NATO’s military intervention in Libya in 2011, which overthrew the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, resulted in a chaotic and murderous failed state. Libyans pay a horrific price for this catastrophe.
Yes. We pay compulsory taxes and thus are implicated in the crimes of this nation. This has become more obvious since WWII as we have come to realize our legacy of that war, that the United States has taken on the role of the World’s Fourth Reich successor to the Third Reich, with the quaint result that Hollywood and our digital mass media has made an American Joseph Goebbels quite unnecessary.
Humanitarianism was just the pretext. Regime change was the goal. Once that was accomplished, the oh-so-totally defensive alliance called NATO went home.
Unless the United States attacked Saudi Arabia for its far worse human rights record and nobody told us.
Libya had the highest standard of living in the entire Africa.
It tried to transform the country by using huge underground water aquifers by building an enormous water infrastructure -- first to be destroyed by NATO bombing -- itself a major war crime and among many country tragedies.
In today's Libya, it is a death penalty offense to say things were better under Ghadafi.
If things then were so bad mandating a humanitarian attack, why would such a law be necessary? I mean, there's no law forbidding black people from saying things were better under slavery, but anyone who said such a goofy thing would be treated as a nutcase at best.
In Australia we have a Senator called Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (the middle name alerts us that she has First Nations ancestry) who at the national Press Club this past week stated, in her opinion that there was no intergenerational trauma for Australia's Indigenous people (against all the evidence of Stolen Generations and in-built racist policies concerning policing (#BLM) and imprisonment). No, she said, glibly, in horrific fashion, to the broad smiles of many of that gathering - why, we now have running water and food (on demand - implying in shops). One wonders how this nation's people dating back over 60,000 years could possibly have lived without tap-water and shops? Ignorance - and currently encouraged by the political rightwing racists still wanting to cling onto control over First Australians as we head to a national referendum next month to say yes to recognition of First Australians in the Constitution and permit the national parliament to set up an advisory body of First Australians to offer counsel to the Parliament on all legislation affecting First Australians. The vast majority of First Australians in support - but not Ms Price - pushed forward in front of her rightwinger politicians to be their spokesperson. Ugly stuff.
That Warren Mundine might support the words of Ms Price and who is himself a man of First Australians background and a son-in-law of rightwing commentator Gerard Henderson - is simply appalling - though in Warren's case his support of Price's ugly comments comes from deceitful lying - he was once an SEO in the NSW State Dept of Education - in its "Aboriginal Education Unit" where no one was ignorant of the effects of colonisation on Australia's First Peoples. (In fact they were writing policies and support documents for introducing an "Aboriginal" perspective to the school curriculum.) I was in a unit alongside - but learning from its Education Officers - including two of its most respected officers - Linda Burney - the current Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs and now Sydney University academic Lynette Riley (once married to Mundine)... Both women of the highest integrity.
I'm struck by how soft and easy-to-please Hedges' followers are ... they are nothing more than a pack of passive pushovers ... they seem totally content to have St. Chris spoon-feed them their weekly dose of darkness and that's it ... beyond that, they seem to demand nothing of him ... as we now stand in the midst of THE most perilous time in human history, they are oblivious to the way he has brazenly gone back on his word by refusing to directly confront tyranny, call out the perpetrators by name and comment on hard news developments ... his followers enthusiastically give him a pass and defend him as a "great journalist" even though he effectively retired with the lockdowns ... I've not seen a single person here express an interest in having him comment on the larger prime-time issues that dominate independent media discourse and shape our lives ... Hedges has in turn developed a cynical pandemic playbook in which he hides behind the plight of Assange ... and give him credit for finding new ways to exploit the Assange case to maintain his place in the independent media food chain ... this week he did a 2-part interview with Stella at her home, and before that devoted a sermon to Assange ... in the meantime, he has not had a word to say about the Maui "wildfires" or the proposed amendments to the WHO pandemic treaty ... I firmly believe that his peculiar PR strategy is no accident ... I believe he was told by TPTB to "stay in his lane" and I'd also bet the ranch he rolled over for them without a fight ... Hedges' followers comport themselves as true cultists - St. Chris can do no wrong and they can find no fault ... these people are actually classic enablers ... they fail to notice that although he denounces the corporate elites in general terms, Hedges has deftly taken sides with them on the issues of climate change and also failed to stand against them on personal medical autonomy ... Hedges flies in the face of his past principles and his followers robotically respond by saying "gimme more!"
Kind of like Nicki Haley and Ramaswamy sucking up to MAGA racists that absolutely hate Pakistani's and refer to all east Indians as "Pakis"! Along with Uncle Tom Democrats like Jim Clyburn who crowned Biden and threw Bernie under the bus. The fact that Hillary the "Goldwater Girl" almost became president as a democrat is just more proof of the interlocking duopoly of US war monger hegemony!
