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As America and her western allies deny the obvious, thank goodness for these people and organizations that continue to speak up for the people of Gaza.....might it also be time to suggest that Hamas could be as easily considered a resistance organization, instead of the terrorists Israel and her western allies construct to make the uninformed think that surrendering to a permanent life in an open air prison is something that should be tolerated.

The double standard when it comes to violence is easy to spot.......it walks around ideologically naked, but increasingly more harrassed looking......before it gets on those private government jets to take off for another jaw session.

We all can see who is being killed, who are the human animals....and how mysteriously powerless Blinken and the rest of imperial America actually is. Guess its what you get when you fund settler states.

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Do have more to contribute about Hamas? For months I've wondered about its current relationship with Israel, other countries, and the Palestinians being martyred.

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Chris would be a better source than I....but I do know Israel blockaded them since 2006 when they voted for Hamas.......I've heard that Hamas has the removal of Israel on its platform or whatever you want to call it.........but I also know how the west seems very comfortable sanctioning any country that votes for what the American government disagrees with....

Just as a nation has a right to defend itself........an occupied people have the right to resist that occupation. So for me, with relatives in Cuba...where American sanctions just now are increasing hunger....I'm a bit sceptical about who is the terrorist....... Venezuela too is sanctioned and its assets in the US frozen....because your government knows better than Venezuelans who they should vote for....Gaza was blockaded because Gazans voted for the wrong guys. How reasonable and democratic of the powerful!! How just to punish the poor for voting wrong!!! But Hamas is the terrorist organization??? Sounds like the kettle calling a tiny pot black to me.

I'm pretty sure that Palestinians see Hamas differently than the west does. I do know Israel prevents Palestinians from fishing in their own ocean waters........but feels no scruples in harvesting the fossil gas that exists off shore in those same waters.

So for me........Israel has been the bully....and the aggressor. Expecting Gaza to just suck it up and live in their own land as permanent refugees.......sounds like fascism to me. The west's demands that Hamas does this that and the other thing...........while Israeli bombs keep falling and Israeli troops keep killing people lined up to get some flour from aid trucks seems to be the expectation of a Darth Vader.

I'm not on that side

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Ingamarie,

Thank you for your long and sensitive comment. I entirely agree with you. I want to scream when you call the U.S. government my government. I never felt comfortable in my society. I'm in the Azores now on an extended stay and might move here.

I've read or heard that Israel created Hamas and funds its operation. Obviously Hamas is Israel's excuse to persecute the Palestinians. I don't know what is the truth and pursuing it seems futile. I follow the suffering in Gaza with a sad heart.

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Anyone who still possesses a working heart has to be grieving now. Not just for Palestinians, but for our own governments, so obviously captured by a military industrial complex that seems insane.

The same BS is trotted out daily about Russia......but when I read recently that one reason the sanctions aren't hurting Russia as much as the west expected is because: 1. Russia has no debt and 2. Russia still has the capacity to produce most of what it needs.

So maybe America's real gripe with Russia is that it resisted the globalization that has left so many countries dependent on the big bully of the globe???

I'm wondering.

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When you mention Russia's resistance to globalization, I think of the Azores and their self-sufficiency. These islands can produce all the food they need, but that's in the past. There's corporate food in the village market and although many garden plots have been planted, I see pesticide use. Tourism had shifted the culture in the last ten years. Rental cars and high speed WiFi are needed for these visitors. People are helpful; I have raw milk, honey, eggs and sausage from the village. Being an island, there's lots of fish. Loss of self-sufficiency makes a culture vulnerable to control.

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We need to share more stories like yours. It has been a mark of globalization that the locals get told: 'don't bother making that here, we can import it more cheaply'.

BUT IN WHAT UNIVERSE DOES THAT MAKE SENSE??

Stop producing, and start consuming? Relay on 'supply chains' to bring you your supper? Import temporary workers from the global south to grow what annual veggis you still want to eat? Vacate on to those places where the locals have to ship out to where you live to make a decent living??

It goes on and on......the stupidity of getting something for nothing...cheap food and no labour....and in the west, where this idea was cooked up........we're now in the business of selling the tools of proxy wars.......and yes: Drunk on controlling others, too obsessed with 'enemy' fantasies to see that we ourselves are controlled, and sinking deeper into unsustainable debt every year.

By a globalized financial system that doesn't work very well......runs on military excursions, and is producing, not wealth, but poverty.

At home and abroad.

The hardest part to swallow is that we in the privileged west, voted for these grifters.

