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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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"?
HEDGES: "... (Gaza) is unlike anything seen since the war in Viet Nam" ...
Not true and Hedges knows better ... hey Chris, what about the 377k that have been killed by a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen? ... I guess you just forgot about that one, right? ...
The blind allegiance of Hedges' cult members would make for an interesting case study ...
How little they actually seem to know about this man ...
He said the U.S. constitution was "a sacred document" and then refused to stand with us against the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports ...
He pushed the "safe & effective" narrative on us just 30 days after the explosive, court-ordered FDA FOIA release which proved that the COVID vax was not "safe & effective" ... and then in the same breath, rubbed our noses in it by openly admitting that he "does not trust Moderna or Phizer" ...
He called those of us who question the motives and tactics of our elected officials "members of the lunatic fringe and conspiracy theorists" ...
When asked to comment on 9/11 after a 2014 speech, he insulted our collective intelligence by saying: "I don't want to get into conspiracy theories ... Bush was probably just asleep at the wheel" ...
In a 2021 interview, he said he told indigenous pipeline protesters to "park your cars in their path, remove the engines and walk away" ... but he did not even comment on the Canadian Trucker's Convoy until a March 2022 interview with Jimmy Dore - one month AFTER the protests actually ended!
I could go on, I have more!
These are not the principles they teach at Harvard Divinity School.
You are a living shame writ large..........your disagreement with some stand Chris made during the covid pandemic looming larger in the small room of your mind than the documentation of the current Genocide.
But thanks for demonstrating what the right wing fringe cares about.......and the long term rancour they carry around in their hearts for those of us who don't confuse public health measures with the war games of Americas military industrial complex.
I happen to think Trump is a complete horse's-ass of a human being ...
But I do not believe that those MAGA types pose a threat to our freedom, as Hedges would have us believe ... they just want the same things we do: fair elections, preservation of the first and second amendments, a fair wage for a good day's work ...
I am not a troll, I am not paid, I am not a Zionist and I am not a Trumper ...
I am a true independent progressive just as Hedges once was ... I can't imagine anybody following him more closely than I for the past decade, he used to be my hero ... I stand for the integrity of written and spoken words and I am obligated by my standards to come back here to tell him how disappointed I am in him ... for the past decade he gave us the impression that he would be there to fight the good fight with us when the time came, but he sneaked out the back door on us with the lock downs ...
Why don't you just admit that you despise the thought of anybody exercising their first amendment rights, especially when their viewpoint does not AGREE WITH YOUR VIEWPOINT? ...
I'm not here to be provocative or compelling ...
I am protesting Hedges' tactics after loyally supporting him for the past decade ... as I've noted here in this thread, I am simply bench-marking his written and spoken words against his actions to demonstrate how he has in fact abandoned the U.S. working class since the lock downs ...
Hedges has been afflicted by the same poison that is now driving us toward societal collapse ... I call it the "primacy virus" ... Hedges really nailed it a couple years ago when he noted that more people are leveraging the principles of primacy of profit and primacy of self to rationalize their decisions ... and now he is doing the same ...
Hedges has a spouse and family and ideological soulmates, but anyone outside of his immediate circle is now fair game, including his very loyal followers ...
And my carefully-researched criticisms of him have proven it!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Agree... I will not vote for either of this criminals... but I will vote.
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
Thank you, Chris. For everything, but especially your words about Aaron Bushnell. He really affected my students; he affected us all.
SHIRAZ UNIVERSITY IN IRAN IS OFFERING SCHOLARSHIPS TO AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WHO'VE BEEN EXPELLED FOR THEIR FREE SPEECH
Really? What a great idea.
Thank you, Chris!
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.
Most excellent and eloquent analysis by Mr. Hedges.
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.
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"?
How about 'Sleepy and foot dragging', JOE' waking TF-up and realizing that:
NUTANYAHU
MUST BE
BROUGHT TO
THE ICC DOC
FORCE
NUTANYAHU
TO THE
ICC DOC
G(enocide)=(ultra-)n(ationalism)×
(ultra-)m(ilitarism)+A(Merican support and armaments): G=nm+A: algebraic formula for the algebra of genocide?
HEDGES: "... (Gaza) is unlike anything seen since the war in Viet Nam" ...
