There was a decade of popular uprisings from 2010 until the global pandemic in 2020. These uprisings shook the foundations of the global order. They denounced corporate domination, austerity cuts and demanded economic justice and civil rights. The Occupy Wall Street and the Black Lives Matter mass demonstrations following the execution of George Floyd in 2020 are cases.
The suppression of dissent within the United States has been a crucial component of the rise of bipartisan fascism. I say this having led the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (now known as Defending Rights and Dissent) from 2010 until 2015. Folks concerned about this disturbing trend can get involved by supporting the work of organizations like it. https://www.rightsanddissent.org
Even though restrictions on domestic dissent have included state violence, state surveillance, and profound pressure from a labor market that prefers to silence workers, it is important to note that Americans of conscience have remained undeterred. I wrote last year about grassroots mobilizations around the world challenging the continuing Israeli genocide in Gaza (https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/an-escalating-uprising-demands-human), and again earlier this month about a particular direct action aiming to shut down a Lockheed Martin facility in California, 21 years to the month after we did so back in 2003 following the invasion of Iraq. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/history-might-not-repeat-but-it-certainly
To associate the current globalist corporatist power in the Western world to the "far right" is so damn intellectually dishonest I don't know how anyone gives any credibility to this piece. The "far right" in this current political era is committed to destruction of that cabal of monied power that connects with the American Democrat party.
Jesus you people are fantastic in how you cultch at your old "look at me, I am against the man and for the little guy" political identity while you also clutch all your real estate and Wall Street wealth and protect the corporatist cabal for your own selfish reasons.
I agree. I think the term "far right" in the title is misleading since many of the failures Bevins describes are losses to left and near-left neoliberal power which permeates contemporary "liberal" governance. As I might paraphrase Bevins (and you, Frank), our neoliberal subjectivity is eating us alive.
I disagree that the far right is any friend to our liberation from elite power. It's clear to me that the populist right has its own oppressive agenda.
There are about ten thousand far right Naziesk numskulls with swastikas claiming white Christian superiority, and several million far left Maoist numskulls with black masks claiming superiority and that white Republicans and cops are racist fascists and a threat to democracy.
Neither should be tolerable, but the establishment corporatist Regime supports the latter. The establishment corporatist Regime supports the latter because the latter supports the establishment corporatist Regime. The only thing that rank and file Republicans have in common with the far right numbskulls is that they both want to scale back the power and control of the establishment corporatist Regime. Other than that there is nothing at all in common. In fact, the far right and far left numskulls are barely different. They are just malcontent people ideologically captured as an outlet for their resentment, grievance and rage.
"In pre–Hitlerian Germany, it was often a toss-up whether a restless youth would join the Communists or the Nazis."
“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. . . . Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil.” Hoffer
I find that there are few rank and file Democrats that do anything but pay lip-service to this dislike of the corporatist establishment Regime. Chris does it, but then kills the messenger, I think, for his social and political fealty requirements. It is like attempting to swim in the deep end of the pool while clutching the safe and familiar side of the shallow end.
From where I sit, your first paragraph is none sense Frank. The swastikas are real, but most Trump supporters don't see them as the threat they are. The Maoist reference is pure fantasy.....that American right wingers see communists behind every call for more social equality is well known. But the idea that every action for more equality is Maoist is paranoid thinking at its finest.
What your establishment corporatist regime supports just now seems to me to be Israel...........it also continues to sanction leftist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. How you get a Maoist conspiracy out of that only God could explain.
Still, I am cheered up somewhat to learn that there might be some genuine socialists at work in your free market gulag. Up where I live and work, the simple right thinks the socialism that gave us single payer health care is the devil....they can't differentiate between Marxism and a democratic commitment to social equality. Yes. They want good health care, and they want it for free. But they disconnect that demand from the political conditions that make good social services possible...because neoliberalism has taught them to fear some fantasy Maoist conspiracy.
For neoliberal reasons that should by now be obvious, most of us have fictions ratting around in our brains that prevent clear thinking, or necessary communal action.
The left is clear in that it wants a cultural revolution. It wants to undue our domestic capitalist system and replace it with a globalist collectivist system. There are two cohorts supporting this demand for change: one is the social and economic malcontents, the other is the cohort of people that are the top 10% of income and wealth. Sometimes they are both as studies have proven the phenomenon that the more a person has, the more they want. These are the same two actors throughout history that have brought down successful societies in a fit of violence and ended up making things much, much worse for everyone. The French Revolution is an example... things were actually going pretty well for the French people during that time, but the malcontents and the elites wanted more, so they wrecked the system.
Mao focused on educational institutions to indoctrinate urban youth, who were next mobilized as Red Guards. They were directed to root out those among the country’s population who weren’t “sufficiently revolutionary” and those suspected of being not compliant with the ideology. The Red Guards terrorized the population.
This is exactly what the American left has done and is doing.
It is the only real existential threat to the US and the world.
You have little actual idea what the left wants Frank. You seem to believe that the left is a unitary organization......but I have to tell you: how Cubans think isn't the same as how Venezuelan's necessarily think. Different countries have different problems and priorities........so while it is true that the left believes in strong social programs, good schools for all children, adequate housing etc. etc....it seems to me it is the right that keeps things so simple that it can imagine a planetary single system.
Which may be why there is an international group(the International Democracy Union) supporting right wing dictators like Erdogan in Hungary...but for the workers, there's only a song. My husband has it on his cell phone, but the International does not constitute a globalist system.....collective or otherwise.
As for the French Revolution, I don't know what history you are reading, but my knowledge of the period leading up to the storming of the Bastille was that of the three estates, only the third estate, the people's estate, paid any taxes. So the people we being taxed to death. When they discovered the aristocrats were about to engage in a European war, they had no choice but to depose the parasites.
The heads that rolled in the French Revolution had brought it on themselves. Your idea that things were pretty good prior to is revisionist his story at its finest....the elites my dear, went to the guillotine and the terrible want the people had suffered made them thorough to the point of cruelty.
Your last two sentences would be hilarious, if Gaza wasn't happening or the proxy war in Ukraine being pushed to the detriment of one of the planet's best food baskets.
Your fear of "THE ENEMY" has led to a mythological history reduced past the point of any Truth value.
So clearly you love Canada and think it is the model for the rest of the world. Canada would still be a fur-trading colony of GB if not for the US trading partner to its south.
I have to ask. Other than your fantastic country, what other countries past or present provide that utopian model you want to impose?
Because you and I are really not any more sophisticated with respect social system and governance design. For thousands of years humans have been trying to come up with a system that worked... kept the peace and kept the people fed and safe.
The problem you and others have is that you have lost perspective for what you have and what has provided it, and can only fixate on what you don't have (or what others you claim to be an advocate for don't have). The basic design of the US from the founders is of course flawed... but happens to be the best system ever designed... that is why tens of millions immigrated here, hundreds of millions would immigrate here if allowed, and so many do illegally. These people HAVE the perspective of what the US provides. They are not corrupted malcontents always staring at the glass half empty.
Yes, the system is sick... but not the founders version of the system. The sickness is those that are deconstructing that foundation primarily to enrich themselves at the expense of the people.
You say yes the left wants strong social programs, good schools, adequate housing, etc... LOL. Like that is something unique that everyone else does not want too. It is an idiotic statement really. The only debate is HOW DO WE ACHIEVE THOSE THINGS IN A SUSTAINABLE WAY?
The left keeps heading for the "solutions" that result in system collapse from running out of other people's money. The right is justified for fighting to prevent it.
