Chris Hedges and Ahmed Eldin discuss the propagandistic purpose the corporate media serves in the age of the American-Israeli project of genocidal colonialism.
On October 6th '23 I heard a report ( and never heard it again on ABC radio australia) That acontingent of female Soldiers guarding the border to Gaza had reported the amassing of Hamas fighters and equipment on the border. Nothing happened. Except that Mossad-the most well informed spy system on the planet said to Netanyahu "do nothing. Let them come. This is what we've been waiting for! This will justify our war!" Hundreds of Israelies died- as planned by Mossad. Ingleton
No one can convince me that Israel didn’t use the music festival as a justification to commit genocide and to attempt to take over much of the Middle East. Why hold a music festival on “occupied, illegal land” (The Guardian) within a mile of the border? I learned about the warnings from the female IDF border guards, including Haaretz, and that confirmed my theory.
What I read was that spotters reported suspicious behavior on the part of Hamas, but were ignored. Israel had Hamas's plans the year before the assault took place, but they were dismissed as too complicated for them to carry out. Also Egypt warned them of an impending assault, and some say they were given standdown orders on that day. Quite a few have come forward to make that claim. "A Golani Brigade soldier has revealed that Israeli troops near Gaza were ordered to stand down from routine patrols on October 7, fueling suspicions that the Israeli leadership may have had foreknowledge of the Hamas operation." I always felt they knew it was going to happen, let it happen. Netanyahu continues to claim,. although disproven, that babies were burned, women were raped, etc. Netanyahu, is little more then a pathological narcissist, and he has no compassion or empathy for others.
Aside from burned babies when Biden says he identifies as a Zionist what he is saying is that Palestine is the homeland of the Jews. I always hated him, I mean hate, and I remember him lying us into that war. Yeah Hussein had nuclear weapons, a story line he picked up from Netanyahu. He is a man that also will sell his soul for power and money and when he dies I believe he and those like him die forever. They're soulless when they go.
I couldn’t agree with you more. And one more reason I hate him: He’s the reason Trump is president. He had no intention of holding Trump accountable for the insurrection. People blame Garland, but Garland was just part of the plan. He’s the worst president in my memory, and I soon will be 83.
Interesting that during Trump's first term in office I thought they didn't treat him well, and used him as a scapegoat of sorts, even when he wanted to get along with Russia. I'm sure people now wished they had instead of believing the lie of Russia-gate. I never voted for him, not Clinton either, a war monger at the top of anyone's list. Bush/Cheney are two that I loathed, since they adopted the agenda of war in the service of Israel, and their war was marked with death and more death which got Israel's agenda underway, and supported Netanyahu's lie that Saddam Hussein was in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Biden did his share by pushing that lie down the throats of his fellow democrats. No one reveals the truth of all this better then Jeffery Sachs. People often give Obama a pass when he as well as the others engaged in these Middle Eastern wars for Israel, in Syria, and Libya, and implemented a coup in Ukraine, but is best known for being the droner and chief. Trump now seems like a madman, and I have no doubt Iran, the top country on Netanyahu's hit list has now become his. I didn't hate Trump in his first years in office but I loathe him now but I just wanted to say he had and continues to have lots of loathsome, and soulless company in this century.
Again, couldn’t agree with you more. Jeffrey Sachs is my source for the truth. Btw, I’m glad I’m old, but how I worry about my two young great nieces. What kind of world awaits them?
It's quite possible Israeli brass wanted the attack.........but let's remember that such a narrative is assuming absolute power and all knowingness for the Israeli command.
It leaves out the real vulnerability of the Israeli government.........which is their belief in their own impunity. They've built up a narrative of superhuman defence, while the whole truth may well be that they, like the USA, just wants to bomb things to smithereens, without wasting any of their soldiers.
Shooting children in the head, sniping from a distance...........they're good at that.
But hand to hand combat, slugging it out in the trenches as the Ukrainians are doing against the Russians???? That they mostly avoid.
