Social media platforms are aggressively censoring all who challenge the dominant narrative on Ukraine, the ruling Democratic Party, the wars in the Middle East and the corporate state.
"Those of us who see it coming, and who desperately seek to prevent it, have become the enemy."
On the bright side it's easier to identify the truth tellers with a glance at legacy media "fact checkers" for the most maligned characters. The reality is that without the enemies of corp totalitarianism we would have been sunk long ago so big time thanks for refusing to be silent.
Do you know who Ryan Dawson is? Probably not, he was censored in 2008. Here, I'll trigger you with an programmed response - ever listen to David Duke? No - you have been propagandized to react with revulsion at the mere mention of him - he's a historian on Eastern Europe having gotten his doctorate in Ukraine. Do you know who Gary Webb is? He showed the CIA was running drugs in the 1980s, and was murdered by the CIA for it. They did the same thing in Afghanistan but it was opium then. Malcom X was murdered, Dorothy Kilgallen was taken out because our intelligence agencies killed JFK.
Anybody worth anything is censored and this has been true for decades, not just recently.
Hedges has never railed against it before, he is now, because even his pathetic murmurs of near actual truth are upsetting the criminal syndicate the run the United States - FINALLY.
Don't cry for Hedges. He was never worth listening to, because he never spoke truth to power. He's a little less corrupt than Judith Miller, a tiny bit.
There's no news media at all in the West and there hasn't been for at least 30 years. If you read the NY Times or LA Times, or Washington post or any of that establishment garbage, you are reading propaganda, and it's obvious you are. Television is even more blatantly obvious.
The reason the Internet was created was to destroy this propaganda web, which has been around for a long long time. If you're reading Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube and looking for information on them, you're not getting it. You weren't getting 10 years ago. People who are over the mark have been censored and even murdered for a very long time.
"Any moron could see what was coming DECADES ago."
What we see depends on where we stand on the globe, our age, experience and access to information. Any moron can collect an assortment of third party, investigative work and imagine fraction they learned propels them to a position to pass judgement on what is and isn't of value. The verdicts as malicious as they are ignorant, tweet quality swill.
"Anybody worth anything is censored and this has been true for decades, not just recently.
Hedges has never railed against it before, he is now, because even his pathetic murmurs of near actual truth are upsetting the criminal syndicate the run the United States - FINALLY."
You're just flaunting your ignorance here because anyone who has gaf about free speech and threats of censorship and covert powers knows a minimum of two monumental, landmark events defining the current battle.
To be ignorant of decade old NDAA lawsuit Hedges v. Obama qualifies with your references as something any moron can see. Find a better search engine get some skilz!
"Don't cry for Hedges. He was never worth listening to, because he never spoke truth to power. He's a little less corrupt than Judith Miller, a tiny bit."
We have a winner, smugnorant ass of the month with a jab better suited to lipstick on a flop house, bathroom wall. There is no contemporary human more emblematic of the price of speaking truth to power than Julian Assange and none more vilified than Julian's trusted friends and vocal defenders.
Chris has been both a friend and vocal Assange supporter longer than bystanders who saw what WikiLeaks publishing model had pioneered with Collateral Murder. Unless your aim is irritate and misinform you would do well to have citations with your accusation or expect me to take it as a large appetite for humiliation & that's disturbing paid or for free.
May 12, 2013 The Death of Truth: Chris Hedges Interviews Julian Assange
You're welcome, Bill. This poster actually knocks himself down by being so rude - I've had enough of that way of being. I was just sticking up for Pam Drew.
Support is always very much appreciated but I'm fairly fierce in my own right and play with these dolts like a cat with a mouse swat, swat, swat. The nicest thing you can do for me is to use all six letters in my name.. very much dislike the shortened form. :~)
Hardly a saint by any measure, occasionally an angel with teeth, mostly an old player in this game of smear mongers who learned long ago, you cannot argue with stupidity but you can show fools for who they are. Bullies are notorious cowards so it doesn't take much for them to move along. Substack is too nice to welcome the dregs of Twitter to join us. :~)
I have noticed that they level of discourse here is much better than on the normal web. I even try to be nicer here. As a Canadian, I believe in being nice, but it's hard sometimes!
Think, one pretty obvious difference is, now, well-intentioned or folks, simply curious about the truth will have NO way to even discover that there's anything BUT our Creative Class™ MinLuv narrative: Ukraine, COVID, Democrat primaries, Republican vote suppression, RussiaRussiaRussia, WTO/ Atlantic Council, the upcoming Market crash, bail-out of fracking & cracking, worst than Trump... I'd posted a situation map of Azovstal for some steelworker buddies, using Signal: Android phones sent it, iPhones blocked it? First, they came for the journalists. We never even knew we should've cared what happened after that.
Thanks so much for the sweet comment. For it to be abuse I'd have to care about this nit wit's opinion more than litter on NYC sidewalks. Sparring with nasty trolls targeting folks I hold in high esteem is one of my better sports. It's my way of establishing their babbling here will not be fruitful, nor more fun for them than it is to me to highlight stupidity! *smirk*
" . . . our relationships with other people, especially the difficult ones, are the very path, the conditions that help us learn to be more free. " Kaira Jewel Lingo.
What we see depends on what we look at, it has nothing to do with age or where you are on the globe now. You can talk to literally anybody on the planet now. You want ot know if the Iraq War helped or hurt the Iraqis? Ask an Iraqi.
"To be ignorant of decade old NDAA lawsuit Hedges v. Obama qualifies with your references as"
Who cares what the corrupt criminal government does in a court? Our judicial system doesn't exist. Do you need to see PROOF of that?
Our government is run by criminals, obviously. Criminals are not going to find fault with themselves. Don't you realize that?
Lawsuits are POINTLESS. They're a waste of time.
Hedges is too much of an IDIOT or perhaps coward, just to identify the obvious. Our government is a criminal syndicate. It's run and controlled by criminals.
Joe Biden is likely a pedophile, Hunter Biden is a crack smoking criminal that is addicted to prostitutes who sells access to his father - bribes. You wake me up when a lawsuit fixes that.
"May 12, 2013 The Death of Truth: Chris Hedges Interviews Julian Assange"
Julian Assange can speak, he doesn't need a bullshit pretend journalist to help.
This "richard" person is clearly envious of Chris Hedges' prodigious intellect, experience, and honest morality and ability to speak truth so it's clear to any literate person.
OR. Poor Richard is making a list of those of us who dare talk back to him so he can report us. Bit sickening.
Yes, Mr. Hedges is unassailable in my book. This is not hero worship, but my honest evaluation. He is not infallible of course, but he clearly has integrity and honesty.
Why do you read his articles if you find him so dishonest and even dangerous? You are quite interesting Richard! Entertaining for sure. But I don’t get you.
Here, I'm going to demonstrate something to you, if you will entertain it. Remember a girl named Bana al-Abed? She supposedly was sending out tweets, EVERY DAY when Aleppo was under siege. Despite water, and food being scarce, SOMEHOW the Internet continued to work and there was electricity and she sent out tweets every day to beg for the US to please bomb Syria some more, for SOME reason the Syrian military left her alone.
I'm an electrical engineer, I work on Internet infrastructure, I know for CERTAINTY that this girl was propaganda. The Internet is much more fragile than the water system is in every country. Still Wikipedia reports this as a real child. It's ridiculous. It's Nayirah Testimony ridiculous.
Wikipedia is active propaganda. It's not an information source. If you want to know what is going on, you have to actually make some small trivial effort to do it. You have to think.
How many of your opinions are actually YOUR opinions, and haven't been formed for you? My bet, is very very few.
You won't do it, but I will. I know what Malcolm X has said, was Louis Farrakhan has said, was Hitler has said, what David Duke has said. I know who is worth listening to because I've spent SMALL amounts of time listening to them.
Hedges, is constantly being promoted as some sort of "rebel" against the system. He's false opposition. Either he's a coward or an idiot. I don't know which one it is.
Here, I'll let you play with this if you like - this is Ryan Dawson:
These are people you never heard of because they really are censored. Hedges will never protect them. Now you listen to that, and find out what they are incorrect about if you like.
There's PLENTY of people that will tell you straight up what is going on. There's plenty. It's not hard to know, but you have people like Hedges that waste your time talking about the same damned things over and over, they won't name names or point out the actual problems, or why they exist.
When has Hedges ever had the courage to say "the government is just a criminal syndicate"? Never - he never will. But that's what it is, and IF people understood that was the fundamental problem, they could address it. There's pitifully few people who any courage.
The reason I brought up David Duke, is I said, it would cause a programmed reaction for you. But you're fine with Dennis Hastert - he was the House Majority Whip, and a child rapist, you're fine with Ed Buck, a homosexual man that enjoyed murdering male prostitutes, and a huge donor to the Democratic party, you're fine with that pedophile Joe Biden, and his slut son. We have a "president" that very openly is selling bribes now.
I'm being quite direct when I say your opinions are formed for you. You don't form them.
Are you asking about Bana al-Abed being a propaganda construct?
The "news" is that our "news" is propaganda. That why it stands. Wikipedia's editorial policy is to ONLY source information from "reliable sources" - which today, means propaganda sources.
There are no journalists in the west today.
I know people that make a living just pointing out the bullshit that is passed off as news. That's all they do. They expose the propaganda, and move on.
30 years ago, when a "news" station made a "mistake" - it would be pointed out. People could lose jobs over it. In one instance it was a MAJOR SCANDAL when it was pointed out that in an interview being given, there was only one camera, and the interviewer faked it by creating reaction shots after the Internet. They were pilloried in the "news". That's back when there was some attempt to remain credible.
If a journalist isn't willing to point out the CONSTANT BULLSHIT of our propaganda, they're a propagandist themselves and that's what Hedges is.
I agree with you on some things, I am not a citizen of the US and would never go near to take it even if it was offered ... on the other hand, there are a lot of nasty people out there that want to take advantage of you (the government is working on this abt. 50% content citizens to avoid a rebellion, revolution or whatever ... good or bad ... I do not want to live in the middle of a bloody civil war - so my solution is: immediately down with ALL THE WEAPONS (I know the milkmaid wishes for something ..). And regarding propaganda (wikipedia ... I know they are a doubtful source, but as I do not know any of these people I read it with a grain of salt. Without being there (f.i. Syria) we do not know what happened and others with 'special interest' will tell us what is going on, solution to that is that you try to read both sides ... The core of the matter is, that humans are a very flawed species ...
