How Can We Make Reparations to Palestine?

by C. A. Matthews

There will come a day when the genocidaires of Israel and its mostly Western allies will be forced to make reparations to the Palestinian people. Justice demands that fair and proper restitution be made to the victims of Israeli war crimes. But what will these reparations look like? How will they be enacted? Who will oversee the implementation of these reparations?

I’ve pondered these questions and came up with an outline of what all should be covered in a reparations plan. I believe reparations should be made to the Palestinian people in the following categories:

1. Financial-Material Reparations

2. Cultural-Historical-Educational Reparations

3. Political-Judicial Reparations

4. Spiritual-Physical Reparations

Israel will have to make reparations to Lebanon, Syria, and Iran in addition to Gaza and the West Bank. In this article, I’m concentrating on reparations to be made to the Palestinian people, although this outline could be used as a pattern to help develop a reparations plan for other peoples Israel and its allies have committed war crimes against.

Financial-Material Reparations

Financial-material reparations are the most obvious ones that Israel and its allies will need to make. All buildings Israel has destroyed in its genocide of Gaza, as well as in its attempt to takeover the West Bank, must be repaired or replaced. This includes public edifices such as hospitals, schools, universities, churches, mosques, and community centers. It will also include restoring parks, beaches, tourist attractions, museums, theaters, and other public gathering places. Bridges, roads, port facilities, utilities, water treatment plants, power plants, and any other infrastructure damaged or destroyed will also need to be repaired or rebuilt and paid for by the war criminals.

Private homes, apartment buildings, business offices, shopping areas, and individual stores or kiosks must also be repaired or rebuilt in a timely manner. And because Israelis have deprived Palestinians of their livelihoods and homes, they would need to make good on the income Palestinians have lost during the commission of their war crimes. Israelis must continue to repay all Palestinians lost income during this period of rebuilding Gaza and the destroyed and stolen homes and villages of the West Bank.

I know what’s going through your head at this point: How will the state of Israel be able to afford the restoration of all the buildings and infrastructure it has destroyed? How will it afford to give financial support to the Palestinian families it has harmed? Who will be the workers to fulfill this plan?

I will discuss the worker situation later, but for now notice that I added “and allies” at the start when I mentioned who all have committed war crimes against the Palestinian people. Israel won’t be the only country that will be making good on these reparations. All of Israel’s allies that have provided funding, bombs, jets, tanks, munitions, mercenaries, military support and surveillance, etc., to attack Gaza will need to make restitution as well. No country that aided or abetted Israel’s war crimes gets to walk free under this reparations plan. All who are guilty will pay to restore the damages their activities and support of the state of Israel have caused. No exceptions...

 

To learn more about my reparations plan, please continue reading the rest of this article on Substack. Just copy or click on this link: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

There you'll see related article and video links, all the graphics, and be able to leave comments. You can become a free or paid subscriber and receive weekly posts in your email box, along with occasional special articles just for paid subscribers, too.

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Power to the people! 

 

This article is the 532nd 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. 

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

 

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.

In A 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 continue reading the rest of this article by copying or clicking on this Substack link: 

https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com

There you'll see related article and video links, all the graphics, and be able to leave comments. You can become a free or paid subscriber and receive weekly posts in your email box, along with occasional special articles just for paid subscribers, too.

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Power to the people!

This article is the 513th 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.

You can make a donation at https://paypal.me/camatthews or at Buy Me a Coffee or at Ko-fi. Every little bit helps since this is my only source of income. Thank you.

 

The Founders Would Be Proud

 

The Founders Would Be Proud

by C.A. Matthews

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:

https://twitter.com/peopleforstein/status/1849264793011818948 or

https://twitter.com/TeamJillStein/status/1849906420340408804

https://www.youtube.com/live/HLCplaowzy8?si=AKHM8u9vnCWE1v5U

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...

Please read the rest of this article by clicking on this link to go to our Substack page: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com  There you'll also see related article and video links, all the images, and be able to leave comments. You can subscribe to receive the weekly blog post in your email box as well. 

Subscribe today! Power to the people!

The Ugliness To History

 

We need to tell the truth about the ugliness to history. We don't honor our forefathers if we don't learn from their mistakes. —Radical Jesus on X.

