“We are not destined for the Shangri-La sold to a gullible public by fatuous academics such as Stephen Pinker. We are destined for extinction. Not only individual extinction — which our consumer society furiously attempts to hide by peddling the fantasy of eternal youth — but wholesale extinction as temperatures rise to make the globe uninhabitable. If you think the human species will respond rationally to the ecocide, you are woefully out of touch with human nature. You need to study Gaza. And history.”
And with those words, Chris perfectly describes human history: Its past, present and future. Bleak.
I refuse to see the future of the world and it's people in such grim terms. To adopt such an attitude predisposes you to make little to no effort to prevent the world from crashing down on us. People grow up in homes that are rife with violence and abuse, often perpetrated by one, or both parents, yet the children grow into normal human beings, and most do not perpetuate the violence they experienced. I don't see Israel as a winner, but soulless.
There exists a paucity of discussion- nitty gritty info - of the “how”to coagulate the. Citizenry into an unmistakable force for change if not transformation of the nihilistic path the leaders are pursuing. Hedges periodically calls for mass action. Who where how when why? We go the grocery store with a list of necessities. Time and space devoting our imaginations to the destructive path appearing set towards doom -is time and space and serious intentional and creative energy and actions not focused upon that La Vida demands of us. How is a large population inspired to break “set”? How does a large population become manipulated into learned helplessness? Elaborations of doomsday are not the ticket to the activation of energy and brilliant minds that breaks the trance we are in.
Agreed. The following sentence is more toward the future:
'If you live in the Global North, you will get to peer out at the horror, but slowly this horror, as the climate breaks down, will migrate home, turning most of us into Palestinians. Given our complicity in the genocide, it is what we deserve."
It isn't so much that all of us are complicit............many have marched with the Palestinians.....and protests have increased around the world. What most of us are is powerless.....and many cowards to boot.
It is our leaders who have betrayed us....our elites who have revealed themselves as complicit......or caught inside a globalism that has never been about human rights, or solidarity, or social justice. Turns out, most of them go with the flow also......pick up on local grievance and milk it to stay in power.
What Gaza has taught me is that Capitalism is at best amoral. It can't serve social justice, international law, or anything but money....we've been tricked into thinking we are better than we are, that our society is more peaceful and just than it is........and as we wake up, we also face an economic system in semi collapse..........likely due to how much more we've spent on war and surveillance than on building a humane society.
Gaza is the horror we need to face. But it is happening at a time when a lot of other skinny chickens are coming home to roost. The West is not a source of sweetness and light.........our security is based on other people's utter loss..........the only thing we manufacture to any great extent is vehicles and weapons of mass destruction.
Where to start?? Who to stand with???
I don't know about the rest of the people who read Chris, but my partner and I are mostly alone......isolated even inside our political circles. We aren't young any longer, and our kids need us more than we needed our parents....so yes....
We're complicit. We're isolated. We're unfeeling for the most part. No one in authority in my Canada is going to protest what Trump is getting ready to do to Venezuela.........I'm deeply ashamed.
But I don't think I've lived my life in such a way........or remained indifferent to the lies and sufferings in the world...........to actually 'deserve' what is coming. Besides.
I'll be dead by the time it gets really gawd awful. My grand babies won't be.
Note that Zionists are positively rejoicing at the Bondi shootings, as this gives them an opportunity to play victim, to run screaming to their American thug, to demand double standards and special pleading.
The Zionist government and its true believers have gone out of their way to inflame hatred of Jews. It is their fault, to a large extent, that Zionism is falsely equated with Jewishness. An event such as the Bondi shootings was predictable. It is more grist for their mills. No loss of even the lives of fellow Jews is too much for these rabid Zionists. A pox on them.
I'm sure you're right. "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." -Proverbs, 16:18 (King James Pure Bible Search - Version: 3.0.0)They must consider themselves immune to blowback.
Yes, true, but they will constitute a minority. I think people will see it as someone, and in this case a father and son who ran amok and killed Jews, and hopefully they will also know that it was a Muslim who helped put an end to it. Yes, a father and son go on a killing rampage, not acceptable, but Israel is also culpable in many regards for the death of those people .
Is the qualifier "in many regards" really needed here? In little more than two years , Israel is responsible for the deaths of more than 300,000 residents of Gaza. Yes... not the 70 or 80,000 reported by the "Gaza Health Ministry" and then dutifully passed along to western media. There are more than 300,000 Gaza residents dead and buried, or still missing. Israeli officials themselves have stated that there are not 2.1 million residents of Gaza now... but 1.7 to 1.8 million. And, no, they haven't migrated to another country. Israell somehow (and only with the cover of mainstream British and US media ) claims the dual role of both victim and annihilalator of Palestinians. It is the most morally repugnant sovereign government on the planet. A terrorist state.
Even if the masses knew (most don't) it doesn't matter. Elite opinion is the only opinion that matters, and elites know who gets carrot and who gets stick.
I think that's true in most cases, however the genocide in Gaza which had a lot of coverage, via the net and with a lot of younger people tuned in, many of them Jewish, will be forgotten, or forgiven. It's hard to turn your back on all those pictures of mothers holding dead babies, or reading that a child's head was blown off, or all of the other atrocities implemented will slip away. I don't think this genocide is going to be swept under the carpet like so many are. I don't believe for a moment that Israel and it's sense of invincibility in regard to criticism once a given is true any longer. I have faith that AIPAC will lose it's grip on our politics, and will become a thing of the past. I also don't think Netanyahu and his impoverished character will be able to sell any of it, or will anyone else.
Hear, hear, but as long as we have a Zionist Occupied Government calling the shots in D.C., we'll never see any changes in Israel's behavior, as long as Christian Zionists continue to believe their preachers who fill them with a false narrative of how Jews are the chosen people & that they can essentially do no wrong, we'll see no changes in our leaders attitudes & behaviors towards this outlaw regime.
