Battle of Algiers vs. Battle of America: Two tales about the horrors of occupation

     I'm currently watching that old movie classic, Battle of Algiers.  Filmed in 1966, it won a whole bunch of awards -- as well it should.  "What is the plot?" you might ask.  It's a story of how Algeria threw off the suppressive yoke of its brutal French occupiers back in 1962.  After 150 years of being under the thumb of the dread French Foreign Legion and harshly dominated by settler-colonialist invaders from France, Algeria had pretty much been sucked dry -- and so the locals rebelled.  You gotta watch the movie to understand the full effect.  It's on HBO Max.

      "The first thing that we need to do," declared the rebels, "is to strengthen the Algerian people,"  Kind of like a "Make Algeria Great Again" movement -- only without any real estate tycoons, war mongers or phony populists in charge.

      The rebels then went about cleaning up the streets of Algiers.  Gangsters, prostitutes, drug dealers, alcoholics and junkies had all been encouraged by the French -- or had been a sad result of the cruel French domination.

     So that's what happened at the beginning of the Battle of Algiers.  That was the starting point for taking their country back.  They cleaned up the streets.  However, this is a rather hard movie to watch so I took it in segments.  The next part of the movie is when the Front de Libération Nationale rebels appealed to the United Nations to follow the rules of its own freaking charter and help end the French occupation.

     To this end, the FLN called a general strike to show the UN that all of Algeria supported the return of its freedom.  The general strike was then brutally suppressed by French armed forces.  But still.  The United Nations voted to not interfere anyway.  The hopeful promise of the UN charter was broken to bits by this vote in support of Algeria's brutal occupation.  

     I'll watch the rest of the movie tomorrow.  Will let you know how it ends.  Oops.  We already know how it ends!  The brutal occupation was overthrown! 

      Now let's move on -- to the Battle of America.  Yeah, America is an occupied country too.  For the past 150 years, we've been brutally occupied and sucked dry as well -- by the powerful and elite military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about.  The Rockefellers and Carnegies sucked us dry back in the nineteenth century, and conglomerates like General Electric, Raytheon, the Federal Reserve and AIPAC are still sucking us dry now.  

 

     No, it's not another country that is bleeding America dry -- but rather our very own elite corporations.  The results, however, are the same as in Algeria.  Gangsters, prostitutes, drug dealers, alcoholics and junkies.  Homelessness, job scarcity, failing infrastructure and quiet desperation.

     It's not Venezuela (or even Marco Rubio's buddies in Ecuador, the real source of our illegally-imported cocaine) that is responsible for America's drug problem.  It is America's cruel occupation by heartless, narcissistic and fascist corporations that have caused it.

     So.  What can we American rebels do to clean up America's streets?  We can't just go out and shoot all the low-lifes cluttering them up.  It's not their fault that they, after 150 years of brutal corporate occupation, have been been given very few other options.  What we rebels actually need to do is to give the "Wretched of the Earth" here other options too.  Duh.

     And that will only happen when the corporate boot of occupation is removed from off of our necks here too.

      Another similarity between Occupied Algeria and Occupied America is how both occupations violated international and national laws, rules, morality and justice.  The UN violated its own charter by enabling the French occupation of Algeria.  And elite corporations here violate the U.S. Constitution just as often as humanly possible as well.

      What we need to do next is file a class-action suit against the United Nations for violating its charter -- this time with regard to the brutal occupation of Palestine.  And we also need to sue major American corporations for violating our Constitution as well.  "Meet ya in court!"  But unfortunately that probably won't ever happen -- and Americans too will just continue to slide downhill into a morass and gutter of drugs, prostitution, unemployment, gangsters, homelessness, poverty, whatever.

PS:  I recently heard journalist Steve Martinot give a presentation on his new book, Police Brutality -- wherein he pointed out that America has always been ruled by ruthless corporations that were only out to make a buck -- not just in the past 150 years.  "The first corporation to dominate this continent was a British conglomerate, The London Company, that caused the ruination of the Jamestown colony back in 1699."  The London Company's greedy for-profit-only policies basically sucked Jamestown dry.  

 

     "But how did The London Company suck Jamestown dry?" you might ask.  By demanding that all the colonists' production be sent back to Britain, and the colonists were also ordered to slaughter the local Algonquian tribe and steal their land -- making The London Company one of the very first war profiteers in the world and midwife to America's current military-industrial complex.  The result?  Jamestown suffered from "The Great Starvation" -- just like you and me are also gonna suffer too if we don't watch out. 

     Yeah, and major corporations and conglomerates are still at it today.  And yet there is still hope that, like Algeria, America too can somehow break free of its brutal occupation.  I'm not in favor of bloodshed, but a general strike here and there might be nice.  And a whole bunch of lawsuits against our government and the UN for not obeying their constitutions and charters would surely be appropriate here too.

     To paraphrase the famous 1976 movie Network (and also to paraphrase the FLN), "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"

Resources:

Maung Zarni, who I toured the West Bank with recently, just wrote an article bout how Americans are turning into serfs:  https://substack.com/home/post/p-181442811

 

Remember to buy Steve Martinot's book:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/police-brutality-steve-martinot/1146515210 

 John Mearsheimer gives us a huge dose of reality with regard to America's screwed up foreign policy:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWdG8qqcZ4U

Peter Dale Scott explains the Deep State to us.  "It's more like a system..."  Interesting.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tz7CzkMW04

This report is totally scary!  Vaccinated adults have a 50% higher risk of getting Altzheimers!  I was required to get 15 vaccines when I was in the Peace Corps. I'm doomed.  STUDY: Common Vaccines Linked to 38-50% Increased Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s

Richard Wolff discusses important economic stuff:  Richard Wolff: New Economic Model for Post-Hegemony America

Yanis Varoufakis discusses more important economic stuff:  The "Unthinkable" Deal The US Just Offered China & Venezuela | Yanis Varoufakis

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