I sent the following comment to the NYT re. Paul Krugman's column today 12/8/23, "Half a Loaf Is Better Than None" --- which undershoots and does not understand the nature of economic deceit via the great danger unseen and unwanted awareness of 'Negative Externality Cost' Looting:
Paul [Krugman], the way you may well be seeing it — by which I specifically mean ‘seeing it’ too much like the GDP, economically, rather than the entire socio-political economic controlled system on the basis of what Graham Greene should have called —
“The Quiet/Violent American” EMPIRE and which Mark Twain attempted to address with the American Anti-Imperialist League.
America First, along with the few Globalist Wannabe Empires have now, IMHO, fallen into the trap of employing and producing 'power products’ — like weapons, pollution, disinformation, and deceit — through the inverse alchemy of manufacturing — ’Negative Externality Cost’ LOOTING far more than constructively manufacturing ‘Positive Externality Profits’ for ‘we the people’ of the U.S., and all citizens of our small, fragile, waning, and intentionally dying planet.
The unbelievably and arrogantly self-appointed “Masters of the Universe” despite their insane goals of extra-Global luxury homes, eternal-life, and boundless wealth — will not IMHO, as the fabulous and last film ever made, “Don’t Look UP”, ever get-off this mortal coil without God’s Blessing of LOVE over power:
Chris [Hedges] as I commented recently to your Alma Mater, which I frequently note as “these ‘TIMES’ they are a changing” -- but not in a progressive way -- my following and most recent double-sided, ad-hoc, focus-group tested, demonstration and protest signs, which I employ on the sidewalks of Portland Maine and Portsmouth NH. several times per week simply say:
Israel was one of the first to create the covid vaccine pass which was clearly a surveillance tool. The biosecurity state is an expansion of the security state, and doubles and triples the revenue stream. Israel had one of the most draconian covid policies of any country besides China. Ask yourself why? Israel has alot of biotech companies, a lot of ties to Big Pharma, but also to small pharma. Mark my words, its not just about terrorism. Big brother governments in collusion with corporations both large and small, want to keep you safe from everything, for control and profit. They always find or create some reason to take away our freedom. Without freedom, the human being has no dignity, and cannot be fully human.
In recent weeks, Chris Hedges has said much, much more about the plight of the Palestinians than he has ever said about the U.S. working class who have been marginalized into a state of fear, poverty and censorship by COVID tyranny ...
Here's one of his more memorable quotes that no longer rings true ... from his book WAGES OF REBELLION: "I do not fight fascists because I think we will win, I fight them because they are fascists" ... if he really practiced this principle, he never would have thrown the working class under the bus with COVID by quietly refusing to stand with us against the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports ... on this topic, he has only said: "it's a tough decision" ... when in fact, he never should have had a second thought about it ...
I was shocked and puzzled by Chris' lack of fighting back over covid. At least he could have fought the censorship of moderate voice and high level scientists who dared to dissent. However I have some dear friends who believed in all the covid craziness. Too long to say more, but yes, I agree. As you point out, the people who suffered the most from covid crazy policies were working class and children, especially poor children in cities who were deprived of school and social activities for up to 2 years. And then many were vaccinated with the pointless vaccine that didnt stop transmission or infection.
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!
and then, just 30 days later ...
On JAN 1, 2022 ...
Chris Hedges made this comment on the Krystal Kyle & Friends Podcast (Episode #54):
"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 ...
I firmly believe 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 anyway!
PITA - I came of age when polio was freaking out parents. Pictures of kids in iron lungs. And crippled. And small pox and measles. The milkman’s son died of polio. His name was Bobby McCann. The USA then had more of a feel “that we’re in this life together” so let’s help each other out. We felt then and I feel now fortunate to have been vaccinated. This society today does not have that quality because the corporate mind washing exalts the individual.Also in my youth science was valued. People paid attention to it. Respected it. We’re grateful for it. Unlike today’s vogue of not valuing it. I’m old now. And have preexisting conditions. And I praise scientists for making a vaccine that has probably saved my life for when I got Covid, Ihad had 3 inoculations before contracting it. And I praise the government for decreasing the probability of my dying from Covid by shutting down the frequency of encountering those unknowingly afflicted and passing it on.Two very different things today than when Inwas younger. My generation had parents who’d gone through the depression and a father or uncle who fought in WW2. In their childhood diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping cough, and other diseases that killed people. The draft was operating. Men came home dead or deeply shell shocked. Their eyes had a blank look. So I am totally inoculated against your anti-vax attitude. By experience .