Saying that Zionists are occupying Washington allows our legislators off the hook.
This genocide is US policy. Not because Zionists 'own' the political class, but because our political class has decided to demonstrate, to the entire world, that they are above the laws of God and Man and woe be any who tries resist.
Oh no it doesn't, it emphasizes the fact our government is owned lock, stock & barrel by them & that the President & the entire Congress have been bought off or blackmailed into submission!
And in the midst of all this brutality the human race is displaying shines the light of the Palestinian people themselves: Their sumud, their love. While Mr. Hedges points to one aspect of human nature, let's not forget the others, which Mr. Hedges himself personifies. Nothing is guaranteed, even the impending extinction many of us seem hell-bent on achieving,. It ain't over 'till it's over. Persevere. Free Palestine, and thus free us all.
When the “ceasefire” was first announced, partisans addicted to mining every news cycle for ways to score political points for their side and deduct points from the other didn’t seem to care about context, recent history, or the conditions on the ground. On social media, Trump loyalists jumped at the chance to shame pro-Palestinian voices for not celebrating in the streets. Because the word “ceasefire” was being splashed across their television screens, they demanded that Donald Trump be lauded as a selfless humanitarian devoted to peace. The implication behind this reasoning is that the president’s complicity in nine months of bombing should magically be erased, while his tolerance of nine months of engineered starvation should just be ignored.
Mindless rhetoric like this is par for the course for many corners of the internet, but was also featured on CNN.
“… many prominent celebrities who were vocal about a ceasefire are accused of being silent now that there is actually a ceasefire with Israel since Hamas released Israeli hostages,” the network’s Dana Bash stated on-air.
“Israel has committed 738 violations of the ceasefire agreement between Oct. 10 and Dec. 12, including 358 land and air bombardments, the killing of at least 383 Palestinians and the injuring of 1,002 others, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Palestinian Health Ministry,” Chris writes.
The aforementioned voices have once again fallen silent about Gaza.
I'm going to read this after I finish helping my son paint the bathroom, pick up the grand daughter and shine the floors for Christmas...........but here's my guess, and I've seen it in bold colours since the Ceasefire began.
THE NEW WEST SPEAK FOR A GENOCIDE AND CONTINUED LAND THEFT IN THE WEST BANK IS NOW CALLED A CEASEFIRE. And the progressives light huddling in the vacant centre believe the headlines (which is all the reading they do) and are back on name calling Russia for having the temerity and evil nerve to be winning the snailmate in Ukraine. (Which the west engineered but will die denying)
How we love to be Self Righteous in the west. How we defer to the appointed 'experts'. How little we actually give a damn. But then, the end of empire is often written in just such invisible red ink.
I always empathized with the Indians as a child but we didn't kill most Indians, since we brought many germs over which did that. However I do and always have looked at it as a genocide.
Didn't say they weren't culpable, but most did die of disease. You know I never saluted the flag after the realization of what we did, never said with liberty and justice for all, and decided at seven people were my country and those in charge were people not to be trusted. Only 7 and a pessimist and I must say, rightly so. However not a pessimist when it came to people. I still have faith the people of the world see the profound horror and injustice caused by Israel on the people of Gaza no matter what their government has to say on the matter.
No one is saying they suddenly died out. I am not saying we did not make a concerted effort to rid the land of the Indian population, but were primarily assisted by bringing disease along with us, which killed a large portion of the population. That is what I am saying.
I never said we didn't kill them purposely, and no doubt they gave them blankets infected with smallpox, however that does not negate they were greatly assisted by killing the indigenous population via infectious disease to which they were very vulnerable. That's all. No one is giving them a break. Not to mention there was a papal bull that made the following proclamation in regard to non-Christian people the explorers came across "... any non-Christian people "discovered" by European explorers were to be vanquished and subdued. Direct quote: "Subjugated — and brought to the faith."
Yes, Christianity has been a violent organization that spread its fate forcefully since the time that Rome accepted them. They started with the empire itself and then move to north and eastern Europe, the middle east and the Americas
Even at seven I saw it as a genocide, but I doubt I used that word. I would always ask grownups that we take their land, kill them, and how come they're the bad guys? No body offered up an answer, and one day I had an epiphany and realized the cowboys were the bad guys. From then on I never saw my country as someone to be trustedto provide me with truth. I never saluted the flag and added the end line, with liberty and justice for all. I think one of the reasons for my rather mature perspective and concerns is that my father was an abusive bastard who presented himself as a good guy, and at five I knew better.
We all learn in different ways, and sometimes the wisdom comes hard.
I've come to suspect the folks who present themselves as virtuous.... and long have seen even most progressive politicians and ordinary people as well..........as more concerned with the well being of their group than they are with universal peace and prosperity.
We all want to be Good. That seems obvious. But given the Mammon Worship that is at the bottom of western Capitalism, that requires drawing lines.......those outside of the lines we draw become evil...threats that we are justified in destroying for the good of....??? Our world view or lifestyle.
I see it everywhere. Good people justifying evil because its being done by their side. The degree to which we tolerate Green Criminals in the Fossil Fuel industry is a case in point. THEY ARE DESTROYING THE FUTURE....they make war machines possible.
And all Americans are culpable......shooting boats out of the water, and your country wastes air time debating 'IF A SECOND STRIKE MIGHT BE A WAR CRIME"???
The worst of genocidal regimes is they insist we all dumb ourselves down. For the majority, it doesn't seem to pose a problem.
I agree and I think we are indoctrinated to do exactly that. I had a uncle, who was a chief engineer in the merchant marines, and he and my mother and their sibling were raised in an orphanage, and both adopted a a global perspective on the world I liked it, so I tried to adopt it as well. My background is in the biological and environmental sciences and it came natural to care about the welfare of all animals, but I also found too many in the field don't adopt that perspective, and become solely focused on those they are attending to. I think we are indoctrinated to have a narrow perspective otherwise how do you get people to go to war, usually based on lies, and have them feeling comfortable with slaughtering other people. My mother was also an anti-Zionist, believe it or not, and what is happening now I heard as an adolescent. Use to scare me, but scares me more now. I think the computer and sites like Aljazeera helped to break down walls that keep us apart from a common sense of humanity.
