7 billion barrels of oil? What wouldn’t you do to get a hold of such a prize?

Please don’t tell me there aren’t people in Washington DC and in Israel who aren’t more than willing to commit war crimes in order to get that oil and gas and make their Big Oil masters happy. We all know that’s exactly what they’re doing. Capitalists always get their way. 

Money makes the world go round, after all, a capitalist will tell you. What better way to generate it than by drilling for oil and gas?

Why else would the US government want to keep all Israeli aid and military spending talks secret—done without Congressional approval? If the US isn’t committing war crimes alongside the Israeli military already, it certainly sounds like they’re getting ready to do so. And our spineless, sociopathic politicians know the majority of the American public won’t knowingly stand for it and could rebel against them. So, the feds are going to keep their actions quiet and lie about what they're doing for as long as they can get away with it.

“For the love of Big Oil [money] is the root of all evils.”All evils—but especially the evil called genocide. 

Keep protesting and speaking out to expose Big Oil's evils. Stand with others to end the rule of Big Oil's puppets and the entire military-industrial complex. Shut down the genocidal war machine forever.

Related Articles and Interesting Links

The Unrealized Potential of Palestinian Oil and Gas Reserves https://unctad.org/news/unrealized-potential-palestinian-oil-and-gas-reserves

The New Litmus Test https://bernie2016.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-new-litmus-test.html

Israel Destroys Gaza to Control World’s Most Important Shipping Lane (video) https://rumble.com/v3t4nim-november-1-2023.html

Biden Wants Arms Deals With Israel to Be Done in Complete Secrecy https://truthout.org/articles/biden-wants-arms-deals-with-israel-to-be-done-in-complete-secrecy/

“This culture of silence is happening even as senior agency officials may acknowledge in private that Israel is committing war crimes, according to the report. “Over the past weeks, as I have heard from numerous officials across both the executive and legislative branches, it has become clear to me that many senior leaders not only fully understand how Israel is currently using U.S.-provided arms in Gaza, but are even, behind closed doors, willing to acknowledge that these actions include ‘war crimes,’” [Josh] Paul told HuffPost. “The fact that none are willing to do so publicly … points to a deep moral rot in our system.”

Israel’s Final Solution for the Palestinians https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-final-solution-for-the-palestinians

Ask the American People Before You Impose a Genocide Tax for Prosperous Israel  https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/02/biden-and-congress-ask-the-american-people-before-you-impose-a-genocide-tax-for-prosperous-israel/

Fossil Fuel Firms Bought Lawmakers  https://youtu.be/2qEIOvF5_H0?si=eY0UP2xOArVGEIV8

Israel Is Evicting Palestinians NOT In Gaza https://youtu.be/ESSQhpgOj7w?si=k9wKOYV3gcyv_XZJ

The Moral Complexities Of Bombing A Concentration Camp Full Of Children  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-moral-complexities-of-bombing

As The Lights Go Out In Gaza https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/as-the-lights-go-out-in-gaza

Israel Has A Directive To Kill Hostages
https://youtu.be/_T5SLfZs5ww?si=Gc_kAMO8-072XQxl

White House in discussions with Israel on deploying US troops to Gaza https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/11/01/sjlf-n01.html

Israel in Search of Its Hiroshima: Massive Bomb Wipes Out 20 Apt. Buildings, Kills, Wounds 400 Civilians  https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/01/israel-in-search-of-its-hiroshima-massive-bomb-wipes-out-20-apt-buildings-kills-wounds-400-civilians/

Israel Apologists Relentlessly Gaslight And Attack Our Sense Of Reality https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-apologists-relentlessly-gaslight

New Document Leak on Plan to Expel Gaza Population https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/31/new-document-leak-on-plan-to-expel-gaza-population/

This is not a war, it's the second Nakba https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/this-is-not-a-war-its-the-second

In Gaza, Biden is an equal partner in Israel’s mass murder
https://www.aaronmate.net/p/biden-is-an-equal-partner-in-israels  

“Gaza has become a graveyard for children,” a UNICEF spokesperson says. “It’s a living hell for everyone else.”