No, I was just talking about the Voice referendum, but when it comes to the story of white men murdering aboriginal people, you can't go past a movie called 'High Ground'.
I have decided to stay away from that referendum, not because I am opposed to its stated aims but because despite all the hooha from the conservatives, if successful the plan will create a toothless tiger; one able to roar for as long as Oz media indulges it (knowing Murdoch & co that won't be long) but which has no way of enforcing its POV.
In my opinion a system which reserved a percentage of seats in the house of reps & senate for those first Australians identified as such by their communities would ensure that first Australians had a means to ensure their needs & wants are addressed.
This referendum is just performative; sleazy, corrupt labor party pols went for it because it is so meaningless they felt sure no one could oppose it, so enable a free goal.
That is not what is happening though as it has been made into such a culture war beat up by wealthy oil & mining interests lest it could cost them a coupla dollars as a proper form of honest & equitable arrangement of power sharing would have done.
The lib/nat pols who are fighting back are doing so regardless, ensuring disappointment for those first nations peoples who have been sucked into believing in it.
As far as dutton & co are concerned a win for labor is a loss for them, even if they are resisting a toothless tiger.
Nothing sums up the spirit of white australia more than this farce. So happy I'm not living there right now as it was the grass roots progress being made for indigenous Australians through the 80's & 90's which I found so great about Oz. We & local communities did some amazing things strictly at the behest of communities throughout a big chunk of Northern Oz during that time. All gone to shit now thanks to howard & weak arsed, neolib 21st century labor. The indigenous humans in Arnhemland I am still in touch with tell me that nowadays it feels as though they are prisoners in their own country.
Debsisdead: I can't dispute you on any of the things you write here! Sadly. I think the reserved number of seats from each state/territory a sensible idea - and maybe so long as it was reserved for the non-aligned? But who knows, should the Referendum get up - it could be a future way to go...let's hope so. And be well - wherever you are in the world.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for gathering and speaking these truths Chris! I knew this must be the back story when I read phrases like "neglected infrastructure" in a once thriving country but I searched google and the press in vain and could find next to nothing. All I would add is that Humanitarian really should be "Humanitarian" in quotes because it degrades a good word and perhaps to add a subtitle right up front that could be something like: "The U.S. and NATO'S Cruel and Insatiable Greed for Oil, Profit, Power and Domination at any Cost."
I'm endlessly grateful for your work and your courage. These are terribly hard truths, and it repeatedly breaks my heart to be an American - what Libya is and will be going through is agonizing - but you validate here that I am neither paranoid nor insane in what I believe to be true in Libya based upon hints, the strange lack of coverage, and knowing the number of countries who have shared a similar fate at our hands. I think of Lady Macbeth. Again, I cannot thank you enough.
This really truly is so hard to read. so many pieces fall right in place place telling a horror story; painting a true picture of the USA. Like Dorian Gray ´The painting is a vile record of guilt, something ‘bestial, sodden and unclean’ (chapter 10)
Thank you for mentioning Gaddafi's benefits to his people None of the articles I have seen do that, but I'm not sure why you would bother to call him brutal. He seems to me to be much less brutal than the last few US presidents also the leaders of France, Netherlands Uk etal who have no compunction to kill tens of thousands of innocent people in order to get the oil or metals or whatever it is they want from a country and proceed to lie totally to do it. You might want to talk to Diana Johnstone who wrote about this in her book about Hillary "Queen of Chaos" - she points out that an important Dutch person ( I forget his business or job) totally made up the story about Gaddafi planning to attack some protesters in his country, and France and the UK took it up, and without checking to see if any of the story was true (it wasn't) Hillary took it up and persuaded Obama to bomb the country. As we bombed, one million Libyans went out in protest against what we were doing and stood up for Gaddafi but we ignored that. BTW, that's one fifth of the total population of Libya which had a population of around 5 million. That is a pretty strong protest - I can't imagine one fifth of the US protesting about anything. Gaddafi was a good man and a good leader who was generous to his people and was also a good neighbor to other African countries. I suspect that is a major reason why the US and NATO wanted him dead.
I hope you will maybe contact Ms Johnstone and discuss with her what she knows, and then maybe you could tell the world a little more about our appalling acts in Libya, which as you casually point out are as God awful as the lies we invented to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. It's important to get this info out, because Africa is an area the US is focusing on and I think African nations need to understand that we are clearly not to be trusted in any way.
It is indeed a noun but I’ve seen it used as an adjective as in lickspittle serf. I like lickspittle quality and quality lickspittle which also work for me in this context.
So the devastation of Iraq and Libya weren’t lessons enough, it seems. But hey, Manhattan penthouses are chock full of priceless artefacts of civilization so it’s not all bad, right? See the revolting Michael Steinmetz et al.The EU is keeping very bad company so long it risks becoming another mini-me to Dr. Evil.