You do have an interesting background.......and as is often the case, little people, living through hard times and tragedy, often seem to be the most clear about what is going on in the world.
My dad worked in the woods of BC during the depression, doing the dangerous job of topper to help hold on to our Saskatchewan farm.....mom worked for a quarter a day helping in the harvest near the small town where she lived.
Miraculously, they found each other near the end of the Great Depression and raised 6 of us to be good little social democrats. But they're both gone now, the farm sold, and we five survivors are mostly separated.....by distance and difference.
Still.......anyone who believes Putin started the Ukraine tragedy all on his lonesome is to me, a moron. Which is doubly proved by how the majority in both our countries stay silent as Palestinian protesters are demonized and shut down.
I think however, that at some level, most of us are feeling the disconnect. It's just that there's always a steady flow of scapegoats provided for us to blame. And its not just Trump. Genocidal Joe never saw a foreign war he didn't like either.
Thanks for reminding everyone of the ugly truth of the "ceasefire."
Though the reality we're living (both here & abroad) is almost too grim for words, I'm still hoping enough people will wake up & find the strength to resist the madness & oppression.
The signs are ominous: the empire is losing in its own backyard. Venezuela is its panic to block the Chinese economic model from sweeping into what it believes to be its unitary sphere of influence; and this is unallowable, not the least because it's a bad look, blatant publicity for its demise-in-progress.
Sure. But for the Venezuelans...........and other vulnerable people, these ominous signs mean death. And dumbed down Americans have yet to consider that the drugs coming into your country wouldn't be killing so many if life in America itself weren't so gawd awful for so many.
You have people sleeping rough, people with no support system at all...........and its Venezuela's fault??? Chavez did a lot to raise the incomes of his people before his death......Maduro is of that same Bolivarian Revolution..........but even on your so called progressive (Democratic party inclined) TV programs.............borons who think they know more than they obviously do........call Maduro a thug.
YOU HAVE TWICE ELECTED A FELON WHO'S THE ESSENCE OF A THUG....but your journalists know for sure there's a better target of American do gooders in Venezuela???
Your empire deserves to crater. It appears to be fast becoming ineducable....and as a Canadian, I fear for my grandchildren as fossil fuels and fools get a reboot from the real THUG of the planet....and wars of regime change get blamed on anyone but your idiotic CIA.
Do you think from my comment that I, for a instant, am inured to any of what you're posing. Of course not. Of course the empire needs to die. A given. Unfortunately, it's not gonna be quick, and the dunderheads in this country are in lala land about it, for the most part.
But get this straight. Voting for either arm of the U.S. Duopoly DOES NOT MATTER. They are all corrupt criminals under the orders and tutelage of Zionist and other neofeudal tech billionaires. Hence, focusing on election of the orange menace thug is quite naive, perhaps as naive as you all up north thinking that Pierre Trudeau was anything but a neoliberal toadie in his own right. Ain't MY empire. I'm not worth a hundred million, or a million or anything even close. I'm giving what $ I have to humanitarian orgs, consuming as little as possible, and hoping the demise comes sooner rather than later.
We all do what we can, and certainly up here in the Great White North.........we just elected another liberal (a central banker no less) to avoid a Trump like conservative..........and low and behold.......
PM Carney is busy putting in a Conservative agenda.
The Big Picture is often not seen by the majority though.......even when they realize they were conned. Justin Trudeau might have been naive, but he was trying to move on climate change.........in the only way we can.......TRANSITION OFF FOSSIL FUELS....but....
On the environmental wing, he wasn't doing enough. Likely true, BUT...on the right and centre right.........paying a carbon tax was too much to ask of the beleagured people....still trying to pay off all their vacate ons to other people's beaches..........SOO..OO..
We now have Carney backing another bitumen pipeline to our Pacific North west. Most North Americans have 0 idea how bitumen is extracted, what it needs added to it so it will semi float through pipes........fracking to most sounds like a misspelling of you know what..............
And the Fossil Fool Criminals are back in the saddle. As are the Warmongers. The Russia haters......and, it goes without saying, the good people who pretend Gaza isn't a thing.
All we've got out of neoliberal globalism is a shortened attention span and addictions that must be fed. I simply like to point out America's sins of stupidity because you're ever so slightly ahead of the ignoramuses in Canada.
Can't win electing a banker. And it seems to me that even folks who understand the ills of fracking tend to shrug them off too readily. Potable water --- where's it going to come from? Fracking consumes; AI data centers consume mightily; desalination consumes tons of energy. The water issue looms large, but Ho Hum, right?
Sorry for confusing Pierre & Justin. My mind reverted to the past reflexively. And no one, including myself would argue that the sins of the U.S. aren't leading the world in their level of both mendacity and sinister intent. We suck most, for sure. Moronic citizenry raised on fake history. You all at least have faced your treatment of aboriginal people better for example.
I've pointed the following out on many threads: Every U.S. idiot needs to be force-fed Howard Zinn's "People's History" for a genuine rendering of why this country is in such deep doo doo, why its exceptionalist hogwash is just that.
I try not to call us "America". As the musician Ruben Blades is fond of pointing out, it's all America, from the northern islands and NW Territory down to Tierra del Fuego. But the U.S., as it always does, usurps "America" for itself.
My journey from brainwashed young U.S. citizen patriot to horribly-tired-of-this-place elderly critic and perennial skeptic has been a long one indeed.
You can't fool all of the people all of the time. Unfortunately, those of us not easily fooled often find ourselves isolated and bitter. Even at progressive gatherings, its the ones willing to dumb down the situation that do most of the yatta yatta.
