I talked to the hosts of the podcast, Law and Disorder, about my latest book "A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine."
Thank you, again, Mr. Hedges. Your engagement with journalism in the public interest produces what I can only call a breath of fresh air. Good work, sir
“an inexhaustible source of evil” which “is perpetrated as hatred in the survivors, and springs up in a thousand ways, against the very will of all, as a thirst for revenge, as moral breakdown, as negation, as weariness, as resignation.”
Wonderful interview. You speak as well as well as you write. Thank you. Because you are so experienced with conflict in the Middle East, do you know the underlying causes of this conflict? Is it due to Israel’s persecution complex, perhaps created by the Holocaust? Is it cultural or blind fear and hate? Is it self-preservation in a harsh environment? Or maybe due to America's covert, on-going, violent, self-serving, instigating, interference in the Middle East?
I wonder which 215 representatives won't be re-elected?
We're already paying to upgrade the electrical grid for AI (wink, wink, really to support EV's but while we got our wallets out, right?) An expense that should be paid for by the people investing in this taudry crap but they don't seem to have any stake in the game anymore as Ii began writing about almost 25 years ago. Wall Street is getting all the gains while they have nothing at risk NOTHING. We've seen this again and again since computers have been fosited upon us. Each time the market fails to provide profits for Wall St the people are forced to make up their losses while getting nothing. Now we have Trump continuing these ridiculous tax cuts while the Treasury is having problems selling bonds to float our debt. Not only do they face no investment risk but they're paying minimum taxes for having tapayers held hostage for these people that add nothing to society. They don't want to pay for labor so they move our entire industrial capacity to Asia. Where they won't bring profits back to the US so they won't pay US taxes. A very similar problem that happened under Reagan I think it was I might be wrong on this. It was so bad they had to force investors to repatriate their profits. Not the businesses and not the jobs just the money. This country is soooooo fuked.
Now let's take what farmland we have left and plow it over and pave it or plow it over and put solar arrays on it either way it won't grow food anymore. But thank God it can provide AI computer services that no one needs and are nothing short of a joke. Computer's don't think no matter how much data you give them they have no concept of how to weigh good data over bad data because they don't know what's good or bad. They have no concept of red, yellow or green other than what some programmer tells them about each color. Computers are physically incapable of making informed decisions/choices. They use data to determine what branch of a program they will follow. No decision a simple flow of data based on the value of the data and it has to be programmed by a person. Given a value of A do this, given a value of B do that, etc. That's all a computer can do. Sure they can amass every piece of data around a search but they can't decide what's more impotant about that data and what's irrellevent so they give it all to you.. AI found mostly to be wrong seems to have a bias to be wrong. Oddly, no one is checking to see if their results are right or wrong just publish and hope no one looks I guess. But what a great boon for anyone wanting to disseminate propaganda.
We don't need food. Here in PA along maybe a 5 mile section of I-83 there are probably 10 warehouses all for lease hundreds of thousands of square feet all sitting empty on what used to be farmland now covered with tar, concrete and essentially gigantic pole barns. Gotta love those utilitarian structures and wait till the overcrowded I-83 has thousands of trucks driving over paved farm lanes trying to get off and on I-83 at exits that are already backed up with commuters tryinig to get off or on. The people that we've elected to prevent these very boondogles are probably lining their pockets with bribes but they're so stupid they don't understand the concept of farmland growing the food they need to eat nor apparently do they care. Where do they think food comes from? A magical cloud in the sky releases the food and it drops into their local grocery stores already to eat. When did people become so clueless?
Up I-83 a bit more north is the old TMI reactor that has supposedly been bought by Bill Gates to power Microsoft's AI misadventures. Not only was Bill Gates a pathologists and virologist during COVID but now he's going into restarting nuclear reactors. When does the madness end? When does Rome burn?
I think you are right but most of the people don't see the smoke.
I was in Ollie's Outlet just a few weeks back and as went to checkout I could smell there was a fire burning and I could see the smoke was in the air. When I told the cashier that they have a fire starting I was told no, no that's the fertilizer, it smells like a fire. I aruged that was not the fertilizer but to no avail. They didn't even go to look just insisted I was wrong. I don't know what happened after I left hopefully some employee grabbed a fire exstinguisher or maybe the sprinklers came on or the fire department arrived. But what a shit hole Ollie's has become. Just merchandise strewn everywhere, no organization. I guess they can only hire so many people at $7.25 an hour. I use to like to go to Ollie's because you never knew what you might find. Now it's like a metaphor of our country.