Gore VIdal recounted a story of Roosevelt and Churchill in History of the National Security State—the book Assange held visibly as he was dragged out of the embassy to send a message—which sums up the relation between Europeans and Americans quite well:
- [Roosevelt] told Churchill at Yalta, he said, you know, “Now we’re winning, you know, the war in Europe.” Pacific war was still going on. “But now that we’re winning it, you know that you’re going to have to give up India.” “Oh, yes, of course, we always knew that. And one day we’ll really give it up.” And he said, “No, no, no, you’re going to give it up right away. And France is going to give up Indochina. Sumatra and Java are going to be let go free by the Dutch.” And he said, “I don’t care what this does to European powers. I’m ending colonialism, because without a clean sweep, United States is meaningless.”
- [...] Roosevelt was a great statesman, and he knew a lot about geography, and these other jokers didn’t know it. And so it came to pass that Churchill had to give up India, grumbling all the way. At this famous lunch, a lot of witnesses there, Churchill apparently turned to him. He thought this man was his friend, but emperors have no friends. And he said, “What do you want me to do? Get on my hind legs like your little dog Fala, and beg?” The emperor said, “Yes.”
The British and the rest of Europeans have been America's little dogs ever since. It's hard to imagine what a centre of power Europe once was, but oh, how the mighty have fallen.
The Death Star commonly referred to a the ‘untied states of America’ is the root cause of all evil. If there is a goddamn satan, he would reside in Washington DC, home of pedophile murderous creatures who worship at the altar of the military industrial complex.
Fuck all politicians and bootlickers who do their bidding
Your closing paragraph hit home hard, Chris, and reminded me of this quote I included in my Croatian Weekly (Hrvatski Tjednik) interview:
“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!”
Your statement that “Human rights advocates have become a vital cog in the imperial project” called to mind the UK’s proposed replacement of the Human Rights Act 1998 with a “Modern Bill of Rights,” which of course proceeds to strip away human rights as I describe in this letter:
Yes, I know that is the utopian promise of socialism, which is perpetually dashed on the rocks of reality by power-aggregating bureaucrats who pulverize individual rights in the name of the collective as documented by those who have witnessed its implementation firsthand throughout history.
“Never has the individual been so completely delivered up to a blind collectivity, and never have men been less capable, not only of subordinating their actions to their thoughts, but even of thinking. Such terms as oppressors and oppressed, the idea of classes—all that sort of thing is near to losing all meaning, so obvious are the impotence and distress of all men in the face of the social machine, which has become a machine for breaking hearts and crushing spirits, a machine for manufacturing irresponsibility, stupidity, corruption, slackness and, above all, dizziness.”
—Simone Weil
“The socio-psychological foundations of socialism is identical to that of the foundations of a state, if there were no institution enforcing socialistic ideas of property, there would be no room for a state, as a state is nothing else than an institution built on taxation and unsolicited, noncontractual interference with the use that private people can make of their natural property. There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.”
—Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “The Theory of Capitalism and Socialism”
“The socialist idea is nothing but a grandiose rationalization of petty resentments.”
—Ludwig von Mises
“For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to Heaven from Earth but to set up Heaven on earth.”
―Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Language will be simplified and much less rich, and people will begin to speak one stable and unchanging language. Writing will disappear, together with the tedious chore of learning to read and write. Children will not study at all and, instead, will learn everything they need to know by imitating their elders.
“The necessity of thinking will also fall away…”
—Igor Shafarevich, “The Socialist Phenomenon”
"Modern society is hypnotized by socialism. It is prevented by socialism from seeing the mortal danger it is in. And one of the greatest dangers of all is that you have lost all sense of danger, you cannot even see where it’s coming from as it moves swiftly towards you."
Evil never shows it true face. Evil needs to lie to trick and manipulate nice people into being complicit.
Jim Crow system asserted that blacks were better off separate. They called it "separate but equal;" a blatant lie. They said the blacks were happy that way, and they were incapable of having the better jobs that whites monopolized anyway. Just recently, the covid vaccine money machine/power grab over human health, cloaked the aggressive mandates in moralistic language. You get vaccinated to protect others. Really? How is that possible with a vaccine that makes the disease milder, supposedly, but doesnt prevent infection or transmission? What happened to "My body, my choice"?
We destroy Ukraine to save Ukraine. Because Putin is a bad man. It's the right thing to do.
