TMS: Corpse Merchants and Remorae

NinaIllingworth March 30, 2022November 5, 2022 analysis, anarcho-syndicalist analysis, anti war, arrest oil executives, ASNinaWrites, Big Oil, blog, blogger, Can't You Read, capitalism, class war, climate catastrophe, Climate Crisis, Climate Imperialism, crimes against humanity, fossil fuel industry, Fossil Fuel Wars, fossil fuels, Imperialism, instagram, investor class, Jonathan Katz, manufacturing consent, Media Madness, NATO, natural gas, Nina Illingworth, Nina-Bytes, no war but class war, nobody wins a war, nuclear war, peace activism, Propaganda, Quickshot Quotations, Quotes, Russia, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Smedley Butler, social media, ST2, the Mini-Skinny, The New Old Forever War, Tumblr, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, war, War is a Racket, war profiteering, WD7

Editor’s note: the Mini-Skinny is a social media analysis collection that aggregates related posts I made about a given subject over a short period of time. Today’s post features analysis from March 30th, 2022.

Hello friends; as you may be gathering, I’ve finally gone back to work. Before my unfortunate accident, I started to publish links to some new Mini-Skinny features here on NIDC. After mulling it over, I’ve decided the actual aggregate posts themselves look better here, than they do on Can’t You Read; so I switched them up. Without further delay then, let’s dive right in and talk about who in the Pig Empire profits from yet another fossil fuel war; cause it sure isn’t the labor class.

Profit and Loss

“The problem when the news talks about the cost of forever wars is that people rarely seem to understand that war is only expensive if you’re the one paying the bills. If you’re a weapons contractor, a logistics company, or a Wall Street investor who pays no taxes, its all profit for you. This is why the American investor class is always in favor of every potential war.”

Well my friends, the road to hell is certainly paved with, um, intentions. If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent the past five weeks watching in horror as all sorts of “interested parties” try to drag the entire Pig Empire into a war with Russia that nobody wins. While I certainly have no desire to try and litigate an ongoing invasion, primarily about the 14th largest natural gas deposit on Earth, here in two thousand characters, it’s safe to say this entire mess has been outright horrible for the labor class as a whole; both here, and in Eastern Europe.

Even as we acknowledge that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a unconscionable humanitarian crisis however, it is important to remember that not everyone is “suffering” under the effects of this war. Naturally, armchair warriors in the American media are free to play nuclear chicken knowing they’re unlikely to be held responsible for the fallout; but our media doesn’t launch wars, it just sells them.

No, to find the real profiteers in this struggle, at least domestically in the West, you have to look to the private sector. Take for example a primarily American arms industry, that is gleefully selling billions of dollars of additional weapons to pretty much every country in NATO right now; just in time to replace their profits lost in Afghanistan. Or Pig Empire oil companies, who stand to make between thirty-seven and a hundred and twenty-six billion in additional profits depending on how the price of oil shakes out under ongoing boycotts of Russian oil.

Please keep in mind that we aren’t just talking about a handful of mega-corporations here either. Thanks to the magic of Wall Street, most of the ruling class and decision makers in our societies are up to the necks in defense and fossil fuels stocks. Just yesterday, I saw a Forbes article encouraging petty bouge wannabe investors not to miss the Ukraine fossil fuel boom.

All war is class war; they just got you confused about who the “sides” are.

An Open Mass Murder Conspiracy

As I alluded to in yesterday’s post, a fairly serious injury recently gave me extra time to some new read books. Coincidentally, one of those books happened to be “Gangsters of Capitalism” by Johnathan M. Katz; a biography of Smedley Butler’s life as seen through the lens of American Imperialism. At some point, I intend to write a review of that volume, so I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone by laying some groundwork in today’s QotD post. As I’ve written before, Butler was a complicated figure; less a hero, than a penitent who conducted heroic acts. He did however leave us with one important work; “War is a Racket” and today’s quote comes from that extended-length essay.