The Ugliness To History

by C. A. Matthews

I had an dream about what to call what I wanted to write about this week. My original title idea was along the lines of “The Truth of the Matter” But then I came across Radical Jesus’ awesome post and thought it summed up what I wanted to say nicely (so I borrowed it with permission).

All of human history is ugly. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. You will know what you’re reading is the truth if the author doesn’t varnish over the nasty, disgusting, horrific bits that happened in the past. You’ll know what you’re reading is the truth if the past isn’t painted in uniform, glowing colors and all the actors therein portrayed as decent folks “just doing their best during tough times.”

Because if everyone is just doing their “best” why do things still suck nowadays? How did so much evil come into the world if our ancestors were “doing their best” for all of humankind? Doesn’t voting for the “lesser evil” bring about good eventually? (If you read this piece, you’d know that’s impossible.) Let’s be absolutely honest with ourselves: Human beings all lie, and they have done (and still do) some rather selfishly shitty things to each other and our planet.

There. I said it. I confessed humanity’s deepest sin. We are all liars. We are all manipulators of our own history in order to make ourselves look like decent, non-shitty actors on this stage called life. Countries and corporations are no different. In fact, they’re worse—way worse...

 

To read the rest of this article, click on this link to go to our Substack page: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com  There you'll also see the related article and video links, all the images, and be able to easily leave comments. You can subscribe to receive the weekly blog post in your email box as well. (We'll think you'll like it much better than Blogspot.) Power to the people!

Biden's Berlin Wall

Biden’s Berlin Wall

by C.A. Matthews

Having worked closely with immigrants over the years, I can’t help but take each setback in their collective struggle for equal rights and justice as personal. So many come to the US fleeing gang violence, destitution, climate catastrophe, religious and racial discrimination… And what do they find when they land on US shores? Often more of the same.

The US hides its bias behind a veneer of supposed legality and practicality. But is it really legal? Take for instance Biden’s latest twist in immigration law that prevents individuals from claiming asylum when they come to our southern border. In other words, he wants to get rid of US Code 8, Section 1158 which clearly states:

§1158. Asylum
Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien's status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.

It’s pretty straightforward. If you are fleeing for your life, and you claim asylum, you are to be given an asylum hearing inside the US no matter how or where you enter the country. Until your claim has been adjudicated by an immigration judge, you're allowed to stay safely within the US. That is the law.

But Genocide Joe is trying hard to get the Trump bigots on his side for the upcoming presidential election. He has decided that brown and black people who usually enter on foot at our southern border shouldn’t be able to qualify for asylum even before they can open their mouths to request it. It's telling how immigrants with money (usually white and European in origin) can fly directly into any US airport and request asylum then and there, no problem. Very telling.

Does the president even have the authority to prevent non-citizens from entering the US? Some say he does under INA Section 212(f), however:

INA § 212(f) does not allow the president to interfere with or subvert other parts of the INA or other federal laws. That includes INA § 208, which grants people the right to seek asylum in the United States… While 212(f) authority has been used in recent years in an attempt to restrict access to asylum at the U.S./Mexico border, the courts have identified significant limitations. Some courts have also ruled that the president may not invoke this authority to address purely domestic considerations, such as high unemployment or costs to taxpayers. From Understanding INA Section 212f

The ongoing genocides in Gaza, Sudan, and other parts of the world—along with a potential for World War III involving Ukraine to begin any day now—have stolen the news limelight lately, making this heinous stunt violating human rights at our southern border almost invisible to the majority of Americans. But these types of violent conflicts are the driving forces behind much of the immigration to the US today. 

The US is the driver of its own immigration problems because it can’t keep itself from stealing others' land and resources. It can't stop itself from overthrowing democratically elected governments in countries that won’t do business with American businesses on US corporations' terms alone.

Until we shut down the US war machine and dismantle the military-industrial-Congressional complex, we’re going to see more and more people coming to our borders fleeing from the violence and climate catastrophes the US military has instigated in their homelands.

As the executive director at Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) states:

"This move to drastically reduce asylum access is dangerous, immoral, and illegal," said Anna Gallagher, executive director at CLINIC. "We are appalled that the United States is abandoning its commitment to humanitarian protection and national and international asylum law in issuing this executive order. The policy will strip countless migrants of their legal right to seek asylum with due process, and as a result many lives will be endangered and lost, and families separated."