Which appears to be racist and nostalgic at its heart....to which I'd likely add, 'intellectually challenged'.
Because if any of those people supporting the Donald think social justice and the kind of equality that would lift all boats are part of his agenda........they haven't been paying attention. Lowering taxes for the ultra rich.........or for everybody for that matter..........won't make things better. Bankrupting government won't lead to 'more change in anyone's pocket'. Demonizing immigrants won't change the fact that only work produces much of anything....and at present those who work the hardest, get the least reward.
The far right has its rage and sense of disillusionment. It too needs more political theory and reality based assessment of what is possible. Hating the 'other side' doesn't automatically create a workable social economy, or end the stranglehold of the elites.
Sounds to me like you might be a Trumpster. But what do I know, I'm Canadian!!
From outside your empire, it does seem that there are no good guys......but perhaps we could pin that sad reality onto unregulated, free market capitalism???
If your only purpose on earth is to accumulate wealth, surely you can't demonize the other side for doing so??? Particularly when the right is strongly behind a man who should have been stopped from his illegal activities years ago??? Seems like a couple of very black kettles dooking it out, when the champion coming against the 'cabal of monied power that connects with the American Democrat party", is the guy who cheated a lot of poor kids out of a real education at his phony university.
But then, I'm just a retired teacher with a passion for learning.
And no matter how capitalism robs you, Americans stubbornly continue to think reality is controlled by their definitions of reality.............if you'd read any Marx, you'd know that competititve captitalism ends in monopoly as the smaller 'players' are eliminated: THAT IS CORPORATISM FRANK.
You'd also have the complexity of thought to know that Canada is a more robust social democracy, with a more 'mixed economy' because of our socialist third party.......the NDP, originally the CCF.
No matter how you spin the discourse though my dualistic friend..........there are more than two realities in the Great Mother's scheme of things. Social democracy is the best of many worlds.
You can't have a prosperous society if the few gobble up all the resources.
You can't have a prosperous society if you can't count past two...and a forced to see everything as us versus them, good versus evil, Capitalism versus Communism.
You can't have a prosperous society if you must have an enemy, and put most of your energies to defeating her, rather than caring for all the people.
Finally, you can't have a prosperous society if you continue to rape the earth and forment wars to allow you to rape all of it.
AMERICA IS THE EVIL EMPIRE FRANK....You seem to be determined to defend her right to be right:even when she's wrong.
He got a lot right as far as 19th C captitalism is concerned Frank..........and I have no need to read any right wing revisionist social media sites. I did my time in a good public Canadian university..............before the neoliberals turned them into cash cows for the global elites.
Hard not to miss it, given the work of the right wing media in massaging what happens on the ground so that the coup of 2014 is left completely in the dark, 2004 becomes ancient history with no connection to the present.........
BECAUSE THE AMERICAN PROXY WAR AGAINST RUSSIA MUST BE SEEN FOR WHAT IT IS NOT....a defence of an innocent people...suddenly attacked for no rational reason but the dream of world domination.
America's reality, that it is the World Dominator, must be kept in the shadows. America, as the steadfast champion of national sovereignty, the illusion that must grip the mind and heart of all first worlders.
Many are seeing through the smokescreens now.........but most of us have little power.....and only a nascent sense of revolutionary theory.
Yanis Varoufakis never caved in Greece. He walked rather than give in to the elites, unlike the guy he ran with who became president and caved within two days. I watched it myself. Please interview Varoufakis, Chris.
Varoufakis, has apparently, been banned in Berlin, or all of Germany. The recent Palestine Congress was physically stopped and all the presenters have been banned in person or by video. Quite an extraordinary abrogation of free speech and democracy by the German government.
You can't talk sense to right wing neoliberal governments. Particularly when they are engaged int he delicate work of justifying a genocide.........mainly because they were the dummies who agreed to make up for their genocide by putting the victims in possession of someone else's land.
The clarity of good political theory that Vincent is calling for is hard to come by in the west............we're too dedicated to the idea of always being right. The good guy complex results in most of our analysis containing black holes. What I know of Varofakis suggests he works hard to eliminate those dead spots from his analysis
Very interesting, and a bit depressing. Turns out, we do have to do our homework...have some theory behind us, some historical analysis, and a clearer vision of what we want instead of what we so far have. The idea that fighting neoliberalism is going to be hard if we've internalized neoliberal, individualized ideas and lifestyles is key. Too often, that's what we've found on the ground.
Lots of good people who know we need change....but who don't understand or critique the degree to which they are personally inscripted in the individualized and somewhat privileged lifestyle of the neoliberal world order. We NEED those jets to fly, that plastic to be produced and those restaurants to be affordable....while we fiddle around on weekends trying to make the social system more just..........or maybe just more accessible for our friends and relatives.
Time to read a little Marx and Lenin??? And turn off most MSM commentary while we do so?
Perhaps all the hard work of fixing what ails us isn't all going to be done on the mean streets.
My opinion is that a radical change at smaller less powerful countries is almost impossible because our CIA is full invested in stopping their revolutions. The success of the Cuban revolution was because, in addition to the will of the majority of their population, Russia stopped our intervention there. But today there is not a balancing power to our might. The change has to start here in America through the use of democracy by voting out of office the politicians that are bribed by the corporations.
Do you have any honest brokers with the power to replace them?
My sense, from outside the empire, is that growing internal strife in your country will divert some of the attention away from international control. You don't have politicians or parties willing or able to fix what ails a free market country with levels of poverty that make what we're dealing with in Canada look small potatoes.
But even here.........as money goes into weaponry to fight ideological wars, often of our own devising, the people go without adequate wages, housing and social services. We were better off in Canada at the start of the neoliberal rampage.........but our hospitals and schools are suffering now also. And while there appears to be money for tech toys, foreign vacations and dinner out for the top tier of Canadians........we apparently can't afford either a living wage or good care for our seniors.
Empires fall because they hollow out the centre. That seems to be happening everywhere in the first world...thanks to our foreign policies, our penny pinching for the lower classes at home.............and of course, the climate emergency that our take take take capitalism demands.
No broker. Honesty is a rare commodity these days and our political parties are rotten to their core. The leadership of the DemonRats and the Ratpublicans now comprised of Maggots ( MAGA Trump followers) is mainly a group of elders who want to continue with the fiscal and foreign policies that are bringing our country back to the time of the Great Depression. I hope that, if not our common sense, at least the reduction of social services will make most of us to vote those guys out of power. Our political system is completely corrupted by lobbyism. One example be the
top recipients of the Military Industrial Complex for the period 23-24, so far, according to Open Secrets:
Calvert, Ken (R-CA) House $508,470
Rogers, Mike D (R-AL) House $398,700
Wicker, Roger (R-MS) Senate $309,493
Wittman, Rob (R-VA) House $274,500
Trump, Donald (R) President $255,954
And the top contributors for the same period:
Contributor Total To Dems To Repubs
Lockheed Martin $1,917,820 $884,979 $1,007,147
Northrop Grumman $1,253,089 $660,990 $573,905
General Atomics $1,229,004 $279,617 $864,690
Harris Technologies $1,200,065 $445,060 $751,054
RTX Corp $1,079,739 $490,669 $564,179
Nobody would expect to stop our unjustifiable wars with this level of corruption, and that is only one industry. The one that bothers me more today is the Israel lobbying and I having my revenge by returning the almost weekly requests of contributions to our politician by returning them with $0.00 and the note that "I don't support politicians bribed by the AIPAC".