Israel's violations of international law without consequences presages a world where the law is whatever the most militarily advanced countries say it is.
Sorry, Chris. International law is a farce. There is no such thing. What people call international law is nothing more than a collection of treaties, signed by some nations, but not by others, that is supposedly binding on the signatories. But, as the U.S. has demonstrated several times, any nation can withdraw from those treaties whenever it's not in their national interest, and no one can do a damned thing about it. Furthermore, as the U.S. has demonstrated several times, bully nations can violate those agreements and weaker nations have no means to enforce them. So, we are already in, and have been for a long time, a world in which bullies rule.
That is not law. Real laws are inviolable and can't be fabricated or voided by some asshole on a whim.
The only law in existence today is the law of the jungle.
International law is not a farce. It is a well thought and fair set of norms devised to keep harmony among the nations that we should support with our election of wise politicians.
The problem is that we are like in the old west where the bullies used to win. It is up to all of us to denounce them just like Mr. Hedges has always done
BS. It might have been well thought out and well intended, but when anyone can can withdraw whenever they please or when the strong nations can violate the agreements with no consequences, THAT IS A FARCE, pure and simple.
How many treaties has the U.S. reneged on? Can you count that high?
Your comment is not B.S. for the most part of recent history but there exemptions where war criminals were convicted (Bosnia, DRC, Rwanda, Darfur). But you are missing the point. Just imagine what would happen if the majority of the electorate in the powerful countries voted against those bullies.
Yes, the war criminals were convicted but only because it was consistent with U.S. policy. U.S. policy determines who the good guys are and who the bad guys are every time. If someone like Trump had been in office, those war criminals probably would have been exonerated and given medals of freedom.
As for the proposed vote you bring up, I can imagine, but I'm not holding my breath. If the U.S. electorate is any example, the likelihood of such a vote with a favorable outcome is next to nil. My faith in human nature has long since expired.
"srael has committed 738 violations of the ceasefire agreement between Oct. 10 and Dec. 12, including 358 land and air bombardments, the killing of at least 383 Palestinians and the injuring of 1,002 others, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Palestinian Health Ministry. That’s an average of six Palestinians killed daily in Gaza "
And that completely ignores the accelerated violence against West Band Palestinians. It also ignores the bombings and invasions in Syria and Lebanon.
The Zionists have declared themselves enemies of Muslims throughout the world. Is it any wonder that they occasionally retaliate?
No. But when they do, western leaders come out and lament the horrors of antisemitism. It's almost obscene, the blatancy of the west's double standards.
What most people don't fathom is that the Zionists would turn on the Christians if they weren't so useful in their local war against Muslims. There is no love for Christians (or anyone else) among the Zionists. As God's chosen, they are above everyone else.
The belief that a divinity chooses one group over another........that he/she is like......a popularity contest judge.........is the most inane among many inane beliefs those who think they are entitled (the good guys and gals what?) cling to.
There is another facet to this picture. It might be OK to believe that Jews are God's chosen, but when expressed to others it appears as a claim of superiority and arrogance that is offending to the listener who is not Jewish.
I often wonder how much that claim, and the passion of their proclamations are major factors contributing to antisemitism. It's one of the few reasons I can think of why antisemitism is world wide.
The existence of antisemitism is a bit of a mystery.........but imagining that you have a monopoly on the 'real' divinity is a kind of arrogance that I can't imagine a competitor to. I'm sure not everyone of the faith preens themself on that exclusivity.............but it's a tribal idea, and one we should have long ago put past us.
But then.........there is no appeal to authority that is greater than that appeal to an absent divinity.
Chris' point that the Australian killings, appalling as they are........has to be understood in part as blowback makes a kind of obvious sense. I imagine being a mother or father, with all I love under the rubble in Gaza...........and it doesn't take any ism or ideology to explain why I might be filled with hate and hunger for retribution.
What goes around does sometimes circle back to bite the perpetrators of the first wrong..........or innocent victims of that same faith.
Netanyahu's answer to Bondi: Come to Palestine, we will clear a spot for you, you are not safe anywhere else. This tragedy is the inevitable conflation of being a Jew with the concept of Jewish supremacism, often labeled Zionism. The result, a perverted reality setting up an inevitable consequence. The question is, will anybody care when the worm turns and the carnage in Palestine is no longer ignored.
“We are not destined for the Shangri-La sold to a gullible public by fatuous academics such as Stephen Pinker. We are destined for extinction. Not only individual extinction — which our consumer society furiously attempts to hide by peddling the fantasy of eternal youth — but wholesale extinction as temperatures rise to make the globe uninhabitable. If you think the human species will respond rationally to the ecocide, you are woefully out of touch with human nature. You need to study Gaza. And history.”
And with those words, Chris perfectly describes human history: Its past, present and future. Bleak.
I refuse to see the future of the world and it's people in such grim terms. To adopt such an attitude predisposes you to make little to no effort to prevent the world from crashing down on us. People grow up in homes that are rife with violence and abuse, often perpetrated by one, or both parents, yet the children grow into normal human beings, and most do not perpetuate the violence they experienced. I don't see Israel as a winner, but soulless.
There exists a paucity of discussion- nitty gritty info - of the “how”to coagulate the. Citizenry into an unmistakable force for change if not transformation of the nihilistic path the leaders are pursuing. Hedges periodically calls for mass action. Who where how when why? We go the grocery store with a list of necessities. Time and space devoting our imaginations to the destructive path appearing set towards doom -is time and space and serious intentional and creative energy and actions not focused upon that La Vida demands of us. How is a large population inspired to break “set”? How does a large population become manipulated into learned helplessness? Elaborations of doomsday are not the ticket to the activation of energy and brilliant minds that breaks the trance we are in.