Who really needs due process or to respect the legal rights of others, huh? Obviously, we’ve decided that the migrants we don’t want to let in for whatever reasons don’t have any rights at all. It was bad enough when Trump and his cadre use the misnomer “illegals” to describe immigrants coming to our border seeking asylum, but now we have Butcher Biden continuing the Trump tradition of separating family members, separating children from their parents. This move will cause ever more desperate immigrants to seek the services of human traffickers to help smuggle them into the US. More deaths, more lawsuits, more unhappiness…

The US Southern Border Wall https://borgenproject.org/10-facts-about-mexicos-southern-border/

I talked to our resident historian, Coast Watcher, about the walls at our southern border, the barbwire-covered walls circling the bomb-pummeled territory of Gaza, historic walls such as the one that divided East and West Berlin. That got Coast Watcher thinking about how certain patterns of history are once again repeating themselves. 

Is Biden really trying to keep desperate people out of the US, or is he very slyly trying to keep desperate Americans locked in? Why would the Biden administration fear Americans escaping? Are there not enough cannon fodder (soldiers) for a big war planned in the near future? Should we expect American citizens to be denied human rights like we're currently denying them to asylum seekers, like the Israeli government denies the rights of the indigenous Palestinian people?

 https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/berlin-wall-pictures-1961-1989/

The New Iron Curtain?

by Coast Watcher

A common theme of far-right criticism leveled at Biden is, “He’s a Commie!” On the face of it such an accusation is far from accurate. Biden was, is, and (for what little remains of his putrid life) always will be a conservative authoritarian.

And yet, that little comment throws up a few surprising parallels between the United States of Israel—er, America—with the former Communist Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR. In English, we called it the German Democratic Republic, or more commonly East Germany.

The first parallel is how in both nations the mainstream media was/is almost entirely state-controlled. (Not owned by the state necessarily in the US but controlled.) Little is published that contradicts or criticizes The Regime. Social media takes up a lot of the slack here in the US, but with increasing levels of censorship it’s taking on the appearance of samizdat. In terms of online material much that is frowned upon is self-censored by the corporations who own the social media platforms on behalf of the status quo. 

A recent example of censorship in Biden’s America is how the Columbia Law Review’s website was closed down by the university board of directors after the site published an article by Rabea Eghbariah criticizing Israel.

Secondly, there’s The Regime’s obsession with walls. The DDR created a beauty when it erected the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall (the Anti-fascist Protection Barrier, a.k.a. The Berlin Wall, a.k.a. The Iron Curtain). Supposedly a wall against the pernicious influence of capitalism, the Berlin Wall acted to prevent the hemorrhaging of the East German population to the West. Something in the region of 20% of the DDR’s people voted with their feet against the totalitarian regime during its existence, causing immense harm to the DDR's economy and its image.

Part of the Gaza Wall activestills.org

Of course, both Biden and Trump claim the wall built along America’s southern border is to prevent mass illegal immigration. Looking at posts on X (Twitter) from people seeking to leave the increasingly totalitarian United States, I wonder how long it’ll be before the border wall is turned around to face inward. If the US wants you to stay put, you will be walled in similar to how the Gazans have been walled into their own homeland by the white settler colonists, a.k.a. Israeli Zionists.

The DDR shut down political dissent as soon as it appeared. We’re seeing that very same phenomena in the United States nowadays. Police response to pro-Palestine demonstrations on university campuses has been far beyond proportional to any trouble caused. Zionist vigilantes have been allowed to beat up on student protesters while the cops look the other way and arrest the peaceful students who were beaten. 

The message is clear. There is to be no resistance, no objections to the official narrative. Anyone who supports the Palestinian people are “Hamas” and subsequently “terrorists” to be locked up.

And when it comes to protesting the government’s policies in any way, shape or form, here’s a quote from Police Superintendent Larry Snelling in reference to the upcoming so-called “Democratic” Party conference in Chicago: “Protesting peacefully doesn’t always mean you’re protected by the First Amendment.”

What’s free speech good for if you can’t even be protected from harm by your own government while exercising your First Amendment rights peacefully? The East German Stasi would have been proud.