Whoa. They ALL came out of the woodwork to comment at once! And they know EVERY awful thing about Chris Hedges. Because they regularly and carefully read an author they disagree with, denigrate and despise, as we all do.
Or someone does, anyhow.
When the flak is thickest, it means you're over the target (or you were target fixated enough to immediately take a 2nd low level strafing run on a heavily defended Nakba, er, I mean target).
Chris and his sycophantic followers reveal their anti whatever you want to call it with their fixation on Israel. There is too much overlap between anti-Zionists and anti-Semites at this point to see any meaningful distinction. Just like Roger Waters, his grasp of the issues is incomplete and has been co-opted by his love for the Arab culture. We know you were a correspondent in the Middle East. We know you speak Arabic (although I speak more at my favorite restaurant than I’ve heard him utter).
I am disgusted by the Israeli retaliation. I don’t have to find every kernel of Israeli policy and practice offensive however. Why does he?
Chris, spend a little time on other countries and their flaws, then we will be able to assess your objectivity. I don’t hear you denouncing the huge increase in anti-Semitism in America, let alone the rest of the world. You say there’s a difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. There should be, but you and your followers, including the abundance of nuts who comment here, don’t see a difference.
Selina, I'm hoping you directed that question at me, because I've got an answer for you ...
What distinguishes me from the other clapping seals here is my deep reverence for the integrity of he spoken word, especially the words committed to print by sacred cows like Hedges ... I've cited just two examples above in this thread of Hedges' duplicity and I've got more ... all ya gotta do ask! ... and on a number of major issues like vax-related bodily autonomy and climate change, he has actually taken sides with the globalists! ... I've got the details, all ya gotta do is ask!
Hey Eric, I've dwelled in the midst of his flock for the past decade and began to see his true colors around 2014 ... I can assure you his followers are every bit as wacked-out as the MAGA fringe types ... but unlike St Chris, I do not believe all MAGAs pose threats to our freedom as he would have us believe .... I think of his cult members as highly-trained clapping seals ... once a week, Hedges spoon-feeds them his dose of darkness and they respond by saying "gimme more"!
CHRIS HEDGES IS DIVISIVE and his followers actually seem to like it ...
Just listen to what he says here is his otherwise terrific AMERICAN SADISM speech:
Just wondering listening to this raises a plain and simple question. Does the discount online optical industry with really cheap prescription glasses put our eye ball pictures into the data bank for facial recognition spyware purposes??
If you are carrying a 5G capable cell phone, you are already making yourself available for very precise locating & spying, even if you/your eyeballs are visually obscured, you never leave your apartment or otherwise avoid getting scanned.
If you've used one of the DNA services such as 23 & me, a lot more information than your eyeballs conformation is in the wind, suitable for a bewildering variety of exploits- Up to and including individually targeted bio weapons.
Fantastic anti-Israel conspiracy stuff. Just watched a good video documentary on WWII and the Germans of that time would approve of this characterization of those evil dastardly Jews.
Keep informing us Chris. It isn't pretty, but it also isn't just a danger to be human 'over there'. Authoritarian gun toting dominators are rising everywhere. It will be a cruel joke if we kill each other over our tribalisms....just before the greenhouse gases we emit take out all life on earth.......or to be accurate, all life left after we engage in our military solutions for everything.
The Israelis have done such a good job over the last 75 years in containing, murdering, repressing, beating and imprisoning Palestinians that they have become one of the most brutal and dangerous militarist countries in the world: and they are for sale.
They are one of the top ten military contractors in the world and have worked since last century in Latin America training death squads, as in Argentina and especially in Colombia, where the carnage was despicable, for decades.
According to William I. Robinson, professor at Santa Barbara University, regarding the digitalization and techno fascism:
“The expansion of surplus humanity and precariousness is not a result of digitalization as much as an expression of the problem of capitalism.
If capital has no use for labor it will be ghettoized in the so-called grey zone and subject to the new systems of social control and repression in a global police state.