"Evil" and "nice people" do not exist beyond an individual's particular belief system. Better to identify how peoples actions objectively affect others. The sooner you realize are able to take stock of that, the easier it is to identify fake news. Just because Hedges interviewed Khaddafi once in the 80;s, does not make him a perfect chronicler of actual events (and causes for them) in Libya. The most salient and accurate viewpoint I heard from Hedges is that non incremental change can lead to explosive change. Not usually for the better. America saw this phenomena in the overnight outlawing of slavery (abolitionism coupled with Emancipation Proclamation--an illegitimate executive order which is not unlike many issued by modern day Presidents) whereas slavery was formerly legal, embraced, and heavily exploited even by our own founding fathers. This overnight change resulted in the beginning of a Civil War in which 3 million Americans died over the next 4 years and continues to represent a conflict that, arguably, has never ended. That is why all memorials to the CSA (Confederate States of American) have been removed. Out of site, out of mind is the modus operandi there. The reason it has not ended, IMO, is not because of slavery. Everyone knows it's a morally bankrupt economic system. The real reason the Civil War conflict has never ended is because the issue of individual State's sovereign rights prevailing over those of a centralized, federal government has never been resolved. And it likely never will be. That's because it is easier for an oligarchy to buy the influence of a smaller, centralized federal government than it is to buy off (and maintain) the government control of 50 separate States. This is, essentially, the same problem NATO grapples with today.
Southern Feudalist Lords are the reason for the Electoral system and Jim Crow that runs the US domestically and Geo Politically. The Civil War may have ended slavery of that era, but morphed into the Robber Baron north version of anti unionism, health care or public schools and any sense of government countervailing power of a progressive tax policy, rules and regulations. War or the threat of war is their biggest cash cow hands down! Some men are chronic womanizers, gamblers and power mongers, the rich are usually all of the above! Power and money go hand in hand for all three!
If you don't think the bulk of the western world participates in modern day peonage, then just try refusing to pay your property taxes next time it comes due (usually semi-annually). You'll see your "ownership" quickly tested with the threat of any illusion of equity being quickly evaporated. Bottom line: You never really own the property you live on (even if you have Title). The local 'lord' only allows you to temporarily inhabit theirs.
BTW, if you want to think of serfs serving Lordships, it apt to appreciate the full context of Feudalism whereby Lords were morally obligated to provide physical protection to those living on the property in return for bulk population peonage. In this context "war or the treat of war" has turned the 99% of the U.S. population into 'villeins'. As the saying goes: The more things change, the more they stay the same. So much for morphing.
In order to morph into "anti unionism, health care, or public schools", the U.S Feudalist South would have had to start from the antithesis of such precedents. I don't believe that was ever the case. As for Feudalistic Lords running geo politics, the U.S. is certainly no exception. I believe they just simply followed the historic rule.
Suggestion for US readers and intrepid journalists:
Under federal law, State Governments must prepare "Hazard Mitigation Plans" to qualify for FEMA disaster aid.
I strongly urge you to Google and read your State's "Hazard Mitigation Plan" - there are incredible hazards that are documented, yet very little is being done to prevent and reduce those risks and have more effective response programs, like universal warnings, et al.
As one who has spent much time in Haiti, and who now misses it terribly because US-generated chaos prevents spending time now, I can appreciate the truth and value of this report. Don't believe the media that report that Haiti has been in a state of chaos since the assassination of its president in 2021. It's been in that state since the ancestors were kidnapped from Africa. It's been in heightened chaos since the US invasion and occupation of 1915. Seeing it is difficult, but not seeing it is dangerous. Once more, Chris, thank you.
“Incapable of taking responsibility for the carnage they inflict, they clamor for more destruction and death to save the world.”
At 17 or 18, I became became aware of Hedges’ ending comment in his report, more than a half a century ago in Vietnam on hearing the ubiquitous chatter then, ‘We had to destroy the village to save it.’ The chatter was habitually, grammatically mendacious, thus wrong and thus conceptually false, in as much the accusative noun was not numbered in the plural, and thus Hedges concluding remark more than a century later yet obtains - multiplied now in the dysfunctional shades and shadows of the Nuremberg Trials displaced by this nation’s manufactured, global Hell.
This is hard to read, we actually pay taxes to this death cult don't we?
Yes. We pay compulsory taxes and thus are implicated in the crimes of this nation. This has become more obvious since WWII as we have come to realize our legacy of that war, that the United States has taken on the role of the World’s Fourth Reich successor to the Third Reich, with the quaint result that Hollywood and our digital mass media has made an American Joseph Goebbels quite unnecessary.
Humanitarianism was just the pretext. Regime change was the goal. Once that was accomplished, the oh-so-totally defensive alliance called NATO went home.
Unless the United States attacked Saudi Arabia for its far worse human rights record and nobody told us.
Libya had the highest standard of living in the entire Africa.
It tried to transform the country by using huge underground water aquifers by building an enormous water infrastructure -- first to be destroyed by NATO bombing -- itself a major war crime and among many country tragedies.
