US. Freedom of Speech. Foreign Policy.

By Sean O'Torrain. 

I was looking at the march in Paris led by hypocrites and governments which deny freedom of speech whenever it suits them. Not only deny freedom of speech but kill, imprison and torture its own citizens to keep them quiet. The Saudi regime is one of the closest friends of US imperialism and the Bush family. It has just begun to give lashes to a blogger whose views it disagrees with. He will get 50 a week until he gets a total of 1,000.  This is extreme savagery by the Bush family's friends. Then there is the US itself. What about Chelsea Manning, Snowden, Assange? The US has Chelsea Manning in solitary confinement for telling the American people what is going on in their name in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for exercising his freedom of speech. 

There was a low level presence from the US government at the march in Paris. This was for a number of reasons. One was the arrogance of the US government. They did not see why they needed to put on a big show. After all they are the US government. But another was worry that if they sent Obama or Biden they might be assassinated. There is particular hatred amongst the Islamic individual terrorist groups and Islamic military groups like ISIS for the US. They see the US as the main force in looting the wealth in their countries and propping up all sorts of extreme right wing reactionary and repressive regimes. 

The following is not spoken of much, freedom of speech you see also involves who owns and controls the mass media outlets, if you own the mass media then you are free to decide what goes in it, if you do not own it you are not your are not free to decide what goes in it. Put aside the bias in the mass capitalist media and think and what hatred the following actions have stirred up. 

The American historian William Blum recently published his updated summary of the record of US foreign policy from1945. This showed that since that year alone, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders. The US is supposed to exercise freedom of speech. But how many people in the US are aware of these facts? Use your imagination. Think about these actions which are carried out in the name of the US population but are really carried out in the interests of the US corporations, that is US imperialism.  

This blog unconditionally condemns what the extreme right wing Islamic forces did in Paris in murdering the cartoonists and journalists and the other victims. We stand unconditionally for freedom of speech. This does not mean that we ourselves do not think of the effect of what we write and print. We do. And we also insist on our freedom of speech in being able to say what we think is a good idea to print or not. But we unconditionally oppose any attempt to repress freedom of speech. In doing so  we also insist in exercising our own freedom of speech and pointing the finger at all the forces who try to keep others quiet. And also point the finger at US imperialism which struts around the world overthrowing and bombing and manipulating any country it can in the meanwhile ranting on about democracy and freedom of speech.