Which is also why they're bombing in Lebanon....again.........and mainly just talking about boots on the ground. It's the same reason why Amerikkka lost in Vietnam...
Aerial bombardment, napalmed jungles..........that they could do.
But they were an invading force.......an invading force has to subdue the people who live there. That takes 'boots on the ground'..........American/Israeli men and women dying.
They trust their firepower. And that makes them, over time, careless. So its also possible Israel just got careless...............believing in their walls and surveillance technology as gods. I'm hoping that's the case for America now in her illegal bombardment of Iran. Careless arrogance built on machine intelligence might take them down.
There is zero question in my mind that Israel knew of the impending attack by Hamas, and allowed it to happen to lend justification for a planned genocide. Is it any more shocking that they provided the US with a hit list of countries to take out at the beginning of this century in which we became willing partners. Do you really put it past them that they wouldn't sacrifice their own to obtain their objectives? They did implement the Hannibal directive, as well, and are still lying about dead babies, and rape which have been shown to be proven lies, and they think can be used to justify their barbarism.
The bit about rape actually made me laugh. You have to know 0 about the conditions Palestinians have lived with for decades to imagine that in the midst of an attack, fighters who likely went knowing they most likely wouldn't be coming home, would pause for a bit of sexual fun......
Demonizers always make the mistake of going too far....concocting fantasies of evil that no mere human would be capable of. But then it is likely true, they know less about the limits of being human than most.
Why I always stop reading anyone who makes the sweeping generalization common to the entitled.......I've been shocked by all the BS about Maduro that tells me the commentator knows zip about either him or Venezuela....Canada had civil organizations monitoring the 2018 election......when the United Church says everything was fair and square, I believe them....but if you read and know nothing about a country.......its' easy to let your paranoid imagination run wild.
when you tell others - over&over&over again - how invincible you are, you start believing it yourself at some point. when someone eventually exposes your actual weakness, they catch your wrath & ruthless revenge until the very end.
This is an excellent interview by Chris Hedges with Ahmed Eldin that really digs into what’s driving mainstream media’s capture, capitulation and complicity with today’s wealthy elite.
I think Elon Musk’s quote from the Joe Rogan show that "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy" reveals the Faustian deal most of today’s elite have done with the devil and the world they’re shaping ruled by self-interest, domination and ignorance.
We are ruled by sociopaths. It's that simple. Sociopaths inevitably come to dominate any organization with power, because, unlike normies, sociopaths will do whatever it takes to get that power for themselves.
MSM journalists are simply fluffers to power, renaissance courtiers, but without the classical learning or the colorful outfits.
I really appreciate your direct statements. It is that simple. There are few if any complexities when you drill in and expose these people for who they are.
Confucius said that if you really seek justice on earth, start by using exact definitions of words.
Orwell wrote "Politics And The English Language" on this. Once you cut through the crap and write in plain sentences, it tends to make the right or wrong of a position stand out starkly.
Relevant is Huntington's 1996 book /The Clash of Civilizations/ developed originally as a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute (right wing think tank.) Basically, the west and the rest. The west being western Euro and colonist descendants; the rest includes the Islamic world, the Eastern Orthodox Christian countries, South Asia, East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Conspicuously absent is any mention of Indigenous peoples--but of course they're not civilized, thus irrelevant.
He was right the west is under siege. He was wrong about the cause. The smug certainty of the Enlightenment was that if the lower classes and the inferior cultures of the world were taught how to think properly, they would become like the best, or at least defer to them. This is why colonization was beneficial. World War I blew that apart. It was about empire and power through the instruments of war--heavy weapons and propaganda.
The west IS under attack. Its economic and political powers are trying to keep the remnants of power at all cost. Therefore any possible opposition, like the western values of democracy, a free press, independent higher education, religious moral traditions, all must be suppressed. During the Vietnam war we heard the claim "it was necessary to destroy the village to save it." That disingenuous horror is now at home.
What goes around, comes around. But the west is also coping with something else that we should be aware of.......because many of us are part of it.