Might explain why some commentators on this thread prefer to imagine a global left wing cabal coming for the planet. Takes their attention away from what the WAR industries at home are up to.
Just now, the bellicose west's efforts to divert our attention from the genocide in Gaza, by taking Israel's side in a fantasy escalation started by Iran (killing 6 or 7 people in a third country not being a matter of much concern)...makes me fear we may be headed for another American led war in the middle east........by way of diverting our attention from the genocide in Gaza....which badly wants to move to the West Bank........and could do so, under cover of eradicating evil Iran.
Wonder how many of us know clearly that Iran is not the problem??? Western propaganda being what it is.
Nor should it. But I'd like to hear more ideas about how we jump start the thinking and reflections on political ideology and organizing for revolutionary work. And I don't mean revolution in the sudden violent up rising way that fascinates a certain demographic. Rather...I dream of discussion groups, study groups, and perhaps even visionary sessions where we imagine the new world............and then find ways to act individually and collectively to bring that world into being.
I'm particularly struck by the observation during this interview that its our internalization of neoliberal values and subjectivities that hold us captive. Many of us have never experienced collective action, let alone participation in a community that lives for other values besides money, appearance and superficial status. The result is that we aren't who we think we are...in any deep way. We opine, but we don't act. Or we act, but only in superficial, one off ways.
This is an issue worth giving much consideration to, even as our species is runimng out of time. How to do this now that we are separated in location, and atomized in the online world rather living in ways that facilitate face to face meetings. And I recall from the anti Vietnam era, that many meetings were no more than exercises in frustration, and fractious factions.
Yes. But it is an issue more important in some ways than many others. Because unless we can change the status quo it doesn't look good for any of us. And I worry......as climate change gets worse and refugees grow in numbers......will we go on a killing spree instead of working together to fight the real enemy of the future???
We can live, and well, without those jet vacations and Amazon packages.......but we can't continue to burn fossil fuels and engage in foreign wars. Finding alternatives is so important now....and organizing for solidarity and communal effort so important.
Let’s get the Biden Administration to focus on the criminal charges they so rightly deserve. 18 U.S. Code § 1091 is the statute that incorporated the Genocide Convention in US criminal law. Members of this administration shouldn't go a single day without having this statute in their faces, up front and center at every protest at every meeting, press conference, briefing, and trips home and abroad.
They may feel they are immune now, let's get them considering what is possible when they leave office, since they have set the precedent of charging former presidents. They should have visions of prison all the days of their lives. Let us find the way.
Not only will "We the Peoples of the world" lose whatever remains of our "freedom of dissent", given the new, draconian, hate,dis, mis, & mal, speech, laws recently enacted in Canada, Scotland, U.K., etc. but, if not stopped, the W.H.O.'s new ammendments, & their revised I.H.R. Pandemic Preparedness Treaty, will strip ALL sovereign rights from member countries. Evidently, once enacted @ the end of May 2024 (a few weeks away) the new, W.H.O. dictats ( supervised by th W.EF., will be legally binding for all member states w/NO opt- out possibility thereafter.
James Roguski has been sounding the alarm on this "One World" takeover by the global corporate, military, establishment elites for some time now. I am hoping Chris Hedges can arrange to interview Mr. Roguski to address this "event" before it is too late. The obliteration of personal rights that was tested during the C19 pandemic years was a dress rehersal, the real global coupe will be far more devestating.
This sounds like conspiracy fear mongering to me..........but I will admit I know nothing about the events you reference. I will say two things however: 1. there was a pandemic, and public health measures slowed its progress, vaccines decreased its deadly effects, and listening to public health officials makes sense to me. Why else do we train them, if after all they've learned, we still want to KNOW BETTER.
2. Given the reality of climate change, there will be new pandemics in our future. Every thing that lives is struggling to survive the rapidly changing climate...including virus'. New threats will emerge..........and when they do, we should all want a vigorous world health community to spearhead our reactions to it
These are hard facts to accept..........and we all know libertarians believe no one can tell them what to do. But sometimes, communal values, and the safety of our most vulnerable need to trump these freedom lovers.
So I'd relax. The world health organization isn't on a power trip. THAT'S NETEN YAHOO...and most likely, WASHINGTON'S MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
We happen to be living in "One World" but have no idea what that actually means, or what actions any of us need to take to make it less dystopian than it is at present, and in the future. The writing is on the world-wide wall. Read it and weep, or figure out how to intelligently change it.
You might not agree, but we cannot know the potential for true evolutionary progress, which always takes place by leaps and bounds, not gradual meanderings. We also cannot really prepare for creative energy upheavals, in the way humans act. Miracles may still occur! The pressure cooker of our time is causing us such terrible anxiety, and yet, there are still "cracks where the light gets in." The last 20 years of the life of the poet Christian Wiman have been said to "outstrip knowledge". He keeps getting rescued from the edge of death by new medical experimental treatments that have worked just in time. The horizon of what is known gets moved outward just a bit. Let us keep praying for that infusion of energy and try to accept that we cannot control it.
Perhaps not control it.........but surely we should be studying, talking, thinking, writing....to increase our abilities to ride with it, rather than resist it with fear and loathing.
A lot of this discussion was over my head, especially the multiplicity of uprising, but I appreciate the tackling this important subject.
The good news is that I could access this in place, or along side of the Sunday morning CNN shows - Fareed Zaharia and the others.
I think it was in Black Elk Speaks that he visioned a time when "the center was everywhere and the there was no circumference" which Joesph Campbell picked up in his Inner Reaches of Outer Space. This is "horizontality" w/o boarders, and it is always the boarders that cause the conflicts, IMO. And that cause hierarchy domination rather than democratic representation.
I like your idea of the centre being everywhere (now if you Amerikans could just learn how to spell it, lol), but those centres better do their revolutionary theory........and hopefully, put the need for violent uprising low on the list of actions we all might take to build a better world.
I've had a bellyful, in my 78 years........of what violence can achieve.
There must be an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Pope Francis has said what is needed, now he must do what is needed by going to Gaza and standing for peace, justice and freedom.
Let us also support UNRWA. If our governments won’t act in accordance with humanity, then we will. https://www.unrwausa.org/donate Let us do it to honor Aaron Bushnell, or in memory of Hind Rajab.
Let us call for a No Fly-Zone over Gaza!
These are a few small things we can do. If we can do more, let us do more.
“These ‘TIMES’ they are a-changing” in a Revolutionary way on Tuesday April 16th 2024, by FSTV, regarding “The Quiet American” EMPIRE — and not in a good way for: Google, Amazon, the ‘TIMES’ censorship of Free Speech regarding The Intercept’s reporting of censorship of these terms: ‘genocide,’ ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘occupied territory’, along with the megalomaniac sociopath Trump and all along with my newest double-sided, ad-hoc, focus-group tested demonstration/protest signs which simply say:
INEQUALITY
CAUSED BY
BILLIONAIRE
BASTARDS
ARROGANTLY
SELF-TITLED
"MASTERS OF
THE UNIVERSE”
All of which ANTI-EMPIRE deceits and crimes can be clearly diagnosed and solved with an, overdue from 1944, new Revolution of a:
DEMOCRATIC
SOCIALISM
EQUALITY
PARTY
and with the seminal focus of:
LOVE
OVER
VIOLENT
EMPIRE
Instead of “The Quiet American” Empire, of our children being most likely to be killed by GUNS, the real problem is not guns, but the GLOBAL WEAPONS Industry (including Anti-Social Media).