CodePink SE Los Angeles and Inland Empire joined other activists in vocally disrupting Vice President Kamala Harris’s guest spot on the Jimmy Kimmel Live television show. They were forcefully removed, assaulted, and illegally detained by the show’s security. So much for free speech anywhere in the US.

And then there’s the economy… The DDR suffered massive financial stress due to its totalitarian policies. Everything from food to furniture to cars became harder for the workers to afford. The East Germans were left with rising food costs and increasingly decrepit infrastructure.

The United States is on course for the same trouble with, as an example, a week’s grocery bill for two people in New York City costing over $750. The price of eggs has skyrocketed. Locally this most staple of cheap foods costs about $1.49 a dozen as of this past week. What will it cost next week? Will working class people even be able to afford eggs at all by November?

And it’s not like the US has experienced any recent example of infrastructure failures such as derailed trains carrying toxic chemicals deliberately set on fire in the middle of a small town or bridges falling over from a small tap from an overloaded ocean-going container barge.

It should be noted that the DDR was not above dealing with the hated Capitalist West when it came to earning hard currency to keep its failing economy afloat. The DDR took incredible quantities of industrial waste from West Germany, dumping it on its own soil and causing pollution for generations. Sounds familiar when you consider how states like Ohio take in toxic fracking water waste to make some extra cash at the expense of their own citizens’ health when the pollutants leak into their drinking water.

It's not hard to draw a parallel between the East German government taking capitalist cash like this and the US taking “backhanders and gifts” from oil companies to license fracking and drilling for oil on federal lands and preserves. In the US they sometimes call this money influx “campaign donations.”

Of course the DDR government paid little to no attention to climate change. Thirty plus years on from the Berlin Wall’s collaspe, the US government is doing as little or less. This in spite of record-breaking heatwaves across the Southwest and dramatic flooding in parts of the Central and Eastern states so far this season. There are just too many more important things to occupy the attention of the powers-that-be, like growing the US military budget.

When it came to the DDR’s military budget, it was given a 6% increase each year until it reached the point where the regime’s military became a major partner in the Warsaw Pact alliance. Military and security expenditures amounted to a 9.2% slice of the DDR budget, a sizable chunk of change.

The US military sucks up a woeful 14.7% of national expenditure. It’s not like that money could be spent on things like universal health care or providing a free education from kindergarten through college such as the East Germans had. We wouldn’t want Americans to become used to things like that. They could become “Commies.” And who really wants that?

When it comes to the government, the East German public had little say in how it was run. Show elections happened every few years. You might think there would be a big difference between the DDR and the USA when it comes to elections, but the Princeton study shows real input from the American public amounts to no more than 3% of all policies fielded in Congress. This is much like the DDR, where the status quo Communist Party always won 98% or more of the vote—something which was shown to be false when independent observers oversaw the ballot count in the elections of May 1989.

That particular election led to huge trouble for the DDR government, paving the way for the massive uprising against the totalitarian regime that threw down the Berlin Wall and brought about German reunification.

But it’s not like that at all in the US where exit polls are no longer taken in presidential elections. It’s not like Americans don’t have a wide variety of candidates to choose from when they open up their ballot for president every four years… Even in states like New York that force independent and third party candidates to collect 45,000 verified signatures within a short six week period. No comparison at all to GDR with its limited choice of candidates. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along now.

Perhaps my analogy will only go so far, although the parallels are there to see. Perhaps someday Americans will finally tell their bought-and-paid-for politicians where they can shove their military budget appropriations and demand serious and lasting beneficial changes for the people—hopefully before we all get blown to hell by the nuclear fires of World War III. 