The west has a growing enemy within...........thus the Trumpster's ICE battalions, being trained/primed to deal with the defectors when the time comes.
Our old colonial stories of white exceptionalism are breaking down........we're not ethnically pure any longer. Three of my grandchildren are half Cuban.......I worry about their Cuban grandma, who has come here three times to help care for each child in their second year of life.
My youngest is half Philipino...I love my Philipino daughter-in-law. She's family
We have a god daughter who is El Salvadorian, another who came from Iran with her mom and dad....we're an international family with roots spreading beyond the classical west.
We hate America now........for reasons you can easily imagine. My daughter-in -laws head office is in Los Angeles. I told her last weekend at the family dinner she cannot take Zach to her yearly meetings ever again, at least not until Trump is gone........
"He wouldn't survive it, if separated from you" I said.......and she knows its true.
The west has to stop attacking. Stop imagining it gets all the marbles and others have to beg for one or two.
And perhaps our family will be rounded up and disposed of..........but we aren't alone. There's lots of us capable of loving and living and working together....lot's of us in happy multiracial communities. We need to stand together, against war, racism and fearful bigotry masquerading as Christian.
And we're sick of the white right nationalistic pseudo-religious bigots intent on taking back something that was't theirs in the first place.
This was a beautiful interview..........though at the beginning I felt impatience with the sometimes fractured sentences, or the thoughts that went uncompleted because other qualifying thoughts intruded. By the conclusion, I felt I'd participated in the process of articulating something very hard to completely articulate.
I have no idea what it must feel like to be a Palestinian, a journalist, a middle aged male caught up in these times, from this particular perspective....but I felt the confusion, the fragmentation, and at the same time, the sense that the unseeing wasn't working.......that the turning away, the capitulations, the evasions to suit the powerful.........were part of the wake up so many of us are experiencing now.
The neoliberal corporate western power structures cannot hold......they're becoming houses of cards, iron gates through which we see the gulags on the other side of privilege and power....
We might be white. Privileged. Economically secure.......but we know people who are none of these things. What's more, the violations Trump engages in daily, the kidnapping of Maduro, the starving of Cuba, the killing of American citizens who refuse to look away.......all these events are chipping away at anything resembling collective blindness.
Many still choose to look away. Many still imagine partial blindness protects the pristine view........but even for these many the frame is eroding at the edges, the blood and violence is seeping in.
150 plus or minus little Iranian girls went to school the other morning, likely attired in their little hijabs that westerners feel contempt for. Most of them didn't come home.
The night before last, almost asleep, I saw them laughing as they walked to school and suddenly, the callousness our culture teaches us to cultivate so as not to feel too much or be too often afraid dissolved. I cried uncontrollably, as if my own grand daughters had been taken.
Try as we might, we can't inure ourselves to the atrocities visited daily now on civilians, men, women, children, elders.........more all the time, they are our people being erased, for no good reasons we can discern.
We must all join the resistance, embrace empathy and abandon fully the official lies.
So thank you Chris and Ahmed, for having done so in so many ways, already.
"The neoliberal corporate western power structures cannot hold......they're becoming houses of cards, iron gates through which we see the gulags on the other side of privilege and power...."
Why can't it hold? They don't care what we see or think or know, as long as they can smash your face in any time they feel like it.
Yes, they are doing that.........but that is no way to build a prosperous country, it's a way to destroy one. Missiles that cost 3 million apiece to build will impoverish the country that has to build them ...........there's simply 'too many faces to smash'....and the survivors may be temporarily silent, but they can't forge the devastation white America brought them.
Plus, inside the empire built on weapons of mass destruction, more and more people don't swallow the propaganda lies...........
We mistake silence for agreement too often......there may be a kind of peace at the heart of empire, but more quickly than many imagine, it will be the peace of the graveyard....or the insane asylum. Trump is of the asylum faction. He imagines a gaggle of autocrats can make a riviera rise on the poisoned ground of a genocide.