US Says It's Powerless To Stop The Genocide That It Is Directly Funding And Supplying https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-says-its-powerless-to-stop-the

Biden 'Countering Islamophobia' While Incinerating Gaza Is The Most Democrat Thing Ever https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/biden-countering-islamophobia-while

The fight for Palestinian Liberation is a Fight for the Whole Working Class https://unac.notowar.net/2023/10/23/the-fight-for-palestinian-liberation-is-a-fight-for-the-whole-working-class/

This Weekend’s DC Protest Was Largest Pro-Palestine Mobilization in US History https://truthout.org/articles/this-weekends-dc-protest-was-largest-pro-palestine-mobilization-in-us-history/

 

Palestine Solidarity Activists Block Boeing’s Doors to Stop Delivery of Bombs https://truthout.org/articles/palestine-solidarity-activists-block-boeings-doors-to-stop-delivery-of-bombs/

 

Gaza Peace Activists Chain Themselves To Ship Headed To Israel

https://popularresistance.org/gaza-peace-activists-chain-themselves-to-ship-headed-to-israel/

“Killers of the Flower Moon” Shows Wealth-Building Doesn’t End Racial Injustice https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/11/01/sjlf-n01.html

US Immigration Policy Is Designed to Divide the Working Class
https://truthout.org/articles/us-immigration-policy-is-designed-to-divide-the-working-class/

Only Israel, the United States, and Ukraine Refuse to Stand With Cuba https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/03/only-israel-the-united-states-and-ukraine-refuse-to-stand-with-cuba/

UN Human Rights Committee Calls for Moratorium on Life Without Parole in U.S. https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/03/un-human-rights-committee-calls-for-moratorium-on-life-without-parole-in-u-s/

Put The US In The Time Out Chair

 

Put The US In The Time Out Chair

by C.A. Matthews 

When you work in a kindergarten, you see a lot of a particular kind of behavior. One kid—sometimes the biggest physically in the group but not always the most mature emotionally or mentally—will walk over to a fellow student and take a toy or object away from him without a moment’s thought. The big kid just yanks it out of the smaller kid’s hands and might even hit him over the head with it in the process. The teacher is then forced to step in to protect the injured child because obviously the big kid doesn’t understand that he’s acting like a douchebag and has broken all the rules of civilized society.

Placed into the “time out chair,” the big bully sits there and stews, spouting off all sorts of gripes about how the smaller kid didn’t “share” the toy with him when he asked nicely. Of course the teacher or a staff member never witnessed any manners whatsoever on the part of the bigger child. It’s all lies and the big kid knows it, but he sits in his time out chair and continues to whine and cry about how unfair everybody is to him simply because they won’t share their toys and don’t care to be beat up by him. Oh, boo-hoo-hoo!

Flash forward a few decades and you’ll see the “big kid” acting like a douchebag once again, taking things that don’t belong to him and screaming that it’s not fair that the “little kids” don’t like having their resources grabbed in a violent manner without permission. Here is an example of our current president doing just that on the behalf of the American people:

On Tuesday night US Central Command announced that it had "conducted precision airstrikes in Deir ez-Zor Syria" in order to "defend and protect U.S. forces from attacks like the ones on August 15 against U.S. personnel by Iran-backed groups."

"The President gave the direction for these strikes pursuant to his Article II authority to protect and defend U.S. personnel by disrupting or deterring attacks by Iran-backed groups," CENTCOM said.

Iran has denied any link to the troops targeted in the airstrikes, up to ten of whom were reportedly killed. (...)

"US claims to be in Syria to fight ISIS, but it rarely fights ISIS," journalist Aaron Maté tweeted of the exchange. "It's actually there to deny Syria its own oil and wheat, and to occasionally attack Syrians and their allies who defeated US-backed sectarian death squads in the dirty war." -- US Invades Syria, Kills People,Claims Self-Defense

The US simply takes away resources from Syria like a bully grabbing a toy away from a smaller kid. Aren't you pleased that we have such a respectful and neighborly Commander-in-Chief? 