Sources:
The Berlin Wall
https://www.stiftung-berliner-mauer.de/en/topics/berlin-wall
US military spending
https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense
 DDR military spending
https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R3726z1.html

Don’t Forget the USS Liberty’s Dead and Wounded https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/08/dont-forget-the-uss-libertys-dead-and-wounded/

Related Articles and Other Interesting Links

Understanding INA Section 212f https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/understanding-ina-section-212f-president-authority-suspend-entry-migrants

‘What Are They Afraid Of?’: Columbia Law Review Board Shuts Down Website Over Nakba Article https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/06/what-are-they-afraid-of-columbia-law-review-board-shuts-down-website-over-nakba-article/ 

Peace Activists Assaulted And Forcibly Removed From Jimmy Kimmel Taping https://popularresistance.org/peace-activists-assaulted-and-forcibly-removed-from-jimmy-kimmel-taping

Biden's new immigration order restricts asylum claims along the border. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-executive-order-immigration-border-asylum/

A century ago, anti-immigrant backlash almost closed America’s doors https://theconversation.com/a-century-ago-anti-immigrant-backlash-almost-closed-americas-doors-228589

'Historic, But So, So Late': Israel Added to UN's Child-Killing 'List of Shame' https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-killing-children-2668478068

Israel has bombed a school less than a day since it bombed the last one https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/israel-has-bombed-a-school-less-than

Israel kills over 200 Palestinians to rescue 4 captives; U.S. allegedly involved in operation https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/israel-kills-over-200-palestinians-to-rescue-4-captives-u-s-allegedly-involved-in-operation/

Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the USA https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/07/narcissistic-personality-disorder-in-the-usa/

Rights group accuses Israel of hitting residential buildings with white phosphorous in Lebanon  https://apnews.com/article/israel-lebanon-human-rights-watch-white-phosphorus-616984b69e1cbe1efc5bbee4cb3ba8ae

US weapons parts used in Israeli attack on Gaza school https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/6/us-weapons-parts-used-in-israeli-attack-on-gaza-school-al-jazeera-analysis

US Bombs Used in Israeli Massacre of 40 in Gaza Refugee Camp https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/07/us-bombs-used-in-israeli-massacre-of-40-in-gaza-refugee-camp/

Israeli forces killed captives during Nuseirat 'massacre', alleges Hamas https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-israeli-forces-kill-other-captives-during-nuseirat-massacre-alleges-hamas

US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration's Foreign Policy https://denniskucinich.substack.com/p/us-targets-journalists-who-

State department says it's Hamas' fault Israel won't accept Biden's peace deal (Hamas is willing to accept the deal) https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/state-department-says-its-hamas-fault

The Reckless Brinkmanship With Russia Just Keeps On Escalating https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-reckless-brinkmanship-with-russia

Lawmakers move to automate Selective Service registration for all men  https://www.federaltimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2024/05/23/lawmakers-move-to-automate-selective-service-registration-for-all-men/

If You Want to See White “Supremacy” at Work, Don’t go to a Trump Rally, Observe the Democrats’ Approach to Climate Change
https://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php/if-you-want-see-white-supremacy-work-dont-go-trump-rally-observe-democrats-approach-climate-change

The CIA Has “Georgia On Its Mind” https://joebrunoli.substack.com/p/the-cia-has-georgia-on-its-mind

Police Are Sending Student Protesters to the ER. Campus Cops Don’t Keep Us Safe. https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/05/police-are-sending-student-protesters-to-the-er-campus-cops-dont-keep-us-safe/

The Fight for Palestinian Recognition in American Academia https://www.citizenschronicle.org/p/the-fight-for-palestinian-recognition

Some of AIPAC’s Biggest Donors Are Also Financing Attacks Against Labor Rights https://truthout.org/articles/some-of-aipacs-biggest-donors-are-also-financing-attacks-against-labor-rights/

Scott Ritter: On My Way to Russia I Met Big Brother. https://www.youtube.com/live/lOsW84wYdzg?si=G3L4wgiRDIrK6z9A

Russian warships will arrive in Havana next week, say Cuban officials citing ‘friendly relations’ https://apnews.com/article/cuba-russia-warships-caribbean-ukraine-97905c0a6072e39e2869a18e28b0aeef

Israel Reportedly Used Fake Social Media Accounts To Garner Support From US Lawmakers On Gaza War https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/06/05/israel-reportedly-used-fake-social-media-accounts-to-garner-support-from-us-lawmakers-on-gaza-war/

When Opposing A Genocide Means You're A Nazi https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/when-opposing-a-genocide-means-youre

Everything About Israel Is Fake https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/everything-about-israel-is-fake

The Media Skew Public Perception By Manipulating People's Attention https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-media-skew-public-perception

'We Want Peace': Spain Applies to Join ICJ Genocide Case Against Israel  https://www.commondreams.org/news/spain-genocide-case

Police Can Be Held Liable for Killing a Dog but Not a Black Person https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/07/police-can-be-held-liable-for-killing-a-dog-but-not-a-black-person/

Mexico Elected a Climate Scientist. But Will She Be a Climate President? https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07062024/mexico-president-elect-claudia-sheinbaum-climate-policy/

Subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Go to https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com and subscribe at the link at the end of the article. You'll enjoy having each week's post automatically sent to your email box or reading it at the Substack site. Many thanks for your consideration. 