The grey zone refers to spaces in between those of the well off and those of outright warfare, where policing and other forms of containment become normalized against the lumpenprecariat subject to repressive discipline.
Here is where we find the prison-industrial complexes, immigration and refugee control systems, mass surveillance, ubiquitous, often paramilitarized policing, alongside a mobilization of state ideological apparatuses that portray the outcast as dangerous, deprived, and undeserving and that inculcate petty consumerism and flight into fantasy”
This we can call 'repressive accumulation', a stage of financial capitalism.
All of this is occurring in Ecuador right now.
It is being and will be paid for with austerity, privatization of essential services, inadequate if any health care, increased misery, growing poverty, rising unemployment, lack of basic services and collateralized and monetized Ecuadorian bodies.
Ecuador: Collaboration with Israel for Prison Reforms
"As part of a comprehensive response to escalating crime and violence, particularly within the prison system, newly elected, 35 year old billionaire, Daniel Noboa has unveiled a robust plan for what he calls ‘prison reform’.
In a strategic alliance, Israel is set to provide technical assistance to help Ecuador regain control over its tumultuous prisons, notorious for violence and disorder.
This international partnership aims to bring about a paradigm shift in the Ecuadorian prison system, restoring law and order."
And just what composes that ‘technical assistance’?
We know that in Colombia among the assistance asked for were helicopters, trucks, rifles, ammunition, and combat infantry advisors to work at both the “company and battalion level of the Salvadoran Army”
I sent the following comment to the NYT re. Paul Krugman's column today 12/8/23, "Half a Loaf Is Better Than None" --- which undershoots and does not understand the nature of economic deceit via the great danger unseen and unwanted awareness of 'Negative Externality Cost' Looting:
Paul [Krugman], the way you may well be seeing it — by which I specifically mean ‘seeing it’ too much like the GDP, economically, rather than the entire socio-political economic controlled system on the basis of what Graham Greene should have called —
“The Quiet/Violent American” EMPIRE and which Mark Twain attempted to address with the American Anti-Imperialist League.
America First, along with the few Globalist Wannabe Empires have now, IMHO, fallen into the trap of employing and producing 'power products’ — like weapons, pollution, disinformation, and deceit — through the inverse alchemy of manufacturing — ’Negative Externality Cost’ LOOTING far more than constructively manufacturing ‘Positive Externality Profits’ for ‘we the people’ of the U.S., and all citizens of our small, fragile, waning, and intentionally dying planet.
The unbelievably and arrogantly self-appointed “Masters of the Universe” despite their insane goals of extra-Global luxury homes, eternal-life, and boundless wealth — will not IMHO, as the fabulous and last film ever made, “Don’t Look UP”, ever get-off this mortal coil without God’s Blessing of LOVE over power:
Chris [Hedges] as I commented recently to your Alma Mater, which I frequently note as “these ‘TIMES’ they are a changing” -- but not in a progressive way -- my following and most recent double-sided, ad-hoc, focus-group tested, demonstration and protest signs, which I employ on the sidewalks of Portland Maine and Portsmouth NH. several times per week simply say:
CAPITALIST
INEQUALITY
CAUSES
CANCER
and on the other side
EQUALITY
FOR PEOPLE
EMPOWERS
LOVE
Israel was one of the first to create the covid vaccine pass which was clearly a surveillance tool. The biosecurity state is an expansion of the security state, and doubles and triples the revenue stream. Israel had one of the most draconian covid policies of any country besides China. Ask yourself why? Israel has alot of biotech companies, a lot of ties to Big Pharma, but also to small pharma. Mark my words, its not just about terrorism. Big brother governments in collusion with corporations both large and small, want to keep you safe from everything, for control and profit. They always find or create some reason to take away our freedom. Without freedom, the human being has no dignity, and cannot be fully human.
In recent weeks, Chris Hedges has said much, much more about the plight of the Palestinians than he has ever said about the U.S. working class who have been marginalized into a state of fear, poverty and censorship by COVID tyranny ...
Here's one of his more memorable quotes that no longer rings true ... from his book WAGES OF REBELLION: "I do not fight fascists because I think we will win, I fight them because they are fascists" ... if he really practiced this principle, he never would have thrown the working class under the bus with COVID by quietly refusing to stand with us against the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports ... on this topic, he has only said: "it's a tough decision" ... when in fact, he never should have had a second thought about it ...
