https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/government-itself-is-immoral?justPublished=true&embeddedPostPublications=
Government Itself is Immoral
No, I do not want better elections. I do not want to "clean up the system." I do not want to "get the money out of politics" and "make sure every vote is counted" and "drain the swamp" so we can "Make America [or any other geographical area] Great Again."
The state is not a benevolent force, despite what the most brainwashed of statists believe. It is not even a neutral tool that can be used for good or ill, as those who consider themselves pragmatists believe. It is violence. It is force. It is aggression. It is people believing that what is wrong for any individual to do is perfectly OK if an agent of the state does it.
If I steal, it is theft. If the state steals, it is taxation. If I kill, it is murder. If the state kills, it is warfare. If I force someone to work for me involuntarily, it is slavery. If the state does it, it is conscription. If I confine someone against their will, it is kidnapping. If the state does it, it is incarceration. Nothing has changed but the label.
What binds us to the state is the belief that there is a different morality for anything that has been sanctified through the political process. "Oh, 50%+1 of the population voted for forced vaccinations? Then I guess we have to comply." If you scoff at that sentence, how about if the vote were 100%-1? Would that change the morality of resistance? How about if forced vaccinations were mandated by the constitution? Then would you be compelled to submit?
Does the ballot box transform the unethical into the ethical? Of course not. But I'll tell you what it does do: It makes everyone who casts their ballot a part of the process that legitimizes the murder and violence committed by agents of the state.
No, I am not an efficiency manager for the state. I do not want to help it do its job of inflicting aggression and violence on peaceful people. I want the state to perish, not through violence or bloodshed, but by removing the mystical superstition from the minds of the general public that makes them believe that "government" is anything other than a gang of thugs with a fancy title.
This is the point that—in my experience as a communicator of voluntaryist ideas—I start butting up against a brick wall of incomprehension when talking to the normies in the crowd. They start having mental breakdowns, frothing at the mouth that "votes need to happen."
As if voting, elections, positions of responsibility and other things that exist under statism could not exist under voluntary associations. As if voluntary association itself were such an arcane and bewildering concept that no one could possibly wrap their head around it (let alone, heaven forfend, read a book or two to see if some of their questions on the subject have already been answered).
No, much easier to go back to the comforting political wrestling match. "Red vs. Blue? Now that I can get behind!"
That's a travesty, really. Because the truth is that this is not a complicated message. It's actually remarkably simple, and remarkably hopeful. The truth is that . . .
There is Only One Vote That Matters
You'd think that a column like this would be all doom and gloom.
"Oh sure, James," say the statists in the crowd, twirling their handlebar moustaches and fingering the "I Voted" sticker proudly displayed on their chest, "but what's your solution? Sitting around and not voting is not going to change anything!"
Now I'm tempted to say, "Why ask for one solution when I've provided dozens?"
But, more seriously, I would say: You're right.
No, really. You're right. Sitting around and not voting is not going to change anything. Yes, by all means, let's vote! . . .
. . .But (and you knew there was a "but" coming) I'm not talking about voting in some phony baloney (s)election to anoint some political puppet as President of this geographical location. I'm talking about the only vote that matters.
Hmmm . . . if only I had a way to explain this to the normies.
Oh, wait! I do.
[. . .]For the rest of us, there is the realization that the political system itself is just another form of enslavement. An enslavement that is all the more insidious, because it asks us to buy into it. All we have to do is push a button or pull a lever or touch a screen once every four years and we are now absolved from our moral responsibility.
Ironically, this realization is in itself liberating and puts the world into focus with crystal clarity. We are not cogs in some machine called “society” to be dictated to by some nebulous entity we have been taught to call “the government” or “the authorities.” We are free individuals freely interacting with those around us, bound by the moral injunction not to initiate force against others or take things from others against their will. We are responsible for our actions and their consequences, both positive and negative. We are responsible for what we do or don’t do to help those in our community, and to make this world better or leave it to rot. There is no political messiah that will descend from the heavens to tell us what to do or to protect us from the bad men. All we have is our self and our choices.
We vote every day, not in some meaningless election, but in whom we choose to associate with, what we choose to spend our money on, what we choose to invest our time and energy doing. This is the essence of freedom.
For us, it is painful to watch our brothers and sisters getting swept up in the election-cycle hype. We watch the sad spectacle not with a sense of scorn or derision, but with sadness for those who have not yet woken up to the reality of their mental enslavement. That sadness, however, is tempered by hope: hope that one day, those poor voters who are trudging off to that booth to pull that lever will realize that all they are really doing is voting for which slavemaster they will allow to put the chains around their neck.