It's not like Americans haven't done it before. After bombing Afghanistan for twenty years and then withdrawing, the US decided to keep $7 billion worth of Afghans' money sitting in our banks. Yeah, the big bullies stole ordinary Afghans' money, and now millions of Afghan children are starving. But when did doing the right and moral thing ever stop a bully from grabbing a smaller kid's lunch box?

The biggest and most destructive sanction currently facing Afghanistan is the seizure of more than $7 billion of the country’s assets that are held at the US Federal Reserve. This is equivalent to about 40 percent of Afghanistan’s economy, and about 14 months of the country’s imports – which include food, medicine, and infrastructure needs that are vital to public health. --US Sanctions on Afghanistan Could Kill More Civilians than 20 Years of War

According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), nearly 23 million Afghans, or 55% of the population, are facing “extreme levels of hunger.” Of those, almost 9 million are at risk of famine.

UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch called it “a crisis of hunger and starvation.”

Yet there is little discussion inside Washington of the disastrous impact of US sanctions. --Millions in Afghanistan Are Starving Due to US Sanctions

Sometimes, bullies will gather together into a grouping of bullies to make it easier to gang up on a weaker kid or kids. Gangs of bullies are able to grab a ton of toys or "resources", as they’re known to most grown ups. A recent headline tells us that's exactly what a gang consisting of the US, NATO, and a few others are doing in Ukraine:

Representatives of Western governments and corporations met in Switzerland this July to plan a series of harsh neoliberal policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” drop tariffs, deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.”

Ukraine has been destabilized by violence since 2014, when a US-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew its democratically elected government, setting off a civil war. That conflict dragged on until February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded the country, escalating into a new, even deadlier phase of the war.

The United States and European Union have sought to erase the history of foreign-sponsored civil war in Ukraine from 2014 to early 2022, acting as though the conflict began on February 24. But Washington had sent large sums of weapons to Ukraine and provided extensive military training and support over several years before Russia invaded.

Meanwhile, starting in 2017, representatives of Western governments and corporations quietly held annual conferences in which they discussed ways to profit from the civil war they were fueling in Ukraine.

In these meetings, Western political and business leaders outlined a series of aggressive right-wing reforms they hoped to impose on Ukraine, including widespread privatization of state-owned industries and deregulation of the economy.

On July 4 and 5, 2022, top officials from the US, EU, Britain, Japan, and South Korea met in Switzerland for a so-called “Ukraine Recovery Conference.” There, they planned Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and performatively announced aid commitments – while salivating over a bonanza of potential contracts.

--West Prepares to Plunder Post-War Ukraine with Neoliberal Shock Therapy: Privatization, Deregulation, Slashing Worker Protections

There’s no aggressive behavior under the sun that would surprise a kindergarten teacher, and there’s nothing new about how stronger nations treat weaker ones. The US and its Western allies want cheap liquid natural gas, and they don’t want to go crying to Russia or even Saudi Arabia to get it. So, they take it from Syria. The indiscriminate bombing and killing of innocent civilians along the way is just the price you pay for being the smaller kid in the global classroom.    

Western corporate interests—especially those of the military industrial complex, such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, etc.—wanted to make some money off of the disintegrating Soviet Union thirty-something years ago. It seemed like a piece of cake to these capitalists to walk in and take their resources since the Cold War was now officially over. The largest part of the former Soviet Union (now simply “Russia”) helped many of the weaker kids (former Soviet nations) in their classroom get back on their feet economically. This cooperative activity didn’t sit well with the West. The US of Big Bullies and friends started working on angles to grab the natural and man-made resources of the weaker nations of the now defunct USSR. 

The unrest in Ukraine in 2014 gave the West the opportunity they’d been looking for to make a grab for these resources. The CIA helped to instigate a coup against the elected government of Ukraine because the Ukrainian voters (heaven forbid!) elected a pro-Russia president who wanted to increase trade with their much larger neighbor. With Ukraine’s ports and a liquid natural gas (LNG) pipeline (the Russian-German Nord Stream 2), Russia and Ukraine together could make some serious cash by selling LNG to European countries to heat their homes and businesses.