Why Are We Repeating History?

Why Are We Repeating History?  

by C. A. Matthews 

 

Happy Black History Month!

Last year, we spent several weeks in the month of February discussing various topics that are of particular interest to African-Americans—reparations, critical race theory, and what it must be like to be considered only 3/5 of a human being (according to the US Constitution). We were still reeling from the deaths of George Floyd and many others. The Afghan War was winding down about that same time, but the upcoming proxy war in Ukraine was winding up. I held out still some hope the war hawk rhetoric would die down and the Minsk Agreements would keep things peaceful.

One year later, we find ourselves in a world of déjà vu. Critical race theory is under violent attack by right-wing pundits, reparations are still seen as an impossible (or at least a far-off) goal, and the police are killing an average of three ordinary Americans every day, many of them persons of color. (See last week’s blog about some of the latest police caused deaths, Targets On Our Backs.) Hundred of thousands have been left homeless or slaughtered in grueling, needless warfare in Ukraine thanks to a determined lack of diplomacy and billions of dollars of American military-industrial complex weaponry.

The rich got richer. The poor and POC got shot at and beaten up by thugs wearing cop uniforms. Endless warfare for control of fossil fuels continues. The more things change... 

It is said, “History repeats itself,” but that statement isn’t an imperative. We don’t have to keep repeating ourselves, especially when the event is destructive and immoral. So much of American history is just that—destructive and immoral. I don’t pull punches anymore. There’s no use lying about the filthy propaganda US government officials spew forth from their mouths like volcanoes full of molten shit. There’s no use lying about our blood-soaked history of killing our own and others across the globe simply for the sake of lining the pockets of capitalists who desire ever more blood money.

We don’t need militarized police forces or killer cops—we need social services and Medicare for All. We don’t need to pretend any longer we’re doing anything except money laundering for Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, etc., in a provoked proxy war in Ukraine to knock out Russia’s economy. And we certainly don’t need to pretend that we’re not gunning for another chance at starting World War III by antagonizing China this week over a lost weather balloon.

We’ve been here before. Déjà vu. History repeats itself. Things don’t change for the better for the vast majority of human beings.

I read a couple of articles this past week that opened my eyes and made me think of how history and the present are intertwined. The first article ran in the New Yorker online in July 2020. The Invention of the Police tells the story of what we understand as “police” from ancient times to the present day. We learn how the American system of policing is based upon military practices. The article is well worth the few minutes it takes to read (or listen to) to see how the destructive, immoral patterns we witness in our world today have their roots in a history not worth repeating. 

My argument in Targets On Our Backs about how the police in the US are based on the slave patrols is further buttressed with some interesting facts:

In eighteenth-century New York, a person held as a slave could not gather in a group of more than three; could not ride a horse; could not hold a funeral at night; could not be out an hour after sunset without a lantern; and could not sell “Indian corn, peaches, or any other fruit” in any street or market in the city. Stop and frisk, stop and whip, shoot to kill.

Then there were the slave patrols. Armed Spanish bands called hermandades had hunted runaways in Cuba beginning in the fifteen-thirties, a practice that was adopted by the English in Barbados a century later. It had a lot in common with England’s posse comitatus, a band of stout men that a county sheriff could summon to chase down an escaped criminal. South Carolina, founded by slave owners from Barbados, authorized its first slave patrol in 1702; Virginia followed in 1726, North Carolina in 1753. Slave patrols married the watch to the militia: serving on patrol was required of all able-bodied men (often, the patrol was mustered from the militia), and patrollers used the hue and cry to call for anyone within hearing distance to join the chase. Neither the watch nor the militia nor the patrols were “police,” who were French, and considered despotic. In North America, the French city of New Orleans was distinctive in having la police: armed City Guards, who wore military-style uniforms and received wages, an urban slave patrol. (…)

