Boycott The USA
And don't be a hypocrite
I saw a post today where a local, independent family restaurant is closing down. Yet another one. As they said in their post:
“Over recent years, the challenges facing small businesses have continued to grow. The ongoing rise in government-related costs, increasing food prices, and the lack of meaningful support for small, independent businesses have placed us in an impossible position.”
The comments were full of sympathetic messages (rightly so, it is a loss), and laments about the failure of the government to do anything for small businesses. But what annoyed me is that I bet most of those people go in foreign chain cafes like Starbucks and Costa (owned by fucking Coca-Cola, of all things), and buy stuff from Amazon.
For fuck’s sake, don’t be the problem.
Our government will do nothing. Red and Blue are the same nowadays (in both US and UK). They are in the pockets of corporations, they suppport genocide, and they do whatever USA tells them. They tie us into trade agreements where foreign businesses have to be given equal treatment to native ones, meaning we can’t give preferential treatment to local businesses. Our government created this problem, leading to empty high streets, and the government is not going to fix it. If Labour are evil enough to arm Israel so it can commit genocide in Palestine, do you think they give a shit about small businesses?
So the answer is with us. With our main power. Boycott.
Just as anyone with a conscience would boycott anything from Israel, we should also boycott anything from the USA. It’s the USA that treats International Criminal Court judges as if they were terrorists. That ignores international law. That has invaded or implemented “regime change” (often overthrowing democratic governments and replacing them with dictators) about ten times more nations than Russia ever did. I’m not defending Russia, but open your eyes!
Are you upset about Russia invading Ukraine in an attempt to kill the people and steal their land? Well, I hope you’re even more upset about Israel doing the same with Palestine over a much longer period. (I realise racists care about Ukranians because they’re white, but don’t care about Palestinians because they have darker skin.) The only difference is that the USA and UK back Israel (just as they did the evil apartheid of white South Africa). Shit, the UK and USA created Israel as a Western settler colony in 1948.
Worried about China? The USA has surrounded it with hundreds of military bases; China doesn’t have a single military base near the US. So which one is really the imperialist aggressor?
For fuck’s sake, the US just attacked Venezuela, kidnapped its president (who has a higher popularity rating in his country than the wanker Keir Starmer has in the UK), and admitted it is about stealing the country’s oil. The US has openly threatened to invade any nation that tries to prosecute US or Israeli war criminals. The US is threatening to take over Greenland and Canada and other nations that have resources it wants. The US is a white settler-colony nation built on land stolen from the indigenous people via genocide. Everything comes from that.
The US has initiated 201 out of 248 armed conflicts since the end of WWII. Let that sink in.
So if you care about local businesses, here are a few things you can do.
Only support independent UK cafes and shops! Put your money where your mouth is.
Boycott foreign chains. Your Starbucks, Costas etc. Do it for every kind of shop. Cafes, clothes shops, supermarkets, whatever. If it isn’t local, don’t give them a penny.
Boycott US companies and big tech in general. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and so on. It’s not easy, but it is doable if you put the effort in.
And don’t vote for Labour and Conservative dipshits. Make sure you only join and vote for parties with some element of socialism, that want to tax the rich, such as the Greens, or Your Party. (And pressure them to work together in the next election, not stand against each other.)
Or keep on going as you have been, and watch everything get worse.
PS I’m also an author. You can buy my books, or subscribe to my newsletter. I’m grateful for either. :-)
Absolutely, Karl. Using our money as a tool for change should be a way of life for every caring person.
Why anyone eats at chain restaurants and not independent restaurants, or shops at chain stores of any kind makes no sense to me.
And on Ukraine, I hope people realize that Russia has never threatened to invade Europe, that the war with Ukraine is a western proxy war, and if Russia's legitimate security concerns were honestly addressed, this war could end tomorrow.
But then what? Western leaders would have to face an angry public, people who are fed up with austerity. The 2014 CIA backed coup in Ukraine overthrowing a democratically elected leader had a lot to do with starting this war. And so did western violation of the Minsk Agreement.
Wars, corporations and our spending habits are linked, and we need to weaken the link that we have control of, and do what we can to stop the war and make corporations less profitable.
Thanks for the opportunity to rant.
Strong point about consumer spending being the lever here. I've watched local coffee shops near me close while people line up at Starbucks on the same street, then complain about losing community character. Behavioral economics research shows people default to convenience even when they say they value local business, the friction costs of finding alternatives are just high enough that most never do it. The part about trade agreements preventing preferential treatment is underrated, those provisions were quietly negotiated decades ago and basically locked in this outcome. Boycotts work when theres critical mass but most people dunno which brands are actually local anymore cause packaging is designed to fake it.