LESS
WEAPONS
MORE
LOVE
BTW, all of this insane money making can be easily explained by, the cheap dirty trick of ‘Negative Externality Cost’ looting and lying, instead of ‘Positive Externality Profits’ for “we the people”. ‘Negative Externality Cost’ looting certainly can, and is, far greater than any FAUX-Profits that the looting OIL Industry, WEAPONS Industry, and anti-SOCIAL MEDIA Industry will ever be able to repay to our only fragile little planet.
BTW, FINALLY this system's HUMAN ENGINEERING is sort of working, but not anything like STEVE's goals with Visual Programming in 1980, IMHO, Chris
PLEASE HELP ME! PLEASE! I am thirsting to understand. I am politically conservative in my heart, but I was never a TRUMP SUPPORTER. I truly thought that he was an embarrassment…but then I witnessed the effect he was having on the permanent political class and I was stunned. Trump was like garlic to a vampire, if you will allow the analogy. Trump now strikes me as THE ONLY OUTSIDER who can change the system by burning down the corrupt elements. PLEASE help me to understand why I am wrong.
A Canadian take, for what it's worth: TRUMP IS THE SECRET WEAPON OF THE REAL RULING CLASS. HE GATHERS TO HIMSELF ALL THE RIGTEOUS RAGE OF THE NEOLIBERAL LOSERS...AND FOLKS LONG PRIVILEGED BY CLASS AND RACE, BUT NOT SO MUCH ANY MORE: So that, even if he wins, they continue to wield power.
Follow the money. He's apparently a billionaire. Follow his business dealings: Who won and who lost?
Review the years in which he was president. What exactly did he fix for ordinary Americans?
To me, he's the essence of a False Flag....taking America further to the right...where wealth rules, and workers subsist.
There's no hope, really, since we are dealing with brains that resulted from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in the natural environment, and they now have to function in a completely different human-made environment. The theories and intellectual thinking displayed here encompass a minuscule measure of what our brains accomplish. In short, we don't understand what we are and no amount of armchair theorizing can amount to what would be necessary to invoke societal change. The society our brains invent cannot be understood by select parts of the brain.
If you want to hope, then hope that our brains will change in a way favorable to truly act civilized in the so-called civilization we live in. But that would take many years, too numerous to even guess.
I marched with protestors in Tegucigalpa, Honduras in 2016, protests ostensibly in opposition to the US backed Juan Orlando regime.
The group I was with met with US embassy staff and it became clear that USSD was doing everything in their power to coopt the movement, paying it lip service but undermining any effort to truly engaged in coordinated analysis of the impact of neoliberalism.
One of the most telling images I recall was a flatbed truck hauling in portable toilets for the crowds. The military also looked on with indifference, even mild amusement.
We met a day or so later with students at the national university who were engaging in a non violent protest of efforts to privatize higher education. JOHs thugs were there in force ready to beat the shit out of the students, who unlike the "protestors" we'd seen earlier really did have specific demands rooted in analysis and an understanding of class struggle.
Please tell us, exactly how do your dark perspectives on our present issues of life, death and freedom empower us? ... how?
Why have you failed to mention the threat posed to our freedoms by the amendments to the WHO International Pandemic Treaty ... why?
---------------------------------
I no longer consider Chris Hedges to be a true activist because of none of his content here is actionable ...
I miss the old, pre-pandemic Chris Hedges ... there was a time when he would not have dodged commentary on hard news here in the U.S. ... he would have called out the culprits out by name, set the record straight and pointed us in the right direction ... but not anymore ...
Here's an excerpt from the intro to his March 8th interview with author John Valaint: "... if left unchecked, (the excavation of the Fort McMurray tar sands) will SOON render the planet uninhabitable" ...
Oh really? ... how soon Mr. Hedges, WHEN? ... handicap it for us, give us a time window ... you've actually said this many times Mr Hedges, but this old world just keeps on turning! ... yes, we are in fact in the midst of a climate crisis, but Hedges continues to push a hoax on us that global warming poses an existential threat to our species ...
Why was Hedges diverting our attention to a Canadian fire that occurred 8 years ago while Texas is in the midst of the worst fires in its history?
CBS reported 7,000 cattle had been killed, so we know that figure is probably larger ... this area accounts for nearly 90% of the beef production in the U.S ... the WEF is on record as saying that the global livestock population must be reduced because of its supposed role in global warming ... ya see, TPTB are just trying to save us, right? ...
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 has now brazenly hidden behind ASSANGE and Gaza for the past 6 months ... his predictable decision to once again leave us all hangin' here with no hope on GAZA has become his trademark ... Chris Hedges is deliberately misdirecting our attention here ...
His relentless recounting of the horrors of the Gaza genocide for the past 6 months has passed the point of diminishing marginal returns for the marginalized millions in HIS U.S. working class ...
I now count over 70 pieces he has posted here since OCT 7, with only 8 addressing issues OTHER THAN the Gaza genocide, and only his recent interview with Les Leopold striking at the heart of the problems now facing Americans ... 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 ...
------------------
DIVISIVENESS
Hedges is deceptively divisive and he obviously has no problem with it ...
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:
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 ...
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 listen him equivocate and 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."
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: He temporarily suspended his principles because things just got too hot in his kitchen.
And on USEFUL IDIOTS on SEP 21, 2021
Go to the 1:50 mark ...
Another less-than-passionate, half-hearted response ...
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"!
"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 ...
Read about James Roguski and the Amendments to the W.H.O.'s International Pandemic Treaty here on Substack ... Hedges should be front and center on this ... in tough times like these, why won't he even mention this topic? ...
Can't even finish reading this Pita......but you obviously need to get your ass off this feed and get busy defending us from the terror's posed by the World Health Organization.
I'm Canadian Pita, and a passivist....as to the first amendment, we did have some of our convoy crazies thinking they had something like that.......but the ignorant often make those kinds of basic mistakes about their country.
What most of us believe in is that everyone has a right to their opinion, but no one has a right to their own set of 'facts'. Reality somehow eludes all efforts to reduce her to their preferred 'right answer'....and we should be glad that is the case.
In the context of you being a Canadian, I wonder if your choice of the word "passivist" was faulty dictation software, a momentary brain fart or a Freudian slip. Fascinating!
Any suggestion that I have my own set of facts is dead-wrong ...
I simply benchmark Hedges' direct verbatim quotes against his actions to demonstrate how he has deserted the U.S. working class since the MAR '20 lockdowns ...
You can call me a troll, but that's about all ya got on me ...
I repeatedly cite Hedges' words and opinions, that's all ...
Get over it, live with it, accept and deal with it.
The suppression of dissent within the United States has been a crucial component of the rise of bipartisan fascism. I say this having led the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (now known as Defending Rights and Dissent) from 2010 until 2015. Folks concerned about this disturbing trend can get involved by supporting the work of organizations like it. https://www.rightsanddissent.org
Even though restrictions on domestic dissent have included state violence, state surveillance, and profound pressure from a labor market that prefers to silence workers, it is important to note that Americans of conscience have remained undeterred. I wrote last year about grassroots mobilizations around the world challenging the continuing Israeli genocide in Gaza (https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/an-escalating-uprising-demands-human), and again earlier this month about a particular direct action aiming to shut down a Lockheed Martin facility in California, 21 years to the month after we did so back in 2003 following the invasion of Iraq. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/history-might-not-repeat-but-it-certainly
I'm sure its no surprise to you to say this is the first we've heard of this up in Canada.....must have missed that 30 second report on our CBC.