Beautiful. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Too bad the people who really need to hear this message stopped reading this article when they realized it wasn't really about the Iowa caucuses.
....
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-govt-world-worst-violator-freedom-press-not-protector/5790062
US Government Is World’s Worst Violator of Freedom of Press, Not Its Protector
From the persecution and torture of journalist Julian Assange to mass censorship of independent media outlets by US government contractors in Silicon Valley, Washington’s attacks on freedom of the press hurt every country and person on Earth.
The US government employs many strategies to try to justify its intervention in the internal affairs and violation of the sovereignty of foreign nations. Chief among these deceptive tactics is Washington’s weaponization of accusations that its adversaries violate the freedom of expression.
This is quite ironic, given that the United States is the world’s leading violator of press freedoms, according to any consistent definition of the term.
And unlike the countries that Washington claims supposedly repress the freedom of expression within their borders, US government censorship of independent media outlets and suppression of alternative voices is global, hurting people across the planet.
The Joe Biden administration has in particular gone to great lengths to depict itself as a defender of civil liberties.
In May, the White House published a statement commemorating World Press Freedom Day. The purpose of the declaration was to portray Russia as a leading violator of free speech and the United States as its noble protector.
But the reality is Washington is guilty of exponentially more persecution of journalists than anything Moscow is even accused of.
US government persecution of Julian Assange threatens freedom of speech everywhere on Earth
There is no more gruesome symbol of the ludicrous hypocrisy of the United States portraying itself as a protector of press freedoms than its authoritarian persecution of the most famous journalist on Earth: Julian Assange.
The US government’s ruthless attack on Assange, the founder and publisher of whistleblowing journalism website WikiLeaks, is likely the worst blow to freedom of speech carried out by any government in history, with dangerous implications for all human beings on the planet.
The US case against Assange essentially amounts to a criminalization of journalism.
Washington is seeking to extradite and prosecute Assange, an Australian national who has never lived in the United States, for the “crime” of publishing truthful information exposing US war crimes – in other words, for doing the kind of journalism that any good reporter should do.
Assange is facing up to 175 years in prison on 18 charges. If it succeeds in the extradition process, the United States will likely throw the WikiLeaks publisher in a medieval-style dungeon, where he will be held in solitary confinement for the rest of his life.
Due to persecution by the United States and United Kingdom, Assange has already been essentially imprisoned for a decade. Starting in 2012, the WikiLeaks journalist sought refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London. He would end up being trapped there for seven years.
In 2015, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determined that Assange had been “arbitrarily detained” and should be released and given compensation.
The British government ignored the UN legal experts. Instead, in 2019, UK authorities violated Ecuador’s territorial integrity, entered the embassy, and kidnapped Assange (who by that time was a naturalized Ecuadorian citizen, in addition to his Australian nationality).
Since 2019, Assange has been subjected to draconian treatment in Britain’s maximum-security Belmarsh prison, held alongside people convicted of “terrorism,” murder, and other violent crimes.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention once again condemned the UK government in 2019 for violating the freedoms and fundamental rights of the Australian journalist.
In Belmarsh, Assange has been held in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours per day. UN legal experts have repeatedly stated that this kind of prolonged solitary confinement, which is routinely carried out by the United States and Britain, amounts to psychological torture.
In other words, Julian Assange has been effectively imprisoned for a decade, has been subjected to grueling torture, and will likely spend the rest of his life in a US prison, all because he committed the “crime” of doing journalism.
It is impossible to imagine a tyranny more absolute than this. With the Assange case, the United States is establishing a precedent that says it can imprison any journalist or really any person on Earth, regardless of their nationality, throw them in a dungeon for the rest of their life, and torture them. All Washington needs to do is fabricate charges and claim that that individual violated its domestic laws.
Assange is not the only victim of this kind of Kafkaesque persecution by the US regime. The United States holds multiple political prisoners, including Black revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Although it has less than 5% of the world’s population, the United States has nearly 25% of its prisoners.
US censorship of media affects the entire world, not just North Americans
In its May statement on World Press Freedom Day, the Biden White House condemned Russia for passing “a ‘disinformation’ law intended to silence those speaking the truth.”
The hypocrisy could hardly be any more ridiculous. The US government has used the canard of “disinformation” to censor news outlets and journalists from around the world, erasing their work and removing them from digital platforms.
While Washington accuses Moscow of violating the freedom of speech inside Russia, US censorship harms the entire planet.
In March, the US government forced YouTube to censor Russia’s major media network RT in every country on Earth. The European Union likewise banned Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik.