It's an asylum he's actually contemplating. Where the spiritually and emotionally dead can congregate. To hallucinate the good life they've actually destroyed.
Oh I know that's mostly true Feral..........but from where I sit, the real problem is that they've taught most peons, like you, not to care about each other, or find ways to work together.
I leave myself out of that, because I've worked for solidarity all my life......coming from Tommy Douglas country.............so I know how many of us find competition, even if its just verbal wins, more satisfying than working together to protect the children, the commons, or the ecosphere.
The success of the rich is that they've made us all rich wannabes. It never took with me......most of those wannabes are boring...self centred....and don't want to talk about anything real. Reality scares them.
No Feral..............I'm using 'you" because your posts often display a cynicism and almost a contempt for people.
I read what you post, as the thoughts of a good man, but isolated and in despair for his fellow humans.
My argument is that we've gone along with a system that isolates us, keeps us in fighting, arguing about things like 'whether the rich, as a class, could not care less about you and me'.............since its a sweeping generallization Feral, that is likely not true.........my argument back at you is not a fight.........its a reasoning.
We are doomed if our ideas about human nature, other people, the rich, etc. etc. are used to claim not only that we're cooked..........but that we deserve to be cooked.
Though I might have guessed you'd take it personal. Isolated intellects end up with more self love.........and prickly reactions to potential allies........than anything resembling an open mind.........or a belief in solidarity.
As a Canadian democratic socialist...........I see it all the time...in-fight, take offence, accuse...............my post was about our society.......and the isolated semi rage it produces.
Your one liner illustrates it perfectly. I await your thoughtful reaction...lol
It felt relaxing to listen to a conversation where sentences weren't always completed, and now and then a shift in focus. Made me feel I wasn't being lectured to, but just eavesdropping on an interesting conversation.
Correcting student essays for 25 years makes me desire the completed sentence......I have to struggle not to be irritated by interruptions in the form........that often leave the original clause dangling.....
I know from whence my weakness comes..........it often feels, in interrupted sentences, that the person was hesitant to reach the conclusion the beginning of the sentence promised.
I suspect that stopping in mid sentence and introducing another clause, often one that muddles the meaning...........is part of the hesitation the 'know it all, know nothings'....build into us over the years.
I have an 11 year old grand daughter whom I suspect may be gifted.
At 3 she told her mom most people were 'stoops', and she feared her dad might be one as well. We laughed.
By 6 she was prefacing her observations with the phrase, "no offence"
I told her nothing she said could offend me, but I also realized she was already experiencing the silencing society brings to the bright....when bright children are young, they blurt out what they see. It's natural. But in our blighted age, much of what they see, most of us learn 'not to see'.........so we grow up feeling like simple truths are rubbing our noses in something unpleasant. And we grow up competitive, not wanting anyone to know or see what we don't or won't.
She's not saying it any more, I fear that by 11 she's learned to keep her thoughts to herself. Power operating at the capillary level.......as Foucault taught me.
I recall the interview mentioned with Norman Finkelstein when he brought up the Nat Turner rebellion and what was behind it. One can only take so much crap from a bully before they retaliate.
Can we all admit that it's actually quite easy to build a following by simply denouncing genocide, the Epstein class or mainstream media bias? ... did you know that the sanctimious Mr Hedges capitulated to big pharma during the lockdowns? ...
In 2022 Hedges actually said "the constitution remains a sacred document" AFTER he refused to stand with us against the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports.
But first, here's proof that COVID “vaccines” actually killed people …
Not a word here from Hedges about the illegal and unconstitutional nature of the mandates, passports and the jab ... after preaching direct confrontation to tyranny for the past 20 years, watch him dance and listen to him equivocate before sheepishly blowing it off: “… that was just a decision that I made” ... yup NBD, right Chris?
And on DEC 2, 2021 the explosive FDA FOIA release revealed that Fzr's Vx trial data documented 1,223 deaths and 25,000 medically verified injuries to trial participants in the first 90 days of their trial period.
