BLOOD MONEY

(Also published on Dissident Voice)




BLOOD MONEY means different things to different people. In some cultures it’s the price paid to the victim’s family by the perpetrator, after a family member is murdered. Elsewhere it can be a fine paid for committing libel, theft, physical harm, or rape. If you employ a contract killer, their payment is also BLOOD MONEY

In cultures influenced by Christian traditions, BLOOD MONEY refers to an historic market transaction. When you talk BLOOD MONEY there, you’re talking about those infamous thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas Iscariot for squealing on his boss. After the fact, when Judas tried to return the money, even the bankers wouldn’t have anything to do with those particular shiny silvers. Business leaders back then thought those coins would pollute their existing supply. Money earned by a heinous criminal act. BLOOD MONEY. What a concept! 

Today people are divesting from those international criminal corporations whose business models depend upon the massive combustion of carbon based fuels. It’s been over forty years since everyone with a conscious mind realized the world was overdosing on oil and coal. For decades those involved in profiting from combustible carbon have worked their damndest to disguise the inevitable conclusion that their currency is BLOOD MONEY, and their industries, if not reigned in, might well destroy human life on Earth.

But these are not the only organizations where BLOOD MONEY flows. No pharisee would ever touch the BLOOD MONEY of a nuclear weapons manufacturers like General Electric. Insurance corporations, pharmaceutical companies, and like minded criminal operations who ration healthcare, with profits as their major consideration, should be committed to their own circle of hell as well. Cartels pushing oil, gas, and coal aren’t the only merchants of death.

As in the case of Conflict Diamonds, civilized society should turn their backs on the BLOOD MONEY generated by businesses that are acting against humanity’s best interest. When today’s investment bankers say the money is all green, and everything fungible is of equal worth, they are participating in a convenient lie. Just as trade in diamonds from countries involved in brutal wars has been outlawed; financial dealings with, or stock ownership in, corporations that engage in activities detrimental to the lives and human rights of all homo sapiens should immediately cease. If you do business with a criminal organization, knowing full well their crimes, you become as guilty as they.

Simply coming into contact with BLOOD MONEY corrupts us all. Like Ebola, letting BLOOD MONEY even touch you, can be fatal to all of humanity.

At the present time in the United States, there is little hope of a legal remedy to eliminate the activities of these corporate merchants of death, so a cultural solution must be found. Those dealing in BLOOD MONEY: oil company executives, and those trading in their stocks and bonds; nuclear weapon manufacturers, and for-profit healthcare rationers should be shunned as the criminals they are. If you know someone who owns shares in a petroleum company, turn your back on them, and tell them why. If your doctor is a part owner of a for-profit hospital, take your business elsewhere, and explain that healthcare is a human right, and a the person’s freedom, should not be traded in the marketplace. If a business is dripping with BLOOD MONEY, their employees shouldn’t be given awards by the PTA. 

Extremists will say that some corporations will always do some harm. On occasion some people will kill other human beings, but that doesn’t mean murderers should be accepted in a civilized society.

If you’re doing business with merchants of death and their BLOOD MONEY, there is really no way to wash the blood off your hands.

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