Spoken like a true investigative, object psychoanalytical historian. We will always be engaged in struggles against nefarious forces, but most of us fools aid them by not looking past the superficial, divisive nonsense. Funny thing is that those in power use the same tactics of divide & conquer that were used by ancient tyrants. Now of course, they have dangerous technologies that the monsters of history could only dream about. Nevertheless, we can use clever strategies & technology against them.
People need to think and stop being so easily controlled.
I really dislike Chris Hedges by the way. I find him ineffectual and dishonest. This is a man that surely must realize how corrupt the government is, how obviously criminal it is, and he talks about "reform".
Start talking about prosecutions and executions.
Ghislaine Maxwell's trial is over, she was guilty of sex trafficking of CHILDREN. Now where are the clients? The reason the clients are walking away is they are the government.
Does Hedges have the courage to identify this? I do.
Our government is entirely criminal. The DOJ is controlled by criminals, the intelligence agencies is run by criminals, and "journalists" are nothing but the PR firm to protect these criminals, they are public relations not journalists.
And I have to laugh Hedges got censored - big deal. NOW he complains about it, FINALLY - because it happened to HIM.
Chris Hedges has been talking about censorship since he was squeezed out at the NYT, and he's been a champion of Julian Assange for years.
The people against all of the stuff you a talking about mostly do know of the people you give as example.
I would suggest that Hedges has a different message and *a different audience* than you do even though you are generally on the same side.
But fine. You see him as an obstacle or whatever.
But that's no reason to be insulting (to put it mildly) to one of his *readers*.
Do you not believe that we need to look for allies? Maybe not make enemies by being an asshole to people who adjacent to us?
Your examples are important, and yeah, some people for perfectly legimate reasons may not know about them. It's no reason to berate them in public.. Surely there was a time before you had heard about them.
Oh Pamela, I have been awake and living in painful reality for decades, only about 12 years ago, I found some like minded people, yes on line, as a matter of fact on Twitter, we have become friends, I got on twitter as soon as it became available, and it was Twitter that first started to censor me, shadow banning around the first time our Nazi Trudo was running for PM, finally over 2 years ago I got banned for life, at the same time I got banned on LinkedIn for speaking out the Truth about Gates of Hell, then Instagram, Parler, Reddit, Fakebook I got off years ago myself as my life was threatening by exposing a corrupt Mayor, at the same time most local papers even my own city blocked me on Twitter, I was called so many names etc by friends and other sleeping know it all, but once you are awake there is no turning back, just walk your own path with pride and confidence, death comes either way, they will have to kill me before I get masked, tested or vaxxed, My Body My Right My Choice - I love reading Chris's truth have done so for years. If only we could have a town just with the Awake, calling it FilterFree
Brock's CTR & Bezos' Prop'RNot had us scrambling for journalists, leaks & whistleblowers, BECAUSE we'd seen this all before? LBJ laughing at Tonkin Gulf & McNamara's "Fog Of War" monologue. But this ain't just Ukraine, Let 'er RIP COVID, tag-team kleptocracy & MINTRU media. It's immediately apparent: shopping, banking, researching... ANYTHING, you used to do on the internet has recently turned into a protracted blatant phishing/ Trojan Horse/ keylogging/ backdoor rootkit you downloaded onto a camera covered, voice activated, fingerprint triggered, perpetual wireless tracking device connected to everything you have worth taking. Anybody acknowledging that Social Security requires you're you through the leakiest Credit scoring site, that has your consent to do whatever they want, whenever it's convenient, without recourse to ANY remedy...
Powerful and ordinary white people are now really terrified of losing their power over the majority of the world which is black, red, brown, yellow and any mix.
Get real no one,'s afraid of that noise. This is about centralized power baiting you with that bullshit into tearing down the only documents which aided US ALL to gain individual sovereignty & natural rights. The Feds HATE the Dec of Independence & Bill of Rights, so poisoning you against their authors is a stroke of tyrannical genius. They want a complete surveillance state & to nullify the Bill of Rights & are using Corporations to aid them. Get some universal perspective & understand socio-politixal evolution is a PROCESS. You sound like you swallowed the propaganda down whole..YES I KNOW it's been a flawed process. So what. Struggles are an instrinsic quality of existence, & human nature is irreparably flawed, so we have to preserve & protect whatever advances are made, & not resort to stale racialist tactics meant to position us to fight each other - while those who rules us laugh at our stupidity.
Bella, I said this long before trump came upon the scene. All this talk about race, CRT, and other issues that, in one way or the other, don't amount to a can of beans is all fodder. Somehow people buy into this thinking that it makes a real difference in their lives when they should look around and see that they don't have health care or free education. Programs that can make a real difference in their lives, so, in that respect, the oligarchs have succeeded. What is it called "Fear"?
My question is, how do you change the way people think? Bernie was on the right path but not strong enough to take on the system, eventually destroying his candidacy. I see dissidents like Chomsky, Nader, Hedges, Dr. West, Angela Davis, and others who dedicate their lives to the movement only to see small changes, one step forward, two back. I get frustrated and could only imagine what it would be like for them.
Hi Bella , I had to use ‘Google ‘ to look up the meaning of a theory you used, this is what I found.
SOCIOPOLITICAL EVOLUTION - The process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure which is qualitatively different from the ancestral form.
I just always use phrasing like this bc it seems logically coherent to me. Thanks, i actually have been writing papers about this based on my own hypotheses & intend to do a sweeping dissertation about how we are part of a continuum since the dawn of mankind. Interestingly, we are still instrinsically the same creatures.
How to divide and conquer the rich and powerful, that is very important question, to which I cannot now provide any suggestions. but the result of doing that may not be the desired one.
I'd be interested in hearing anyone else's idea of effective action for this end.
Thank you Chris Hedges for saying it loud and clear! This is the scary truth ... (I just read that Britain arrested 70 demonstrators of the Extinction Rebellion ... I wish we ALL would stand up, protest and be arrested, there would not be enough jails or prisons to hold us all)
I agree. I hate to say it without an expensive lawyer to protect your legal rights you could be in jail for a long time in the states. Maybe there’s a way around that without a lot of money but I don’t know anything about it. If you plan well though it should be done.
These people are pushing the carbon scam. It's the same with the BLM folk and their Defund the Police. This is all manufactured by the CIA / MI5. Wasn't Biden handing out Crack Pipes to them a few weeks ago.
This is the problem we have in society. The people who are causing all the trouble shouldn't be thrown in jail, they should be publicly executed, so the next time someone has the same idea, he or she will think twice before attempting to screw us over again. We need to go to their home, drag them out of their beds and deal with them in a way where they will longer be a problem.
Great idea, NOT! More violence trying to counteract violence never works, it just gets folks hurt and killed and leaves the survivors angrier than ever.
If your idea was valid then the "War to End All Wars" would have brought peace throughout the world. Didn't happen, can't happen, and never will happen.
Why don't you mention the most important thing they're censoring which has caused so much damage -- many deaths and injuries, lost jobs and friendships, broken families, medical heroes using generic drugs successful worldwide having their license to practice taken away, probable autoimmune diseases in the near future, wholesale lying by an industry making billions via their bought and sold media mouthpieces. I'm talking about the fraudulent "vaccine" scam! CHRIS IT'S TIME TO MOVE BEYOND YOUR USUAL LEFTIST TALKING POINTS and address what's savaging this country and transcends politics. And more than this country. Are you aware of the upcoming WHO program to control health agencies worldwide with the power to transcend national mandate and passport policies? Are you aware of the Great Reset, the 4th Industrial Revolution, with the rapidly advancing prospect of transhumanism, human-machine interface and surveillance via smartphones of your financial, medical, and social status? This is the 21st century, man. Something new and evil is happening. Time to wake up!
Many are still in denial. Denial is a coping mechanism. Not a good one, but it's working for otherwise intelligent people who cannot believe their gov't would be aligned with these Pharma criminals...but they always have been.
There's denial, yes, and it's due to more than not believing their government would be aligned with criminals. Denial also among those many people who've been jabbed and have too much to lose by discovering or admitting the products now in their bodies are dangerous. This can happen on the subconscious level in addition to the conscious. In other words, buried anxiety to go along with the fear of Covid -- fear of the unknown.
You see the threat of Christian fascism. Do you see the threat of left-wing fascism associated with coerced vaccinations, lockdowns and vaccine passports/ papers? How easily that can lead to digital IDs and mass surveillance, which would be a Nazi regime wet dream?
Fascism is coming at us both from the right and the left. The left used to fight corporatism, but since covid they've backed corporatist-backed fascism and censorship in the name of technocratic control of a virus that at maximum has a 0.2 to 0.3% death rate around the world. This corporatist technocratic fascism has at least as much, if not more grip and power then a religious backed fascism.
The downfall of the U.S. left, whatever that was, began with Trump and before COVID-19. First we saw Trump Derangement Syndrome, where people hated Trump so much that they would have supported Hitler and death camps to oppose him. Then we got all the Russiagate BS, which turned most U.S. leftists into right wingers. Then the pandemic problems you described, and now the U.S.-caused war in Ukraine. At this point, the left in the U.S. is probably less than 10% of the population and it's totally ineffective.
At least cite Parenti's analysis you parrot. There are several flaws in his argument, e.g. failure to note that public health is a collective approach long backed by the left; that public health has always trump individual "freedoms" that the libertarians - not the left - have obsessed on; that the left has always rejected a social Darwinist approach; that elderly and obsessive live matter to the left, not just young white healthy people, etc. Has anyone seen a compressive critique of Parenti's "Lockdown Left" diatribe? I was thinking of writing one myself. (and I agree with many of his obvious arguments, e.g. about corporate power, government capture, Big Pharma, manipulation of science, fatal flaws in science on long term health effects, et al).
I'm a radical environmentalist, not a leftist, though I agree with the real left (i.e., not the Democratic Party or MSNBC, but people like Chris Hedges, Jimmy Dore, Lee Camp, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal, etc.) on most issues. While I generally support the good of society over the good of the individual, bodily autonomy is where I draw the line. People should not be forced or even coerced into putting things into their bodies that they don't want. Period, no exceptions. If you think that it's OK to do that to people, you're either not left or I don't want anything to do with the left.
Parenti is spot on, and your comments are a perfect example of the lockdown left and why it should be strongly opposed, though there's nothing "left" about it.
Your examples for your attempted analogies are all irrelevant. No one is forcing or coercing you to proactively put things into your body that you don't want, and wearing clothing is necessary if you don't live in the tropics in order to prevent dying from hypothermia.
Regarding the pollutants you mentioned, I agree that industrial society should be eliminated, but that's a different issue. :) Again, you are not being forced to proactively ingest or inhale these pollutants, they just happen to be in the air that you have to breathe, the water you have to drink, and the food you have to eat.