In today's Libya, it is a death penalty offense to say things were better under Ghadafi.
If things then were so bad mandating a humanitarian attack, why would such a law be necessary? I mean, there's no law forbidding black people from saying things were better under slavery, but anyone who said such a goofy thing would be treated as a nutcase at best.
In Australia we have a Senator called Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (the middle name alerts us that she has First Nations ancestry) who at the national Press Club this past week stated, in her opinion that there was no intergenerational trauma for Australia's Indigenous people (against all the evidence of Stolen Generations and in-built racist policies concerning policing (#BLM) and imprisonment). No, she said, glibly, in horrific fashion, to the broad smiles of many of that gathering - why, we now have running water and food (on demand - implying in shops). One wonders how this nation's people dating back over 60,000 years could possibly have lived without tap-water and shops? Ignorance - and currently encouraged by the political rightwing racists still wanting to cling onto control over First Australians as we head to a national referendum next month to say yes to recognition of First Australians in the Constitution and permit the national parliament to set up an advisory body of First Australians to offer counsel to the Parliament on all legislation affecting First Australians. The vast majority of First Australians in support - but not Ms Price - pushed forward in front of her rightwinger politicians to be their spokesperson. Ugly stuff.
She doesn’t know that on Sunday white settlers would ride out - for hunting -- killing native Australians for entertainment...
That Warren Mundine might support the words of Ms Price and who is himself a man of First Australians background and a son-in-law of rightwing commentator Gerard Henderson - is simply appalling - though in Warren's case his support of Price's ugly comments comes from deceitful lying - he was once an SEO in the NSW State Dept of Education - in its "Aboriginal Education Unit" where no one was ignorant of the effects of colonisation on Australia's First Peoples. (In fact they were writing policies and support documents for introducing an "Aboriginal" perspective to the school curriculum.) I was in a unit alongside - but learning from its Education Officers - including two of its most respected officers - Linda Burney - the current Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs and now Sydney University academic Lynette Riley (once married to Mundine)... Both women of the highest integrity.
I'm struck by how soft and easy-to-please Hedges' followers are ... they are nothing more than a pack of passive pushovers ... they seem totally content to have St. Chris spoon-feed them their weekly dose of darkness and that's it ... beyond that, they seem to demand nothing of him ... as we now stand in the midst of THE most perilous time in human history, they are oblivious to the way he has brazenly gone back on his word by refusing to directly confront tyranny, call out the perpetrators by name and comment on hard news developments ... his followers enthusiastically give him a pass and defend him as a "great journalist" even though he effectively retired with the lockdowns ... I've not seen a single person here express an interest in having him comment on the larger prime-time issues that dominate independent media discourse and shape our lives ... Hedges has in turn developed a cynical pandemic playbook in which he hides behind the plight of Assange ... and give him credit for finding new ways to exploit the Assange case to maintain his place in the independent media food chain ... this week he did a 2-part interview with Stella at her home, and before that devoted a sermon to Assange ... in the meantime, he has not had a word to say about the Maui "wildfires" or the proposed amendments to the WHO pandemic treaty ... I firmly believe that his peculiar PR strategy is no accident ... I believe he was told by TPTB to "stay in his lane" and I'd also bet the ranch he rolled over for them without a fight ... Hedges' followers comport themselves as true cultists - St. Chris can do no wrong and they can find no fault ... these people are actually classic enablers ... they fail to notice that although he denounces the corporate elites in general terms, Hedges has deftly taken sides with them on the issues of climate change and also failed to stand against them on personal medical autonomy ... Hedges flies in the face of his past principles and his followers robotically respond by saying "gimme more!"
Kind of like Nicki Haley and Ramaswamy sucking up to MAGA racists that absolutely hate Pakistani's and refer to all east Indians as "Pakis"! Along with Uncle Tom Democrats like Jim Clyburn who crowned Biden and threw Bernie under the bus. The fact that Hillary the "Goldwater Girl" almost became president as a democrat is just more proof of the interlocking duopoly of US war monger hegemony!
I will vote yes. Because if the Pentagon and US arms manufacturers, have a voice to Parliament via ASPI, then surely Australian First Nations should.
But I do agree with Lidia Thorpe, it ain't enough even if it is a small step in the right direction.
Likewise. (Are you referencing a young Warlpiri man murdered by a pumped-up ex-military-become police officer in Yuendumu?)
No, I was just talking about the Voice referendum, but when it comes to the story of white men murdering aboriginal people, you can't go past a movie called 'High Ground'.
I have decided to stay away from that referendum, not because I am opposed to its stated aims but because despite all the hooha from the conservatives, if successful the plan will create a toothless tiger; one able to roar for as long as Oz media indulges it (knowing Murdoch & co that won't be long) but which has no way of enforcing its POV.