The US of Big Bullies and its gang of NATO wasn’t going to suffer this indignity. How dare a weaker kid keep his toys and share them with another kid—a kid we don’t like (and are possibly even jealous of)! Grabbing Ukraine’s resources and causing the big brotherly country that helped them (Russia) to collapse at the same time became US priority number one. Six months and a lot of death and destruction later, the entire world can see what happens when a big bully like the US tries to get its way by grabbing resources from and then hitting a smaller kid who simply wanted to get along with his fellow classmates, or neighboring countries in this instance. 

I realize that I’m simplifying things, but, like most teachers have discovered, sometimes it’s the best way to get down to the root of an aggressive behavior so we can end the aggression once and for all. We can’t continue hiding this behavior of resource grabbing or else it will never stop. We can't keep denying it, lying about it in our mainstream media, or attempting to rename it. 

The US military intervention in other countries has got nothing to do with giving Syria or Afghanistan or Ukraine "freedom and democracy." It's the US acting like a big bully by bombing weaker nations into submission in order to make a lot of profits for the military industrial complex and other Western corporations. All moral people must expose this evil for what it is so we can deal with it like adults, not children. 

It's time we put the US and NATO in the time out chair.

I sent a few grabber-hitters to the time out chair when I worked in a kindergarten class. Usually by the end of the school year these bullies matured a little emotionally. They began to understand why hitting and stealing toys/objects from their classmates wasn’t a good idea. Their first grade teachers praised our patience and stick-to-it-ness. It (almost) made the stress of dealing with these miniature Napoleons worth it.

Unfortunately, the world doesn’t have a school year to wait and see what will happen if we don’t stop the US and the West’s aggressive behaviors. We’ve got warmongers in Congress who want to provoke a war with China next. What’s sane about a bully taunting and grabbing at resources from other countries who own nuclear weapons? Nothing. Nothing at all. 

The next time you read how a far away country like Syria is a “threat” to the US look at what kind of natural resources they have. Look at where it’s positioned on the globe. Perhaps it’s located next door or within a short bomber’s flight distance of another country we’re jealous of and want to push out of our “classroom” so we can grab all their “toys”.

And stop making excuses for the United States of Bullies—even if you're a member of their "gang." Because how will Americans ever  grow up and stop their aggressive ways if they’re not taught a lesson by sitting in the time out chair?

Related Articles

US Invades Syria, Kills People, Claims Self-Defense https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/us-invades-syria-kills-people-claims

US Carries Out Airstries in Syria's Deir Ez Zor Province https://popularresistance.org/us-carries-out-airstrikes-in-syrias-deir-ez-zor-province/ 

US Sanctions on Afghanistan Could Kill More Civilians Than 20 Years of War  https://multipolarista.com/2022/02/05/us-sanctions-afghanistan-death-war/

Millions in Afghanistan Are Starving Due to US Sanctions https://multipolarista.com/2022/01/23/afghanistan-starving-us-sanctions/

'We Will Die by Poverty before Dying of Covid’: Young Adults and Multi-Layered Crises in Afghanistan  https://areu.org.af/publication/2205e/

US Judge Says Billions in Seized Central Bank Funds Belong to Afghan People https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/30/us-judge-says-billions-in-seized-central-bank-funds-belong-to-afghan-people/ 

West Prepares to Plunder Post-War Ukraine... https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/28/west-neoliberal-recovery-conference/

Revealed: US & EU Plans to Plunder Ukraine (video) https://youtu.be/1WsB-vvMLZk

This is Why the EU Doesn't Want Russian Gas (video) https://youtu.be/vC9yRNYWb84

The Uncomfortable Truth About Zelensky, featuring Scott Ritter (video) https://youtu.be/qmpnVbbqqOE 

Free Speech Doesn't Matter If Propagandists Determine What People Say  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/free-speech-doesnt-matter-if-propagandists 

 Seen on Twitter:

1. Invade a country on the other side of the world
2. Kill the people in that country who don't want you there
3. Claim your actions were self defense https://t.co/fiVhvbVVW0

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 24, 2022

Sacrificing for a war in Ukraine that didn't have to be while defense companies make record profits. When will the people learn that their interests & interests of warmongering capitalist are not the same? End the war in Ukraine, abolish NATO, reject "full spectrum dominance." https://t.co/Y0PvISJz9i

— Ajamu Baraka (@ajamubaraka) August 25, 2022

The US illegally occupies Syria, bombs it, steals its oil and wheat, murders its people, and accuses Russia of aggression. The audacity of these people.

