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Paul DuNard's avatar

I am now 80 years old. When I was 17, I was sent to Vietnam to participate in what I later learned was the American Vietnam-South Asian Genocide (3.8 million American taxed paid casualties, mostly children and non-combatants). I know what genocide looks like, I know what it smells like. I see it and smell it now

American Voters, having been corralled into a voters vicious circle, face a dilemma: whether to vote for either one of the two leading presidential candidates, is giving a nod either to Extreme Evil or MEGA Criminality.

As per Chris, I will take a bullet in my brain before I vote for Extreme Evil or MAGA Criminality.

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Blind Faith's avatar

Agree... I will not vote for either of this criminals... but I will vote.

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Kody Cava's avatar

In addition to those immolators you mention here, Chris, we should also remember others who self-immolated in opposition to America's war in Vietnam: Florence Beaumont, a wife and mother, Roger Allan LaPorte, George Winne Jr., and Alice Herz - herself a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. I hope their sacrifices, like Bushnell's, do not become forgotten. Their stories are here:

https://weirdcatastrophe.substack.com/p/the-self-immolations-of-climate-activists

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Tom Alfera's avatar

Thank you, Chris. For everything, but especially your words about Aaron Bushnell. He really affected my students; he affected us all.

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Julia Rose's avatar

SHIRAZ UNIVERSITY IN IRAN IS OFFERING SCHOLARSHIPS TO AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WHO'VE BEEN EXPELLED FOR THEIR FREE SPEECH

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JennyStokes's avatar

Really? What a great idea.

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catfish rushdie's avatar

Thank you, Chris!

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Ingamarie's avatar

It's also true that it is now obvious there are no 'western values'....in action, we're thieves and killers....we take what we want, and we kill with impunity. Those of us who see what is happening, and don't have any need to wear 'blinders of virtue', are terrified for our children. Climate change is the enemy now, and we have created it in the west........with our profligate lifestyles and our infinite sense of personal rights...........and as it rises and food insecurity grows, we'll huddle in our little gated communities and pretend we don't see the poor starving at the gates.

We had fed the heart on fantasy, the heart's grown brutal from the fare, more substance in our enmity than in our loves"....so wrote WB Yeats during the Irish civil war. The entire west seems to be harbouring such hearts in our craven breasts just now. I'm horrified by the massive evidence Chris has gathered.......to convince those of us who already know, that we are being isolated for real reasons.

Fascism is still alive and well. It immigrated to Canada and the USA at the end of WWII.

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W.F.Miloglav's avatar

Most excellent and eloquent analysis by Mr. Hedges.

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Ingamarie's avatar

The best part for those of us who refuse 'not to know' is that if we send this articulate indictment to most of our friends and relatives, they won't respond, but will do their best to avoid us in the coming weeks. WE ARE COMPLICIT IN GENOCIDE IN THE PRIVILEGED WEST....secure in our bubbles of well meaning 'liberalism', and determined to stay there.

Chris represents what it means to be a Christian....and demonstrates how rare that is in our 21st C endtimes.

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Alan MacDonald's avatar

Dear Chris, maybe I'm slow (since April 26th), but I have just now confirmed in my mind that "The Quiet American" EMPIRE is clearly employing the massive propagandist power of American TV Networks (even the faux-progressive MSNBC and CNN) are being controlled by the:

INEQUALITY

CAUSED BY

BILLIONAIRE

BASTARDS

With the slick use by the POWER and CONTROL of American Jewish network CEOs, Billionaires, and the highest GINI Coefficient of Wealth Inequality in this world to place a well disguised and subtle 'thumb on the scale' of what Robert Reich --- might well call and draw his "INEQUALITY MEDIA" cartoons, at the endings of all Amy Goodman's "FREE SPEECH TV" educational programs, at least since the explosion to TRUTH in MEDIA --- which is being clearly propagandizing to the max by the richest portion of the mult-colored 'PIE Chart', of which the almost imperceptible 0.1% and 0.2% show the power of American and other less powerful nations, can be viewed.

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Thg0Gtt7HsQ/US5J66UwrbI/AAAAAAAAALk/N8a6BsVSIE8/s1600/WealthDistribution.jpg

BTW, Chris, the GINI Coefficient of Wealth INEQUALITY of: America, Russia, and what the past TRUMP official always shouted-out as if in all CAPS the "Chinese COMMUNIST Party" --- somehow I can't remember this blow-hard's name or position in the Trump; Megalomaniac, Sociopath, Narcissist, and every mental condition in DSM-5 --- diagnosed remotely by over 1000 psychiatrists.

But in 'reality world' China's GINI Coefficient of Wealth INEQUALITY is only the far more normal, low, progressive, and entirely reasonable 0.70 --- and certainly NOT the highest/worst GINI Coefficient of Wealth Inequality of highest and worst "The Quiet American" (economic) EMPIRE and Russia's more visible "Military Empire" .

BTW2, Xi Jinping had already publicly committed in front of everyone in his Party Congress, twice, that 1st in 2019 and 2nd in 2023 to "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics", and then adding four years latter to commit to "Socialist Democracy with Chinese Characteristics"!

As Matt Damon yelled through the window to the pompous Harvard ass hole, "How's them Apples"?

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Alan MacDonald's avatar

How about 'Sleepy and foot dragging', JOE' waking TF-up and realizing that:

NUTANYAHU

MUST BE

BROUGHT TO

THE ICC DOC

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Alan MacDonald's avatar

FORCE

NUTANYAHU

TO THE

ICC DOC

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W.F.Miloglav's avatar

G(enocide)=(ultra-)n(ationalism)×

(ultra-)m(ilitarism)+A(Merican support and armaments): G=nm+A: algebraic formula for the algebra of genocide?

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Gladwyn d'Souza's avatar

Excellent analysis and presentation of the moral abdication of all our leaders. Can you publish this speech as a text on here?

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futgal73's avatar

There is no level of satanic wickedness to which Israel and the U.S. will not sink. Pure evil.

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nat's avatar

There is only on US Presidential candidate that is condemning Zionism as racism in the service of Imperialism and the genocide in Gaza but he is being shadow banned and censored at every turn. He has been a fighter and activist his entire life. A dhalit from India who came to America and earned 4 degrees from MIT. Shiva4president for those who have the courage of their convictions and want to end the Zionist occupation of America and the world.

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debra's avatar

I stand with the oppressed. NO human being deserves to watch as his people are decimated, and trying to rationalize what is happening in Palestine is evil.

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Allan Gnidec's avatar

I agree with Chris in everything except the fact he is not voting for Biden. Indeed Biden is complicit in the genocide of Gaza but the alternative is TRump. Fight the Democrats after November. There are so many things wrong with the political system but right now we have to get democracy back from the brink. The genocide in Gaza is horrific but tackle the corporate and Zionist control of the government after this MAGA craziness has been stamped out!

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Ruth Hunt's avatar

The MAGA crowd won't be stamped out unless there is an economic, political and social revolution in the US. They represent those who have been sold out and left behind economically--Clinton's legacy with NAFTA. The know the system threw them under the bus and are furious about it. Trump knows how to play to his crowd but blinded by rage, they do not see that he did nothing for them. When you have nothing to loose, you cling to any scrap of hope for a better life.

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JennyStokes's avatar

Maybe one of the foremost things to do is to get an Arab Alliance together before the sham elections.

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