Agreed. The following sentence is more toward the future:
'If you live in the Global North, you will get to peer out at the horror, but slowly this horror, as the climate breaks down, will migrate home, turning most of us into Palestinians. Given our complicity in the genocide, it is what we deserve."
It isn't so much that all of us are complicit............many have marched with the Palestinians.....and protests have increased around the world. What most of us are is powerless.....and many cowards to boot.
It is our leaders who have betrayed us....our elites who have revealed themselves as complicit......or caught inside a globalism that has never been about human rights, or solidarity, or social justice. Turns out, most of them go with the flow also......pick up on local grievance and milk it to stay in power.
What Gaza has taught me is that Capitalism is at best amoral. It can't serve social justice, international law, or anything but money....we've been tricked into thinking we are better than we are, that our society is more peaceful and just than it is........and as we wake up, we also face an economic system in semi collapse..........likely due to how much more we've spent on war and surveillance than on building a humane society.
Gaza is the horror we need to face. But it is happening at a time when a lot of other skinny chickens are coming home to roost. The West is not a source of sweetness and light.........our security is based on other people's utter loss..........the only thing we manufacture to any great extent is vehicles and weapons of mass destruction.
Where to start?? Who to stand with???
I don't know about the rest of the people who read Chris, but my partner and I are mostly alone......isolated even inside our political circles. We aren't young any longer, and our kids need us more than we needed our parents....so yes....
We're complicit. We're isolated. We're unfeeling for the most part. No one in authority in my Canada is going to protest what Trump is getting ready to do to Venezuela.........I'm deeply ashamed.
But I don't think I've lived my life in such a way........or remained indifferent to the lies and sufferings in the world...........to actually 'deserve' what is coming. Besides.
I'll be dead by the time it gets really gawd awful. My grand babies won't be.
Note that Zionists are positively rejoicing at the Bondi shootings, as this gives them an opportunity to play victim, to run screaming to their American thug, to demand double standards and special pleading.
The Zionist government and its true believers have gone out of their way to inflame hatred of Jews. It is their fault, to a large extent, that Zionism is falsely equated with Jewishness. An event such as the Bondi shootings was predictable. It is more grist for their mills. No loss of even the lives of fellow Jews is too much for these rabid Zionists. A pox on them.
Zionists see antisemitism as a feature, not a bug.
I'm sure you're right. "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." -Proverbs, 16:18 (King James Pure Bible Search - Version: 3.0.0)They must consider themselves immune to blowback.
I think Israel playing victim is a thing of the past, and no one with any sense of a soul is buying that manipulative lie anymore.
Those who want to believe will find a reason to do so.
Yes, true, but they will constitute a minority. I think people will see it as someone, and in this case a father and son who ran amok and killed Jews, and hopefully they will also know that it was a Muslim who helped put an end to it. Yes, a father and son go on a killing rampage, not acceptable, but Israel is also culpable in many regards for the death of those people .
Is the qualifier "in many regards" really needed here? In little more than two years , Israel is responsible for the deaths of more than 300,000 residents of Gaza. Yes... not the 70 or 80,000 reported by the "Gaza Health Ministry" and then dutifully passed along to western media. There are more than 300,000 Gaza residents dead and buried, or still missing. Israeli officials themselves have stated that there are not 2.1 million residents of Gaza now... but 1.7 to 1.8 million. And, no, they haven't migrated to another country. Israell somehow (and only with the cover of mainstream British and US media ) claims the dual role of both victim and annihilalator of Palestinians. It is the most morally repugnant sovereign government on the planet. A terrorist state.
Amen!
Even if the masses knew (most don't) it doesn't matter. Elite opinion is the only opinion that matters, and elites know who gets carrot and who gets stick.
I think that's true in most cases, however the genocide in Gaza which had a lot of coverage, via the net and with a lot of younger people tuned in, many of them Jewish, will be forgotten, or forgiven. It's hard to turn your back on all those pictures of mothers holding dead babies, or reading that a child's head was blown off, or all of the other atrocities implemented will slip away. I don't think this genocide is going to be swept under the carpet like so many are. I don't believe for a moment that Israel and it's sense of invincibility in regard to criticism once a given is true any longer. I have faith that AIPAC will lose it's grip on our politics, and will become a thing of the past. I also don't think Netanyahu and his impoverished character will be able to sell any of it, or will anyone else.
Already the genocide is being swept away, much as I may wish otherwise, and AIPAC is secure as long as its partisans have money and power.
Hear, hear, but as long as we have a Zionist Occupied Government calling the shots in D.C., we'll never see any changes in Israel's behavior, as long as Christian Zionists continue to believe their preachers who fill them with a false narrative of how Jews are the chosen people & that they can essentially do no wrong, we'll see no changes in our leaders attitudes & behaviors towards this outlaw regime.
AIPAC
Owns
US.
Look at trackaipac.com. to see who is owned - it's most of them , D's and R's
wow
AIPAC's
Tentacles
run Deep
.
this was a Revelation!
.
Thank you!
Those numbers and names surprised me initially too -spread the word.
Yep, I've been posting that website address for months now.
I first learned about that website from Juan "Nobody" Santos, on he Caitlin Johnstone site - glad you know too. Spread it far and wide.
Doesn't mean it will own us forever.!
[why is it that I can
Reply, but not Like
these comments?]
Idk
Saying that Zionists are occupying Washington allows our legislators off the hook.
This genocide is US policy. Not because Zionists 'own' the political class, but because our political class has decided to demonstrate, to the entire world, that they are above the laws of God and Man and woe be any who tries resist.
If true, it means we all must resist.
Check this link :
https://www.trackaipac.com/aipac
Oh no it doesn't, it emphasizes the fact our government is owned lock, stock & barrel by them & that the President & the entire Congress have been bought off or blackmailed into submission!
Bingo.