As to the contaminants that you mentioned in food, just stick to organic unprocessed food. And again, what you incidentally take in that happens to be in the environment is totally different than being forced to let someone inject something into your body, or even being forced or coerced to take a pill.
My point is that no matter what you do you will ingest things that you have no idea about. Food additives and preservatives, airborne particles, the list is long.
My pants analogy is good. You wear pants because you HAVE to, as do people in the 'tropics'. There is a very long list of things that you only do because you are "forced" do. The antivaxxer arguments are identical to the anti seatbelt arguments. Both of them come down to some people who feel that they are being pushed around and so push back. There is no logic, just feelings.
Those things don't just "happen" to be in our environment. We allow them there. Microplastics are in our very blood now. Do you truckers care about them? Or being forced to wear pants, seatbelts et al? No, not at all. Selective outrage is great fun, but it's not rational.
You totally don't get it and totally misunderstand me, even though I've addressed your claims. Again, I said I strongly oppose industrial society. Forget humans, nonhumans shouldn't have to ingest the crap you mention. (BTW, you're also wrong about wearing pants in the tropics; hunter-gatherers and other traditional indigenous people in the tropics don't wear pants.)
You also don't get the HUGE difference between being forced or coerced to PROACTIVELY (look it up!) put something in your body and incidentally ingesting things that are in the environment because of industrial society.
You are right that I also totally oppose nanny state BS like helmet and seat belt laws. You probably think that those laws were enacted to help people, but they were actually enacted by the insurance industry to save money. The fact that seat belts and helmets prevent injuries and death is irrelevant. What's relevant is that consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want with their own bodies so long as they're not harming the environment or anyone else. My not wearing a seat belt or helmet doesn't harm you directly, so it's none of your business. For the same reason, drugs, prostitution, and gambling should also all be legal (but regulated like alcohol).
I'm not a "trucker" (though I literally used to be!), and as I said I care very much about the humanpox destruction of the Earth, including all the pollutants you mentioned, even more than the vaccine issue. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone tell me what I have to put into my body, and no one else should have to suffer that either, just like the plants and nonhuman animals shouldn't have to suffer from ingesting all of the pollution that humans cause by living industrially.
I agree with you that the Left has always had a collective approach to public health. however, the pharmaceuticals have hijacked our public health institutions, who are supposed to be protecting us from their greed. When the FDA is funded by Big Pharma to the tune of 50% that's a conflict of interest. When Bill Gates, with no medical degree, is the second biggest funder of the WHO, where is its independence? When Big Pharma has hijacked our universities & are funding all medical research, there's a conflict of interest. I'm afraid I agree with Parenti, although not on the liberal aspect of his argument!
Yes, I agree with all those points - that's why I said I agreed with Parenti on government capture, Big Pharma, corporate power, manipulation of science, etc. But Parenti uses those legitimate problems to distort and attack what he calls the "Lockdown Left". He gets a LOT wrong in doing so.
You didn't state any FACTS that are "flawed." Your argument is wrong for two reasons.
First and foremost, the left advocates for public ACCESS to healthcare, not for forcing people to take drugs they don't want. Assuming that Christian Parenti has the same political ideologies as his father Michael, these guys are as left as it gets (within reason), and I fully agree with his assessment of the lockdown left and that it should be strongly opposed.
As to at-risk people, they are free to get the vaccines, no one is challenging that. Perhaps you believe the pharmaceutical industry lie -- loudly trumpeted by their paid lackeys in the government and media -- that getting vaccinated helps others. It does not, and even the head of the CDC admitted so last August. The two best studies on this, one from Israel and one from the U.K., also confirm this. So even if it would be OK to violate people's bodily autonomy by forcing them to get vaccinated, which it's not, that doesn't work for stopping an unstable virus like this with the leaky vaccines available.
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) was about as "socialist" as The Klan, Mafia, "Vigilantes" company thugs or old timey militia & "cattleman's associations"
Parenti is a professor. He's written a recent essay attacking what he calls The Lockdown Left. Many of your points are consistent with what he wrote. Sorry for making that assumption.
Okay, I just read parenti's article in the gray zone. And I agree with the criticisms that you wrote in the comment above. I grew up liberal and have been politically independent the last 10 years. I live in the Bay area, California. I support some form of universal health care and agree with I need to address systemic issues around race, etc.
I was speaking in more general terms about the left, and I see nuances rather than hard and fast categories. In my view, more people on the left have supported what I feel are fascist policies related to vaccination status - vaccine passports, loss of employment (whether you interact with the public or not), loss of access to social spaces, proposed policies that require unvaccinated to pay for their own covid healthcare (NY), removal from organ transplant lists, and worst policies overseas from people on the left end of the political spectrum. Then recently here in California they tried to pass bills requiring mandatory covid vaccination for all employment california, and for kids to attend school. To me these fascist policies stems from beliefs about the science, and not about the science itself, which makes it fascism rather than rational public health policy.
Now if Donald Trump were still in office, people on the left may have been more skeptical of these policies. Which points to tribalism and groupthink rather than policies based on rational scientific thinking.
People on the right more prone to opposing these fascist policies don't necessarily have a greater capacity for rational scientific thinking. It's part of their political framework to be skeptical of government and government programs, and there's a democrat in office to boot. Fox News channel has been running stories and opinions on the actual science, that doesn't align with the pharma/ government/ corporate media narrative. But again if Donald Trump were in office I don't know that they'd be running these stories.
So I don't think the left is fundamentally fascist, but I see a greater majority of the left as planting the seeds of fascism in the above policies that can quickly lead to full fledged fascism in the form of digital IDs, and coercive vaccination policies that equate to a two-tiered society.
The 0.2 to 0.3% death rate you cite applies to the world population at large, but for older people and others with certain risk factors it can be much, much higher. For younger people it can be much, much lower. If for you, the death rate were 10%, you might support a lot more "technocratic control" of the virus than if for you, the death rate is close to nil. Not many people seem to appreciate this variance in the death rate, instead they assume everybody else is being an asshole, either wanting too many restrictions, or too few. It reminds me of how on highways everybody thinks everybody else is an asshole for wanting to drive "too fast" or "too slow", while we all ignore the "technocratic control" of the legal speed limit set by public safety authorities.
So what? Old people, obese people, and people with comorbidities can die from a lot of things. That's no reason to force or coerce anyone else to get vaccinated. If at-risk people are concerned about COVID-19, by all means they should get vaccinated. But no one else should have to.
You also totally miss the point: the death rate from COVID-19 has been greatly exaggerated in order to scare everyone and convince them to get vaccinated so that the pharmaceutical companies could make a fortune off these vaccines, which they have.
Finally, you fell for the big lie that getting vaccinated helps other people. It doesn't, it only helps you. Vaccinated people contract and transmit COVID-19 just like unvaccinated people do, because this is an unstable virus and the vaccines for it are "leaky." This was proven by the two largest and best studies regarding this issue, the first from Israel, the second from the U.K. The difference in transmission between vaccinated and unvaccinated people was minimal and only lasted for 3 months after being fully vaccinated, after which time there was no difference at all.
So none of your arguments for controlling people are valid. Even if they were, someone's bodily autonomy should take precedence over these concerns.
I am aware of the age adjusted death rates, I think it is 5% maximum for older people, which is a 95% survival rate. I don't consider that "much much higher" than people younger than 60. And that's counting people who died "with covid", so we don't know the actual death rate from covid itself. I did a Google search I think 6 months ago, and in the US the average death rate from covid was 77 years old, and the average life expectancy the past 15 years was 78. (I think Omicron lowered that average covid death rate a little).
I think there was a big missed opportunity in this country to bring us all together. I started out the pandemic delivering food to older people who didn't want to leave their home. We could have rallied as a country to protect those at greater risk, and we don't need technocratic control to do that. Instead we were divided over policies that were not scientifically settled and caused harm.
A person more at risk can do many things in their own life to reduce that risk, they aren't helpless and dependent on technocratic control to do so. As you say, if a person is more at risk they may want more technocratic control. Or they may see the fascist country that would lead to, and would not want that.
I'm not sure what this "technocratic control" term really means in your vocabulary. Asking people to get vaccinated or tested, and wear a mask in crowded places, these are so far away from historical examples of fascism. I mean, is wearing seat belts and stopping for red lights fascism? Are speed limits on the highway fascism? Are driving-while-intoxicated laws fascist because the death rate from car accidents is only 0.01% per year? Are there any public safety laws you agree with? Even if you are correct in your maximum death rate for older folks, a 5% death rate for a respiratory illness is a high risk for an individual to experience. If you told me getting on an airplane means I'm likely to be exposed to COVID and would then kill me 5% of the time, that's frightening. All I was trying to do was get you to think beyond your personal risk and see that when risks affect people differently, they will advocate for more or less restrictions that are aimed at reducing that risk. "Technocratic control" is just some boogeyman term you're throwing around to scare people.
There is a huge difference between wearing a seatbelt, obeying traffic laws, and being coerced to inject a medical drug into your body. Things have gone way beyond "asking" people to get vaccinated. It was coercion and threats. It was different in places around the world, some examples are people were not allowed in grocery stores to get food, people lost their jobs and their ability to support themselves and their families. Bills were proposed here in the US and other places to monetarily fine people who don't get vaccinated (Rhode Island most recently) or make them pay for their own healthcare (New York and Singapore). People were not allowed in restaurants or public spaces without showing their vaccine papers/ vaccine digital passports. President Biden menacingly said he and the American people are getting "impatient" with those who won't take this experimental vaccine, and those who aren't vaccinated we're going to "face a winter of disease and death for them and their families". Many of these restrictions, and similar restrictions, are what Jewish people went through in Germany for the 12 years before there were concentration camps. They were increasingly outcast and demonized. Their freedoms of movement and their participation in society were incrementally chipped away and eroded. 12 years of that environment created a belief system in the German population that allowed them to look away as Jewish people were taken off to camps. I'm not saying that I think that's going to happen to unvaccinated people, but the fascist environment is unmistakable. These are the seeds of fascism that have been planted in this country. At some time in the future can grow into full fascism.
If you had read my comment further up, I was thinking and acting beyond my individual personal risk. I delivered food to the elderly and disabled who didn't want to leave their homes early in the pandemic. What I will NOT do is take responsibility for another person's assessment of their own risk, and restrict my life in the way they have chosen to restrict theirs. It's not virtuous or mature to demand that other people restrict their lives because of the way I am assessing my own risk. People assess covid risk differently, which is appropriate because covid risk is so much different depending on age group and comorbidities.