This proved the Vx was not "safe and effective", but only 30 days later on the K&K podcast, he brazenly took sides when he knew better …
EP 54, Hedges said: "I don't think we can stop the pandemic and mutations until everyone gets vaccinated” without saying a word about the revelations of the FDA FOIA release – not a word!
So stop praising this guy, he doesn't give a hoot about us ... COVID scared the pants off him, so he tucked his tail between his legs and snuck out the back door on us.
Utter bullshit..........you merkins are so stupid it makes the head spin.
Explains why you had the highest per capita death count in the west.........while up in Canada we listened to the science (apart from some convoy crazies) and kept more of our people alive.
Only if the speech makes sense. We're in difficult times..........and many look for those responsible in some of the weirdest places. That Hegseth monster now.....he's looking more and more like a deadly virus.
Been reading Chris for 20 plus years. I've heard from his detractors for as many years and usually ignore them - responding to you was an error on my part. Adios
I too, have followed him very closely for the past 20+ years, I read all but one of his 12 books ... followed him so closely that it was impossible to not notice a dramatic change in his words AND tactics since the lockdowns ... he's said some pretty nasty things ...
Just listen to what he says here in his otherwise terrific AMERICAN SADISM speech, as he demeans those of us who question the motives and tactics of our elected officials by conflating us with Q-ANON types ...
What is the purpose, even if what you claim is true, for giving us a long list of complaints about Hedges, or is this list meant to undermine the validity of what was under discussion which was mainstream journalism sucks?
I stand for the integrity of the written and spoken word, just as Hedges once did ...
I followed him very closely these past 20 years, read all but one of his 12 books, used to love the guy ... but he ceased being a journalist and activist years ago ... he flipped on us with the lockdowns after promising to be there to fight the good fight with us when the time came ...
I have more links to more head-scratching quotes by this sacred cow ...
I don't know whether he flipped with the lockdowns during Covid, and if he did he had a lot of company. He really was in no position to make an assessment of things in regard to Covid, since it was a great unknown and you relied on what the medical field and what Fauci bastard said. I know a couple of people who died from the disease. Too often put on ventilators operated by people who didn't know what the hell they were doing. Of course many people die in hospitals from medical issues they never came in with as a result of poor quality care, or mistakes, or lack of cleanliness. Also, Covid was used by the democrats to undermine Trump, and now that he has helped implement a war in Iran they're applauding him. Others, like Cuomo made some terrible decisions in NY which killed a whole lot of people. I was challenged by sub-stack because of my insecurity about Covid, and thought implementing measures to prevent it seemed okay to me. My fear was greatly enhanced because a friend's mother died of it. I attended her funeral which consisted of staying in your car, listening to a priest on a loud speaker, and not being allowed to go to her gravesite. My brother died of Aids in the late 1880's, and way too young to die. Fauci scared the hell out of people when he commented to a journalist and lied that children of 3, and 4 were contracting AIDS because they lived in homes of people who had it. Bullshit! Maybe his purpose was to make people feel that it wasn't restricted to gay men, and drug users to encourage people's concern, or he was just being a liar drumming up business. Who knows. I could have a lot of anger about how my brother was treated, and how primitive people's mindsets were, but I have let it go.
This is what I said. "He really was in no position to make an assessment of things in regard to Covid, since it was a great unknown and you relied on what the medical field and what Fauci bastard said." Not "you" personally! I was using you in it's broadest context, referring to people in general. Wow, what a self centered perspective. Goodbye!
But Hedges actually did make an incredibly reckless assessment of COVID by essentially endorsing the jab "for everyone" when Phizer's own records proved the vax was actually killing and injuring people.
Just got this and don't know if you will find it interesting.
Judicial Watch announced that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense for records on funding proposals submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Biological Technologies Office prior to the Covid-19 outbreak (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:26-cv-00433)).