It is also often said that modern American urban policing began in 1838, when the Massachusetts legislature authorized the hiring of police officers in Boston. This, too, ignores the role of slavery in the history of the police. In 1829, a Black abolitionist in Boston named David Walker published “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World,” calling for violent rebellion: “One good black man can put to death six white men.” Walker was found dead within the year, and Boston thereafter had a series of mob attacks against abolitionists, including an attempt to lynch William Lloyd Garrison, the publisher of The Liberator, in 1835. Walker’s words terrified Southern slave owners. The governor of North Carolina wrote to his state’s senators, “I beg you will lay this matter before the police of your town and invite their prompt attention to the necessity of arresting the circulation of the book.” By “police,” he meant slave patrols: in response to Walker’s “Appeal,” North Carolina formed a statewide “patrol committee.” —Jill Lepore, The Invention of the Police

Eye-opening and thought provoking, isn’t it? What we’ve tricked ourselves into believing—that all police officers are the handsome cops on Law and Order or diligent Detective Joe Friday in the TV series Dragnet—is completely false. We do have an excuse. We’ve been taught to believe these lies all our lives through the clever use of novels and television/movie dramas which paint the police in strictly heroic and positive terms. If there’s ever a racist cop or a crooked cop or a super-violent cop portrayed in fiction, they’re almost always seen as the exception, never the rule.

Jill Lepore’s article demonstrates how destructive this “copaganda” (cop propaganda) truly is. When an organization is based upon protecting the property (that is, enslaved persons) and tasked with maintaining the safety of the ruling elites (that is, to prevent slave uprisings), it will always be a corrupt and violent organization. Poor and powerless persons will undoubtedly suffer and die from this organization’s practices. It’s what our true masters—the super-rich oligarchs—demand of their policing agencies.

A corrupt, violent organization must hire and train only those who are willing to do the job they’ve been tasked with, which is to keep us the poor and struggling workers, persons of color, and unwanted immigrants in their proper place, planted firmly beneath the heels of the ruling capitalist elite.

Are you starting to see why history should never be allowed to repeat itself in regards to the police? The time of rounding up “property” in order to keep the capitalist class safe and wealthy is over. At least, it should be.

Even very recent history should never be repeated. This is noted well in Caitlin Johnstone’s article US Surrounds China With War Machinery While Freaking Out About Balloons:

So everyone's losing their minds over a balloon that in all probability would be mostly worthless for spying, even while everyone knows the US spies on China at every possible opportunity. US officials have complained to the press that American spies are having a much harder time conducting operations and recruiting assets in China than they used to because of measures the Chinese government has taken to thwart them, and in 2001 a US spy plane caused a major international incident when it collided with a Chinese military jet on China's coastline, killing the pilot.

The US considers it its sovereign right to spy on any nation it chooses, and the average American tends more or less to see it the same way. This is highlighted in controversies around domestic versus foreign surveillance, for example; Americans were outraged over the Edward Snowden revelations not because spy agencies were conducting surveillance, but because they were conducting surveillance on American citizens. It's just taken as a given that spying on foreigners is fine, so it's a bit silly to react melodramatically when foreigners return the favor.

But, of course, the US is acting melodramatically over a lost weather balloon. They are attempting to provoke the Chinese into a “shoot first” situation, such as they did to Russia in February 2022 when, under the auspices of the NATO, they completely forgot about the Minsk Agreements and armed Ukraine to fight a proxy war. Yet again we are all living under the imminent threat of nuclear war.

We’ve been here before. Déjà vu. History repeats itself. Things don’t change for the better for anybody.

Why are we repeating history like this on a yearly basis? Isn’t the military-industrial complex making enough money from armaments sales? Arms manufacturers' stock prices have skyrocketed on Wall Street. The idea that the US/NATO bloc can take on two nuclear powers at the same time is utterly insane. But here we are again, repeating history, attempting to provoke another super-power, while simultaneously riling up the American public’s emotions with over-the-top propaganda about a lost weather balloon. 