In my opinion a system which reserved a percentage of seats in the house of reps & senate for those first Australians identified as such by their communities would ensure that first Australians had a means to ensure their needs & wants are addressed.
This referendum is just performative; sleazy, corrupt labor party pols went for it because it is so meaningless they felt sure no one could oppose it, so enable a free goal.
That is not what is happening though as it has been made into such a culture war beat up by wealthy oil & mining interests lest it could cost them a coupla dollars as a proper form of honest & equitable arrangement of power sharing would have done.
The lib/nat pols who are fighting back are doing so regardless, ensuring disappointment for those first nations peoples who have been sucked into believing in it.
As far as dutton & co are concerned a win for labor is a loss for them, even if they are resisting a toothless tiger.
Nothing sums up the spirit of white australia more than this farce. So happy I'm not living there right now as it was the grass roots progress being made for indigenous Australians through the 80's & 90's which I found so great about Oz. We & local communities did some amazing things strictly at the behest of communities throughout a big chunk of Northern Oz during that time. All gone to shit now thanks to howard & weak arsed, neolib 21st century labor. The indigenous humans in Arnhemland I am still in touch with tell me that nowadays it feels as though they are prisoners in their own country.
Debsisdead: I can't dispute you on any of the things you write here! Sadly. I think the reserved number of seats from each state/territory a sensible idea - and maybe so long as it was reserved for the non-aligned? But who knows, should the Referendum get up - it could be a future way to go...let's hope so. And be well - wherever you are in the world.
She knows what her bosses want to hear.
Thank you for not forgetting Palestine and, in specific, Gaza!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for gathering and speaking these truths Chris! I knew this must be the back story when I read phrases like "neglected infrastructure" in a once thriving country but I searched google and the press in vain and could find next to nothing. All I would add is that Humanitarian really should be "Humanitarian" in quotes because it degrades a good word and perhaps to add a subtitle right up front that could be something like: "The U.S. and NATO'S Cruel and Insatiable Greed for Oil, Profit, Power and Domination at any Cost."
I'm endlessly grateful for your work and your courage. These are terribly hard truths, and it repeatedly breaks my heart to be an American - what Libya is and will be going through is agonizing - but you validate here that I am neither paranoid nor insane in what I believe to be true in Libya based upon hints, the strange lack of coverage, and knowing the number of countries who have shared a similar fate at our hands. I think of Lady Macbeth. Again, I cannot thank you enough.
This really truly is so hard to read. so many pieces fall right in place place telling a horror story; painting a true picture of the USA. Like Dorian Gray ´The painting is a vile record of guilt, something ‘bestial, sodden and unclean’ (chapter 10)
Thank you for mentioning Gaddafi's benefits to his people None of the articles I have seen do that, but I'm not sure why you would bother to call him brutal. He seems to me to be much less brutal than the last few US presidents also the leaders of France, Netherlands Uk etal who have no compunction to kill tens of thousands of innocent people in order to get the oil or metals or whatever it is they want from a country and proceed to lie totally to do it. You might want to talk to Diana Johnstone who wrote about this in her book about Hillary "Queen of Chaos" - she points out that an important Dutch person ( I forget his business or job) totally made up the story about Gaddafi planning to attack some protesters in his country, and France and the UK took it up, and without checking to see if any of the story was true (it wasn't) Hillary took it up and persuaded Obama to bomb the country. As we bombed, one million Libyans went out in protest against what we were doing and stood up for Gaddafi but we ignored that. BTW, that's one fifth of the total population of Libya which had a population of around 5 million. That is a pretty strong protest - I can't imagine one fifth of the US protesting about anything. Gaddafi was a good man and a good leader who was generous to his people and was also a good neighbor to other African countries. I suspect that is a major reason why the US and NATO wanted him dead.
I hope you will maybe contact Ms Johnstone and discuss with her what she knows, and then maybe you could tell the world a little more about our appalling acts in Libya, which as you casually point out are as God awful as the lies we invented to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. It's important to get this info out, because Africa is an area the US is focusing on and I think African nations need to understand that we are clearly not to be trusted in any way.
It was NATO that invaded Afghanistan too. What the hell is wrong with the EU? They’ve shamed themselves.
Then again - NATO operates at the direction of the US.
Europeans like being slaves.
They’re competing with the Australians to see who can jump the highest when the US makes the request.
Holmes, an American official snaps his fingers and their knees hit the floor.
Such lackeydom is truly a sight to behold.
Lickspittle works too. Is this the same EU that Vicki “the war witch” was referring to, when she demurely said to Pyatt “Fuck the EU” ?
Is there an appropriate noun for "the quality of being a lickspittle"?
It is indeed a noun but I’ve seen it used as an adjective as in lickspittle serf. I like lickspittle quality and quality lickspittle which also work for me in this context.