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I just sent a financial contribution to the CCR.

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Thank you. And - apparently more insanity may be coming:

This Red Cow Might Destroy the World – An example of scary religious extremism

https://youtu.be/2T5t22DZjlQ?si=xJbAqjsQ-aUjxIkq

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Chris--What happened to the dialogue last night????

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Mar 22·edited Mar 23

Yes, the Gaza genocide demands urgent attention, but  ...

Can we as Chris Hedges' followers do more than merely read and comment? ... and can Hedges do more than relentlessly recount the gruesome details month after month? 

YES!

Hedges could drop the names of several GAZA support orgs ... he could list them at the top of each of his posts here on Substack and we can then respond accordingly ... Substack reports that Hedges now has 85k SUBs here ... why has he never once mentioned any of these support orgs since OCT 7?

And why did I have to be the first to do this?

HERE THEY ARE:

Just Google "gaza palestinian refugee support organizations"

ALSO, of course he has a right to comment only those topics he chooses ... but wouldn't it make more sense to alternate his posts here between ASSANGE/GAZA and those issues that now threaten our freedoms and privacy here in America? ... Why hasn't he written a single piece here on the relentless invasion of illegal immigrants and the scary amendments to the WHO pandemic treaty? ... Like GAZA, these are now urgent issues!

Why does Chris Hedges continue to ignore developments here is the U.S.?

-------------------------------------------------

CHRIS HEDGES HAS DESERTED THE U.S. WORKING CLASS! ...

HEDGES: "Let us stand up and resist so future generations will at least say ‘they tried.’ We cannot do this alone ... together we have a chance" ...

https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/11/hedges-the-pimps-of-war/

but he has refused to comment on THE GREAT RESET, The World Economic Forum and the proposed tyrannical amendments to the WHO Pandemic Treaty

Hedges abandoned the U.S. working class and the U.S. Constitution in an AUG 27, 2021 interview with Jimmy Dore, and he's now brazenly hides behind Gaza for the past 5 months ... his predictable decision to once again leave us all hangin' here with no hope has become his trademark ...

Chris Hedges is deliberately misdirecting our attention here ...

------------------

DIVISIVENESS

Hedges is deceptively divisive and he obviously has no problem with it ...

His relentless recounting of the horrors of the Gaza genocide for the past 5 months has passed the point of diminishing marginal returns for Americans ... I now count over 70 pieces he has posted here since OCT 7, with only 7 addressing issues OTHER THAN the Gaza genocide ... somebody please tell St. Chris he did not tell us anything here we didn't already know here ... we are the people who bought his books, attended the his public signings, smashed THUMBS UP and always commented accordingly ... and we deserve much, much more from this once good man ...

Rather than comment on the ominous threats posed to our freedoms by the WEF and the WHO, he would also have us believe the problem is TRUMP-MAGA ... just listen to the extremely divisive, out-of-context comment he makes here in his otherwise terrific AMERICAN SADISM speech ... listen as he blames the MSM for splitting us into "warring factions" and then demeans those of us who question the motives and tactics of our elected officials as "members of the lunatic fringe and conspiracy theorists" ...

Start at the 43:10 mark and then listen very closely to him at the 44:32 mark:

https://scheerpost.com/2021/06/29/chris-hedges-speaks-on-american-sadism/

Many times, Hedges has been quick to point out the problems of our binary reaction to political reporting but once again, he chooses to deftly demonize and conflate law-abiding Christians with fringe MAGA types ...

I happen to believe that 9/11 was an inside job ... so does that make me a member of his lunatic fringe? ... well guess what, Hedges has actually admitted as much ... after a 2014 speech he was asked to comment on 9/11 and insulted our collective intelligence by saying "I don't want to get into conspiracy theories, Bush was probably just asleep at the wheel" ...

Hedges' words do not empower us, his pessimism demoralizes us ...

Here's a few more head-scratching comments that now have even more meaning since the March 2020 lock downs:

------------------

ON THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

He says all the right things here:

“We cannot be paralyzed by fear. We will be stripped, if we do not resist, of our few remaining rights. To resist, while there is still time, is not only the highest form of spirituality but the highest form of patriotism. It is, if you care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral imperative."

And on another occasion: "The Constitution remains a sacred document."

------------------

ON THE MANDATES & PASSPORTS

But then, after the lock downs ...

He threw us AND the Constitution under the bus with COVID in an interview with Jimmy Dore ... just watch him dance to avoid a direct answer when asked about the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports before sheepishly blowing it off by saying: "that was a decision that I made."