If you didn't want to fly on a plane because of covid risk, then I don't imagine you would demand other people not fly too. Maybe you would demand other people to wear masks on the plane so you felt safer, even though the efficacy of masks is not settled science, even though masks restrict other people's oxygen uptake, forces them to breathe in their own carbon dioxide and bacteria. This would not be a virtuous or mature demand of others.
By technocratic control I'm referring to digital vaccine passports, whose platform can be used for digital IDs and social credit system. I don't want that here in the US, I do not want to live in a country like China.
The fragility of American free speech has been evident since the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The pattern has been: crush now, apologize later.
Sorry for the Red Scares, Mccarthy and the virtual destruction of the left. Can we move on?
An Irony of the attempt to limit discussion and rouse public support for ever "stronger" measures to assist Ukraine and validating the absurd "genocide" charge is that MSNBC and other corporate outlets are helping to send Biden's numbers into the sub-basement.
The Democratic Party cannot be pleased.
Examples:
Nicolle Wallace, who worked in the administration of war criminal George W. Bush, alternately blubbers over the spectacle of “people just like us” i.e. white people — being massacred — and badgering officials and even the Times Pentagon reporter on why the US isn’t sending even more weapons into the conflict, musing about no-fly zones and more dangerously aggressive acts. She mumbled past the Times’ journalist, who tried to inform her about the risk of a nuclear conflict.
Ali Velshi: once presented as a competent journalist, has voiced demands that Putin be removed and seconded Biden’s gaffe on the subject — and has repeatedly denied that NATO has anything to do with the conflict. He’s also called for no-fly zones. He made a passing reference to his support for the Palestinians, who would be killed with the rest of us in the event of a nuclear exchange.
One exception: Ari Melber, strong and dogged in his opposition to mass incarceration, police shootings of Black people and immigration hypocrisy -- reduced two spokespersons to evasine embarrassment by pointing out that the US rejects the authority of the ICC, even while asking it to probe Russian crimes. I hope he survives.
The current taboo seems to be that any hint that the war in Ukraine began in February 2014 rather than February 2022. Pointing out that Russia has valid and obvious security concerns that make Crimea as unacceptable a part of NATO as Cuba was an unacceptable part of the Warsaw Pact sixty years ago makes a person a Putin troll to the censors. Going so far as to characterize Russia's invasion of Ukraine as justifiable self defense against the incorporation of Ukraine as a defacto member of NATO is even more beyond the Pale. And characterizing the sainted Zenlensky as a clown whose subservience to his American puppeteers is treated as akin to sacrilege, despite the obvious fact that his refusal to negotiate seriously is prolonging his country's agony and is a betrayal of his country's overwhelming electoral mandate as a peace candidate.
It began before that. Professor Mearsheimer traces it back at least to NATO 2008 Bucharest Open Door Policy, which announced intent to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia:
"NATO welcomes Georgia's and Ukraine's aspirations for membership"
You're absolutely correct that the provocations certainly increased markedly at that tme, whether or not they merited being called an initiation of war. They were at least aggressive and hostile, which is what is key.
While the 2008 Bucharest Policy was a major escalation, the issue of NATO expansion goes all the way back to the 1990's when we promised Russia that NATO would not expand "one inch closer" to Russia beyond the integration of East and West Germany. Newly released documents confirm this.
How very correct you are! Thanks for the link. Once the Warsaw Pact was disbanded and the USSR disintegrated, NATO's reason for existing disintegrated. Charles de Gaulle had been questioning its necessity a generation earlier.
I read a lot ((I mean A LOT) and have for much of my life. Before the internet I subscribed to many magazines and newspapers. A few months ago, the internet went out and i had not finished my morning 3-4 hours of reading. In that silence, I was transported back to the past where i would have been surrounded by newspapers and magazines. And, of a sudden, the dependence I now have on the internet and those who control the sites on which what I read appears came home to me. It was perhaps one of the most frightening experiences I have had in a long time. There are no longer any protected outlets for speech given the dependence we now have on the internet and computers. We are in so much trouble. I fear for my people and my country.
I suggest you go directly to the websites of publications you support, where you can still usually read their print editions, instead of using any sort of social media or search engine or aggregator to pique your interest according to their algorithms.
It is a joy to welcome you to Substack, Chris. I have been a fan of your relentless journalism for decades and have frequently recommended “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.”
I appreciate that you are one of the few voices on the left still faithful to the principles of classical liberalism and willing to defend free speech, open debate, and diversity of thought while the establishment left has gone full-tilt authoritarian.
Censorship and criminalization of independent thought are the centerpieces of every dictatorship and dystopian novel, and today’s manifestation of totalitarianism is no different. Indeed, it poses a greater threat than any past iteration because of the totality of its global reach and the technocratic surveillance powers now available to GloboCap.
I have been examining the totalitarianism that has swept over the planet in the name of “public health” at my Substack for the past year. I know this has not been your focus but hope you will delve into this issue in future essays. I would be honored if you would take the time to read some of my own essays on COVID tyranny as I have been exhaustively researching this topic since the outset of this mass persuasion/hypnosis/coercion campaign. Here are a few examples to get you started:
I also write political letters that I and others submit as public comments. For example, California is currently considering a slate of medical tyranny bills, the most Orwellian of which is AB2098, which threatens to strip physicians of their licenses if they make statements not in alignment with the Ministry of Truth’s ever-fluctuating, politically formulated catechisms on COVID. Below is the letter I submitted to the California legislature:
After the letter, I include instructions on how people can submit their own letters of opposition. I hope you will join in the effort to raise awareness about and encourage opposition to these despotic bills as they are likely a foreshadowing of similar measures to come throughout the country and ultimately world.
I look forward to joining with you on future efforts to resist totalitarianism—especially the WHO’s proposed international pandemic treaty (https://drtesslawrie.substack.com/p/urgent-my-video-call-with-the-who), which would be used to override constitutional rights and represents the most brazen step toward One-World tyranny to date.
As usual Chris you shine a spotlight on an issue that I need to hear. I’m not a journalist so I count on independents like yourself to get information. I know mainstream news agencies (though I’m loathe to even call them that) are not going to share this kind of unflattering information with the general public. I think suppression of dissent is very serious and I believe once it starts it’s all the ruling oligarchs need to silence and control the masses. It’s hard to watch as my country slowly crashes and burns.
“it is manifestly obvious that our society is not capable of conducting an honest, logical, reasonably informed discourse on matters of consequence. Instead, we experience fantasy, fabrication, fatuousness and fulmination.”
The Brenner interview at Scheerpost is superb. His comments on nihilism and collective psychopathology are exactly right. And he is one of very few people who have the courage and integrity to say that the US Ukraine strategy was offensive and incited this war intentionally.
Still crazy after all these years! ""The United States of America Has Gone Mad": John le Carré on Iraq War, Israel & U.S. Militarism" https://youtu.be/EI4-xK3Uwhs
Yeah, DemocracyNow, The more war and piece /s report, is a military psyops operation! Amy Goodman is deep cover CIA! It’s no wonder why she hasn’t declared her solidarity with the 3500+ Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth!
They also force us to wear clothes on the Internet LOL, lots of censorship of nudity on social media, even on hookup apps I get told my pics are "too sexually suggestive", which is flattering for a 54-year-old.
There are so very many things that, as social animals living in cities that we are 'forced' to do. No one worries, at all, about what type of anesthetic gas is used for their surgery. They think nothing of taking an antibiotic. Over the counter meds? Bring em on! Food additives? "WHO CARES?" When I went to visit the 'truckers' here in Ottawa, many of them were smoking cigs. Way more than among the larger population. Safe? No, this was all just mass hysteria, madness and cosmic idiocy.
"Those of us who see it coming, and who desperately seek to prevent it, have become the enemy."
On the bright side it's easier to identify the truth tellers with a glance at legacy media "fact checkers" for the most maligned characters. The reality is that without the enemies of corp totalitarianism we would have been sunk long ago so big time thanks for refusing to be silent.
Oh give me a fucking break!
Any moron could see what was coming DECADES ago.
Do you know who Ryan Dawson is? Probably not, he was censored in 2008. Here, I'll trigger you with an programmed response - ever listen to David Duke? No - you have been propagandized to react with revulsion at the mere mention of him - he's a historian on Eastern Europe having gotten his doctorate in Ukraine. Do you know who Gary Webb is? He showed the CIA was running drugs in the 1980s, and was murdered by the CIA for it. They did the same thing in Afghanistan but it was opium then. Malcom X was murdered, Dorothy Kilgallen was taken out because our intelligence agencies killed JFK.
Anybody worth anything is censored and this has been true for decades, not just recently.
Hedges has never railed against it before, he is now, because even his pathetic murmurs of near actual truth are upsetting the criminal syndicate the run the United States - FINALLY.
Don't cry for Hedges. He was never worth listening to, because he never spoke truth to power. He's a little less corrupt than Judith Miller, a tiny bit.
There's no news media at all in the West and there hasn't been for at least 30 years. If you read the NY Times or LA Times, or Washington post or any of that establishment garbage, you are reading propaganda, and it's obvious you are. Television is even more blatantly obvious.
The reason the Internet was created was to destroy this propaganda web, which has been around for a long long time. If you're reading Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube and looking for information on them, you're not getting it. You weren't getting 10 years ago. People who are over the mark have been censored and even murdered for a very long time.
"Any moron could see what was coming DECADES ago."
What we see depends on where we stand on the globe, our age, experience and access to information. Any moron can collect an assortment of third party, investigative work and imagine fraction they learned propels them to a position to pass judgement on what is and isn't of value. The verdicts as malicious as they are ignorant, tweet quality swill.
"Anybody worth anything is censored and this has been true for decades, not just recently.
Hedges has never railed against it before, he is now, because even his pathetic murmurs of near actual truth are upsetting the criminal syndicate the run the United States - FINALLY."
You're just flaunting your ignorance here because anyone who has gaf about free speech and threats of censorship and covert powers knows a minimum of two monumental, landmark events defining the current battle.
To be ignorant of decade old NDAA lawsuit Hedges v. Obama qualifies with your references as something any moron can see. Find a better search engine get some skilz!
https://mediaroots.org/hedges-vs-obamas-indefinite-detention/
"Don't cry for Hedges. He was never worth listening to, because he never spoke truth to power. He's a little less corrupt than Judith Miller, a tiny bit."
We have a winner, smugnorant ass of the month with a jab better suited to lipstick on a flop house, bathroom wall. There is no contemporary human more emblematic of the price of speaking truth to power than Julian Assange and none more vilified than Julian's trusted friends and vocal defenders.