So the devastation of Iraq and Libya weren’t lessons enough, it seems. But hey, Manhattan penthouses are chock full of priceless artefacts of civilization so it’s not all bad, right? See the revolting Michael Steinmetz et al.The EU is keeping very bad company so long it risks becoming another mini-me to Dr. Evil.
Gore VIdal recounted a story of Roosevelt and Churchill in History of the National Security State—the book Assange held visibly as he was dragged out of the embassy to send a message—which sums up the relation between Europeans and Americans quite well:
- [Roosevelt] told Churchill at Yalta, he said, you know, “Now we’re winning, you know, the war in Europe.” Pacific war was still going on. “But now that we’re winning it, you know that you’re going to have to give up India.” “Oh, yes, of course, we always knew that. And one day we’ll really give it up.” And he said, “No, no, no, you’re going to give it up right away. And France is going to give up Indochina. Sumatra and Java are going to be let go free by the Dutch.” And he said, “I don’t care what this does to European powers. I’m ending colonialism, because without a clean sweep, United States is meaningless.”
- [...] Roosevelt was a great statesman, and he knew a lot about geography, and these other jokers didn’t know it. And so it came to pass that Churchill had to give up India, grumbling all the way. At this famous lunch, a lot of witnesses there, Churchill apparently turned to him. He thought this man was his friend, but emperors have no friends. And he said, “What do you want me to do? Get on my hind legs like your little dog Fala, and beg?” The emperor said, “Yes.”
The British and the rest of Europeans have been America's little dogs ever since. It's hard to imagine what a centre of power Europe once was, but oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Well, once the war ended, Churchill wanted to renege on the promise of Indian independence.
And US support of France in Vietnam led to the United States' own fiasco in that part of the world.
The Death Star commonly referred to a the ‘untied states of America’ is the root cause of all evil. If there is a goddamn satan, he would reside in Washington DC, home of pedophile murderous creatures who worship at the altar of the military industrial complex.
Fuck all politicians and bootlickers who do their bidding
Colonialism in general.
Your closing paragraph hit home hard, Chris, and reminded me of this quote I included in my Croatian Weekly (Hrvatski Tjednik) interview:
“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!”
—Ludwig von Mises, “Bureaucracy” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/my-croatian-weekly-hrvatski-tjednik)
Your statement that “Human rights advocates have become a vital cog in the imperial project” called to mind the UK’s proposed replacement of the Human Rights Act 1998 with a “Modern Bill of Rights,” which of course proceeds to strip away human rights as I describe in this letter:
• “Letter to the UK Government” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-uk-government)
I hink the word LIBERALISM and socialist maybe a bit confused here?
Do you know what socialism is? Working class rule, not liberalism, not bureaucracy.
Yes, I know that is the utopian promise of socialism, which is perpetually dashed on the rocks of reality by power-aggregating bureaucrats who pulverize individual rights in the name of the collective as documented by those who have witnessed its implementation firsthand throughout history.
“Never has the individual been so completely delivered up to a blind collectivity, and never have men been less capable, not only of subordinating their actions to their thoughts, but even of thinking. Such terms as oppressors and oppressed, the idea of classes—all that sort of thing is near to losing all meaning, so obvious are the impotence and distress of all men in the face of the social machine, which has become a machine for breaking hearts and crushing spirits, a machine for manufacturing irresponsibility, stupidity, corruption, slackness and, above all, dizziness.”
—Simone Weil
“The socio-psychological foundations of socialism is identical to that of the foundations of a state, if there were no institution enforcing socialistic ideas of property, there would be no room for a state, as a state is nothing else than an institution built on taxation and unsolicited, noncontractual interference with the use that private people can make of their natural property. There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.”
—Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “The Theory of Capitalism and Socialism”
“The socialist idea is nothing but a grandiose rationalization of petty resentments.”
—Ludwig von Mises
“For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to Heaven from Earth but to set up Heaven on earth.”
―Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Language will be simplified and much less rich, and people will begin to speak one stable and unchanging language. Writing will disappear, together with the tedious chore of learning to read and write. Children will not study at all and, instead, will learn everything they need to know by imitating their elders.
“The necessity of thinking will also fall away…”
—Igor Shafarevich, “The Socialist Phenomenon”
"Modern society is hypnotized by socialism. It is prevented by socialism from seeing the mortal danger it is in. And one of the greatest dangers of all is that you have lost all sense of danger, you cannot even see where it’s coming from as it moves swiftly towards you."
—Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Yet -- socialism is a future of humanity, including in Croatia, because of its humanism and nurture of community ;-))
Evil never shows it true face. Evil needs to lie to trick and manipulate nice people into being complicit.