At first glance, a casual observer may be tempted to dismiss what Butler is saying here as conspiratorial ravings; and indeed, many corpse merchants and war profiteers of his day, did precisely that. The problem of course here is that if the relationship between the state, private capital and war is a conspiracy, it’s one being conducted firmly in the open. Furthermore it’s important to understand that regardless of who starts the wars, looking at you this time Vladdy Putin; corpse merchants and profiteers everywhere are more than happy to harvest cash from humanitarian catastrophe.

Who are the people in the Pig Empire making “huge fortunes” on back of a fossil fuel war launched by a billionaire fascist? The usual suspects; oil companies and their investors, arms manufacturers and their investors, the occasional human trafficking gang. Nice people, honest. Look, I shouldn’t have to tell folks that there’s no such thing as a good war for the labor class, but after five weeks of watching most of the people around me clamor to pick a side, it’s starting to feel like I’m in a zombie movie. Whether we’re talking morally, financially, or physically, this conflict and its ongoing fallout are nothing short of a disaster for the labor class, pretty much everywhere.

Personally, I’m hoping for an unexpected outbreak of peace, but please don’t ask me to pretend that position is universal; I wasn’t born yesterday. War, all wars, are a racket; it’s just a question of figuring out who is getting gamed, and who is doing the gaming. And the best place to do that, is usually the bottom line.

Merchants of Destruction

Alright folks, let’s start with a little Pop Quiz here. What’s worse for a planetary ecosystem on the brink of collapse, than a huge war? The answer of course is a huge fossil fuel war that leads to massively increased production, and widespread profiteering by an oil and gas sector that should by all rights be charged with crimes against humanity already.

Let’s drill down into just one small example of that profiteering today by looking at this March 29th, 2022 summary by Jake Johnson, over at Common Dreams. Inside we find that according to a meticulous analysis conducted by a coalition of watchdog groups, Big Oil in America stands to make a killing on the fallout from the invasion of Ukraine. From the article in question:

“Under conservative estimates, we find the U.S. upstream oil and gas industry will collect a windfall of $37 to $126 billion in 2022 alone,” the groups’ report states.”

There will of course be those who want to quibble about the significant difference between thirty-seven billion dollars, and a hundred and twenty billion dollars, but from my distinctly labor class perspective, this is pretty obviously war profiteering by another name. Please keep in mind that this is an industry that’s already raking profits in hand over fist, while openly threatening the existence of most life on earth, every single day. Whether it’s a question of cause, or effect, why should humanity continue to tolerate a business that rings up big money every time (primarily poor) people die?

As long time readers of Nina-Bytes will no doubt be aware, I’m firmly in favor of not only disbanding the entire fossil fuel industry, but also seizing their ill-gotten profits, and the profits of their investors, to fight climate change. If war profiteering on the brink of a climate apocalypse isn’t enough for you, will spending billions of dollars to hide the truth about fossil fuels from the public do? How many wars over a gas field that should be kept in the ground does it take, before the price is too high? How many dead bodies does it require for “respectable” CEOs to become mass murderers?

Yet collectively in the Pig Empire, we live in a society where this industry’s army of lobbyists write the laws designed to fight climate catastrophe. Indeed, these same corporations, headed by mass murderers, easily buy and sell our politicians like so many sow bellies. Do you really believe the guys raking in billions from this war, are encouraging their in-pocket representatives to sue for peace? I sure don’t. Once you’re prepared to put billions of lives at risk to snag a quarterly bonus, what’s one more natural gas war on the edge of Europe?

Like most observers, I hope (for the sake of labor class folks everywhere) that Vladimir Putin will call off his invasion; the price of peace, even for him, is at an all-time low right now. Regardless of how this sad story ends however, the simple truth is that the fossil fuel industry represents an existential threat to all life on earth, and a primary generator of imperialist wars. It does no good to pray for peace, while bathing yourself in profits from the black blood of war. Big Oil must die; or it will ensure that the rest of us do instead – and those are just the facts, Jack.