To associate the current globalist corporatist power in the Western world to the "far right" is so damn intellectually dishonest I don't know how anyone gives any credibility to this piece. The "far right" in this current political era is committed to destruction of that cabal of monied power that connects with the American Democrat party.
Jesus you people are fantastic in how you cultch at your old "look at me, I am against the man and for the little guy" political identity while you also clutch all your real estate and Wall Street wealth and protect the corporatist cabal for your own selfish reasons.
I agree. I think the term "far right" in the title is misleading since many of the failures Bevins describes are losses to left and near-left neoliberal power which permeates contemporary "liberal" governance. As I might paraphrase Bevins (and you, Frank), our neoliberal subjectivity is eating us alive.
I disagree that the far right is any friend to our liberation from elite power. It's clear to me that the populist right has its own oppressive agenda.
There are about ten thousand far right Naziesk numskulls with swastikas claiming white Christian superiority, and several million far left Maoist numskulls with black masks claiming superiority and that white Republicans and cops are racist fascists and a threat to democracy.
Neither should be tolerable, but the establishment corporatist Regime supports the latter. The establishment corporatist Regime supports the latter because the latter supports the establishment corporatist Regime. The only thing that rank and file Republicans have in common with the far right numbskulls is that they both want to scale back the power and control of the establishment corporatist Regime. Other than that there is nothing at all in common. In fact, the far right and far left numskulls are barely different. They are just malcontent people ideologically captured as an outlet for their resentment, grievance and rage.
"In pre–Hitlerian Germany, it was often a toss-up whether a restless youth would join the Communists or the Nazis."
“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. . . . Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil.” Hoffer
I find that there are few rank and file Democrats that do anything but pay lip-service to this dislike of the corporatist establishment Regime. Chris does it, but then kills the messenger, I think, for his social and political fealty requirements. It is like attempting to swim in the deep end of the pool while clutching the safe and familiar side of the shallow end.
From where I sit, your first paragraph is none sense Frank. The swastikas are real, but most Trump supporters don't see them as the threat they are. The Maoist reference is pure fantasy.....that American right wingers see communists behind every call for more social equality is well known. But the idea that every action for more equality is Maoist is paranoid thinking at its finest.
What your establishment corporatist regime supports just now seems to me to be Israel...........it also continues to sanction leftist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. How you get a Maoist conspiracy out of that only God could explain.
Still, I am cheered up somewhat to learn that there might be some genuine socialists at work in your free market gulag. Up where I live and work, the simple right thinks the socialism that gave us single payer health care is the devil....they can't differentiate between Marxism and a democratic commitment to social equality. Yes. They want good health care, and they want it for free. But they disconnect that demand from the political conditions that make good social services possible...because neoliberalism has taught them to fear some fantasy Maoist conspiracy.
For neoliberal reasons that should by now be obvious, most of us have fictions ratting around in our brains that prevent clear thinking, or necessary communal action.
Nothing you wrote here refutes a thing I said.
The left is clear in that it wants a cultural revolution. It wants to undue our domestic capitalist system and replace it with a globalist collectivist system. There are two cohorts supporting this demand for change: one is the social and economic malcontents, the other is the cohort of people that are the top 10% of income and wealth. Sometimes they are both as studies have proven the phenomenon that the more a person has, the more they want. These are the same two actors throughout history that have brought down successful societies in a fit of violence and ended up making things much, much worse for everyone. The French Revolution is an example... things were actually going pretty well for the French people during that time, but the malcontents and the elites wanted more, so they wrecked the system.
Mao focused on educational institutions to indoctrinate urban youth, who were next mobilized as Red Guards. They were directed to root out those among the country’s population who weren’t “sufficiently revolutionary” and those suspected of being not compliant with the ideology. The Red Guards terrorized the population.
This is exactly what the American left has done and is doing.
It is the only real existential threat to the US and the world.
You have little actual idea what the left wants Frank. You seem to believe that the left is a unitary organization......but I have to tell you: how Cubans think isn't the same as how Venezuelan's necessarily think. Different countries have different problems and priorities........so while it is true that the left believes in strong social programs, good schools for all children, adequate housing etc. etc....it seems to me it is the right that keeps things so simple that it can imagine a planetary single system.
Which may be why there is an international group(the International Democracy Union) supporting right wing dictators like Erdogan in Hungary...but for the workers, there's only a song. My husband has it on his cell phone, but the International does not constitute a globalist system.....collective or otherwise.
As for the French Revolution, I don't know what history you are reading, but my knowledge of the period leading up to the storming of the Bastille was that of the three estates, only the third estate, the people's estate, paid any taxes. So the people we being taxed to death. When they discovered the aristocrats were about to engage in a European war, they had no choice but to depose the parasites.
The heads that rolled in the French Revolution had brought it on themselves. Your idea that things were pretty good prior to is revisionist his story at its finest....the elites my dear, went to the guillotine and the terrible want the people had suffered made them thorough to the point of cruelty.
Your last two sentences would be hilarious, if Gaza wasn't happening or the proxy war in Ukraine being pushed to the detriment of one of the planet's best food baskets.
Your fear of "THE ENEMY" has led to a mythological history reduced past the point of any Truth value.
So clearly you love Canada and think it is the model for the rest of the world. Canada would still be a fur-trading colony of GB if not for the US trading partner to its south.
I have to ask. Other than your fantastic country, what other countries past or present provide that utopian model you want to impose?
Because you and I are really not any more sophisticated with respect social system and governance design. For thousands of years humans have been trying to come up with a system that worked... kept the peace and kept the people fed and safe.
The problem you and others have is that you have lost perspective for what you have and what has provided it, and can only fixate on what you don't have (or what others you claim to be an advocate for don't have). The basic design of the US from the founders is of course flawed... but happens to be the best system ever designed... that is why tens of millions immigrated here, hundreds of millions would immigrate here if allowed, and so many do illegally. These people HAVE the perspective of what the US provides. They are not corrupted malcontents always staring at the glass half empty.
Yes, the system is sick... but not the founders version of the system. The sickness is those that are deconstructing that foundation primarily to enrich themselves at the expense of the people.
You say yes the left wants strong social programs, good schools, adequate housing, etc... LOL. Like that is something unique that everyone else does not want too. It is an idiotic statement really. The only debate is HOW DO WE ACHIEVE THOSE THINGS IN A SUSTAINABLE WAY?
The left keeps heading for the "solutions" that result in system collapse from running out of other people's money. The right is justified for fighting to prevent it.
Which appears to be racist and nostalgic at its heart....to which I'd likely add, 'intellectually challenged'.
Because if any of those people supporting the Donald think social justice and the kind of equality that would lift all boats are part of his agenda........they haven't been paying attention. Lowering taxes for the ultra rich.........or for everybody for that matter..........won't make things better. Bankrupting government won't lead to 'more change in anyone's pocket'. Demonizing immigrants won't change the fact that only work produces much of anything....and at present those who work the hardest, get the least reward.
The far right has its rage and sense of disillusionment. It too needs more political theory and reality based assessment of what is possible. Hating the 'other side' doesn't automatically create a workable social economy, or end the stranglehold of the elites.
Democrats are part of the bipartisan far right
Yeah right. Standing on your head underwater with your eyes closed it might look like that.
The money flows down from the same people to fund both parties, to serve the same special interests.
Sounds to me like you might be a Trumpster. But what do I know, I'm Canadian!!
From outside your empire, it does seem that there are no good guys......but perhaps we could pin that sad reality onto unregulated, free market capitalism???