Washington and Brussels insisted this draconian violation of the freedom of speech was necessary because Moscow was supposedly spreading “disinformation” about the war in Ukraine. Their own media outlets, meanwhile, have constantly been exposed for disseminating fake news and misleading propaganda to justify illegal Western wars of aggression – which explains why just 11% of North Americans trust television news, and only 16% believe newspapers.
YouTube’s censorship of Russian media outlets did not just affect people in North America and Europe, but rather the entire world. And YouTube is not just a private company; it is owned by Google, which is inextricably linked to the US government.
All major Silicon Valley companies are US government contractors. Google, Facebook (which owns Instagram and WhatsApp), and Twitter have many billions of dollars of contracts with the US government agencies such as the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as police departments.
The US government uses Big Tech corporations in Silicon Valley as arms of soft power, censoring information that is inconvenient for its foreign-policy interests, violating the free speech of billions of people in foreign countries.
This censorship is often directly overseen by veterans of the US national security state. Google and Facebook have hired dozens of former CIA agents and NATO press officers. Twitter has recruited many former FBI officers, and the top official overseeing Middle East-related content on Twitter is also a member of British Army’s psychological warfare unit, which admits to waging “information warfare.”
Silicon Valley censorship has silenced countless media outlets and journalists in China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria, and other countries targeted by the US empire for destabilization
Iranian media outlets have been constantly censored by the US government and its soft-power arms in Silicon Valley. The US Justice Department has even seized the domain names of dozens of news websites that it alleged were being run by Iran and Yemen.
Iran’s top network Press TV has had its social media accounts censored dozens of times. The US regime likewise robbed its domain name presstv.com.
The US Justice Department seized Iran’s domain name presstv.com.
This social media censorship nearly always serves US government interests.
Just a week before Nicaragua’s elections in November 2021, Silicon Valley launches a coordinated purge of pro-Sandinista accounts on social media.
Hundreds of profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook were censored. All of them were pro-Sandinista. Not a single account was from the US-backed right-wing opposition. On the contrary, Nicaraguans from the US-backed right-wing opposition are constantly promoted on social media, and verified while leftists are suspended.
The same was clear in the US-led coup attempt against Venezuela. Representatives from Venezuela’s democratically elected government were suspended on Twitter, whereas US-appointed coup puppets like unelected putschist Juan Guaidó and his gang of corrupt cronies were all verified and promoted.
While using vague allegations of “disinformation” to justify censoring these independent voices on social media, Silicon Valley corporations simultaneously take money from US state media outlets to run ads promoting propaganda against Washington’s adversaries.
In addition to direct censorship through suspensions, there is also more subtle censorship by Silicon Valley mega-corporations.
Google, for instance, distorts its algorithm in order to promote mainstream corporate media websites, and has a blacklist of outlets that it hides in search results. This means that independent media publications, especially left-wing and anti-imperialist pages, are severely hurt by the Google algorithm and get significantly less traffic.
Even DuckDuckGo, which markets itself as a Google alternative that protects privacy, engages in this political censorship. After Russia initiated its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, the website announced that it would be demoting in its search results any websites that it accuses of being pro-Russian.
While censoring independent journalists at home, US government funds so-called ‘independent journalists’ abroad to destabilize foreign adversaries
While the United States persecutes journalists that expose its crimes and aggressively censors independent media outlets that operate inside its borders, Washington ironically claims to support “independent media” abroad.
In its May statement on World Press Freedom Day, the Biden White House called for supporting so-called “independent media” in foreign countries.
CIA cutouts like the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have poured many millions of dollars into bankrolling media activists in countries where the United States seeks regime change.
The US government claims it is supporting “civil society,” but in reality it is funding political opposition groups that use the media as a weapon to destabilize Washington’s adversaries.
By definition, these media activists are not “independent” – they are receiving funding from the US government in order to advance its political interests. They are essentially indirect employees of the US State Department, and instruments of Washington’s soft power.
These media activists constantly spread fake news, disinformation, and propaganda, and have played a key role in violent coup attempts in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Hong Kong, Syria, Belarus, and beyond.
The absurd hypocrisy of Washington persecuting independent journalists at home while funding them abroad highlights the deep cynicism of the US regime’s information warfare tactics.
Washington may depict itself as the beacon of freedom and democracy, but its global empire is authoritarian and ruthless.
US government repression impacts everyone on Earth. As long as the United States maintains its empire, and continues to try to control all of the planet’s political and economic affairs, no country, and no individual, can ever be completely safe.
....
https://stephenlendman.org/2022/08/13/hegemon-usa-interventionism-worldwide/
Hegemon USA Interventionism Worldwide
Since the empire of lies emerged from WW II as the only major world nation unscathed by the ravages of war, it’s been an unparalleled menace to humanity worldwide.