Not true and Hedges knows better ... hey Chris, what about the 377k that have been killed by a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen? ... I guess you just forgot about that one, right? ...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/23/un-yemen-recovery-possible-in-one-generation-if-war-stops-now
The blind allegiance of Hedges' cult members would make for an interesting case study ...
How little they actually seem to know about this man ...
He said the U.S. constitution was "a sacred document" and then refused to stand with us against the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports ...
He pushed the "safe & effective" narrative on us just 30 days after the explosive, court-ordered FDA FOIA release which proved that the COVID vax was not "safe & effective" ... and then in the same breath, rubbed our noses in it by openly admitting that he "does not trust Moderna or Phizer" ...
He called those of us who question the motives and tactics of our elected officials "members of the lunatic fringe and conspiracy theorists" ...
When asked to comment on 9/11 after a 2014 speech, he insulted our collective intelligence by saying: "I don't want to get into conspiracy theories ... Bush was probably just asleep at the wheel" ...
In a 2021 interview, he said he told indigenous pipeline protesters to "park your cars in their path, remove the engines and walk away" ... but he did not even comment on the Canadian Trucker's Convoy until a March 2022 interview with Jimmy Dore - one month AFTER the protests actually ended!
I could go on, I have more!
These are not the principles they teach at Harvard Divinity School.
You are a living shame writ large..........your disagreement with some stand Chris made during the covid pandemic looming larger in the small room of your mind than the documentation of the current Genocide.
But thanks for demonstrating what the right wing fringe cares about.......and the long term rancour they carry around in their hearts for those of us who don't confuse public health measures with the war games of Americas military industrial complex.
And one more thing Ingamarie ...
I AM NOT a member of the right wing fringe ...
I happen to think Trump is a complete horse's-ass of a human being ...
But I do not believe that those MAGA types pose a threat to our freedom, as Hedges would have us believe ... they just want the same things we do: fair elections, preservation of the first and second amendments, a fair wage for a good day's work ...
Sorry Ingamarie ...
But those are all Hedges own words I've cited here, not mine ...
So why don't you take it up with him?
Why do you keep on - are you paid!
I am not a troll, I am not paid, I am not a Zionist and I am not a Trumper ...
I am a true independent progressive just as Hedges once was ... I can't imagine anybody following him more closely than I for the past decade, he used to be my hero ... I stand for the integrity of written and spoken words and I am obligated by my standards to come back here to tell him how disappointed I am in him ... for the past decade he gave us the impression that he would be there to fight the good fight with us when the time came, but he sneaked out the back door on us with the lock downs ...
So did I answer your question?
You neglected to mention at least 2-things about ‘blind spots’…everybody has them & nobody can detect their own, hence the phrase.
I can relate to the your stance of only respecting people who agree w/ you on everything because I’ve done the same thing.
But, you gotta’ admit… it’s not too smart even if often seems a compelling perspective .
-suerté, JJ ( Detroit near Canada )
Oh really!
Why don't you just admit that you despise the thought of anybody exercising their first amendment rights, especially when their viewpoint does not AGREE WITH YOUR VIEWPOINT? ...
I'm not here to be provocative or compelling ...
I am protesting Hedges' tactics after loyally supporting him for the past decade ... as I've noted here in this thread, I am simply bench-marking his written and spoken words against his actions to demonstrate how he has in fact abandoned the U.S. working class since the lock downs ...
Hedges has been afflicted by the same poison that is now driving us toward societal collapse ... I call it the "primacy virus" ... Hedges really nailed it a couple years ago when he noted that more people are leveraging the principles of primacy of profit and primacy of self to rationalize their decisions ... and now he is doing the same ...
Hedges has a spouse and family and ideological soulmates, but anyone outside of his immediate circle is now fair game, including his very loyal followers ...
And my carefully-researched criticisms of him have proven it!
Excellent analysis and presentation of the moral abdication of all our leaders. Can you publish this speech as a text on here?
There is no level of satanic wickedness to which Israel and the U.S. will not sink. Pure evil.
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.
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.
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!
MAGA is not the problem as Hedges would have us believe ...
The problem is the Elite's relentless pursuit of the goals of UN Agenda 21 ...
And Hedges won't go there!
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.