And in the midst of all this brutality the human race is displaying shines the light of the Palestinian people themselves: Their sumud, their love. While Mr. Hedges points to one aspect of human nature, let's not forget the others, which Mr. Hedges himself personifies. Nothing is guaranteed, even the impending extinction many of us seem hell-bent on achieving,. It ain't over 'till it's over. Persevere. Free Palestine, and thus free us all.
When the “ceasefire” was first announced, partisans addicted to mining every news cycle for ways to score political points for their side and deduct points from the other didn’t seem to care about context, recent history, or the conditions on the ground. On social media, Trump loyalists jumped at the chance to shame pro-Palestinian voices for not celebrating in the streets. Because the word “ceasefire” was being splashed across their television screens, they demanded that Donald Trump be lauded as a selfless humanitarian devoted to peace. The implication behind this reasoning is that the president’s complicity in nine months of bombing should magically be erased, while his tolerance of nine months of engineered starvation should just be ignored.
Mindless rhetoric like this is par for the course for many corners of the internet, but was also featured on CNN.
“… many prominent celebrities who were vocal about a ceasefire are accused of being silent now that there is actually a ceasefire with Israel since Hamas released Israeli hostages,” the network’s Dana Bash stated on-air.
“Israel has committed 738 violations of the ceasefire agreement between Oct. 10 and Dec. 12, including 358 land and air bombardments, the killing of at least 383 Palestinians and the injuring of 1,002 others, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Palestinian Health Ministry,” Chris writes.
The aforementioned voices have once again fallen silent about Gaza.
https://issuechronicle.substack.com/p/donald-trump-is-no-peacemaker
I'm going to read this after I finish helping my son paint the bathroom, pick up the grand daughter and shine the floors for Christmas...........but here's my guess, and I've seen it in bold colours since the Ceasefire began.
THE NEW WEST SPEAK FOR A GENOCIDE AND CONTINUED LAND THEFT IN THE WEST BANK IS NOW CALLED A CEASEFIRE. And the progressives light huddling in the vacant centre believe the headlines (which is all the reading they do) and are back on name calling Russia for having the temerity and evil nerve to be winning the snailmate in Ukraine. (Which the west engineered but will die denying)
How we love to be Self Righteous in the west. How we defer to the appointed 'experts'. How little we actually give a damn. But then, the end of empire is often written in just such invisible red ink.
Itmar Ben-Gvir is no different or better than Heinrich Himmler. They were both cast from the same pure evil mold.
Israeli colonialism is not much different than others except the extremes it goes
Even U.S colonialism destroyed most of the American indian
Thinking Israel or even WWII Germany are really that different would be a mistake
This is not the end of the nightmare EVEN for the U.S.. It is the beginning.
I always empathized with the Indians as a child but we didn't kill most Indians, since we brought many germs over which did that. However I do and always have looked at it as a genocide.
The U.S state and it forts did much of that
Didn't say they weren't culpable, but most did die of disease. You know I never saluted the flag after the realization of what we did, never said with liberty and justice for all, and decided at seven people were my country and those in charge were people not to be trusted. Only 7 and a pessimist and I must say, rightly so. However not a pessimist when it came to people. I still have faith the people of the world see the profound horror and injustice caused by Israel on the people of Gaza no matter what their government has to say on the matter.
disease like maybe in Gaza ?
I do not believe they suddenly died out
No one is saying they suddenly died out. I am not saying we did not make a concerted effort to rid the land of the Indian population, but were primarily assisted by bringing disease along with us, which killed a large portion of the population. That is what I am saying.
heh
OK
Maybe. But if so most are too scared........or lazy.......to attend a rally .
We did kill them purposely when we gave them blankets we knew were infected with smallpox.
I never said we didn't kill them purposely, and no doubt they gave them blankets infected with smallpox, however that does not negate they were greatly assisted by killing the indigenous population via infectious disease to which they were very vulnerable. That's all. No one is giving them a break. Not to mention there was a papal bull that made the following proclamation in regard to non-Christian people the explorers came across "... any non-Christian people "discovered" by European explorers were to be vanquished and subdued. Direct quote: "Subjugated — and brought to the faith."
Yes, Christianity has been a violent organization that spread its fate forcefully since the time that Rome accepted them. They started with the empire itself and then move to north and eastern Europe, the middle east and the Americas
That's what it was.
Even at seven I saw it as a genocide, but I doubt I used that word. I would always ask grownups that we take their land, kill them, and how come they're the bad guys? No body offered up an answer, and one day I had an epiphany and realized the cowboys were the bad guys. From then on I never saw my country as someone to be trustedto provide me with truth. I never saluted the flag and added the end line, with liberty and justice for all. I think one of the reasons for my rather mature perspective and concerns is that my father was an abusive bastard who presented himself as a good guy, and at five I knew better.
We all learn in different ways, and sometimes the wisdom comes hard.
I've come to suspect the folks who present themselves as virtuous.... and long have seen even most progressive politicians and ordinary people as well..........as more concerned with the well being of their group than they are with universal peace and prosperity.
We all want to be Good. That seems obvious. But given the Mammon Worship that is at the bottom of western Capitalism, that requires drawing lines.......those outside of the lines we draw become evil...threats that we are justified in destroying for the good of....??? Our world view or lifestyle.
I see it everywhere. Good people justifying evil because its being done by their side. The degree to which we tolerate Green Criminals in the Fossil Fuel industry is a case in point. THEY ARE DESTROYING THE FUTURE....they make war machines possible.
And all Americans are culpable......shooting boats out of the water, and your country wastes air time debating 'IF A SECOND STRIKE MIGHT BE A WAR CRIME"???
The worst of genocidal regimes is they insist we all dumb ourselves down. For the majority, it doesn't seem to pose a problem.
