Richard L. Bennett

On or about Wednesday Nov 5, 2025, Poilievre, and those in the Conservative Party of Canada working in close cooperation with him, blackmailed Matt Jeneroux.

[Richard L. Bennett @RichardLBennett]

Also, the fact is that for decades the great political attraction of the US was a physical and intellectual market economy producing music, popular clothing, literature, and so on.

Jazz, jeans, Kerouac, & Sinatra are all gone. All that is left is the threat of violence.

[Peter Frank @FillingTheCrack]

The fundament of Trump’s foreign policy has always been the assumption that the U.S. is so powerful it can force basically anything on anyone — the old elite is just too shy & ethical to use it.

His presidency is in part a journey of discovery: of the limits of U.S. power.

[Richard L. Bennett @RichardLBennett]

OCCUPY the Brampton Stellantis plant.

[Chris Hedges @ChrisLynnHedges]

Power does not rest in the Congress. It does not rest in the courts. It does not even rest in the imperial presidency. It rests in the hands of Wall Street financiers, Silicon Valley, private equity firms, the fossil fuel industry, the predatory health care and pharmaceutical giants, agribusinesses and, most of all, the war industry.

No mainstream politician, including Bernie Sanders, dares utter a word against our entrenched militarism. If you do, you end up like Ralph Nader, who was turned into a pariah by a compliant media and our corporate-indentured political parties. Nader spoke the truth. He paid for his honesty.

We are about to witness the largest increase in war spending in American history with a proposed $1.5 trillion budget. The average taxpayer already shells out over $4,000 a year to the war industry as consumer and environmental agencies are dismantled, health care and education are defunded and programs such as Medicaid and food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) are slashed.

The new Pentagon budget will hand $58.5 billion to artificial intelligence and military command-and-control centers and see the effective merging of the United States and Israeli military industrial complexes. Seventy-four percent of the increase in the proposed $1.5 trillion budget will go to private contractors, including those who are building massive data centers on military bases.

None of this is good for us or good for the planet. The Pentagon, powered by the fossil fuel industry, is the world’s largest institutional polluter, emitting an estimated 66 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2024.

Americans, meanwhile, struggle with rising prices — nearly 30 percent of people go into debt to buy groceries. An estimated 114,174. Americans die each year due to lack of health insurance or inadequate health care while a single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and reduce annual health expenditures by $1.04 trillion, or nearly 20 percent. Twenty-five percent of Americans are functionally unemployed. The minimum wage remains frozen, despite Democratic Party promises to raise it, at $ 7.25 an hour.

The elites use war not only for personal enrichment, but to stifle class conflict.

War, as W.E.B. Du Bois said, diverts the poor from their real interests. It funnels national frustrations into the “heroic” battle against a common enemy. The nationalist cant, with its endemic racism, seduces those who are alienated or on the margins of society into feeling they suddenly belong. It entices them to sacrifice themselves for a “noble” cause. They become the architects of their own enslavement. They march like sheep into war’s purgatory.

By the time they wake up, it is too late. They are cast aside, as so many of our veterans have painfully discovered, like human refuse.

But as a tactic to consolidate power and enrich the billionaire class, it is unbeatable.

Wars will only be curtailed, if not halted, when we nationalize the weapons industry and dramatically reduce the military budget. Until then, nothing, absolutely nothing, will change.

Indeed, things will only get worse.

No one in Congress — or any other branch of government — will do this for us.

The masters of war sitting in the boardrooms of Boeing, General Dynamics or Northrop Grumman are not praying for peace in the Middle East or coexistence with China and Russia. The generals — who build their careers by orchestrating wars and post military careers enriching themselves working for defense contractors — are not seeking a cessation of global conflicts. They are seeking hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars and government debt to fuel the self-defeating cycle of endless war.

The corporate vultures — especially the war makers — are, as I write, descending on Congress. They are meeting with Democratic Party leaders and holding out promises of millions in cash. They will corrupt, neutralize and compromise most. They will destroy the careers of the very few who refuse to do their bidding.

They hold the real power. They have no intention of surrendering it.

The manufacturing of weapons systems and the waging of war are the chief activities of the U.S. government. It is no longer one among other means of advancing the national interest. War and violence are how we speak to the rest of the world.