If your only purpose on earth is to accumulate wealth, surely you can't demonize the other side for doing so??? Particularly when the right is strongly behind a man who should have been stopped from his illegal activities years ago??? Seems like a couple of very black kettles dooking it out, when the champion coming against the 'cabal of monied power that connects with the American Democrat party", is the guy who cheated a lot of poor kids out of a real education at his phony university.
But then, I'm just a retired teacher with a passion for learning.
We don't have a capitalist system, we have a corporatist system moving toward a globalist corporatocracy.
I would not harp so much on the US given the state of Canada. That country is turning more Chinese communist every day.
And no matter how capitalism robs you, Americans stubbornly continue to think reality is controlled by their definitions of reality.............if you'd read any Marx, you'd know that competititve captitalism ends in monopoly as the smaller 'players' are eliminated: THAT IS CORPORATISM FRANK.
You'd also have the complexity of thought to know that Canada is a more robust social democracy, with a more 'mixed economy' because of our socialist third party.......the NDP, originally the CCF.
No matter how you spin the discourse though my dualistic friend..........there are more than two realities in the Great Mother's scheme of things. Social democracy is the best of many worlds.
You can't have a prosperous society if the few gobble up all the resources.
You can't have a prosperous society if you can't count past two...and a forced to see everything as us versus them, good versus evil, Capitalism versus Communism.
You can't have a prosperous society if you must have an enemy, and put most of your energies to defeating her, rather than caring for all the people.
Finally, you can't have a prosperous society if you continue to rape the earth and forment wars to allow you to rape all of it.
AMERICA IS THE EVIL EMPIRE FRANK....You seem to be determined to defend her right to be right:even when she's wrong.
I am not sure you know what capitalism really is. Marx was a fool. He got everything wrong.
https://socialmisfit.substack.com/p/the-dangerous-corruptors-of-capitalism
He got a lot right as far as 19th C captitalism is concerned Frank..........and I have no need to read any right wing revisionist social media sites. I did my time in a good public Canadian university..............before the neoliberals turned them into cash cows for the global elites.
Speaking of Ukraine, you seem to forget the far-right element in the American-sponsored coups in 2004 and 2014.
Hard not to miss it, given the work of the right wing media in massaging what happens on the ground so that the coup of 2014 is left completely in the dark, 2004 becomes ancient history with no connection to the present.........
BECAUSE THE AMERICAN PROXY WAR AGAINST RUSSIA MUST BE SEEN FOR WHAT IT IS NOT....a defence of an innocent people...suddenly attacked for no rational reason but the dream of world domination.
America's reality, that it is the World Dominator, must be kept in the shadows. America, as the steadfast champion of national sovereignty, the illusion that must grip the mind and heart of all first worlders.
Many are seeing through the smokescreens now.........but most of us have little power.....and only a nascent sense of revolutionary theory.
Team D also was fully on board with using actual self-proclaimed self-confessed Nazis on both occasions.
Yanis Varoufakis never caved in Greece. He walked rather than give in to the elites, unlike the guy he ran with who became president and caved within two days. I watched it myself. Please interview Varoufakis, Chris.
Varoufakis, has apparently, been banned in Berlin, or all of Germany. The recent Palestine Congress was physically stopped and all the presenters have been banned in person or by video. Quite an extraordinary abrogation of free speech and democracy by the German government.
You can't talk sense to right wing neoliberal governments. Particularly when they are engaged int he delicate work of justifying a genocide.........mainly because they were the dummies who agreed to make up for their genocide by putting the victims in possession of someone else's land.
The clarity of good political theory that Vincent is calling for is hard to come by in the west............we're too dedicated to the idea of always being right. The good guy complex results in most of our analysis containing black holes. What I know of Varofakis suggests he works hard to eliminate those dead spots from his analysis
Very interesting, and a bit depressing. Turns out, we do have to do our homework...have some theory behind us, some historical analysis, and a clearer vision of what we want instead of what we so far have. The idea that fighting neoliberalism is going to be hard if we've internalized neoliberal, individualized ideas and lifestyles is key. Too often, that's what we've found on the ground.
Lots of good people who know we need change....but who don't understand or critique the degree to which they are personally inscripted in the individualized and somewhat privileged lifestyle of the neoliberal world order. We NEED those jets to fly, that plastic to be produced and those restaurants to be affordable....while we fiddle around on weekends trying to make the social system more just..........or maybe just more accessible for our friends and relatives.
Time to read a little Marx and Lenin??? And turn off most MSM commentary while we do so?
Perhaps all the hard work of fixing what ails us isn't all going to be done on the mean streets.
My opinion is that a radical change at smaller less powerful countries is almost impossible because our CIA is full invested in stopping their revolutions. The success of the Cuban revolution was because, in addition to the will of the majority of their population, Russia stopped our intervention there. But today there is not a balancing power to our might. The change has to start here in America through the use of democracy by voting out of office the politicians that are bribed by the corporations.
Do you have any honest brokers with the power to replace them?
My sense, from outside the empire, is that growing internal strife in your country will divert some of the attention away from international control. You don't have politicians or parties willing or able to fix what ails a free market country with levels of poverty that make what we're dealing with in Canada look small potatoes.
But even here.........as money goes into weaponry to fight ideological wars, often of our own devising, the people go without adequate wages, housing and social services. We were better off in Canada at the start of the neoliberal rampage.........but our hospitals and schools are suffering now also. And while there appears to be money for tech toys, foreign vacations and dinner out for the top tier of Canadians........we apparently can't afford either a living wage or good care for our seniors.
Empires fall because they hollow out the centre. That seems to be happening everywhere in the first world...thanks to our foreign policies, our penny pinching for the lower classes at home.............and of course, the climate emergency that our take take take capitalism demands.
No broker. Honesty is a rare commodity these days and our political parties are rotten to their core. The leadership of the DemonRats and the Ratpublicans now comprised of Maggots ( MAGA Trump followers) is mainly a group of elders who want to continue with the fiscal and foreign policies that are bringing our country back to the time of the Great Depression. I hope that, if not our common sense, at least the reduction of social services will make most of us to vote those guys out of power. Our political system is completely corrupted by lobbyism. One example be the
top recipients of the Military Industrial Complex for the period 23-24, so far, according to Open Secrets:
Calvert, Ken (R-CA) House $508,470
Rogers, Mike D (R-AL) House $398,700
Wicker, Roger (R-MS) Senate $309,493
Wittman, Rob (R-VA) House $274,500
Trump, Donald (R) President $255,954
And the top contributors for the same period:
Contributor Total To Dems To Repubs
Lockheed Martin $1,917,820 $884,979 $1,007,147
Northrop Grumman $1,253,089 $660,990 $573,905
General Atomics $1,229,004 $279,617 $864,690
Harris Technologies $1,200,065 $445,060 $751,054
RTX Corp $1,079,739 $490,669 $564,179
Nobody would expect to stop our unjustifiable wars with this level of corruption, and that is only one industry. The one that bothers me more today is the Israel lobbying and I having my revenge by returning the almost weekly requests of contributions to our politician by returning them with $0.00 and the note that "I don't support politicians bribed by the AIPAC".
It's worse than I imagine in other words.
Might explain why some commentators on this thread prefer to imagine a global left wing cabal coming for the planet. Takes their attention away from what the WAR industries at home are up to.
