Happily married.Retired. 3 grown Up Children. 2 Grandchildren.Bibliophile. Secular humanist. Democratic socialist. Animal lover. DON’T DO MONEY OR OF 🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
Liverpool, England
Joined May 2009
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“To learn without thinking is fatal but to think without learning is just as bad”. The Analects of Confucius II, 15
Guy Mitchell retweeted
They will say: "Colonialism ended. It’s in the past. Move on."
The wealth extracted during colonialism did not end when colonialism ended.
It moved. It compounded.
It became the capital base of the modern Western economies.
It became the university endowments and the banking systems and the infrastructure and the head start that turns into the ongoing gap between the countries that extracted and the countries that were extracted from.
The past is not past in the way that phrase requires.
The past is the present’s foundation.
And asking people to "move on" from a foundation that is still structurally determining their circumstances is not a call for reconciliation.
It’s a request to stop noticing.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
The groundbreaking documentary by Lebanese journalist @radwanmortada about Israel’s pager attacks is now available for English speakers.
3 weeks after it was released, the Israelis looted and then blew up Radwan’s house.
Tomorrow pro-Israel fanatics will release a propaganda film in U.S. theaters about the criminal pager attacks.
Watch Radwan’s movie instead ⬇️
aljazeera360.com/video/10423…
Guy Mitchell retweeted
Understand what a compliant China would have meant.
Not just strategically. Economically.
The largest consumer market on earth, opened on American terms.
The manufacturing base of Asia, structured to serve American capital.
A military ally anchoring the Western Pacific.
A permanent American presence at the edge of the Soviet Union's eastern flank.
This was not a fantasy. This was the plan.
This was what Washington spent billions supporting the Kuomintang to achieve.
The plan failed. Completely, irreversibly, and publicly.
And the alternative that emerged, a China explicitly committed to its own development on its own terms, hostile to the architecture of American-managed Asian order, has never stopped being, at the core of American strategic anxiety, the thing that went wrong.
Everything since, the refusal to recognize the PRC for three decades, the Korean War, the Taiwan Strait crises, the American war in Vietnam, the encirclement strategy, the current technology war, is the long aftermath of 1949.
The plan failed.
Washington never fully accepted that the failure was permanent.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
The Korean War is rarely taught honestly.
It is taught as a response to "North Korean aggression."
It was also the moment the United States came into direct military confrontation with a China it had just "lost" and was not prepared to accept as a permanent fact.
When American-led UN forces pushed toward the Yalu River, toward the Chinese border, and China entered the war, what followed was one of the most brutal reversals in American military history.
The "frozen Chosin." Changjin Lake. The retreat. The casualties.
A China that had just emerged from a century of foreign humiliation, fighting with an army that had been at war continuously for over a decade and was equipped largely with captured weapons, stopped the American advance and pushed it back.
The war ended roughly where it started.
The "loss" of China, it turned out, could not be reversed by force.
That lesson was available in 1953.
The decades of encirclement, containment, and strategic hostility that followed suggest it was not fully absorbed.
ALT Chinese People's Volunteers crossing the Yalu River into Korea, October 1950. Their intervention would transform the course of the Korean War and force American-led forces into a major retreat.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
The phrase "Who lost China?" entered American political discourse in 1949 and never really left.
Sit with the grammar of it.
Not: China chose its own government.
Not: the Chinese people ended a civil war on their own terms.
Who. Lost. China.
As though China were a set of keys misplaced by an inattentive administration.
As though a country of 500 million people were an object that could be possessed, managed, and through negligence, dropped.
That grammar is not a metaphor.
It is a precise expression of how American foreign policy thought about the world. And still does.
Countries are not sovereign actors making their own choices.
They are positions. Assets. Pieces on a board.
And when a piece moves in a direction Washington didn’t choose, someone must have lost it.
The possibility that no one lost China, that China simply decided, remains, in certain American foreign policy circles, genuinely unthinkable.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
a reminder that Israel is not a real country. It doesn't have declared borders. It doesn't have a constitution. Its population does not have family roots in the land prior to the modern advent of zionism. They don't have a native culture, native food, dance, or stories.
Israel is literally the greatest heist of the 20th century that expelled an ancient society and turned their land into a jewish supremacist military outpost murdering its way through time, and constantly cobbling together new stories about itself to suit the latest political whims, while destroying everything that threatens their latest flimsy narrative.
God and the Bible have nothing to do with this abominable entity. They're not "chosen." They're not "a light." They're the biggest and most dangerous charlatans the world has ever known.
That was not a democratic election. It was another act in this absurd theatre we're all forced to endure.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
Every country America calls a "rogue state" has something in common.
It refused a request.
The request was always the same.
It was never about democracy.
It was never about human rights.
Open the market.
Accept the dollar.
Host the base.
Refuse, and the "human rights concerns" begin.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
The ideological function of the Cuba argument is not primarily about Cuba.