The “shadow world,” — as the author Andrew Feinstein calls it in his book on the global arms trade — is defined by staggering levels of corruption, deception and senseless death. It is lawless and unregulated. Its criminal activities, cannibalization of national budgets and secrecy are sanctified in the name of “national security.”

Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Airbus, Rheinmetall and ThyssenKrupp, along with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and Exxon, are the state.

We, including our political class, are the vassals.

Read my my full column, 'The Enemy at Home' on Substack at the link below:

[Richard L. Bennett @RichardLBennett]

A great line, true, especially when we remember that the purpose of Data Centres is to allow Artificial Intelligence to replace jobs.

[Marilyn Walls @marilyn_walls]

“We can’t all live in a data centre!”

What a great line from Unifor President Lana Payne when trying to explain why it’s difficult to get help from the feds. #Stellantis

[Woke Former Senator @WokeMitt]

I will never forget, for the rest of my life, how @jaketapper went after Joe Biden obsessively over his cognitive decline, and even profited off of it with a book, but constantly gives Trump a complete pass on his even worse cognitive decline.

Fuck Jake Tapper forever.

[Richard L. Bennett @RichardLBennett]

OCCUPY the Stellantis plant.

OCUPPY the Stelco plant.

Change the calculation by *all* parties by occupying the real estate. Unless that happens, Carney will bow before the rights of private property.

#cdnpoli

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

Over 20% of seniors live on less than $15,000 a year.

Nearly half of older workers have no retirement savings.

Meanwhile, Musk pays the same into Social Security as someone earning $184,500.

Absurd. We must apply the Social Security payroll tax to all income above $250,000.

[Richard L. Bennett @RichardLBennett]

Yes, but without the idiotic 'lol' tic. #cdnpoli

[Toronto Timmy📟 @GregCohen29]

@RichardLBennett So your advice is to break the law lol

[Brattani @Bratt_world]

IDF just levelled the last standing hospital in Khan Yunis

No warning or evacuations

Killed many, doctors injured and killed too

An intended target, to take out one Hamas operative according to Israel

https://t.co/p0yrPePj4n

[Rania Khalek @RaniaKhalek]

You have to be delusional to think this man is anything but a vessel for the worst most monstrous ruling class interests destroying the world

[OGGY…. of The North 🇨🇦🇬🇧 @OGGY_North]

It is not the “war between Russia and Ukraine”……

It is the “illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia, tacitly supported by the United States of America”.

[Iran Embassy SA @IraninSA]

Nonsense.

You attacked Iran for the sake of the illegitimate Zionist regime's interests, remained silent in the face of Zionist savagery in Palestine, and helped them.

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

LibDems have 72 MPs and are utterly politically irrelevant.

The Greens have 5 and we are changing political discourse on the daily.

https://t.co/X4utrHxt54

[Doug @Dougmcg1]

FUCKING BREXIT YOU GASLIGHTING TWAT.

[Tom Parkin @TomPark1n]

PM says Stellantis broke their deal. But it does not appear he intends to enforce the deal, instead wanting some “global solution”

Stelco also clearly broke their deal. And no enforcement by Canada.

[Richard L. Bennett @RichardLBennett]

100% agree.

[G McThink @redsnoopy69]

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, with Reaganomics and Thatcherism destroyed the working class and ushered in this dystopia we are now living through. Useful idiots like Brian Mulroney and Mike Harris simply followed suit.
Conservativism has screwed us for generations...

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Can't wait for @SheffieldGreens to take on Labour at the ballot box in May.

Let voters decide if they want a party that cares more about their city than supporting Israel's genocide.

Want to help us win?

https://t.co/i9idDx53ow

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Elon Musk asked for a name of a person he has killed.

He got a list.

[Richard L. Bennett @RichardLBennett]

Nationalize Stellantis and Stelco.

Why wait?

[Dr Rahmeh Aladwan @doctor_rahmeh]

The 'inflammatory' comments were a prayer for Palestine and against those committing a genocide.

Meanwhile, hundreds of British zionist and jewish charities not only proudly support 'israel' and the criminal IOF, they fundraise and materially support them.

This is supremacy.

[Richard L. Bennett @RichardLBennett]

Keep the monarchy, fire the German royal family (both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were German). Make being King or Queen for a year a lottery. Take back all the land. Prince Andrew can move out. At last.