For example, my husband turned on ABC News Friday night. We rarely, if ever, watch mainstream media outlets, and he’d turned off the sound, but I noticed the first story was about the lost weather balloon. I went into the kitchen and a few minutes later I came back and noticed that the same video clip of the weather balloon was still plastered on the screen. I turned on the sound and heard nothing but hysterical “The Chinese are invading!” commentary. I promptly hit the mute button. Five minutes later, the weather balloon was still on the screen and “experts” were all screaming about how this lost weather balloon means war. ABC spent the entirety of its half hour newscast spewing inflammatory nonsense, probably at the behest of the Biden Administration. War propaganda bears repeating, apparently.

All Americans can learn something from celebrating Black History Month. That feeling of “We’ve been here before. Déjà vu. History repeats itself. Things don’t change for the better for the vast majority of human beings,” is real. It proves that our gut feeling is correct. The ruling elite will do whatever it takes to get the results they want. 

If the elite want to keep their enslaved workers from running away, they’ll equip and arm a slave patrol. If they want to corner the LNG market in Europe, make huge profits from selling arms, and destroy Russia’s and possibly China’s economies, they’ll rev up the propaganda machine of the mainstream media (90% of which are owned by just six corporations) to create the necessity for a war in order to do so.  

The US is still the only industrialized country on Earth without a single-payer (Medicare For All) health care system, free education pre-K through college, and a Universal Basic Income because these programs have been deemed unnecessary by our masters. We breath polluted air, drink water full of plastic particles, and eat cheap processed food infused with high fructose corn syrup because its all we can afford. If we should ever act out because of these injustices and protest, the elite's "slave patrols" stand ready to put us back into our place, swiftly and violently, if they deem necessary. 

Whatever the ruling capitalist elite want they will have it. They will have their way, and they won’t lose any sleep over how many are starved, killed, or maimed in the process. You can be sure about that, as history repeats itself.

Happy Black History Month, America. Our sordid history doesn't need to keep repeating itself. Abolitionist David Walker had the right idea for a rebellion, don’t you think? Watch out for those slave patrols.

 

Related Links:

Teach Black History--Don't Ban It https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/04/teach-black-history-dont-ban-it/ 

New Advanced Placement African American Studies Course is Watered Down Version of Itself  https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/03/new-advanced-placement-african-american-studies-course-is-watered-down-version-of-itself/

The Invention of the Police https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police

US Surrounds China with War Machinery While Freaking Out About Balloons  https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/03/caitlin-johnstone-us-surrounds-china-with-war-machinery-while-freaking-out-about-balloons/ 

The Pentagon's Balloon Floats On  https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/05/patrick-lawrence-the-pentagons-balloon-floats-on/ 

Chris Hedges: WikiLeaks Exposed the Extent of US Meddling Abroad and Corruption at Home. Why Have We Forgotten It? https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/04/chris-hedges-wikileaks-exposed-the-extent-of-us-meddling-abroad-and-corruption-at-home-why-have-we-forgotten-it/ 

 

Nuclear War Imminent? https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/03/nuclear-war-imminent/ 

 

More Evidence That The West Sabotaged Peace In Ukraine

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/more-evidence-that-the-west-sabotaged 

 

How the US Instigated the Ukraine Crisis https://popularresistance.org/how-the-us-instigated-the-ukraine-crisis/

 

Uncomfortable Truths: Critical Race Theory https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2022/02/uncomfortable-truths-critical-race.html

Why Not Reparations? https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2022/02/why-not-reparations.html

 

What's It Like to Be 3/5 of a Person? https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2022/02/whats-it-like-to-be-35-of-person.html

 

Targets On Our Backs https://continuousrev.blogspot.com/2023/01/targets-on-our-backs.html

 

Do the Police Have an Obligation to Protect You? https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/do-the-police-have-an-obligation-to-protect-you/

 

Quote of the week:

Ask an empire apologist to show you how China is aggressing against the US and they'll start babbling about TikTok and balloons. --Caitlin Johnstone

 

 

Comrades, can you spare a dime? Or the cost of a cup of coffee? Help us keep The Revolution Continues going another eight years by donating once or becoming a regular supporter. You can do so via our Substack account or through the link below. 

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TRCblog 

If you prefer Paypal, you can donate to us at  

https://paypal.me/camatthews  

Thank you. Power to the People!