Cuba has 11 million people and an economy the size of a mid-sized American city.
The function is to make any alternative to the existing economic order look like this:
Shortages. Lines. Restrictions. Decay.
So that when workers in any country begin asking whether a different arrangement might be possible, when they look at their own wages and their own conditions and begin wondering aloud who the economy is actually organized to benefit, there is a ready image.
"You want Cuba? That’s what you want?"
Cuba, the small island nation strangled by six decades of sanctions, is made to represent the ceiling of what any alternative can achieve.
Not because the evidence supports that conclusion.
Because the sanctions helped manufacture it.
The image is a product.
A very expensive, very deliberately produced product.
Paid for, in part, by ordinary Cubans who had nothing to do with the argument being made over their heads.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
El señor Zelenski debería mirar bien estas imágenes… Es el líder de la Revolución cubana, Fidel Castro, recibiendo a miles de niños ucranianos que sufrieron exposición a radiación en el accidente de Chernobyl… fueron recibidos en Cuba y tratados integralmente durante más de 20 años sin ningún costo, como un deber humano con el pueblo soviético.
Ayer, Zelenski, en “agradecimiento” por aquel gesto, votó en la ONU a favor de que se mantenga el bloqueo cruel y genocida contra mi país… La miseria humana no tiene límites!
Guy Mitchell retweeted
I have today written to the Charity Commission to complain about the activities of Westminster Synagogue which appears to have broken charity law by hosting fundraising campaigns for the 'Israel' occupation forces on its website.
The letter was supported by a four page briefing containing all the evidence assembled by Public Interest Investigations. The covering letter is below. A review of the evidence is in my recent article for @mintpressnews. The link is in the replies below.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
Imagine spending 66 years under an embargo imposed by a country 90 miles away that has tried to assassinate your head of state over 600 times.
And then being lectured by that country about democracy.
Cuba has survived this.
Cuba is still there.
The lecture continues.
The Castro regime has profited at the expense of the Cuban people with luxury cars, expensive watches and a private island resort. As I shared this with the world, regime thugs rushed the stage to interrupt my speech.
They can intimidate their own people in Cuba but think again about trying that nonsense in the United States of America.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
Cuba has a higher literacy rate than the United States.
It has a longer life expectancy than many countries far wealthier than it.
It produced a medical system capable of sending doctors to dozens of countries, including some that sanctioned it.
It did all of this under 66 years of economic blockade.
Now imagine what it might have built without the blockade.
The people who imposed the blockade have imagined this too.
That is why the blockade continued for 66 years.
Not because Cuba was failing.
Because Cuba was, in specific and inconvenient ways, succeeding.
And a Cuba that succeeded under its own system was more dangerous to the argument than a Cuba that failed.
The blockade was not punishment for failure.
It was prevention of success.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
The most honest statement ever made about Cuba policy came from a State Department memo in 1960, written before the sanctions were fully implemented.
The memo, written by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory, stated that the U.S. should pursue a policy to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of the Cuban government.
Not: respond to "Cuban repression."
Not: protect Cuban human rights.
Not: promote democracy.
Hunger. Desperation. Overthrow.
This memo is declassified. It is in the historical record. It is not disputed.
It means that every subsequent year of sanctions, every subsequent citation of Cuban poverty and dysfunction as evidence of socialist failure, every subsequent American official expressing concern for the welfare of the Cuban people:
All of it happened downstream of a documented decision to deliberately produce hunger and desperation in that population.
This is not a conspiracy theory.
It is a declassified government document.
The conspiracy was the policy.
The theory was written in plain English by an American official in 1960 and has been implemented faithfully for 66 years since.
What they wanted to prove, they engineered the conditions to prove.
And then they called it evidence.
ALT U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester D. Mallory's secret memorandum recommended economic measures to bring about "hunger, desperation and overthrow of government" in Cuba. Declassified U.S. State Department memorandum, 6 April 1960, FRUS Document 499.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
The most immoral army continues to slaughter children. Nearly daily.
UN bodies and human rights groups have documented the pattern in detail. Anyone who denies it should read these reports.
We keep receipts and there will be accountability.
#PalestineTrials
Guy Mitchell retweeted
This nonsense has gone far enough
Guy Mitchell retweeted
They tell you to be afraid of these countries.
And I want to ask you, seriously, to sit with this:
Name the last country Iran invaded.
Name the last country Cuba destabilized through a coup.
Name the last population North Korea bombed into the Stone Age.
Name the last foreign president China abducted in a military raid.
Now do the same exercise for the country that told you to be afraid.
The fear is a product.
It is manufactured, distributed, and renewed on a regular cycle because fear justifies the budget.
And the budget justifies the bases.
And the bases justify the fear.
You are not afraid because these countries are "dangerous."
You are afraid because someone, very powerful, very expensive, needs you to be.