— Hassan Mafi ‏ (@thatdayin1992) August 25, 2022

That's What america Does In Africa.

Among The Many Places Elsewhere Globally. https://t.co/qbnn31wi3Q pic.twitter.com/XjQg8TbEoF

— DanCDO7大牛❤️🇭🇰🇸🇬🇨🇳🇪🇺🇺🇸❤️ (@DanCDO7) August 26, 2022

How to F#ck Up a Country in One Tory Lesson

Our armchair historian and openly British blogger reveals what he really thinks about Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his current government in the UK...

How to F#ck Up a Country in One Tory Lesson
by Coast Watcher

I’ll nail my colors to the mast and state that I favored Brexit. The European Union has a soft shell of socialist values layered over a hard core of capitalism. The UK and the EU are not compatible in their way of doing things, and the EU’s one size fits all policy is asinine at best, destructive at worst. The policy pays scant attention to national characteristics which leads itself to the strengthening of nationalist feelings and a push-back against the very ideals the EU is supposed to espouse. Recent challenges to EU laws have risen in Poland and Hungary as these nations clash with the EU over access to abortion laws and LGBTQ+ rights.

I'd hoped that the country of my birth would have enacted a decent and sensible plan to deal with their departure from EU and that necessary measures would have been put in place in a speedy fashion.

I was wrong.

The Human Cost of Brexit

The resultant fall-out from Brexit is an utter shambles. The ruling Tory party (first under David Cameron and currently under the shambolic Boris Johnson) seem hell-bent on turning the country into a right wing dictatorship, using the natural prickly post-Imperial conservatism found in a sizable minority of British people to push through laws which are not in their interest. They rely upon the average Brit’s knee-jerk reaction of bloody foreigners! to get support for the government in any international dispute. And people die as a result.

Recently, at least 27 refugees and asylum seekers died trying to cross the English Channel after their dinghy deflated and sank. It was the worst disaster on record involving migrants in the sea separating France and the United Kingdom. The famous and hard-working Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) helped rescue survivors. They’ve had to do so on numerous occasions before and since when refugees attempt to cross one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes in treacherous weather conditions. For this humanitarian duty, the lifeboat crews who risk their lives to save those in peril on the sea have been heckled and even received death threats from anti-immigrant persons.

The RNLI charity’s chief executive, Mark Dowie, has recognized that the migrant crisis is a “polarizing issue,” but lifeboat crews carry out “humanitarian work of the highest order.” Rescuers who are called out from bases along the Channel coasts of Kent and Sussex are faced with desperate situations, including “terrified and suffering children.”

Another volunteer spoke of one occasion when his lifeboat brought rescued migrants ashore. They were confronted by an angry mob who shouted, “Go back to France!” The crew member said, “It’s one of the most upsetting things I’ve ever seen. I can’t imagine what those families felt like, coming ashore to that after the night they’d had.”

In Hastings, the lifeboat was blocked from launching by an angry crowd of locals who shouted abuse at the crews. The incident resulted in the police being called, and rightly earned a backlash against the crowd on mainstream and social media.

De-Naturalization

A clause slipped into the Nationality and Borders Bill gives the British Home Secretary draconian powers to strip any person born in the UK of their citizenship, without notice if it’s not “reasonably practicable to do so.”

 
Frances Webber, Vice-Chair of the Institute of Race Relations, said: “This amendment sends the message that certain citizens, despite being born and brought up in the UK and having no other home, remain migrants in this country. Their citizenship, and therefore all their rights, are precarious and contingent.