Just now, the bellicose west's efforts to divert our attention from the genocide in Gaza, by taking Israel's side in a fantasy escalation started by Iran (killing 6 or 7 people in a third country not being a matter of much concern)...makes me fear we may be headed for another American led war in the middle east........by way of diverting our attention from the genocide in Gaza....which badly wants to move to the West Bank........and could do so, under cover of eradicating evil Iran.
Wonder how many of us know clearly that Iran is not the problem??? Western propaganda being what it is.
Or, perhaps, not all of the hard work will start, or end, at street level.
Nor should it. But I'd like to hear more ideas about how we jump start the thinking and reflections on political ideology and organizing for revolutionary work. And I don't mean revolution in the sudden violent up rising way that fascinates a certain demographic. Rather...I dream of discussion groups, study groups, and perhaps even visionary sessions where we imagine the new world............and then find ways to act individually and collectively to bring that world into being.
I'm particularly struck by the observation during this interview that its our internalization of neoliberal values and subjectivities that hold us captive. Many of us have never experienced collective action, let alone participation in a community that lives for other values besides money, appearance and superficial status. The result is that we aren't who we think we are...in any deep way. We opine, but we don't act. Or we act, but only in superficial, one off ways.
This is an issue worth giving much consideration to, even as our species is runimng out of time. How to do this now that we are separated in location, and atomized in the online world rather living in ways that facilitate face to face meetings. And I recall from the anti Vietnam era, that many meetings were no more than exercises in frustration, and fractious factions.
Yes. But it is an issue more important in some ways than many others. Because unless we can change the status quo it doesn't look good for any of us. And I worry......as climate change gets worse and refugees grow in numbers......will we go on a killing spree instead of working together to fight the real enemy of the future???
We can live, and well, without those jet vacations and Amazon packages.......but we can't continue to burn fossil fuels and engage in foreign wars. Finding alternatives is so important now....and organizing for solidarity and communal effort so important.
Let’s get the Biden Administration to focus on the criminal charges they so rightly deserve. 18 U.S. Code § 1091 is the statute that incorporated the Genocide Convention in US criminal law. Members of this administration shouldn't go a single day without having this statute in their faces, up front and center at every protest at every meeting, press conference, briefing, and trips home and abroad.
They may feel they are immune now, let's get them considering what is possible when they leave office, since they have set the precedent of charging former presidents. They should have visions of prison all the days of their lives. Let us find the way.
Very ambitious. But laudable.
Not only will "We the Peoples of the world" lose whatever remains of our "freedom of dissent", given the new, draconian, hate,dis, mis, & mal, speech, laws recently enacted in Canada, Scotland, U.K., etc. but, if not stopped, the W.H.O.'s new ammendments, & their revised I.H.R. Pandemic Preparedness Treaty, will strip ALL sovereign rights from member countries. Evidently, once enacted @ the end of May 2024 (a few weeks away) the new, W.H.O. dictats ( supervised by th W.EF., will be legally binding for all member states w/NO opt- out possibility thereafter.
James Roguski has been sounding the alarm on this "One World" takeover by the global corporate, military, establishment elites for some time now. I am hoping Chris Hedges can arrange to interview Mr. Roguski to address this "event" before it is too late. The obliteration of personal rights that was tested during the C19 pandemic years was a dress rehersal, the real global coupe will be far more devestating.
This sounds like conspiracy fear mongering to me..........but I will admit I know nothing about the events you reference. I will say two things however: 1. there was a pandemic, and public health measures slowed its progress, vaccines decreased its deadly effects, and listening to public health officials makes sense to me. Why else do we train them, if after all they've learned, we still want to KNOW BETTER.
2. Given the reality of climate change, there will be new pandemics in our future. Every thing that lives is struggling to survive the rapidly changing climate...including virus'. New threats will emerge..........and when they do, we should all want a vigorous world health community to spearhead our reactions to it
These are hard facts to accept..........and we all know libertarians believe no one can tell them what to do. But sometimes, communal values, and the safety of our most vulnerable need to trump these freedom lovers.
So I'd relax. The world health organization isn't on a power trip. THAT'S NETEN YAHOO...and most likely, WASHINGTON'S MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
We happen to be living in "One World" but have no idea what that actually means, or what actions any of us need to take to make it less dystopian than it is at present, and in the future. The writing is on the world-wide wall. Read it and weep, or figure out how to intelligently change it.
You might not agree, but we cannot know the potential for true evolutionary progress, which always takes place by leaps and bounds, not gradual meanderings. We also cannot really prepare for creative energy upheavals, in the way humans act. Miracles may still occur! The pressure cooker of our time is causing us such terrible anxiety, and yet, there are still "cracks where the light gets in." The last 20 years of the life of the poet Christian Wiman have been said to "outstrip knowledge". He keeps getting rescued from the edge of death by new medical experimental treatments that have worked just in time. The horizon of what is known gets moved outward just a bit. Let us keep praying for that infusion of energy and try to accept that we cannot control it.
Perhaps not control it.........but surely we should be studying, talking, thinking, writing....to increase our abilities to ride with it, rather than resist it with fear and loathing.
A lot of this discussion was over my head, especially the multiplicity of uprising, but I appreciate the tackling this important subject.
The good news is that I could access this in place, or along side of the Sunday morning CNN shows - Fareed Zaharia and the others.
I think it was in Black Elk Speaks that he visioned a time when "the center was everywhere and the there was no circumference" which Joesph Campbell picked up in his Inner Reaches of Outer Space. This is "horizontality" w/o boarders, and it is always the boarders that cause the conflicts, IMO. And that cause hierarchy domination rather than democratic representation.
I like your idea of the centre being everywhere (now if you Amerikans could just learn how to spell it, lol), but those centres better do their revolutionary theory........and hopefully, put the need for violent uprising low on the list of actions we all might take to build a better world.
I've had a bellyful, in my 78 years........of what violence can achieve.
There must be an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Pope Francis has said what is needed, now he must do what is needed by going to Gaza and standing for peace, justice and freedom.
Please sign the petition and share widely.
https://chng.it/CRQ7qw4Gzn
Code pink
https://www.codepink.org/cnngaza?utm_campaign=12_15_pali_update_alert_3&utm_medium=email&utm_source=codepink
Let us also support UNRWA. If our governments won’t act in accordance with humanity, then we will. https://www.unrwausa.org/donate Let us do it to honor Aaron Bushnell, or in memory of Hind Rajab.
Let us call for a No Fly-Zone over Gaza!
These are a few small things we can do. If we can do more, let us do more.
One more failure by Obama. No wonder he looks so sheepish. I can't stand to look at him now.
This doesn't follow from the interview I listened to....but I've long accepted that the blame game often supersedes any truly radical thinking.
“These ‘TIMES’ they are a-changing” in a Revolutionary way on Tuesday April 16th 2024, by FSTV, regarding “The Quiet American” EMPIRE — and not in a good way for: Google, Amazon, the ‘TIMES’ censorship of Free Speech regarding The Intercept’s reporting of censorship of these terms: ‘genocide,’ ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘occupied territory’, along with the megalomaniac sociopath Trump and all along with my newest double-sided, ad-hoc, focus-group tested demonstration/protest signs which simply say:
INEQUALITY
CAUSED BY
BILLIONAIRE
BASTARDS
ARROGANTLY
SELF-TITLED
"MASTERS OF
THE UNIVERSE”
All of which ANTI-EMPIRE deceits and crimes can be clearly diagnosed and solved with an, overdue from 1944, new Revolution of a:
DEMOCRATIC
SOCIALISM
EQUALITY
PARTY
and with the seminal focus of:
LOVE
OVER
VIOLENT
EMPIRE
Instead of “The Quiet American” Empire, of our children being most likely to be killed by GUNS, the real problem is not guns, but the GLOBAL WEAPONS Industry (including Anti-Social Media).