I was shocked and puzzled by Chris' lack of fighting back over covid. At least he could have fought the censorship of moderate voice and high level scientists who dared to dissent. However I have some dear friends who believed in all the covid craziness. Too long to say more, but yes, I agree. As you point out, the people who suffered the most from covid crazy policies were working class and children, especially poor children in cities who were deprived of school and social activities for up to 2 years. And then many were vaccinated with the pointless vaccine that didnt stop transmission or infection.
Did you know ...
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!
and then, just 30 days later ...
On JAN 1, 2022 ...
Chris Hedges made this comment on the Krystal Kyle & Friends Podcast (Episode #54):
"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 ...
I firmly believe 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 anyway!
Thx for nothin' Chris!
PITA - I came of age when polio was freaking out parents. Pictures of kids in iron lungs. And crippled. And small pox and measles. The milkman’s son died of polio. His name was Bobby McCann. The USA then had more of a feel “that we’re in this life together” so let’s help each other out. We felt then and I feel now fortunate to have been vaccinated. This society today does not have that quality because the corporate mind washing exalts the individual.Also in my youth science was valued. People paid attention to it. Respected it. We’re grateful for it. Unlike today’s vogue of not valuing it. I’m old now. And have preexisting conditions. And I praise scientists for making a vaccine that has probably saved my life for when I got Covid, Ihad had 3 inoculations before contracting it. And I praise the government for decreasing the probability of my dying from Covid by shutting down the frequency of encountering those unknowingly afflicted and passing it on.Two very different things today than when Inwas younger. My generation had parents who’d gone through the depression and a father or uncle who fought in WW2. In their childhood diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping cough, and other diseases that killed people. The draft was operating. Men came home dead or deeply shell shocked. Their eyes had a blank look. So I am totally inoculated against your anti-vax attitude. By experience .
Whoa. They ALL came out of the woodwork to comment at once! And they know EVERY awful thing about Chris Hedges. Because they regularly and carefully read an author they disagree with, denigrate and despise, as we all do.
Or someone does, anyhow.
When the flak is thickest, it means you're over the target (or you were target fixated enough to immediately take a 2nd low level strafing run on a heavily defended Nakba, er, I mean target).
Chris and his sycophantic followers reveal their anti whatever you want to call it with their fixation on Israel. There is too much overlap between anti-Zionists and anti-Semites at this point to see any meaningful distinction. Just like Roger Waters, his grasp of the issues is incomplete and has been co-opted by his love for the Arab culture. We know you were a correspondent in the Middle East. We know you speak Arabic (although I speak more at my favorite restaurant than I’ve heard him utter).
I am disgusted by the Israeli retaliation. I don’t have to find every kernel of Israeli policy and practice offensive however. Why does he?
Chris, spend a little time on other countries and their flaws, then we will be able to assess your objectivity. I don’t hear you denouncing the huge increase in anti-Semitism in America, let alone the rest of the world. You say there’s a difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. There should be, but you and your followers, including the abundance of nuts who comment here, don’t see a difference.
Exactly what distinguishes you from the rest of the abundance of nuts here?
Selina, I'm hoping you directed that question at me, because I've got an answer for you ...
What distinguishes me from the other clapping seals here is my deep reverence for the integrity of he spoken word, especially the words committed to print by sacred cows like Hedges ... I've cited just two examples above in this thread of Hedges' duplicity and I've got more ... all ya gotta do ask! ... and on a number of major issues like vax-related bodily autonomy and climate change, he has actually taken sides with the globalists! ... I've got the details, all ya gotta do is ask!
My reply Pita comes before yours to me. Sorry about that!
Hey Eric, I've dwelled in the midst of his flock for the past decade and began to see his true colors around 2014 ... I can assure you his followers are every bit as wacked-out as the MAGA fringe types ... but unlike St Chris, I do not believe all MAGAs pose threats to our freedom as he would have us believe .... I think of his cult members as highly-trained clapping seals ... once a week, Hedges spoon-feeds them his dose of darkness and they respond by saying "gimme more"!
CHRIS HEDGES IS DIVISIVE and his followers actually seem to like it ...