AUG 27, 2021 ...

Go to the 8:12 mark ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NusQH0pnX7Y&t=509s

Jimmy: “I’d like to get your thoughts on the vaccine mandates and passports”:

Hedges: “So I got the vaccine … the fact is these things were rolled out without proper vetting, that’s real … but I understand how people are weary about it, because they were turbo-charged … but that was a decision I made to get it … I am quite certain, in the history of pharmaceuticals that they work very hard to bury the negative consequences … that was a decision that I made”

TRANSLATION: things just got too hot in my kitchen, right Chris?

And on USEFUL IDIOTS on SEP 21, 2021

Go to the 1:50 mark ...

Another less-than-passionate, half-hearted response ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ZGT8raQS8

“It’s a hard question, I guess”

------------------

ON THE COVID VAX

On DEC 2, 2021 ...

The FDA was compelled by a court ruling to release Phizer's vax trial data that revealed 1,223 post-jab deaths and 34,762 adverse events in the first 10 weeks of its trial ... The FDA attempted to delay the full release of this data for 75 years! ...

This proved that the COVID vax was not "safe & effective"!

https://yandex.com/search/?text=FDA+FOIA+release+1223+deaths+phizer+covid+vaccine+december+2%2C+2021&lr=21504&search_source=yacom_desktop_common

But then, just 30 days later ...

On JAN 1, 2022 ...

Chris Hedges made this comment on the Krystal Kyle & Friends Podcast (Episode #54):

Go to the 1:08:47 mark:  

https://krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/p/episode-54-audio-chris-hedges#details

"I don't think we're going to stop the pandemic and mutations until everybody gets vaccinated" ...

Chris Hedges DID NOT have to take sides on this issue ... He could have said it's a personal decision, but no ... most people would never tell another person to "walk the plank" if they knew better, but that's exactly what Hedges did here ... he knew the VAX was rushed to market after only one year (the average is 10 years), he knew about the explosive FDA FOIA release and he had to have seen the many videos of vax-injured people ... but he chose to push the "safe & effective" narrative on us anyway! ... and then about 2m after making that same comment during the interview above, Hedges rubbed our nose in it by openly admitting that he "does not trust Moderna or Phizer" ... livelihoods and lives can hang in the balance of reckless, irresponsible comments like this but clearly, this man did not give a hoot about the consequences.

Of course, Hedges is free to write about any topic he chooses ... but although the 2024 PRES election is 8 months away, we've only got 2 months to stop the WHO from implementing those scary amendments to the pandemic treaty ...

But Hedges won't go there ... ya see, it's just too risky, he's cutting too close to the bone ... this has become his post-pandemic trademark ...

Read about James Roguski and the WHO here on Substack ... Hedges should be front and center on this ... in tough times like these, why can't he stand with us?

Here's one more gem by Mr Hedges that no longer rings true:

"I do not fight fascist because I think I will win, I fight them because they are fascists" ...

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Time to focus on your own blog, PITA, contrary to your current practice.

To me, you are unable to take to heart Hedges’ recurring message that the violence an empire perpetrates at its frontiers returns in a collapsing system to be perpetrated at home. The more the rich West disregards the economic needs of the poor, the more Americans will look like Israel, shooting what they imagine to be zombies on the fence, something American white supremacists already do at the Mexican border, calling it a hunting trip, again crewed by ex military types who learned their skills at the frontier. Then one day the people you think of as zombies, (or rapists and the like, coming to take Trump’s job as a late night comedian put it) might want their own revenge. Then you’ll need more shiny weapons to “secure the area”/ “take care of business”, beyond the ones you’ve been giving Israel at your own expense. It would perhaps be cheaper to rein in the corporations and the practice of weapons give-aways through legislation impacting the military-industrial complex than to carry on like this. The Butterfly Effect might be more comprehensible to you as a drone effect, if you can only look at the world through a gunsight. Maybe the drugs cartels will send a team to the border to play with a drone and start hunting American spec-ops types at the border. The South Africans have a drone that carries a machine gun. But no doubt there’s something in the toolbox to deal with that.. only the toolbox is now in Ukraine. Nobody has any idea how to stop war spreading let alone how to make peace, the UK included. We’re said by Matt Kennard to have been flying some 50 reconnaissance flights over Gaza from Cyprus to give the Israelis battlefield data. And we’re running around in Ukraine, and we’re not in treaty with either of those countries.