“It builds on previous measures to strip British-born nationals (who are mostly from ethnic minorities) of citizenship and to do it while they are abroad, measures used mainly against British Muslims. It unapologetically flouts international human rights obligations and basic norms of fairness.”

Maya Foa, the director of Reprieve stated: “This clause would give (Home Secretary) Priti Patel unprecedented power to remove your citizenship in secret, without even having to tell you, and effectively deny you an appeal.”

The US government has condemned citizenship-stripping as a dangerous denial of responsibility toward a country’s citizens—although the Biden administration is guilty of doing virtually the same in cases involving deported undocumented immigrants who have underage children born in the US.

Northern Ireland

The affairs of this province remain as tangled as ever. Strong sectarian divides between Protestant and Catholic communities has subsided in the years since the Good Friday Agreements of 1998, ending centuries of strife. The peace negotiations were begun by then-Prime Minister John Major (probably the last halfway decent Tory PM Britain had, which really isn’t saying much, as his regime was mired in scandal after scandal) and finished under the successor regime of Tony Blair (who undeservedly took all the credit).

The mainstay of the agreements is the relaxing of border controls between Northern Ireland (Ulster) and Eire (The Republic of Ireland), which is in the EU. The contentious and divisive checkpoints were dismantled and peace descended upon the province for the first time. Now thanks to wrangling over the shipment of food products—mostly meat, eggs and poultry—between the UK and EU, those checkpoints may rise again, causing outrage and a renewal of nationalist feeling in the hard-line sectarian parties and communities. Violent disturbances have already occurred in Belfast and other cities.

The National Health Service

Last, but certainly not least, we come to the institution beloved by all British people—their national health service.

First authorized by Parliament in the 1946, the National Health Service Act began in 1948 and has served the UK population with easy, free at the point-of-use healthcare across the entire country. Administered and owned by the  government, it’s a cherished part of British life.

Naturally, the Tories hated it from the get-go. Much like the Republican Party of the US, the Tories have never met a public asset they didn’t want to sell off for private profit.

Former President Donald Trump (may he never rise again to molest the world with his dire presence) put pressure on the Tory government to allow US healthcare industry mavens to take part in directing NHS policy. This pressure is being maintained by the Biden administration. Blatant capitalists now sit on all the NHS boards at both the national and regional level, ensuring the smooth transfer of British public-owned assets into private corporate ownership. Tory Members of Parliament are under strict instructions to decry and deny any accusations of privatization. They’re even succeeding in whipping up pro-privatization sentiment among some sections of the British people.

How long this sentiment will last remains to be seen. Perhaps for some British people it’ll end when they’re required to pay £2,000 for an ambulance ride, similar to what many Americans are now billed. 

First P.M. Cameron, then Johnson, have followed the time-worn path of running down a public asset to the point where they can throw up their hands in mock despair and cry,  “Public ownership doesn’t work! We shall have to privatize this so it runs efficiently.”

In the case of the NHS, the Tories work on it by cutting its budgets in secret ways, instituting pay-rises that are well below the rate of inflation. They impose unrealistic “quotas” on staff that can never be met, thus resulting in burn-out and departure of valuable personnel. All this at a time with COVID-19 cases increasing in the UK.

The Tories continue to privatize parts of NHS services, such as methods for disposing dangerous medical waste. Instead of each hospital dealing with its own waste on site using special furnaces, the Tory government handed operations over to a private firm located in the English Midlands. Hospitals and clinics are now required to ship their waste to this facility across the national road system, with all the dangers that entails. Naturally the facility is unable to cope with demand, resulting in a dangerous medical waste piling up at hospitals across the UK.

In London, a specialist eye clinic was sold to billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. In one year it went from an Excellent rating to actively blinding patients. Another London clinic was likewise sold to Virgin Group, and within a year went from an Excellent rating to Failing.

Forty-nine other General Practices have so far been sold into private hands, and the Tory government stands on its hind legs and cries, “It’s more efficient!”