Count the ways.
For over the past 75 years, its ruling regimes, largely Dem ones, have been involved directly or indirectly in 201 armed conflicts in 153 countries.
They comprise over 80% of global wars over this timespan.
At the same time, US rage for unchallenged global dominance waged war by other means on all nations unwilling to sell their sovereignty and souls to a high power in Washington — by color revolutions, coups, assassinations and sanctions to make economies scream.
The late William Blum put it this way, saying:
Throughout the post-WW II period, the US “war machine has been on auto pilot” — on the phony pretext of spreading democracy, what its ruling regimes abhor, tolerating government of, by and for everyone equitably nowhere, especially not at home.
Hegemon USA’s agenda throughout the post-WW II period “is worse than you imagine,” said Blum, stressing:
“If you flip over the rock of American foreign policy (throughout) the past century, this is what crawls out: invasions, bombings, (subversion), overthrowing governments, suppressing (popular) movements for social change, assassinating political leaders, perverting elections, manipulating labor unions, manufacturing ‘news,’ death squads, torture, (chemical), biological (and nuclear) warfare, (radiological contamination), drug trafficking, mercenaries,” police state repression, and endless wars on humanity.”
Countless tens of millions of corpses, at home and worldwide, attest to US barbarity, a rogue state like no others in world history from inception, especially in the modern era with super-weapons able to strike targets anywhere worldwide.
Blum detailed it in his books, articles and commentaries — essential to know truth-telling that US regimes and their MSM press agents suppress.
A near-generation ago, International Politics Professor Robert Jervis called “intervention as American as apple pie” in his book, titled “The New American Interventionism.”
It’s all about US sought hegemony by whatever it takes to achieve its diabolical aims.
From sea to shining sea land theft and extermination of Native Americans, to the halls of Montezuma and shores of Tripoli, to raping and destroying one nonbelligerent, nonthreatening nation after another for being free from US control — all of the above and what relates to it defines the American way, its diabolical drive for hegemony.
It’s been ongoing before and since its 1776 revolution, at the time continuing dirty business as usual under new management.
In 2019, Jimmy Carter, now aged-97, called the US “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” adding:
In its history from inception, they’ve been only 16 years of relative peace.
West Asian and North African Studies Professor Jawaid Iqbal called the US “the greatest violator of human rights” worldwide, adding:
Its ruling regimes “attempted to hide these violations by superficially deploying the language of democracy and rules, a language that results in the further attrition of human rights.”
Days earlier, the China Society for Human Rights Studies documented US crimes of war and against humanity, arbitrary detentions, torture of prisoners, indiscriminate sanctions, and other major violations of international law on targeted nations.
According to Cuban philosopher Gilberto Valdes Gutierrez:
US history is pockmarked by “numerous military interventions and the organizations of coups to eliminate those governments that did not easily accede to its demands.”
Fidel Castro redoubtably resisted hegemon USA’s rage to dominate from the 1959 Cuban revolution he led to his 2016 death at age-90.
Notably he said the following:
“I find (predatory) capitalism repugnant.”
“It is filthy. It is gross. It is alienating…because it causes (perpetual) war(s), hypocrisy and (cutthroat) competition.”
“Someday, the capitalist system will disappear in the US, because no social class system has been eternal.”
“One day, class societies will disappear.”
“We will all be in for our turn, but (what Fidel stood for) remain(s).”
It’s “proof that on this planet, if we work with fervor and dignity, we can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we must fight without ceasing to obtain them.”
Fidel passed on November 25, 2016. His spirit remains eternal.
In stark contrast to forever wars that define how hegemon USA operates, Fidel championed peace, equity and justice for all.
Along with smashing one independent nation after another, the empire of lies uses virtually every dirty trick imaginable in pursuit of its diabolical aims, including illegal sanctions and election-rigging at home and worldwide.
In her book, titled “Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War” hegemon launched at least 64 covert operations of subversion against other countries.
During new millennium years, its sanctions on targeted nations increased over tenfold.
Ones imposed on nonthreatening Russia are unparalleled in numbers and what’s targeted.
Throughout the post-WW II period through 2000 alone, US regimes interfered in 81 foreign elections, according to Political Science Professor Dov Levin.
Its drive for global hegemony is built on a foundation “of greed and lust for power,” according to political commentator John Wight.
Imperial arrogance defines the American way — waging endless wars by hot and/or other means to control other nations, plunder their resources and exploit their people as serfs.
There’s nothing remotely democratic, equitable or just about a nation willing to risk destruction of planet earth to own it.
That’s what the American way is all about — from inception to the modern era.
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