Jim Crow system asserted that blacks were better off separate. They called it "separate but equal;" a blatant lie. They said the blacks were happy that way, and they were incapable of having the better jobs that whites monopolized anyway. Just recently, the covid vaccine money machine/power grab over human health, cloaked the aggressive mandates in moralistic language. You get vaccinated to protect others. Really? How is that possible with a vaccine that makes the disease milder, supposedly, but doesnt prevent infection or transmission? What happened to "My body, my choice"?
We destroy Ukraine to save Ukraine. Because Putin is a bad man. It's the right thing to do.
"Evil" and "nice people" do not exist beyond an individual's particular belief system. Better to identify how peoples actions objectively affect others. The sooner you realize are able to take stock of that, the easier it is to identify fake news. Just because Hedges interviewed Khaddafi once in the 80;s, does not make him a perfect chronicler of actual events (and causes for them) in Libya. The most salient and accurate viewpoint I heard from Hedges is that non incremental change can lead to explosive change. Not usually for the better. America saw this phenomena in the overnight outlawing of slavery (abolitionism coupled with Emancipation Proclamation--an illegitimate executive order which is not unlike many issued by modern day Presidents) whereas slavery was formerly legal, embraced, and heavily exploited even by our own founding fathers. This overnight change resulted in the beginning of a Civil War in which 3 million Americans died over the next 4 years and continues to represent a conflict that, arguably, has never ended. That is why all memorials to the CSA (Confederate States of American) have been removed. Out of site, out of mind is the modus operandi there. The reason it has not ended, IMO, is not because of slavery. Everyone knows it's a morally bankrupt economic system. The real reason the Civil War conflict has never ended is because the issue of individual State's sovereign rights prevailing over those of a centralized, federal government has never been resolved. And it likely never will be. That's because it is easier for an oligarchy to buy the influence of a smaller, centralized federal government than it is to buy off (and maintain) the government control of 50 separate States. This is, essentially, the same problem NATO grapples with today.
Southern Feudalist Lords are the reason for the Electoral system and Jim Crow that runs the US domestically and Geo Politically. The Civil War may have ended slavery of that era, but morphed into the Robber Baron north version of anti unionism, health care or public schools and any sense of government countervailing power of a progressive tax policy, rules and regulations. War or the threat of war is their biggest cash cow hands down! Some men are chronic womanizers, gamblers and power mongers, the rich are usually all of the above! Power and money go hand in hand for all three!
If you don't think the bulk of the western world participates in modern day peonage, then just try refusing to pay your property taxes next time it comes due (usually semi-annually). You'll see your "ownership" quickly tested with the threat of any illusion of equity being quickly evaporated. Bottom line: You never really own the property you live on (even if you have Title). The local 'lord' only allows you to temporarily inhabit theirs.
BTW, if you want to think of serfs serving Lordships, it apt to appreciate the full context of Feudalism whereby Lords were morally obligated to provide physical protection to those living on the property in return for bulk population peonage. In this context "war or the treat of war" has turned the 99% of the U.S. population into 'villeins'. As the saying goes: The more things change, the more they stay the same. So much for morphing.
In order to morph into "anti unionism, health care, or public schools", the U.S Feudalist South would have had to start from the antithesis of such precedents. I don't believe that was ever the case. As for Feudalistic Lords running geo politics, the U.S. is certainly no exception. I believe they just simply followed the historic rule.
Good historical summary analysis, history to remember, basis to future action
Suggestion for US readers and intrepid journalists:
Under federal law, State Governments must prepare "Hazard Mitigation Plans" to qualify for FEMA disaster aid.
I strongly urge you to Google and read your State's "Hazard Mitigation Plan" - there are incredible hazards that are documented, yet very little is being done to prevent and reduce those risks and have more effective response programs, like universal warnings, et al.
As one who has spent much time in Haiti, and who now misses it terribly because US-generated chaos prevents spending time now, I can appreciate the truth and value of this report. Don't believe the media that report that Haiti has been in a state of chaos since the assassination of its president in 2021. It's been in that state since the ancestors were kidnapped from Africa. It's been in heightened chaos since the US invasion and occupation of 1915. Seeing it is difficult, but not seeing it is dangerous. Once more, Chris, thank you.
“Incapable of taking responsibility for the carnage they inflict, they clamor for more destruction and death to save the world.”
At 17 or 18, I became became aware of Hedges’ ending comment in his report, more than a half a century ago in Vietnam on hearing the ubiquitous chatter then, ‘We had to destroy the village to save it.’ The chatter was habitually, grammatically mendacious, thus wrong and thus conceptually false, in as much the accusative noun was not numbered in the plural, and thus Hedges concluding remark more than a century later yet obtains - multiplied now in the dysfunctional shades and shadows of the Nuremberg Trials displaced by this nation’s manufactured, global Hell.
You da man, Chris. Don’t stop your brilliant analysis under any circumstances. We will support you.