I won’t go into great detail over the Tory mishandling of the COVID crisis, averaging 48,000 cases a day at the time of writing, beyond to say that its policy currently seems to be to throw up its hands and say, “Well, what can you do?”

The Opposition

There isn’t one worth the name. Current Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) leader Sir Keith Starmer is another politician in the Tony Blair mold, a neoliberal who seems determined to lead his party as far to the right as he dare. The PLP is doing its level best to oust any true socialists still in its ranks. It has not restored the Whip position to former Leader Jeremy Corbyn. Expect no opposition worth the name from this quarter.

(In essence, the Whip is the means by which a party controls its membership. It ensures members vote the way the leadership wants and follows policy closely. It’s especially important to parties which do not have a majority in the House.)

Corruption

No Tory government member is ever far away from sleaze and corrupt practices. The provision of PPE and sanitizing equipment during the COVID crisis enabled Tory party members and donors to make out like bandits on the public purse. One of the most prominent scandals to date was that of now-former Minister Owen Paterson who was found guilty of accepting payments to advocate on behalf of two private companies. P.M. Johnson attempted to fix the scandal by pressuring his party to change the parliamentary rules governing such matters. Although he succeeded in doing so, the affair caused a massive public outcry and a rapid U-turn on Johnson’s plan.

And, of course, there’s that fine old British governing party tradition of selling titles for cash. Recently the Sunday Times reported that all but one of sixteen Tory Party treasurers over the last two decades had donated more than £3 million (roughly $4 million) to the Conservative Party, for which they were offered a seat in the Lords (the UK Parliament’s Upper House).

In Media Res

Of course, not everything is being reported by British mainstream media. According to information given by Claudia Webbe, MP for Leicester East:

    • 5 billionaires own 80% of UK press.
    • 3 companies dominate 83% of national newspapers.
    • 5 companies dominate 80% of the online market.
    • 5 companies own 80% of local titles.

Austerity Measures

Beloved of right-wing governments everywhere, austerity measures are yet another way of cutting public expenditure so more money can be given to the rich. In my most recent visit to the UK, I was appalled to see so many people sleeping rough (homeless) on the streets. Even provincial cities have many people without a roof over their heads.

And no, they’re all not “there deliberately” or because they drink or have mental health issues. The majority have lost their jobs and homes thanks to Tory policies which border on the vicious. The means-testing of people with disabilities is farcical. Even amputees are required to attend review boards every six months to see if their condition has improved. Funding for disabilities and social workers is cut to the bone and beyond, resulting in failures to deal in a fair and timely manner with those who need help most.

Conclusion

There is push-back against the increasing privatization of the NHS. There are people determined to make the UK a safe place for migrants to come to. It’s going to be a long uphill struggle, but it’ll be worthwhile. In the meantime world events move on. With climate change making an increasing impact on the peoples of earth, modern politics is looking increasingly like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The same-old, same-old conservatism is dangerous. Time to kick it into the long grass.

BIO: Coast Watcher is tired of watching his homeland being torn apart and sold in bits and pieces for the profit by a privileged few. He suggests that everyone, everywhere, take their grievances to the streets, strike, march in picket lines, and organize their workplaces to fight off the neoliberal menace of the privatization of public assets. Unlike what Prime Minister "Bo Jo" says, Coast Watcher says, "Health care is a human right!"

 

Related Articles:

https://www.indy100.com/news/hastings-rnli-lifeboat-blocked-migrants-b1966817

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-57999224

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/24/24-dead-after-boat-sinks-in-english-channel-french-mayor

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/17/new-bill-quietly-gives-powers-to-remove-british-citizenship-without-notice