Chris has been both a friend and vocal Assange supporter longer than bystanders who saw what WikiLeaks publishing model had pioneered with Collateral Murder. Unless your aim is irritate and misinform you would do well to have citations with your accusation or expect me to take it as a large appetite for humiliation & that's disturbing paid or for free.
May 12, 2013 The Death of Truth: Chris Hedges Interviews Julian Assange
https://web.archive.org/web/20180602125805/https://truthout.org/articles/the-death-of-truth-chris-hedges-interviews-julian-assange/
Thank you for taking the time to knock this fool down. And so politely. You are a saint! ;)
You're welcome, Bill. This poster actually knocks himself down by being so rude - I've had enough of that way of being. I was just sticking up for Pam Drew.
Support is always very much appreciated but I'm fairly fierce in my own right and play with these dolts like a cat with a mouse swat, swat, swat. The nicest thing you can do for me is to use all six letters in my name.. very much dislike the shortened form. :~)
Hardly a saint by any measure, occasionally an angel with teeth, mostly an old player in this game of smear mongers who learned long ago, you cannot argue with stupidity but you can show fools for who they are. Bullies are notorious cowards so it doesn't take much for them to move along. Substack is too nice to welcome the dregs of Twitter to join us. :~)
"Patience" of a saint ;)
I have noticed that they level of discourse here is much better than on the normal web. I even try to be nicer here. As a Canadian, I believe in being nice, but it's hard sometimes!
Think, one pretty obvious difference is, now, well-intentioned or folks, simply curious about the truth will have NO way to even discover that there's anything BUT our Creative Class™ MinLuv narrative: Ukraine, COVID, Democrat primaries, Republican vote suppression, RussiaRussiaRussia, WTO/ Atlantic Council, the upcoming Market crash, bail-out of fracking & cracking, worst than Trump... I'd posted a situation map of Azovstal for some steelworker buddies, using Signal: Android phones sent it, iPhones blocked it? First, they came for the journalists. We never even knew we should've cared what happened after that.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/duckduckgo-russian-disinformation-downranking.html
PD : why bother with such an angry abusive poster -- simply not worth it. You are better than that and don't deserve the abuse.
Thanks so much for the sweet comment. For it to be abuse I'd have to care about this nit wit's opinion more than litter on NYC sidewalks. Sparring with nasty trolls targeting folks I hold in high esteem is one of my better sports. It's my way of establishing their babbling here will not be fruitful, nor more fun for them than it is to me to highlight stupidity! *smirk*
" . . . our relationships with other people, especially the difficult ones, are the very path, the conditions that help us learn to be more free. " Kaira Jewel Lingo.
Alex Cockburn, former editor and journalist for Counterpunch once said, that this is “what dumb people think smart people sound like.”
Thanks for the evidence.
Thank you for this elaborate answer (unfortunately my English is not good enough for it)!!
What we see depends on what we look at, it has nothing to do with age or where you are on the globe now. You can talk to literally anybody on the planet now. You want ot know if the Iraq War helped or hurt the Iraqis? Ask an Iraqi.
"To be ignorant of decade old NDAA lawsuit Hedges v. Obama qualifies with your references as"
Who cares what the corrupt criminal government does in a court? Our judicial system doesn't exist. Do you need to see PROOF of that?
https://rumble.com/vkepch-side-by-side-video-shows-hunter-biden-smoking-crack-joe-biden-gives-anti-cr.html
Our government is run by criminals, obviously. Criminals are not going to find fault with themselves. Don't you realize that?
Lawsuits are POINTLESS. They're a waste of time.
Hedges is too much of an IDIOT or perhaps coward, just to identify the obvious. Our government is a criminal syndicate. It's run and controlled by criminals.
Joe Biden is likely a pedophile, Hunter Biden is a crack smoking criminal that is addicted to prostitutes who sells access to his father - bribes. You wake me up when a lawsuit fixes that.
"May 12, 2013 The Death of Truth: Chris Hedges Interviews Julian Assange"
Julian Assange can speak, he doesn't need a bullshit pretend journalist to help.
Profound arrogance paired with venomous stupidity, none greater than claiming Julian can speak for himself. Keep flaunting your ignorance Skippy.
Few have ever been as silenced and abused as Julian Assange. The great Julian Assange.
Assange doesn't need an interpreter. He wasted his life expecting that when gross criminal government malfeasance was exposed, it would be changed.
He didn't realize that the United States is peopled by a bunch of criminals as the population.
"He didn't realize that the United States is peopled by a bunch of criminals as the population."
Because he was so utterly stupid and green? Is that it?
How do you know what Assange knows?
Did your buddy Richard Dobbins tell you this?
This "richard" person is clearly envious of Chris Hedges' prodigious intellect, experience, and honest morality and ability to speak truth so it's clear to any literate person.
OR. Poor Richard is making a list of those of us who dare talk back to him so he can report us. Bit sickening.
Yes, Mr. Hedges is unassailable in my book. This is not hero worship, but my honest evaluation. He is not infallible of course, but he clearly has integrity and honesty.
Hedges is clearly intelligent, but he's dishonest. That is what makes him dangerous.
It's difficult to refute lies and yours is such nonsense that I won't try.
Why do you read his articles if you find him so dishonest and even dangerous? You are quite interesting Richard! Entertaining for sure. But I don’t get you.
Hedges, Dishonest? Projection, much?
Some people will do anything to get attention. As you so well demonstrate. You can go now.
Thanks for trying though! Ryan Dobson is so so proud of you!
Alex Cockburn, former editor and journalist for Counterpunch once said, that this is “what dumb people think smart people sound like.”
No better evidence than the suffering exemplified here.
Do you know about Larry Esperanto?
I thought not.
He was censored in 1234.
Have a serious discussion with me or don't waste my time. Irreverent stupid people don't need to prove what they are although you're free to do it.
None of my replies were directed at you.
There is nothing serious in your remarks to discuss.
Thanks!
That's weird, because you've replied to me like a dozen times.
No. I did not.
Ryan Dawson?
Is he your daddy?
See a doctor.
I only could find this David Duke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Duke
Really??
Yeah, really, And Wikipedia? Seriously?
Here, I'm going to demonstrate something to you, if you will entertain it. Remember a girl named Bana al-Abed? She supposedly was sending out tweets, EVERY DAY when Aleppo was under siege. Despite water, and food being scarce, SOMEHOW the Internet continued to work and there was electricity and she sent out tweets every day to beg for the US to please bomb Syria some more, for SOME reason the Syrian military left her alone.
I'm an electrical engineer, I work on Internet infrastructure, I know for CERTAINTY that this girl was propaganda. The Internet is much more fragile than the water system is in every country. Still Wikipedia reports this as a real child. It's ridiculous. It's Nayirah Testimony ridiculous.
Now go look up Bana al-Abed on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bana_al-Abed
See the talk section too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bana_al-Abed
Wikipedia is active propaganda. It's not an information source. If you want to know what is going on, you have to actually make some small trivial effort to do it. You have to think.
How many of your opinions are actually YOUR opinions, and haven't been formed for you? My bet, is very very few.
You won't do it, but I will. I know what Malcolm X has said, was Louis Farrakhan has said, was Hitler has said, what David Duke has said. I know who is worth listening to because I've spent SMALL amounts of time listening to them.
Hedges, is constantly being promoted as some sort of "rebel" against the system. He's false opposition. Either he's a coward or an idiot. I don't know which one it is.
Here, I'll let you play with this if you like - this is Ryan Dawson:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/UewlpTwQ4rni/
These are people you never heard of because they really are censored. Hedges will never protect them. Now you listen to that, and find out what they are incorrect about if you like.
There's PLENTY of people that will tell you straight up what is going on. There's plenty. It's not hard to know, but you have people like Hedges that waste your time talking about the same damned things over and over, they won't name names or point out the actual problems, or why they exist.
When has Hedges ever had the courage to say "the government is just a criminal syndicate"? Never - he never will. But that's what it is, and IF people understood that was the fundamental problem, they could address it. There's pitifully few people who any courage.
The reason I brought up David Duke, is I said, it would cause a programmed reaction for you. But you're fine with Dennis Hastert - he was the House Majority Whip, and a child rapist, you're fine with Ed Buck, a homosexual man that enjoyed murdering male prostitutes, and a huge donor to the Democratic party, you're fine with that pedophile Joe Biden, and his slut son. We have a "president" that very openly is selling bribes now.
I'm being quite direct when I say your opinions are formed for you. You don't form them.
"Engineer"
It all makes sense now.
Bana?
You think that's fucking news?
You really really really need to stop talking down to your betters. Mr. Engineer.
Are you asking about Bana al-Abed being a propaganda construct?
The "news" is that our "news" is propaganda. That why it stands. Wikipedia's editorial policy is to ONLY source information from "reliable sources" - which today, means propaganda sources.
There are no journalists in the west today.
I know people that make a living just pointing out the bullshit that is passed off as news. That's all they do. They expose the propaganda, and move on.
30 years ago, when a "news" station made a "mistake" - it would be pointed out. People could lose jobs over it. In one instance it was a MAJOR SCANDAL when it was pointed out that in an interview being given, there was only one camera, and the interviewer faked it by creating reaction shots after the Internet. They were pilloried in the "news". That's back when there was some attempt to remain credible.
If a journalist isn't willing to point out the CONSTANT BULLSHIT of our propaganda, they're a propagandist themselves and that's what Hedges is.
Bana was a psyop. This was obvious at the time and not something that only you self-proclaimed cognoscenti were aware of.
I agree with you on some things, I am not a citizen of the US and would never go near to take it even if it was offered ... on the other hand, there are a lot of nasty people out there that want to take advantage of you (the government is working on this abt. 50% content citizens to avoid a rebellion, revolution or whatever ... good or bad ... I do not want to live in the middle of a bloody civil war - so my solution is: immediately down with ALL THE WEAPONS (I know the milkmaid wishes for something ..). And regarding propaganda (wikipedia ... I know they are a doubtful source, but as I do not know any of these people I read it with a grain of salt. Without being there (f.i. Syria) we do not know what happened and others with 'special interest' will tell us what is going on, solution to that is that you try to read both sides ... The core of the matter is, that humans are a very flawed species ...
Spoken like a true investigative, object psychoanalytical historian. We will always be engaged in struggles against nefarious forces, but most of us fools aid them by not looking past the superficial, divisive nonsense. Funny thing is that those in power use the same tactics of divide & conquer that were used by ancient tyrants. Now of course, they have dangerous technologies that the monsters of history could only dream about. Nevertheless, we can use clever strategies & technology against them.
People need to think and stop being so easily controlled.
I really dislike Chris Hedges by the way. I find him ineffectual and dishonest. This is a man that surely must realize how corrupt the government is, how obviously criminal it is, and he talks about "reform".