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Well done. It cheers me to see that some Americans get the stupidity of imagining you can police the globe...knowing better than anyone who lives elsewhere what is good for them...............and paying scant attention to the needs of your own people, slowing going into unsustainable debt at home.

Keep talking.

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Thanks, Ingamarie, Nobody has ever asked me to keep talking before, so I am, as we say in Scotland, chuffed; I would have been proud to have been taken for an American, until Chris Hedges explained to me that the corporations had bought public policy before anyone got to vote and that Trump was beneficiary of the protest vote to overthrow to the system.. That the population should still imagine that voting for such a person, to use the antithesis of the technical term for his nameless, posturing self-invention, would benefit anyone but Trump himself, is completely beyond me except in so far as a vote for Biden is a vote for genocide. For all that Trump claimed not to have had a war, he still gave the military everything they wanted and more.

Thanks for your encouragement.

.

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The anger so prevalent these days does no one any good.....especially if we fail to understand that the obscenely wealthy have taken control of most everything.....since Thatcher and Regan........and that for the obscenely wealthy, no amount of suffering seems to touch them. Unless we work together for more equality, less waste and no war.........all the benefit the wealthy will see is that they'll die last.

What we've done to the planet is an obscenity; what we do to each other makes mock of any idea of divinity. So yes.......good analysis may not prevent where we're headed, but it's all we have.

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Not again …

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Mar 22·edited Mar 23

You can chuckle, but I'm not laughing ...

Go ahead, watch this - I dare you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8RyxQ2bPhE

If Hedges won't open your door to cold-hard reality, then I will ...

This is the problem with Hedges ... his dark writings demoralize and dis-empower us ... his relentless pessimism vaporizes our curiosity and we see no upside to thinking critically ...

Hedges won't touch this, and you should ask yourself why?

This story has now grown to a serious next-level threat for all of us ...

There are supposedly migrant and trafficking cartels now in all 50 states ...

While most Americans remain asleep at the wheel, I was researching habitation laws in my state today to determine if the Biden admin made any changes ... I also intend find out what my city's police department policy is on this issue ... if squatters seize my house while I'm at the relatives, will they protect my rights as a homeowner and immediately evict them or will they arrest me?

So go ahead, watch this - I dare you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8RyxQ2bPhE

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This Holy Week, thinking of Good Friday, this thought came to my mind

'They'd rather have Barabbas'. This loveliest of weeks in my East Anglia, is tainted by what my government has done to Julian, what they have chosen instead of the lives of the Palestinian people. Most days I cry but feel helpless. Writing to my MP who I see in Parliament huddled up as close as he can get right behind the front bench. The people you trust cancelled or worse shackled. All the people who object, the UN and its court silenced. Crucifixion is still with us. Dr Jo

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Are you kidding? I sat in front of my monitor for all 57 minutes waiting for it to start and the video ended with the introductions. There was no presen5ation then nor on the site you referred me to!!!

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Mar 23·edited Mar 23

I essentially agree with you ... but I can't imagine anyone following Hedges as closely as I for the past decade ... He used to be my hero ... and I'm here to stand for the integrity of the spoken and written word ... on this point, Hedges has failed miserably since the lockdowns and I for one will not let him forget it! ... last year a Dr from Europe really nailed it by saying: "in the future, humanity's currency will be relationships of trust" ... and Hedges has proven he's not to be trusted ... Hedges won't admit it, but he is no longer a true activist ... he has morphed into an actor, just another speculator in the independent media business ... he is here to tell you only what you want to hear ...

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If you aren't working for the msm neolibs who want Chris deplatformed....you should look into getting a salary for the hard work you do trying to discredit someone with a global reputation.

I notice you're not very clear about what he did to disillusion you.....but since we pay a bit of attention to the nutbars who want pandemics to be hoaxes....I suspect you were against the lockdown.

Public health is one thing, a genocide is another. I for one am getting tired of your one issue taking precedence to every other international issue. I'm waiting for the day a bunch of know nothings tell us the genocide in Gaza didn't happen....it was all just left wing propaganda.

A bridge too far??? For folks who don't want to face where we are as a planet..there is no bridge to far. And if there is one, it can be blown up, attacked, denied and erased from the historical record.

Give it a rest.

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Mar 23·edited Mar 23

Is that the best you can do, put words in mouth? ...

One-by-one:

1) A global reputation? ... agreed, but so what?

2) I was perfectly clear about the reasons for how he disillusioned me ... he deserted me along with the U.S. working class with the March '20 lock downs ... and you can kiss him goodbye, because he clearly has no intention of coming back ...