Follow the money.
Follow the bases.
Follow the bombs.
And then ask yourself one more time:
Who, in this picture, should actually be afraid of whom?
Guy Mitchell retweeted
Here is a question they will never ask on the evening news:
If American-style capitalism is so self-evidently superior that it wins any free competition...
Why does it require sanctions, coups, trade wars, regime change, military bases, and the systematic destruction of any country that tries something different in order to prove its superiority?
A system confident in its own merits does not need to eliminate the competition.
It wins the competition.
The effort required to prevent alternatives from functioning is itself the most honest testimony available about how the comparison would actually turn out if the competition were allowed to be free.
They know what an undisturbed Cuba might look like after 66 years.
That is precisely why Cuba has not been left undisturbed.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
America does not have allies.
It has assets with expiration dates.
The relationship is entirely clear if you read it without the vocabulary it comes wrapped in.
You provide something: a base, a border, a resource, a regional buffer, a vote in an international body, a population willing to fight a war Washington wants fought but not by Americans.
In exchange, you receive support. Weapons, money, diplomatic cover, the protective association of American power.
The transaction is real. The support is real.
What is not real is the implication that the transaction is permanent.
The moment you stop providing what they came for, or the moment they find a cheaper source, or a new strategic priority makes your geography irrelevant, or domestic politics make the relationship a liability, the transaction ends.
And you will be left holding weapons that need American spare parts, an economy restructured around American investment, a military trained to American doctrine, and the discovery that none of it came with a guarantee.
This is not betrayal.
It was never a promise.
It was always a transaction.
The tragedy is being the last one in the room to understand that.
Guy Mitchell retweeted
That story about Google killing hundreds of thousands of trees in Finland for its data center project is such a perfect microcosm of what capitalism is doing to our world.
Recent mass media headlines are saying the tech giant "illegally" cut down "250,000" trees, but both claims paint an inaccurate picture of what actually happened. Google killed 400,000 trees (250,000 near a town called Muhos and another 150,000 near the village of Otanmäki), and unless the company's executives actually wind up going to prison for this, their actions cannot properly be described as "illegal".
I don't know who first coined the saying "If the penalty is a fine, then it's legal for rich people," but it certainly applies here. The Finnish Licensing and Supervision Authority has reportedly ordered Google to suspend all “measures that significantly change the environment," saying it will "consider enforcement proceedings and fines" if the megacorporation does not comply. Google's parent company Alphabet has a net worth of around four trillion dollars. Whatever paltry penalties Finland might impose for these ecocidal actions, it won't have any meaningful effect on Google.
Giant corporations do this shit all the time. They calculate that the fines incurred by their abusive actions will be dwarfed by the massive profits they generate, issue fake apologies as needed, and leave it to their armies of lawyers to minimize the damage. That's why the Sackler family is still worth billions despite all the fines Purdue Pharma was slapped with while creating the US opiate epidemic.
A 2017 Harvard study titled “The Opioid Epidemic: Fixing a Broken Pharmaceutical Market" contains the following paragraph:
"Although civil claims and criminal charges were brought against Purdue and its executives, the resulting penalties paled in comparison to extended-release oxycodone profits. In May 2007, the company and its president, chief counsel, and former chief medical officer pled guilty to falsely marketing extended-release oxycodone as 'less addictive, less subject to abuse and diversion, and less likely to cause tolerance and withdrawal than other pain medications.' As part of the plea bargain, Purdue agreed to pay the federal government $600 million and 27 states $20 million. The three executives agreed to $34.5 million in fines but avoided jailtime. By contrast, Purdue has earned an estimated $31 billion in total revenues from extended-release oxycodone since its launch. Rather than deterring fraudulent marketing, the penalties simply became a cost of doing business."
A cost of doing business.
That's how things work under capitalism. The law primarily exists not to protect people or the environment, but to protect the interests of capital. If you destroyed a Google data center you'd probably be charged as a terrorist and spend decades in prison, but Google can destroy the natural world around you and get off with a finger wag and a symbolic fine. If you stole millions of dollars from your employer you'd go to prison for grand larceny, but if your employer steals millions from its employees you need to win a class action lawsuit to get back what they stole from you.
Proponents of capitalism often pretend they support minimal government intervention in civilian affairs, but their entire model is at all times propped up by state power using force to protect the haves from the have-nots at every level of our society. Corporations are free to destroy the environment, destroy your health, rob you, exploit you, and manipulate your government to their advantage, and if you ever take action to stand up to this world-devouring onslaught, the state will lock you in a cage.
In school we are taught that that the law exists to protect ordinary people from bad people, but that's not true at all. Under capitalism, the law exists to protect the very worst among us from everyone else. That's why we are seeing our planet being turned into dust and ashes for no reason other than shareholder profit.
It's an insane system, and it needs to end. These freaks are feeding our entire biosphere into the woodchipper.