Start talking about prosecutions and executions.
Ghislaine Maxwell's trial is over, she was guilty of sex trafficking of CHILDREN. Now where are the clients? The reason the clients are walking away is they are the government.
Does Hedges have the courage to identify this? I do.
Our government is entirely criminal. The DOJ is controlled by criminals, the intelligence agencies is run by criminals, and "journalists" are nothing but the PR firm to protect these criminals, they are public relations not journalists.
And I have to laugh Hedges got censored - big deal. NOW he complains about it, FINALLY - because it happened to HIM.
Chris Hedges has been talking about censorship since he was squeezed out at the NYT, and he's been a champion of Julian Assange for years.
The people against all of the stuff you a talking about mostly do know of the people you give as example.
I would suggest that Hedges has a different message and *a different audience* than you do even though you are generally on the same side.
But fine. You see him as an obstacle or whatever.
But that's no reason to be insulting (to put it mildly) to one of his *readers*.
Do you not believe that we need to look for allies? Maybe not make enemies by being an asshole to people who adjacent to us?
Your examples are important, and yeah, some people for perfectly legimate reasons may not know about them. It's no reason to berate them in public.. Surely there was a time before you had heard about them.
Oh Pamela, I have been awake and living in painful reality for decades, only about 12 years ago, I found some like minded people, yes on line, as a matter of fact on Twitter, we have become friends, I got on twitter as soon as it became available, and it was Twitter that first started to censor me, shadow banning around the first time our Nazi Trudo was running for PM, finally over 2 years ago I got banned for life, at the same time I got banned on LinkedIn for speaking out the Truth about Gates of Hell, then Instagram, Parler, Reddit, Fakebook I got off years ago myself as my life was threatening by exposing a corrupt Mayor, at the same time most local papers even my own city blocked me on Twitter, I was called so many names etc by friends and other sleeping know it all, but once you are awake there is no turning back, just walk your own path with pride and confidence, death comes either way, they will have to kill me before I get masked, tested or vaxxed, My Body My Right My Choice - I love reading Chris's truth have done so for years. If only we could have a town just with the Awake, calling it FilterFree
Brock's CTR & Bezos' Prop'RNot had us scrambling for journalists, leaks & whistleblowers, BECAUSE we'd seen this all before? LBJ laughing at Tonkin Gulf & McNamara's "Fog Of War" monologue. But this ain't just Ukraine, Let 'er RIP COVID, tag-team kleptocracy & MINTRU media. It's immediately apparent: shopping, banking, researching... ANYTHING, you used to do on the internet has recently turned into a protracted blatant phishing/ Trojan Horse/ keylogging/ backdoor rootkit you downloaded onto a camera covered, voice activated, fingerprint triggered, perpetual wireless tracking device connected to everything you have worth taking. Anybody acknowledging that Social Security requires you're you through the leakiest Credit scoring site, that has your consent to do whatever they want, whenever it's convenient, without recourse to ANY remedy...
Censorship is an expression of fear. Keep them afraid.
Powerful and ordinary white people are now really terrified of losing their power over the majority of the world which is black, red, brown, yellow and any mix.
Get real no one,'s afraid of that noise. This is about centralized power baiting you with that bullshit into tearing down the only documents which aided US ALL to gain individual sovereignty & natural rights. The Feds HATE the Dec of Independence & Bill of Rights, so poisoning you against their authors is a stroke of tyrannical genius. They want a complete surveillance state & to nullify the Bill of Rights & are using Corporations to aid them. Get some universal perspective & understand socio-politixal evolution is a PROCESS. You sound like you swallowed the propaganda down whole..YES I KNOW it's been a flawed process. So what. Struggles are an instrinsic quality of existence, & human nature is irreparably flawed, so we have to preserve & protect whatever advances are made, & not resort to stale racialist tactics meant to position us to fight each other - while those who rules us laugh at our stupidity.
Bella, I said this long before trump came upon the scene. All this talk about race, CRT, and other issues that, in one way or the other, don't amount to a can of beans is all fodder. Somehow people buy into this thinking that it makes a real difference in their lives when they should look around and see that they don't have health care or free education. Programs that can make a real difference in their lives, so, in that respect, the oligarchs have succeeded. What is it called "Fear"?
My question is, how do you change the way people think? Bernie was on the right path but not strong enough to take on the system, eventually destroying his candidacy. I see dissidents like Chomsky, Nader, Hedges, Dr. West, Angela Davis, and others who dedicate their lives to the movement only to see small changes, one step forward, two back. I get frustrated and could only imagine what it would be like for them.
Hi Bella , I had to use ‘Google ‘ to look up the meaning of a theory you used, this is what I found.
SOCIOPOLITICAL EVOLUTION - The process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure which is qualitatively different from the ancestral form.
Thought provoking.
Thank you.
M
I just always use phrasing like this bc it seems logically coherent to me. Thanks, i actually have been writing papers about this based on my own hypotheses & intend to do a sweeping dissertation about how we are part of a continuum since the dawn of mankind. Interestingly, we are still instrinsically the same creatures.
made, & not resort to stale racialist tactics meant to position us to fight each other - while those who rule us laugh at our stupidity.
How to divide and conquer the rich and powerful, that is very important question, to which I cannot now provide any suggestions. but the result of doing that may not be the desired one.
I'd be interested in hearing anyone else's idea of effective action for this end.
Thank you Chris Hedges for saying it loud and clear! This is the scary truth ... (I just read that Britain arrested 70 demonstrators of the Extinction Rebellion ... I wish we ALL would stand up, protest and be arrested, there would not be enough jails or prisons to hold us all)
I agree. I hate to say it without an expensive lawyer to protect your legal rights you could be in jail for a long time in the states. Maybe there’s a way around that without a lot of money but I don’t know anything about it. If you plan well though it should be done.
Those Extinction Rebellion folk should be line up against the wall and shot.
Those Extinction Rebellion people and Animal Rebellion people are trying to save your life.
Dividing and conquering works.
Bullshit.
I hope this is a joke?!? Why would you want to shoot protesters??
Just harassment, it’s what you get when you protest anything.
These people are pushing the carbon scam. It's the same with the BLM folk and their Defund the Police. This is all manufactured by the CIA / MI5. Wasn't Biden handing out Crack Pipes to them a few weeks ago.
This is the problem we have in society. The people who are causing all the trouble shouldn't be thrown in jail, they should be publicly executed, so the next time someone has the same idea, he or she will think twice before attempting to screw us over again. We need to go to their home, drag them out of their beds and deal with them in a way where they will longer be a problem.
Great idea, NOT! More violence trying to counteract violence never works, it just gets folks hurt and killed and leaves the survivors angrier than ever.
If your idea was valid then the "War to End All Wars" would have brought peace throughout the world. Didn't happen, can't happen, and never will happen.
The only way, throughout the history of mankind, freedom for the subjugated has been won is through violence. Terrible violence.
Time to bring it to their doors.
Why don't you mention the most important thing they're censoring which has caused so much damage -- many deaths and injuries, lost jobs and friendships, broken families, medical heroes using generic drugs successful worldwide having their license to practice taken away, probable autoimmune diseases in the near future, wholesale lying by an industry making billions via their bought and sold media mouthpieces. I'm talking about the fraudulent "vaccine" scam! CHRIS IT'S TIME TO MOVE BEYOND YOUR USUAL LEFTIST TALKING POINTS and address what's savaging this country and transcends politics. And more than this country. Are you aware of the upcoming WHO program to control health agencies worldwide with the power to transcend national mandate and passport policies? Are you aware of the Great Reset, the 4th Industrial Revolution, with the rapidly advancing prospect of transhumanism, human-machine interface and surveillance via smartphones of your financial, medical, and social status? This is the 21st century, man. Something new and evil is happening. Time to wake up!
Many are still in denial. Denial is a coping mechanism. Not a good one, but it's working for otherwise intelligent people who cannot believe their gov't would be aligned with these Pharma criminals...but they always have been.
There's denial, yes, and it's due to more than not believing their government would be aligned with criminals. Denial also among those many people who've been jabbed and have too much to lose by discovering or admitting the products now in their bodies are dangerous. This can happen on the subconscious level in addition to the conscious. In other words, buried anxiety to go along with the fear of Covid -- fear of the unknown.
First they came for Alex Jones....this was entirely intentional, because Alex Jones is a loon whom few want to be seen defending.
Then, the tech giants were relying on obscure ToS violations, selectively applied. Seems that they have dropped even that pretense.
In the UK there is an old saying among barristers, "Hard cases make bad law"
In this case, the "bad law" is an entirely intentional result.
Yes, it is.
Jones is just a jewish shill.
Spoken like a fed trying to make the commenters here look bad. A deliberate attempt to give people an excuse to censor.
Quentin is an obvious agent provocateur.
That or mentally deranged.
Pick one.
Because i don't go along with your narrative?
Must be fun in your household. Then again you probably live alone after several divorces.
Yes. The jew.
You see the threat of Christian fascism. Do you see the threat of left-wing fascism associated with coerced vaccinations, lockdowns and vaccine passports/ papers? How easily that can lead to digital IDs and mass surveillance, which would be a Nazi regime wet dream?
Fascism is coming at us both from the right and the left. The left used to fight corporatism, but since covid they've backed corporatist-backed fascism and censorship in the name of technocratic control of a virus that at maximum has a 0.2 to 0.3% death rate around the world. This corporatist technocratic fascism has at least as much, if not more grip and power then a religious backed fascism.
The downfall of the U.S. left, whatever that was, began with Trump and before COVID-19. First we saw Trump Derangement Syndrome, where people hated Trump so much that they would have supported Hitler and death camps to oppose him. Then we got all the Russiagate BS, which turned most U.S. leftists into right wingers. Then the pandemic problems you described, and now the U.S.-caused war in Ukraine. At this point, the left in the U.S. is probably less than 10% of the population and it's totally ineffective.
At least cite Parenti's analysis you parrot. There are several flaws in his argument, e.g. failure to note that public health is a collective approach long backed by the left; that public health has always trump individual "freedoms" that the libertarians - not the left - have obsessed on; that the left has always rejected a social Darwinist approach; that elderly and obsessive live matter to the left, not just young white healthy people, etc. Has anyone seen a compressive critique of Parenti's "Lockdown Left" diatribe? I was thinking of writing one myself. (and I agree with many of his obvious arguments, e.g. about corporate power, government capture, Big Pharma, manipulation of science, fatal flaws in science on long term health effects, et al).