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_2541

https://www.khon2.com/international/france-lashes-out-at-britains-latest-proposal-on-migrants/

https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-53724381

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I want to share some great news. As you already know, the Federal Election Commission is trying to force me to repay $175,000 in public matching funding we spent to get on the ballot - over 5 years after the end of the 2016 election. This decision, if allowed to stand, would be disastrous for the future of independent politics. But here’s the good part: Thanks to the outpouring of support we’ve already received, we’ve been able to bring two of the country’s leading democracy lawyers together on our legal team! Oliver Hall and Harry Kresky have each won critical legal fights for our democracy over the past two decades. Having them on our team gives us a fighting chance to win our case that is so critical to the future of independent politics in the United States. Oliver Hall is the Founder, Executive Director, and General Counsel of the Center for Competitive Democracy, which was founded in 2005 to strengthen American democracy by increasing electoral competition. Oliver and CCD have won critical cases for ballot access and competitive democracy across the country, including a major victory last week in Maine, overturning oppressive enrollment requirements that made it practically impossible for non-wealthy citizens to establish new political parties.  Oliver is also the author of “Death by a Thousand Signatures: The Rise of Restrictive Ballot Access Laws and the Decline of Electoral Competition in the United States”, a landmark paper shining a light on the establishment’s relentless assault on independent politics. Harry Kresky has years of experience fighting for the rights of independent voters and alternative parties. He has represented numerous insurgent and independent candidates seeking equal access to the ballot, and successfully defended Ralph Nader during the 2004 presidential race against efforts to remove him from the ballot in West Virginia and New Mexico.  Harry is also a co-author of a 2019 law review article: “Let All Voters Vote: Independents and the Expansion of Voting Rights in the United States.” This is a dream team for defending our 2016 campaign - and future campaigns outside the two-party establishment - from an unfair system that creates virtually insurmountable obstacles to political participation by low budget grassroots campaigns like ours. The right to vote requires not only an end to voter suppression. It also requires real choices for voters to choose among - not just the same corporate duopoly that has overseen the crises of climate collapse, crushing inequality and endless war that continue to deepen. With your help, we will continue fighting for the right to vote in all of its dimensions - including the right to political choices that are essential to democracy and our future that depends on it. Contribute All my best, Jill Stein Green Party presidential nominee 2012, 2016

PS. In case you didn’t see our previous email about why I need to fight back against the FEC, you can get the details at jillstein.net. *** From Friends of the Earth Dimples, the snowy white beluga whale, has called Cook Inlet, Alaska her home for many years. The endangered whale is a presumed mother. But soon, Dimples and her calf could become victims of Big Oil’s destruction. Take action now. Big Oil and Gas developers are pushing to build over 200 miles of oil and gas pipelines right through Dimples and her calf’s habitat. With less than 280 Cook Inlet Beluga whales alive today, this could mean extinction for the species.  You can help save Dimples and her calf. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is preparing to sell off Cook Inlet to the highest Big Oil bidder. But before BOEM makes the sale, they have to consider input from people like you. Will you send a message to BOEM right now and demand it cancel the sale? Tell the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to save Dimples from oil and gas developers!  Sign Now If you visit Lower Cook Inlet right now, you’d see miles of pristine blue water. Snowcapped mountains. Maybe even a brown bear hunting for fish or a beluga like Dimples poking her head above water. You might even catch a glimpse of a cuddly-looking puffin out for a swim. Now, imagine this: towering oil platforms block your view of the snow-capped mountains. The noise of fossil fuel development scares off the swimming puffin. The brown bear starves as its food source is diminished. The beluga whale is being driven to extinction. This devastating picture could become a reality if Cook Inlet is sold to Big Oil and Gas. The landscape of Lower Cook Inlet would never be the same again. And the wildlife could take decades to recover from Big Oil’s destruction -- if they’re lucky enough to survive.  Demand BOEM stop Big Oil and Gas from destroying Cook Inlet! Sign Now If Cook Inlet is sold to Big Oil and Gas, it’ll lock the area into 40 more years of fossil fuel pollution. Our planet cannot afford this at a time when we have less than 9 years left to avert climate catastrophe.  Big Oil and Gas are fighting hard to expand their polluting projects -- no matter the cost to people, wildlife, or the planet. I’m counting on you to fight back. Are you with me, C.A.? Sign your name: Demand the BOEM keep greedy polluters out of Lower Cook Inlet! Sign Now Standing with you, Hallie Templeton, Senior Campaigner, Friends of the Earth