I agree and I think we are indoctrinated to do exactly that. I had a uncle, who was a chief engineer in the merchant marines, and he and my mother and their sibling were raised in an orphanage, and both adopted a a global perspective on the world I liked it, so I tried to adopt it as well. My background is in the biological and environmental sciences and it came natural to care about the welfare of all animals, but I also found too many in the field don't adopt that perspective, and become solely focused on those they are attending to. I think we are indoctrinated to have a narrow perspective otherwise how do you get people to go to war, usually based on lies, and have them feeling comfortable with slaughtering other people. My mother was also an anti-Zionist, believe it or not, and what is happening now I heard as an adolescent. Use to scare me, but scares me more now. I think the computer and sites like Aljazeera helped to break down walls that keep us apart from a common sense of humanity.
You do have an interesting background.......and as is often the case, little people, living through hard times and tragedy, often seem to be the most clear about what is going on in the world.
My dad worked in the woods of BC during the depression, doing the dangerous job of topper to help hold on to our Saskatchewan farm.....mom worked for a quarter a day helping in the harvest near the small town where she lived.
Miraculously, they found each other near the end of the Great Depression and raised 6 of us to be good little social democrats. But they're both gone now, the farm sold, and we five survivors are mostly separated.....by distance and difference.
Still.......anyone who believes Putin started the Ukraine tragedy all on his lonesome is to me, a moron. Which is doubly proved by how the majority in both our countries stay silent as Palestinian protesters are demonized and shut down.
I think however, that at some level, most of us are feeling the disconnect. It's just that there's always a steady flow of scapegoats provided for us to blame. And its not just Trump. Genocidal Joe never saw a foreign war he didn't like either.
Thanks for reminding everyone of the ugly truth of the "ceasefire."
Though the reality we're living (both here & abroad) is almost too grim for words, I'm still hoping enough people will wake up & find the strength to resist the madness & oppression.
thank you Chris.
The signs are ominous: the empire is losing in its own backyard. Venezuela is its panic to block the Chinese economic model from sweeping into what it believes to be its unitary sphere of influence; and this is unallowable, not the least because it's a bad look, blatant publicity for its demise-in-progress.
Sure. But for the Venezuelans...........and other vulnerable people, these ominous signs mean death. And dumbed down Americans have yet to consider that the drugs coming into your country wouldn't be killing so many if life in America itself weren't so gawd awful for so many.
You have people sleeping rough, people with no support system at all...........and its Venezuela's fault??? Chavez did a lot to raise the incomes of his people before his death......Maduro is of that same Bolivarian Revolution..........but even on your so called progressive (Democratic party inclined) TV programs.............borons who think they know more than they obviously do........call Maduro a thug.
YOU HAVE TWICE ELECTED A FELON WHO'S THE ESSENCE OF A THUG....but your journalists know for sure there's a better target of American do gooders in Venezuela???
Your empire deserves to crater. It appears to be fast becoming ineducable....and as a Canadian, I fear for my grandchildren as fossil fuels and fools get a reboot from the real THUG of the planet....and wars of regime change get blamed on anyone but your idiotic CIA.
Do you think from my comment that I, for a instant, am inured to any of what you're posing. Of course not. Of course the empire needs to die. A given. Unfortunately, it's not gonna be quick, and the dunderheads in this country are in lala land about it, for the most part.
But get this straight. Voting for either arm of the U.S. Duopoly DOES NOT MATTER. They are all corrupt criminals under the orders and tutelage of Zionist and other neofeudal tech billionaires. Hence, focusing on election of the orange menace thug is quite naive, perhaps as naive as you all up north thinking that Pierre Trudeau was anything but a neoliberal toadie in his own right. Ain't MY empire. I'm not worth a hundred million, or a million or anything even close. I'm giving what $ I have to humanitarian orgs, consuming as little as possible, and hoping the demise comes sooner rather than later.
A great reaction.
We all do what we can, and certainly up here in the Great White North.........we just elected another liberal (a central banker no less) to avoid a Trump like conservative..........and low and behold.......
PM Carney is busy putting in a Conservative agenda.
The Big Picture is often not seen by the majority though.......even when they realize they were conned. Justin Trudeau might have been naive, but he was trying to move on climate change.........in the only way we can.......TRANSITION OFF FOSSIL FUELS....but....
On the environmental wing, he wasn't doing enough. Likely true, BUT...on the right and centre right.........paying a carbon tax was too much to ask of the beleagured people....still trying to pay off all their vacate ons to other people's beaches..........SOO..OO..
We now have Carney backing another bitumen pipeline to our Pacific North west. Most North Americans have 0 idea how bitumen is extracted, what it needs added to it so it will semi float through pipes........fracking to most sounds like a misspelling of you know what..............
And the Fossil Fool Criminals are back in the saddle. As are the Warmongers. The Russia haters......and, it goes without saying, the good people who pretend Gaza isn't a thing.
All we've got out of neoliberal globalism is a shortened attention span and addictions that must be fed. I simply like to point out America's sins of stupidity because you're ever so slightly ahead of the ignoramuses in Canada.
And on that note......Happy Holidays.
Can't win electing a banker. And it seems to me that even folks who understand the ills of fracking tend to shrug them off too readily. Potable water --- where's it going to come from? Fracking consumes; AI data centers consume mightily; desalination consumes tons of energy. The water issue looms large, but Ho Hum, right?
Sorry for confusing Pierre & Justin. My mind reverted to the past reflexively. And no one, including myself would argue that the sins of the U.S. aren't leading the world in their level of both mendacity and sinister intent. We suck most, for sure. Moronic citizenry raised on fake history. You all at least have faced your treatment of aboriginal people better for example.
I've pointed the following out on many threads: Every U.S. idiot needs to be force-fed Howard Zinn's "People's History" for a genuine rendering of why this country is in such deep doo doo, why its exceptionalist hogwash is just that.
I try not to call us "America". As the musician Ruben Blades is fond of pointing out, it's all America, from the northern islands and NW Territory down to Tierra del Fuego. But the U.S., as it always does, usurps "America" for itself.
My journey from brainwashed young U.S. citizen patriot to horribly-tired-of-this-place elderly critic and perennial skeptic has been a long one indeed.