I'm a radical environmentalist, not a leftist, though I agree with the real left (i.e., not the Democratic Party or MSNBC, but people like Chris Hedges, Jimmy Dore, Lee Camp, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal, etc.) on most issues. While I generally support the good of society over the good of the individual, bodily autonomy is where I draw the line. People should not be forced or even coerced into putting things into their bodies that they don't want. Period, no exceptions. If you think that it's OK to do that to people, you're either not left or I don't want anything to do with the left.
I put things in my body that I don't want every single day.
Food additives, car exhaust, second hand cigarette smoke, fats, sugar, plastic, microfibres - it's a long list.
I am also forced to wear pants and underwear too.
Freedom now!
Parenti is spot on, and your comments are a perfect example of the lockdown left and why it should be strongly opposed, though there's nothing "left" about it.
Your examples for your attempted analogies are all irrelevant. No one is forcing or coercing you to proactively put things into your body that you don't want, and wearing clothing is necessary if you don't live in the tropics in order to prevent dying from hypothermia.
Regarding the pollutants you mentioned, I agree that industrial society should be eliminated, but that's a different issue. :) Again, you are not being forced to proactively ingest or inhale these pollutants, they just happen to be in the air that you have to breathe, the water you have to drink, and the food you have to eat.
As to the contaminants that you mentioned in food, just stick to organic unprocessed food. And again, what you incidentally take in that happens to be in the environment is totally different than being forced to let someone inject something into your body, or even being forced or coerced to take a pill.
My point is that no matter what you do you will ingest things that you have no idea about. Food additives and preservatives, airborne particles, the list is long.
My pants analogy is good. You wear pants because you HAVE to, as do people in the 'tropics'. There is a very long list of things that you only do because you are "forced" do. The antivaxxer arguments are identical to the anti seatbelt arguments. Both of them come down to some people who feel that they are being pushed around and so push back. There is no logic, just feelings.
Those things don't just "happen" to be in our environment. We allow them there. Microplastics are in our very blood now. Do you truckers care about them? Or being forced to wear pants, seatbelts et al? No, not at all. Selective outrage is great fun, but it's not rational.
You totally don't get it and totally misunderstand me, even though I've addressed your claims. Again, I said I strongly oppose industrial society. Forget humans, nonhumans shouldn't have to ingest the crap you mention. (BTW, you're also wrong about wearing pants in the tropics; hunter-gatherers and other traditional indigenous people in the tropics don't wear pants.)
You also don't get the HUGE difference between being forced or coerced to PROACTIVELY (look it up!) put something in your body and incidentally ingesting things that are in the environment because of industrial society.
You are right that I also totally oppose nanny state BS like helmet and seat belt laws. You probably think that those laws were enacted to help people, but they were actually enacted by the insurance industry to save money. The fact that seat belts and helmets prevent injuries and death is irrelevant. What's relevant is that consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want with their own bodies so long as they're not harming the environment or anyone else. My not wearing a seat belt or helmet doesn't harm you directly, so it's none of your business. For the same reason, drugs, prostitution, and gambling should also all be legal (but regulated like alcohol).
I'm not a "trucker" (though I literally used to be!), and as I said I care very much about the humanpox destruction of the Earth, including all the pollutants you mentioned, even more than the vaccine issue. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone tell me what I have to put into my body, and no one else should have to suffer that either, just like the plants and nonhuman animals shouldn't have to suffer from ingesting all of the pollution that humans cause by living industrially.
I agree with you that the Left has always had a collective approach to public health. however, the pharmaceuticals have hijacked our public health institutions, who are supposed to be protecting us from their greed. When the FDA is funded by Big Pharma to the tune of 50% that's a conflict of interest. When Bill Gates, with no medical degree, is the second biggest funder of the WHO, where is its independence? When Big Pharma has hijacked our universities & are funding all medical research, there's a conflict of interest. I'm afraid I agree with Parenti, although not on the liberal aspect of his argument!
Yes, I agree with all those points - that's why I said I agreed with Parenti on government capture, Big Pharma, corporate power, manipulation of science, etc. But Parenti uses those legitimate problems to distort and attack what he calls the "Lockdown Left". He gets a LOT wrong in doing so.
Really? I saw him interviewed and I didn't see anything that he got wrong. What exactly do you claim that he got wrong?
I outlined my primary objections in a prior comment above. A proper critique would take a few thousands words, not c reply tho your comment. Sorry.
You didn't state any FACTS that are "flawed." Your argument is wrong for two reasons.
First and foremost, the left advocates for public ACCESS to healthcare, not for forcing people to take drugs they don't want. Assuming that Christian Parenti has the same political ideologies as his father Michael, these guys are as left as it gets (within reason), and I fully agree with his assessment of the lockdown left and that it should be strongly opposed.
As to at-risk people, they are free to get the vaccines, no one is challenging that. Perhaps you believe the pharmaceutical industry lie -- loudly trumpeted by their paid lackeys in the government and media -- that getting vaccinated helps others. It does not, and even the head of the CDC admitted so last August. The two best studies on this, one from Israel and one from the U.K., also confirm this. So even if it would be OK to violate people's bodily autonomy by forcing them to get vaccinated, which it's not, that doesn't work for stopping an unstable virus like this with the leaky vaccines available.
The "Z" in NAZI stands for socialist.
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) was about as "socialist" as The Klan, Mafia, "Vigilantes" company thugs or old timey militia & "cattleman's associations"
I don't know who Parenti is. And I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
Parenti is a professor. He's written a recent essay attacking what he calls The Lockdown Left. Many of your points are consistent with what he wrote. Sorry for making that assumption.
Okay, I just read parenti's article in the gray zone. And I agree with the criticisms that you wrote in the comment above. I grew up liberal and have been politically independent the last 10 years. I live in the Bay area, California. I support some form of universal health care and agree with I need to address systemic issues around race, etc.
I was speaking in more general terms about the left, and I see nuances rather than hard and fast categories. In my view, more people on the left have supported what I feel are fascist policies related to vaccination status - vaccine passports, loss of employment (whether you interact with the public or not), loss of access to social spaces, proposed policies that require unvaccinated to pay for their own covid healthcare (NY), removal from organ transplant lists, and worst policies overseas from people on the left end of the political spectrum. Then recently here in California they tried to pass bills requiring mandatory covid vaccination for all employment california, and for kids to attend school. To me these fascist policies stems from beliefs about the science, and not about the science itself, which makes it fascism rather than rational public health policy.
Now if Donald Trump were still in office, people on the left may have been more skeptical of these policies. Which points to tribalism and groupthink rather than policies based on rational scientific thinking.
People on the right more prone to opposing these fascist policies don't necessarily have a greater capacity for rational scientific thinking. It's part of their political framework to be skeptical of government and government programs, and there's a democrat in office to boot. Fox News channel has been running stories and opinions on the actual science, that doesn't align with the pharma/ government/ corporate media narrative. But again if Donald Trump were in office I don't know that they'd be running these stories.
So I don't think the left is fundamentally fascist, but I see a greater majority of the left as planting the seeds of fascism in the above policies that can quickly lead to full fledged fascism in the form of digital IDs, and coercive vaccination policies that equate to a two-tiered society.
The 0.2 to 0.3% death rate you cite applies to the world population at large, but for older people and others with certain risk factors it can be much, much higher. For younger people it can be much, much lower. If for you, the death rate were 10%, you might support a lot more "technocratic control" of the virus than if for you, the death rate is close to nil. Not many people seem to appreciate this variance in the death rate, instead they assume everybody else is being an asshole, either wanting too many restrictions, or too few. It reminds me of how on highways everybody thinks everybody else is an asshole for wanting to drive "too fast" or "too slow", while we all ignore the "technocratic control" of the legal speed limit set by public safety authorities.
So what? Old people, obese people, and people with comorbidities can die from a lot of things. That's no reason to force or coerce anyone else to get vaccinated. If at-risk people are concerned about COVID-19, by all means they should get vaccinated. But no one else should have to.
You also totally miss the point: the death rate from COVID-19 has been greatly exaggerated in order to scare everyone and convince them to get vaccinated so that the pharmaceutical companies could make a fortune off these vaccines, which they have.
Finally, you fell for the big lie that getting vaccinated helps other people. It doesn't, it only helps you. Vaccinated people contract and transmit COVID-19 just like unvaccinated people do, because this is an unstable virus and the vaccines for it are "leaky." This was proven by the two largest and best studies regarding this issue, the first from Israel, the second from the U.K. The difference in transmission between vaccinated and unvaccinated people was minimal and only lasted for 3 months after being fully vaccinated, after which time there was no difference at all.
So none of your arguments for controlling people are valid. Even if they were, someone's bodily autonomy should take precedence over these concerns.
I think you are responding to some imaginary version of me rather than to what I actually said, LOL. Did you copy and paste this from somewhere else?
I am aware of the age adjusted death rates, I think it is 5% maximum for older people, which is a 95% survival rate. I don't consider that "much much higher" than people younger than 60. And that's counting people who died "with covid", so we don't know the actual death rate from covid itself. I did a Google search I think 6 months ago, and in the US the average death rate from covid was 77 years old, and the average life expectancy the past 15 years was 78. (I think Omicron lowered that average covid death rate a little).
I think there was a big missed opportunity in this country to bring us all together. I started out the pandemic delivering food to older people who didn't want to leave their home. We could have rallied as a country to protect those at greater risk, and we don't need technocratic control to do that. Instead we were divided over policies that were not scientifically settled and caused harm.
A person more at risk can do many things in their own life to reduce that risk, they aren't helpless and dependent on technocratic control to do so. As you say, if a person is more at risk they may want more technocratic control. Or they may see the fascist country that would lead to, and would not want that.
I'm not sure what this "technocratic control" term really means in your vocabulary. Asking people to get vaccinated or tested, and wear a mask in crowded places, these are so far away from historical examples of fascism. I mean, is wearing seat belts and stopping for red lights fascism? Are speed limits on the highway fascism? Are driving-while-intoxicated laws fascist because the death rate from car accidents is only 0.01% per year? Are there any public safety laws you agree with? Even if you are correct in your maximum death rate for older folks, a 5% death rate for a respiratory illness is a high risk for an individual to experience. If you told me getting on an airplane means I'm likely to be exposed to COVID and would then kill me 5% of the time, that's frightening. All I was trying to do was get you to think beyond your personal risk and see that when risks affect people differently, they will advocate for more or less restrictions that are aimed at reducing that risk. "Technocratic control" is just some boogeyman term you're throwing around to scare people.