Thank you, again, Mr. Hedges. Your engagement with journalism in the public interest produces what I can only call a breath of fresh air. Good work, sir
That quote from Primo Levi, about the shoah as
“an inexhaustible source of evil” which “is perpetrated as hatred in the survivors, and springs up in a thousand ways, against the very will of all, as a thirst for revenge, as moral breakdown, as negation, as weariness, as resignation.”
is frighteningly accurate.
I just read the book, Chris. Thanks. I’m not sure how you can keep your face in it all these years. What do we do?
Wonderful interview. You speak as well as well as you write. Thank you. Because you are so experienced with conflict in the Middle East, do you know the underlying causes of this conflict? Is it due to Israel’s persecution complex, perhaps created by the Holocaust? Is it cultural or blind fear and hate? Is it self-preservation in a harsh environment? Or maybe due to America's covert, on-going, violent, self-serving, instigating, interference in the Middle East?
I wonder which 215 representatives won't be re-elected?
We're already paying to upgrade the electrical grid for AI (wink, wink, really to support EV's but while we got our wallets out, right?) An expense that should be paid for by the people investing in this taudry crap but they don't seem to have any stake in the game anymore as Ii began writing about almost 25 years ago. Wall Street is getting all the gains while they have nothing at risk NOTHING. We've seen this again and again since computers have been fosited upon us. Each time the market fails to provide profits for Wall St the people are forced to make up their losses while getting nothing. Now we have Trump continuing these ridiculous tax cuts while the Treasury is having problems selling bonds to float our debt. Not only do they face no investment risk but they're paying minimum taxes for having tapayers held hostage for these people that add nothing to society. They don't want to pay for labor so they move our entire industrial capacity to Asia. Where they won't bring profits back to the US so they won't pay US taxes. A very similar problem that happened under Reagan I think it was I might be wrong on this. It was so bad they had to force investors to repatriate their profits. Not the businesses and not the jobs just the money. This country is soooooo fuked.
Now let's take what farmland we have left and plow it over and pave it or plow it over and put solar arrays on it either way it won't grow food anymore. But thank God it can provide AI computer services that no one needs and are nothing short of a joke. Computer's don't think no matter how much data you give them they have no concept of how to weigh good data over bad data because they don't know what's good or bad. They have no concept of red, yellow or green other than what some programmer tells them about each color. Computers are physically incapable of making informed decisions/choices. They use data to determine what branch of a program they will follow. No decision a simple flow of data based on the value of the data and it has to be programmed by a person. Given a value of A do this, given a value of B do that, etc. That's all a computer can do. Sure they can amass every piece of data around a search but they can't decide what's more impotant about that data and what's irrellevent so they give it all to you.. AI found mostly to be wrong seems to have a bias to be wrong. Oddly, no one is checking to see if their results are right or wrong just publish and hope no one looks I guess. But what a great boon for anyone wanting to disseminate propaganda.
We don't need food. Here in PA along maybe a 5 mile section of I-83 there are probably 10 warehouses all for lease hundreds of thousands of square feet all sitting empty on what used to be farmland now covered with tar, concrete and essentially gigantic pole barns. Gotta love those utilitarian structures and wait till the overcrowded I-83 has thousands of trucks driving over paved farm lanes trying to get off and on I-83 at exits that are already backed up with commuters tryinig to get off or on. The people that we've elected to prevent these very boondogles are probably lining their pockets with bribes but they're so stupid they don't understand the concept of farmland growing the food they need to eat nor apparently do they care. Where do they think food comes from? A magical cloud in the sky releases the food and it drops into their local grocery stores already to eat. When did people become so clueless?
Up I-83 a bit more north is the old TMI reactor that has supposedly been bought by Bill Gates to power Microsoft's AI misadventures. Not only was Bill Gates a pathologists and virologist during COVID but now he's going into restarting nuclear reactors. When does the madness end? When does Rome burn?
"Rome" is already smoldering.
I think you are right but most of the people don't see the smoke.
I was in Ollie's Outlet just a few weeks back and as went to checkout I could smell there was a fire burning and I could see the smoke was in the air. When I told the cashier that they have a fire starting I was told no, no that's the fertilizer, it smells like a fire. I aruged that was not the fertilizer but to no avail. They didn't even go to look just insisted I was wrong. I don't know what happened after I left hopefully some employee grabbed a fire exstinguisher or maybe the sprinklers came on or the fire department arrived. But what a shit hole Ollie's has become. Just merchandise strewn everywhere, no organization. I guess they can only hire so many people at $7.25 an hour. I use to like to go to Ollie's because you never knew what you might find. Now it's like a metaphor of our country.