Just listen to what he says here is his otherwise terrific AMERICAN SADISM speech:
Go to the 44:32 mark:
https://scheerpost.com/2021/06/29/chris-hedges-speaks-on-american-sadism/
hear hear!
Just wondering listening to this raises a plain and simple question. Does the discount online optical industry with really cheap prescription glasses put our eye ball pictures into the data bank for facial recognition spyware purposes??
@David William Jackson
If you are carrying a 5G capable cell phone, you are already making yourself available for very precise locating & spying, even if you/your eyeballs are visually obscured, you never leave your apartment or otherwise avoid getting scanned.
If you've used one of the DNA services such as 23 & me, a lot more information than your eyeballs conformation is in the wind, suitable for a bewildering variety of exploits- Up to and including individually targeted bio weapons.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/04/23andme-confirms-hackers-stole-ancestry-data-on-6-9-million-users/
I wouldn't lose too much sleep about the cheap optical dispensary.
Fantastic anti-Israel conspiracy stuff. Just watched a good video documentary on WWII and the Germans of that time would approve of this characterization of those evil dastardly Jews.
Keep informing us Chris. It isn't pretty, but it also isn't just a danger to be human 'over there'. Authoritarian gun toting dominators are rising everywhere. It will be a cruel joke if we kill each other over our tribalisms....just before the greenhouse gases we emit take out all life on earth.......or to be accurate, all life left after we engage in our military solutions for everything.
The Israelis have done such a good job over the last 75 years in containing, murdering, repressing, beating and imprisoning Palestinians that they have become one of the most brutal and dangerous militarist countries in the world: and they are for sale.
They are one of the top ten military contractors in the world and have worked since last century in Latin America training death squads, as in Argentina and especially in Colombia, where the carnage was despicable, for decades.
According to William I. Robinson, professor at Santa Barbara University, regarding the digitalization and techno fascism:
“The expansion of surplus humanity and precariousness is not a result of digitalization as much as an expression of the problem of capitalism.
If capital has no use for labor it will be ghettoized in the so-called grey zone and subject to the new systems of social control and repression in a global police state.
The grey zone refers to spaces in between those of the well off and those of outright warfare, where policing and other forms of containment become normalized against the lumpenprecariat subject to repressive discipline.
Here is where we find the prison-industrial complexes, immigration and refugee control systems, mass surveillance, ubiquitous, often paramilitarized policing, alongside a mobilization of state ideological apparatuses that portray the outcast as dangerous, deprived, and undeserving and that inculcate petty consumerism and flight into fantasy”
(https://robinson.faculty.soc.ucsb.edu/Assets/pdf/RobinsonBaker.pdf).
This we can call 'repressive accumulation', a stage of financial capitalism.
All of this is occurring in Ecuador right now.
It is being and will be paid for with austerity, privatization of essential services, inadequate if any health care, increased misery, growing poverty, rising unemployment, lack of basic services and collateralized and monetized Ecuadorian bodies.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/investigation-israel-mossad-colombia-genocide-rafael-eitan/277499/
Ecuador: Collaboration with Israel for Prison Reforms
"As part of a comprehensive response to escalating crime and violence, particularly within the prison system, newly elected, 35 year old billionaire, Daniel Noboa has unveiled a robust plan for what he calls ‘prison reform’.
In a strategic alliance, Israel is set to provide technical assistance to help Ecuador regain control over its tumultuous prisons, notorious for violence and disorder.
This international partnership aims to bring about a paradigm shift in the Ecuadorian prison system, restoring law and order."
https://bnnbreaking.com/breaking-news/crime/ecuadors-battle-against-organized-crime-peace-talks-prison-reforms-and-more/
It is not an international partnership, it is a national partnership done in conjunction with the Israeli Prison Service , an Israeli state agency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Prison_Service).
And just what composes that ‘technical assistance’?
We know that in Colombia among the assistance asked for were helicopters, trucks, rifles, ammunition, and combat infantry advisors to work at both the “company and battalion level of the Salvadoran Army”
((https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/6/5/israels-latin-american-trail-of-terror).
The professor from an unnamed but what he feels is a good college came to his favorite site to spew more of his uneducated crap.
Why don’t you spend more time in confession than Jew baiting!
Doing some more of your social and economic malcontent wailing I see. And I assume that you have zero bank loans to your name.