There is a huge difference between wearing a seatbelt, obeying traffic laws, and being coerced to inject a medical drug into your body. Things have gone way beyond "asking" people to get vaccinated. It was coercion and threats. It was different in places around the world, some examples are people were not allowed in grocery stores to get food, people lost their jobs and their ability to support themselves and their families. Bills were proposed here in the US and other places to monetarily fine people who don't get vaccinated (Rhode Island most recently) or make them pay for their own healthcare (New York and Singapore). People were not allowed in restaurants or public spaces without showing their vaccine papers/ vaccine digital passports. President Biden menacingly said he and the American people are getting "impatient" with those who won't take this experimental vaccine, and those who aren't vaccinated we're going to "face a winter of disease and death for them and their families". Many of these restrictions, and similar restrictions, are what Jewish people went through in Germany for the 12 years before there were concentration camps. They were increasingly outcast and demonized. Their freedoms of movement and their participation in society were incrementally chipped away and eroded. 12 years of that environment created a belief system in the German population that allowed them to look away as Jewish people were taken off to camps. I'm not saying that I think that's going to happen to unvaccinated people, but the fascist environment is unmistakable. These are the seeds of fascism that have been planted in this country. At some time in the future can grow into full fascism.
If you had read my comment further up, I was thinking and acting beyond my individual personal risk. I delivered food to the elderly and disabled who didn't want to leave their homes early in the pandemic. What I will NOT do is take responsibility for another person's assessment of their own risk, and restrict my life in the way they have chosen to restrict theirs. It's not virtuous or mature to demand that other people restrict their lives because of the way I am assessing my own risk. People assess covid risk differently, which is appropriate because covid risk is so much different depending on age group and comorbidities.
If you didn't want to fly on a plane because of covid risk, then I don't imagine you would demand other people not fly too. Maybe you would demand other people to wear masks on the plane so you felt safer, even though the efficacy of masks is not settled science, even though masks restrict other people's oxygen uptake, forces them to breathe in their own carbon dioxide and bacteria. This would not be a virtuous or mature demand of others.
By technocratic control I'm referring to digital vaccine passports, whose platform can be used for digital IDs and social credit system. I don't want that here in the US, I do not want to live in a country like China.
Shut up is the new black.
The fragility of American free speech has been evident since the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The pattern has been: crush now, apologize later.
Sorry for the Red Scares, Mccarthy and the virtual destruction of the left. Can we move on?
An Irony of the attempt to limit discussion and rouse public support for ever "stronger" measures to assist Ukraine and validating the absurd "genocide" charge is that MSNBC and other corporate outlets are helping to send Biden's numbers into the sub-basement.
The Democratic Party cannot be pleased.
Examples:
Nicolle Wallace, who worked in the administration of war criminal George W. Bush, alternately blubbers over the spectacle of “people just like us” i.e. white people — being massacred — and badgering officials and even the Times Pentagon reporter on why the US isn’t sending even more weapons into the conflict, musing about no-fly zones and more dangerously aggressive acts. She mumbled past the Times’ journalist, who tried to inform her about the risk of a nuclear conflict.
Ali Velshi: once presented as a competent journalist, has voiced demands that Putin be removed and seconded Biden’s gaffe on the subject — and has repeatedly denied that NATO has anything to do with the conflict. He’s also called for no-fly zones. He made a passing reference to his support for the Palestinians, who would be killed with the rest of us in the event of a nuclear exchange.
One exception: Ari Melber, strong and dogged in his opposition to mass incarceration, police shootings of Black people and immigration hypocrisy -- reduced two spokespersons to evasine embarrassment by pointing out that the US rejects the authority of the ICC, even while asking it to probe Russian crimes. I hope he survives.
The current taboo seems to be that any hint that the war in Ukraine began in February 2014 rather than February 2022. Pointing out that Russia has valid and obvious security concerns that make Crimea as unacceptable a part of NATO as Cuba was an unacceptable part of the Warsaw Pact sixty years ago makes a person a Putin troll to the censors. Going so far as to characterize Russia's invasion of Ukraine as justifiable self defense against the incorporation of Ukraine as a defacto member of NATO is even more beyond the Pale. And characterizing the sainted Zenlensky as a clown whose subservience to his American puppeteers is treated as akin to sacrilege, despite the obvious fact that his refusal to negotiate seriously is prolonging his country's agony and is a betrayal of his country's overwhelming electoral mandate as a peace candidate.
It began before that. Professor Mearsheimer traces it back at least to NATO 2008 Bucharest Open Door Policy, which announced intent to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia:
"NATO welcomes Georgia's and Ukraine's aspirations for membership"
https://www.nato.int/docu/update/2008/04-april/e0403h.html
You're absolutely correct that the provocations certainly increased markedly at that tme, whether or not they merited being called an initiation of war. They were at least aggressive and hostile, which is what is key.
While the 2008 Bucharest Policy was a major escalation, the issue of NATO expansion goes all the way back to the 1990's when we promised Russia that NATO would not expand "one inch closer" to Russia beyond the integration of East and West Germany. Newly released documents confirm this.
For more info see: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2021-11-24/nato-expansion-budapest-blow-1994
How very correct you are! Thanks for the link. Once the Warsaw Pact was disbanded and the USSR disintegrated, NATO's reason for existing disintegrated. Charles de Gaulle had been questioning its necessity a generation earlier.
I read a lot ((I mean A LOT) and have for much of my life. Before the internet I subscribed to many magazines and newspapers. A few months ago, the internet went out and i had not finished my morning 3-4 hours of reading. In that silence, I was transported back to the past where i would have been surrounded by newspapers and magazines. And, of a sudden, the dependence I now have on the internet and those who control the sites on which what I read appears came home to me. It was perhaps one of the most frightening experiences I have had in a long time. There are no longer any protected outlets for speech given the dependence we now have on the internet and computers. We are in so much trouble. I fear for my people and my country.
I suggest you go directly to the websites of publications you support, where you can still usually read their print editions, instead of using any sort of social media or search engine or aggregator to pique your interest according to their algorithms.
This is not the country I grew up in. This is not the country I had friends die for. It is the country I am ashamed of.
It is a joy to welcome you to Substack, Chris. I have been a fan of your relentless journalism for decades and have frequently recommended “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.”
I appreciate that you are one of the few voices on the left still faithful to the principles of classical liberalism and willing to defend free speech, open debate, and diversity of thought while the establishment left has gone full-tilt authoritarian.
Censorship and criminalization of independent thought are the centerpieces of every dictatorship and dystopian novel, and today’s manifestation of totalitarianism is no different. Indeed, it poses a greater threat than any past iteration because of the totality of its global reach and the technocratic surveillance powers now available to GloboCap.
I have been examining the totalitarianism that has swept over the planet in the name of “public health” at my Substack for the past year. I know this has not been your focus but hope you will delve into this issue in future essays. I would be honored if you would take the time to read some of my own essays on COVID tyranny as I have been exhaustively researching this topic since the outset of this mass persuasion/hypnosis/coercion campaign. Here are a few examples to get you started:
• “A Primer for the Propagandized: Fear Is the Mind-Killer” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-primer-for-the-propagandized)
• “Are You a Good German or a Badass German?” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/are-you-a-good-german-or-a-badass)
• “Letter to a Colluder: Stop Enabling Tyranny” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-colluder-stop-enabling)
• “Letter to a Tyrant” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-tyrant)
• “Profiles in Courage: Dr. Tess Lawrie” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/profiles-in-courage-dr-tess-lawrie)
I also write political letters that I and others submit as public comments. For example, California is currently considering a slate of medical tyranny bills, the most Orwellian of which is AB2098, which threatens to strip physicians of their licenses if they make statements not in alignment with the Ministry of Truth’s ever-fluctuating, politically formulated catechisms on COVID. Below is the letter I submitted to the California legislature:
• “Letter to the California Legislature” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-california-legislature/)
After the letter, I include instructions on how people can submit their own letters of opposition. I hope you will join in the effort to raise awareness about and encourage opposition to these despotic bills as they are likely a foreshadowing of similar measures to come throughout the country and ultimately world.
Other examples of my political letters include:
• “Letter to the WHO” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-who)
• “Letter to the UK Government” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-uk-government)
• “Letter to the Washington State Board of Health” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-washington-state-board)
• “Letter to the Oregon Health Authority” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-oregon-health-authority)
I look forward to joining with you on future efforts to resist totalitarianism—especially the WHO’s proposed international pandemic treaty (https://drtesslawrie.substack.com/p/urgent-my-video-call-with-the-who), which would be used to override constitutional rights and represents the most brazen step toward One-World tyranny to date.
As usual Chris you shine a spotlight on an issue that I need to hear. I’m not a journalist so I count on independents like yourself to get information. I know mainstream news agencies (though I’m loathe to even call them that) are not going to share this kind of unflattering information with the general public. I think suppression of dissent is very serious and I believe once it starts it’s all the ruling oligarchs need to silence and control the masses. It’s hard to watch as my country slowly crashes and burns.
It seems the American public can't process graphic news and overreacts
“it is manifestly obvious that our society is not capable of conducting an honest, logical, reasonably informed discourse on matters of consequence. Instead, we experience fantasy, fabrication, fatuousness and fulmination.”
-Professor Michael J. Brenner
The Brenner interview at Scheerpost is superb. His comments on nihilism and collective psychopathology are exactly right. And he is one of very few people who have the courage and integrity to say that the US Ukraine strategy was offensive and incited this war intentionally.
Still crazy after all these years! ""The United States of America Has Gone Mad": John le Carré on Iraq War, Israel & U.S. Militarism" https://youtu.be/EI4-xK3Uwhs
Bruce - I stopped watching/listening to DN years ago, so, tell me: Has DN broadcast something similar on US/EU madness in Ukraine? If not, why not?
Yeah, DemocracyNow, The more war and piece /s report, is a military psyops operation! Amy Goodman is deep cover CIA! It’s no wonder why she hasn’t declared her solidarity with the 3500+ Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth!
The public is led by their nose.
Occupy Silicon Valley!
Now do Vaccines Chris.
Yes! And they way they FORCE us to wear clothes outside.
FREEDOM NOW
They also force us to wear clothes on the Internet LOL, lots of censorship of nudity on social media, even on hookup apps I get told my pics are "too sexually suggestive", which is flattering for a 54-year-old.
There are so very many things that, as social animals living in cities that we are 'forced' to do. No one worries, at all, about what type of anesthetic gas is used for their surgery. They think nothing of taking an antibiotic. Over the counter meds? Bring em on! Food additives? "WHO CARES?" When I went to visit the 'truckers' here in Ottawa, many of them were smoking cigs. Way more than among the larger population. Safe? No, this was all just mass hysteria, madness and cosmic idiocy.
I think the media would be free to report both sides on that. Dumb comparison .