LESS
WEAPONS
MORE
LOVE
BTW, all of this insane money making can be easily explained by, the cheap dirty trick of ‘Negative Externality Cost’ looting and lying, instead of ‘Positive Externality Profits’ for “we the people”. ‘Negative Externality Cost’ looting certainly can, and is, far greater than any FAUX-Profits that the looting OIL Industry, WEAPONS Industry, and anti-SOCIAL MEDIA Industry will ever be able to repay to our only fragile little planet.
BTW, FINALLY this system's HUMAN ENGINEERING is sort of working, but not anything like STEVE's goals with Visual Programming in 1980, IMHO, Chris
PLEASE HELP ME! PLEASE! I am thirsting to understand. I am politically conservative in my heart, but I was never a TRUMP SUPPORTER. I truly thought that he was an embarrassment…but then I witnessed the effect he was having on the permanent political class and I was stunned. Trump was like garlic to a vampire, if you will allow the analogy. Trump now strikes me as THE ONLY OUTSIDER who can change the system by burning down the corrupt elements. PLEASE help me to understand why I am wrong.
How a corrupt man can burn down the corrupt elements?
A Canadian take, for what it's worth: TRUMP IS THE SECRET WEAPON OF THE REAL RULING CLASS. HE GATHERS TO HIMSELF ALL THE RIGTEOUS RAGE OF THE NEOLIBERAL LOSERS...AND FOLKS LONG PRIVILEGED BY CLASS AND RACE, BUT NOT SO MUCH ANY MORE: So that, even if he wins, they continue to wield power.
Follow the money. He's apparently a billionaire. Follow his business dealings: Who won and who lost?
Review the years in which he was president. What exactly did he fix for ordinary Americans?
To me, he's the essence of a False Flag....taking America further to the right...where wealth rules, and workers subsist.
There's no hope, really, since we are dealing with brains that resulted from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in the natural environment, and they now have to function in a completely different human-made environment. The theories and intellectual thinking displayed here encompass a minuscule measure of what our brains accomplish. In short, we don't understand what we are and no amount of armchair theorizing can amount to what would be necessary to invoke societal change. The society our brains invent cannot be understood by select parts of the brain.
If you want to hope, then hope that our brains will change in a way favorable to truly act civilized in the so-called civilization we live in. But that would take many years, too numerous to even guess.
I marched with protestors in Tegucigalpa, Honduras in 2016, protests ostensibly in opposition to the US backed Juan Orlando regime.
The group I was with met with US embassy staff and it became clear that USSD was doing everything in their power to coopt the movement, paying it lip service but undermining any effort to truly engaged in coordinated analysis of the impact of neoliberalism.
One of the most telling images I recall was a flatbed truck hauling in portable toilets for the crowds. The military also looked on with indifference, even mild amusement.
We met a day or so later with students at the national university who were engaging in a non violent protest of efforts to privatize higher education. JOHs thugs were there in force ready to beat the shit out of the students, who unlike the "protestors" we'd seen earlier really did have specific demands rooted in analysis and an understanding of class struggle.
Stop peddling pessimism, Mr Hedges! ...
Is this all ya got, is this the best you can do?
Please tell us, exactly how do your dark perspectives on our present issues of life, death and freedom empower us? ... how?
Why have you failed to mention the threat posed to our freedoms by the amendments to the WHO International Pandemic Treaty ... why?
---------------------------------
I no longer consider Chris Hedges to be a true activist because of none of his content here is actionable ...
I miss the old, pre-pandemic Chris Hedges ... there was a time when he would not have dodged commentary on hard news here in the U.S. ... he would have called out the culprits out by name, set the record straight and pointed us in the right direction ... but not anymore ...
Here's an excerpt from the intro to his March 8th interview with author John Valaint: "... if left unchecked, (the excavation of the Fort McMurray tar sands) will SOON render the planet uninhabitable" ...
Oh really? ... how soon Mr. Hedges, WHEN? ... handicap it for us, give us a time window ... you've actually said this many times Mr Hedges, but this old world just keeps on turning! ... yes, we are in fact in the midst of a climate crisis, but Hedges continues to push a hoax on us that global warming poses an existential threat to our species ...
Why was Hedges diverting our attention to a Canadian fire that occurred 8 years ago while Texas is in the midst of the worst fires in its history?
GO HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pz9gvdvWmU&t=334s
CBS reported 7,000 cattle had been killed, so we know that figure is probably larger ... this area accounts for nearly 90% of the beef production in the U.S ... the WEF is on record as saying that the global livestock population must be reduced because of its supposed role in global warming ... ya see, TPTB are just trying to save us, right? ...
10 Reasons Global Warming is a hoax ...
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-06-27-top-10-reasons-climate-change-is-a-complete-hoax-ponzi-scheme.html
This one is even better ...
https://eartheclipse.com/environment/climate-change/10-reasons-climate-change-is-hoax.html
-------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND
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 has now brazenly hidden behind ASSANGE and Gaza for the past 6 months ... his predictable decision to once again leave us all hangin' here with no hope on GAZA has become his trademark ... Chris Hedges is deliberately misdirecting our attention here ...
His relentless recounting of the horrors of the Gaza genocide for the past 6 months has passed the point of diminishing marginal returns for the marginalized millions in HIS U.S. working class ...
I now count over 70 pieces he has posted here since OCT 7, with only 8 addressing issues OTHER THAN the Gaza genocide, and only his recent interview with Les Leopold striking at the heart of the problems now facing Americans ... 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 ...
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DIVISIVENESS
Hedges is deceptively divisive and he obviously has no problem with it ...
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 ...
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:
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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."
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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 listen him equivocate and 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: He temporarily suspended his principles because things just got too hot in his kitchen.
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”
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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 ...
Read about James Roguski and the Amendments to the W.H.O.'s International Pandemic Treaty here on Substack ... Hedges should be front and center on this ... in tough times like these, why won't he even mention this topic? ...
Can't even finish reading this Pita......but you obviously need to get your ass off this feed and get busy defending us from the terror's posed by the World Health Organization.
And good luck with that.
I've said before and I'll say it again ...
I am not here for you Ingamarie ... ta ta ...
Not sure what you are 'here' for. No one much reads what you say any longer....duh duh.
Damn that first amendment, right Ingamarie?
You'd just love to push a button to wipe me off the face of the earth, right?
Well God bless you anyway, my friend ...
I'm Canadian Pita, and a passivist....as to the first amendment, we did have some of our convoy crazies thinking they had something like that.......but the ignorant often make those kinds of basic mistakes about their country.
What most of us believe in is that everyone has a right to their opinion, but no one has a right to their own set of 'facts'. Reality somehow eludes all efforts to reduce her to their preferred 'right answer'....and we should be glad that is the case.
In the context of you being a Canadian, I wonder if your choice of the word "passivist" was faulty dictation software, a momentary brain fart or a Freudian slip. Fascinating!
Any suggestion that I have my own set of facts is dead-wrong ...
I simply benchmark Hedges' direct verbatim quotes against his actions to demonstrate how he has deserted the U.S. working class since the MAR '20 lockdowns ...
You can call me a troll, but that's about all ya got on me ...
I repeatedly cite Hedges' words and opinions, that's all ...
Get over it, live with it, accept and deal with it.