On that note: Happy Holidays.
Lost my comment, but suffice it to say:
You can't fool all of the people all of the time. Unfortunately, those of us not easily fooled often find ourselves isolated and bitter. Even at progressive gatherings, its the ones willing to dumb down the situation that do most of the yatta yatta.
Israel's violations of international law without consequences presages a world where the law is whatever the most militarily advanced countries say it is.
Sorry, Chris. International law is a farce. There is no such thing. What people call international law is nothing more than a collection of treaties, signed by some nations, but not by others, that is supposedly binding on the signatories. But, as the U.S. has demonstrated several times, any nation can withdraw from those treaties whenever it's not in their national interest, and no one can do a damned thing about it. Furthermore, as the U.S. has demonstrated several times, bully nations can violate those agreements and weaker nations have no means to enforce them. So, we are already in, and have been for a long time, a world in which bullies rule.
That is not law. Real laws are inviolable and can't be fabricated or voided by some asshole on a whim.
The only law in existence today is the law of the jungle.
International law is not a farce. It is a well thought and fair set of norms devised to keep harmony among the nations that we should support with our election of wise politicians.
The problem is that we are like in the old west where the bullies used to win. It is up to all of us to denounce them just like Mr. Hedges has always done
BS. It might have been well thought out and well intended, but when anyone can can withdraw whenever they please or when the strong nations can violate the agreements with no consequences, THAT IS A FARCE, pure and simple.
How many treaties has the U.S. reneged on? Can you count that high?
Your comment is not B.S. for the most part of recent history but there exemptions where war criminals were convicted (Bosnia, DRC, Rwanda, Darfur). But you are missing the point. Just imagine what would happen if the majority of the electorate in the powerful countries voted against those bullies.
Yes, the war criminals were convicted but only because it was consistent with U.S. policy. U.S. policy determines who the good guys are and who the bad guys are every time. If someone like Trump had been in office, those war criminals probably would have been exonerated and given medals of freedom.
As for the proposed vote you bring up, I can imagine, but I'm not holding my breath. If the U.S. electorate is any example, the likelihood of such a vote with a favorable outcome is next to nil. My faith in human nature has long since expired.
"srael has committed 738 violations of the ceasefire agreement between Oct. 10 and Dec. 12, including 358 land and air bombardments, the killing of at least 383 Palestinians and the injuring of 1,002 others, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Palestinian Health Ministry. That’s an average of six Palestinians killed daily in Gaza "
And that completely ignores the accelerated violence against West Band Palestinians. It also ignores the bombings and invasions in Syria and Lebanon.
The Zionists have declared themselves enemies of Muslims throughout the world. Is it any wonder that they occasionally retaliate?
No. But when they do, western leaders come out and lament the horrors of antisemitism. It's almost obscene, the blatancy of the west's double standards.
What most people don't fathom is that the Zionists would turn on the Christians if they weren't so useful in their local war against Muslims. There is no love for Christians (or anyone else) among the Zionists. As God's chosen, they are above everyone else.
The belief that a divinity chooses one group over another........that he/she is like......a popularity contest judge.........is the most inane among many inane beliefs those who think they are entitled (the good guys and gals what?) cling to.
There is another facet to this picture. It might be OK to believe that Jews are God's chosen, but when expressed to others it appears as a claim of superiority and arrogance that is offending to the listener who is not Jewish.
I often wonder how much that claim, and the passion of their proclamations are major factors contributing to antisemitism. It's one of the few reasons I can think of why antisemitism is world wide.
The existence of antisemitism is a bit of a mystery.........but imagining that you have a monopoly on the 'real' divinity is a kind of arrogance that I can't imagine a competitor to. I'm sure not everyone of the faith preens themself on that exclusivity.............but it's a tribal idea, and one we should have long ago put past us.
But then.........there is no appeal to authority that is greater than that appeal to an absent divinity.
Chris' point that the Australian killings, appalling as they are........has to be understood in part as blowback makes a kind of obvious sense. I imagine being a mother or father, with all I love under the rubble in Gaza...........and it doesn't take any ism or ideology to explain why I might be filled with hate and hunger for retribution.
What goes around does sometimes circle back to bite the perpetrators of the first wrong..........or innocent victims of that same faith.
Netanyahu's answer to Bondi: Come to Palestine, we will clear a spot for you, you are not safe anywhere else. This tragedy is the inevitable conflation of being a Jew with the concept of Jewish supremacism, often labeled Zionism. The result, a perverted reality setting up an inevitable consequence. The question is, will anybody care when the worm turns and the carnage in Palestine is no longer ignored.
Homo idiocratis plunderliticus Americ(anus).
Human Inc. A Private Equity Consortium
Coming soon to a planetary system near you!
We specialize in looting habitable planets, asteroids or any exploitable mass drifting through space, searching for a purpose.
Just give us a call anytime! Our associates will assist you in scheduling your very own demolition.
We finalized the trashing of planet Earth back in the 21st century,( so don't waste your time looking for anything of value. )
Earth was forced through the sieve of the free market...it's all gone now.
That's our purpose and we are the chosen dominionists.
And having that good ole entrepreneurial spirit coupled with a positive attitude....well, we're moving on!
.
So look out universe, we're coming through.
How can a species, with such incredible potential commit planetary genocide?
We are the medium with which the universe is able to know and understand itself. What a privilege, just to be so carelessly tossed aside.
"Just give us a call anytime! Our associates will assist you in scheduling your very own demolition." What is the phone number? Is the White House?
DEAR CHRIS,
YOU ARE FABULOUS IN EXPOSING THE PHONY SCAM OF ZIONISTS ON DUMB MSNBC
TROLLING AS ‘SO CALLED, RADICAL LEFT’ GROUPS —- WHEN THE NUTANYAHU GANG ARE ALREADY SCREWING THE WORLD !!!!