3) My post here was hardly about a single issue, I actually took issue with him on the following:

a) his indulgent coverage of Gaza at the expense of U.S. working class issues,

b) his deliberate efforts to convince us that the problem is TRUMP-MAGA while never having said a word about our real enemy, the WEF and the WHO,

c) his abandoning the principles of the U.S. constitution since the lock downs,

d) and lastly, his grossly irresponsible decision to push the "safe & effective" narrative on us exactly 30 days after the explosive, court-ordered FDA FOIA release which proved that the COVID vax was in fact, dangerous!

And you were obviously so desperate to discredit my criticism of him that you recklessly tried to conflate me with a "bunch of know nothings tell us the genocide in Gaza didn't happen" ... but in my very first sentence above in my post, I said: "Yes, the Gaza genocide deserves urgent attention" ...

Young lady, please do not ever again put words in my mouth again!

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As I said Pita...........give it a rest.

I don't buy your anti vacc, anti WHO conspiracy theories.

But regardless of where you stand on vaccines........the situation in Gaza makes your paranoid sense of betrayal petty. The Vaccine saved lives.......nothing so far is preventing the genocide, and your continual harping on Chris Hedges just serves to further discredit the American Empire.

More concerned with your little dust ups in a teacup than with your military complicity in a genocide.

Nor did I put words in your mouth. I used my own words to say what I suspected you were on and on and on and on about............in post after post.

Pretty close, was I not?

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BTW, I've now asked you twice and I'll ask you again:

What exactly do you think of Trudeau? ...

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With the help of the NDP (Jagmeet Singh) he instituted the CERB...Canada's solution to the unemployment the lockdown created.....my kids got 2000 dollars a month during the time they couldn't work. That was excellent public policy and resulted in us being the best of the G10 countries with the exception of Japan I think.......in low covid deaths.

That was the right thing to do....he also saw to it that we had sufficient vaccines, when they became available........and our vaccine programs rolled out well.

His Carbon Tax is in line with what the economists claim is a good beginning for making the use of fossil fuels less attractive. In addition, his government has had incentives for EV's since 2019....we availed ourself of them and bought an EV Kona........and are now able to tell the conspiracy theorists who diss EVs that they are full of mostly hot ICE exhaust.

In the last year and half there have been subsidies for retrofitting your home....triple pane windows, insulation up to R50 and solar panels............we've used that program to retrofit our son's house........just finished the solar roof last week.

On the alt right, conspiracy side of politics we have a man saying everything is broken, that its all Trudeau's fault, that vaccine mandates violated some kind of personal freedom that supersedes public health............so really, going back to the past and keeping on with the Tarsands (a very uneconomic form of unconventional oil) is the only alternative. PP has no policy but blame, and I don't do hate........so will work hard against his plans to be PM, even if he is financed by some of the same dark (American) money that fueled our idiotic truck convoy.

And Pita....my partner and I are university educated and follow events closely....what the convoy did in Ottawa was not protest, it had more in common with the storming of your congress than with peaceful protest. Canadians don't do politics that way.

We vote for the NDP.....but they're a third party that has a lot of influence in minority governments...which thankfully we had during the pandemic.

To conclude: GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL, EV"S WORK VERY WELL, GETTING OFF FOSSIL GAS IS AN IMPERATIVE, DROUGHT IS THREATENING OUR WATER WAYS IN WESTERN CANADA, AND FOSSIL FUEL EXTRACTION USES FAR TOO MUCH WATER TO BE A SUSTAINABLE INDUSTRY GOING FORWARD.

Fossil fuel loves war....so that alternative to sustainability is being pushed just now....but anyone who thinks covid wasn't real...or that there won't be more pandemics as the climate warms and all life struggles to survive the new normal, is nuts.........or old, privileged and too afraid to face the full extent of the reality the burning of fossil fuels has created.

Trudeau isn't his father..........but he's doing his best........and he's not a bold faced liar or denier.

We could, and perhaps will, do far worse.

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That's third time you've skirted a direct answer to my question!

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Mar 24·edited Mar 24

Yes, you did put words in my mouth ...

And I'm asking you kindly not to do it again ...

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Chris: Tuned in the livestream your discussion with Normal Finkelstein yesterday. Once Norm came to the podium something went haywire with stream. Not sure if APAC was doing some funny business or if it was just my connection. Tried to find a rebroadcast on YouTube unsuccessfully. Is it or will it be available in audio and video format? If so, on what platform. Thanks. Keep up the good work.

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