Tag: Network

“There is no America, there is no democracy”

Thoughts on Gaza and the Profitability of Genocide

BILL ASTORE

JUL 10, 2025

I sent this somewhat despairing note to a friend this morning:

It remains unclear to me whether the U.S. government kowtows to Israel (for all the reasons we know, like AIPAC), or whether Israel is a sort of cat’s paw for U.S. imperial and corporate interests. Maybe it’s not about nations and borders, as the famous speech from “Network” put it, but rather resources and profit, whether oil, water, weapons, and the like. The people of Gaza are simply in the way and entirely expendable to these larger interests. Naturally, propaganda is skillfully used to portray just about every Palestinian as a Hamas terrorist. Then, as you noted, there’s a media blackout on Gaza in most U.S. mainstream media sources.

Short of revolution, I don’t see any changes coming. The Democrats, of course, are just as happy to serve Israel and corporate interests.

This is the famous scene from “Network” featuring a brilliant performance by Ned Beatty:

If the world is a “college of corporations” (heck, even Harvard is a corporation) and if business and money is the universal lubricant, the Palestinians in Gaza are both good and bad for business. They are “good” in the sense that money can be made from killing them, concentrating them, monitoring them, expelling them, and so on. Speaking and documenting this horrendous truth got Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, sanctioned by the U.S. government, as Lisa Savage noted here.

They are “bad” for business with respect to the gas fields off Gaza. Those marine gas reserves are likely worth $5 billion or more, money that would have done much to alleviate poverty in Gaza. Of course, Israel wasn’t about to allow Palestinians in Gaza to share in this bounty. Getting rid of Palestinians is a means to the end of completely dominating future trade in gas and other commodities in the Levant Basin.

I’ve been wondering why Great Britain is at great pains to help the Netanyahu government—then I noted that British Petroleum is one of the giant corporations that Israel granted a license to for future gas exploration. Coincidence?

Now, unlike Ned Beatty above, I’m not saying everything is explained by money and currency flows as “the primal forces of nature.” But it’s always a good idea to follow the money. It’s a ghastly business indeed when genocide makes money, but there you have it. A large part of the Holocaust in World War II was Germans and their fellow travelers taking everything from the Jews before they killed them. Profit from death factories—a grim truth I care not to contemplate, but it happened. Mass death can be a huge money-maker, and those pulling the strings couldn’t care less about body counts. Quarterly profits—now those they care about.

This suggests a strategy for activism—except efforts at BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) are heavily resisted by the powers that be. Surprise! You can find out more about the BDS movement here.

When protests are bad for business, that’s when the powerful pay attention. Powerful people already know the truth—they do everything in their power to determine what is “true”—so they’re not interested in right or wrong. What’s “right” is what makes money and what’s wrong, very wrong, loses money. You can’t appeal to their collective conscience (Good luck with that!), but you can possibly appeal to or cut into their collective profits.

Too cynical? What say you, readers?

We’re Mad As Hell — And Fighting Each Other

Peter Finch in “Network”

W.J. Astore

In the movie “Network” from 1976, a TV news anchor played by Peter Finch builds a mass following by promising to kill himself on the air while declaring that “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!”  The network execs are all too happy to encourage him – as long as his outrage is good for ratings and doesn’t threaten the system.  But when Finch starts to step on corporate agendas, he has the riot act read to him by Ned Beatty, who explains “There is no America.  There is no democracy” and that “The world is a college of corporations.”  A visibly shaken Finch realizes he’s in over his head.

I’ve always liked that catchphrase from the movie, for we the people should be as mad as hell, and we should refuse to take it.  We should act.  But what’s interesting is how our anger is redirected before we can act.    

We’re not supposed to be mad at the oligarchs – that “college of corporations” – who own it all and who push all the buttons. No — our anger is supposed to be tribal. We’re supposed to hate Republicans, or Democrats, or anti-vaxxers, or Trump supporters, or someone — someone ultimately like us, without much power. The anger is ginned up to encourage us to punch down while keeping us disunited.

Being mad can be good if the anger is channeled against the exploiters; it’s not good when it’s exploited by the powerful to keep us divided and weak.

America’s two-party system is designed to deflect anger away from the moneyed interests and toward each other.  What we need is a new political party that truly represents the people rather than the oligarchs.  Neither major party, Republican or Democrat, seems reformable.  Both are captured by moneyed interests.  After all, if money is speech, who can yell louder: you and me, or Lockheed Martin and Amazon? Even the “anti-establishment” voices in either major party have largely been neutralized. Or they get sicced on the enemy of the day, whether it’s evil woke Democrats or evil unwoke Trumpers.

Hence nothing really changes … and that’s the point.

America needs an anti-imperial party, a “Come home, America” party, a party that puts domestic needs first as it works to downsize the military and dismantle the empire.  Yet, in the spirit of Orwell’s 1984 and the Two Minutes’ Hate, Americans are always kept hating some putative enemy.  Russia!  Radical Islamic Terror!  China!  Immigrants at the gate!  Maybe even an enemy within.  We’re kept divided, distracted — and downtrodden

If we continue to be at war with each other while punching down, we’ll never turn righteous anger against the right people.  We’ll never effect meaningful change.

It’s said that power never concedes anything without a demand.  Why do we demand so much from the powerless and so little from the powerful?  Isn’t it high time we reversed that?