If that's the case, I question how much you really know about this man - or for that matter, how much you really care what these sacred cows do and say ... Hedges flock of highly trained "clapping seals" can only recall what he said in the past two weeks.
On October 6th '23 I heard a report ( and never heard it again on ABC radio australia) That acontingent of female Soldiers guarding the border to Gaza had reported the amassing of Hamas fighters and equipment on the border. Nothing happened. Except that Mossad-the most well informed spy system on the planet said to Netanyahu "do nothing. Let them come. This is what we've been waiting for! This will justify our war!" Hundreds of Israelies died- as planned by Mossad. Ingleton
No one can convince me that Israel didn’t use the music festival as a justification to commit genocide and to attempt to take over much of the Middle East. Why hold a music festival on “occupied, illegal land” (The Guardian) within a mile of the border? I learned about the warnings from the female IDF border guards, including Haaretz, and that confirmed my theory.
Amen!
What I read was that spotters reported suspicious behavior on the part of Hamas, but were ignored. Israel had Hamas's plans the year before the assault took place, but they were dismissed as too complicated for them to carry out. Also Egypt warned them of an impending assault, and some say they were given standdown orders on that day. Quite a few have come forward to make that claim. "A Golani Brigade soldier has revealed that Israeli troops near Gaza were ordered to stand down from routine patrols on October 7, fueling suspicions that the Israeli leadership may have had foreknowledge of the Hamas operation." I always felt they knew it was going to happen, let it happen. Netanyahu continues to claim,. although disproven, that babies were burned, women were raped, etc. Netanyahu, is little more then a pathological narcissist, and he has no compassion or empathy for others.
Ah yes. The infamous burned babies. It came as no surprise that “I-Am-A-Zionist-First” Joe Biden spouted this garbage.
Aside from burned babies when Biden says he identifies as a Zionist what he is saying is that Palestine is the homeland of the Jews. I always hated him, I mean hate, and I remember him lying us into that war. Yeah Hussein had nuclear weapons, a story line he picked up from Netanyahu. He is a man that also will sell his soul for power and money and when he dies I believe he and those like him die forever. They're soulless when they go.
I couldn’t agree with you more. And one more reason I hate him: He’s the reason Trump is president. He had no intention of holding Trump accountable for the insurrection. People blame Garland, but Garland was just part of the plan. He’s the worst president in my memory, and I soon will be 83.
Interesting that during Trump's first term in office I thought they didn't treat him well, and used him as a scapegoat of sorts, even when he wanted to get along with Russia. I'm sure people now wished they had instead of believing the lie of Russia-gate. I never voted for him, not Clinton either, a war monger at the top of anyone's list. Bush/Cheney are two that I loathed, since they adopted the agenda of war in the service of Israel, and their war was marked with death and more death which got Israel's agenda underway, and supported Netanyahu's lie that Saddam Hussein was in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Biden did his share by pushing that lie down the throats of his fellow democrats. No one reveals the truth of all this better then Jeffery Sachs. People often give Obama a pass when he as well as the others engaged in these Middle Eastern wars for Israel, in Syria, and Libya, and implemented a coup in Ukraine, but is best known for being the droner and chief. Trump now seems like a madman, and I have no doubt Iran, the top country on Netanyahu's hit list has now become his. I didn't hate Trump in his first years in office but I loathe him now but I just wanted to say he had and continues to have lots of loathsome, and soulless company in this century.
Again, couldn’t agree with you more. Jeffrey Sachs is my source for the truth. Btw, I’m glad I’m old, but how I worry about my two young great nieces. What kind of world awaits them?
It's quite possible Israeli brass wanted the attack.........but let's remember that such a narrative is assuming absolute power and all knowingness for the Israeli command.
It leaves out the real vulnerability of the Israeli government.........which is their belief in their own impunity. They've built up a narrative of superhuman defence, while the whole truth may well be that they, like the USA, just wants to bomb things to smithereens, without wasting any of their soldiers.
Shooting children in the head, sniping from a distance...........they're good at that.
But hand to hand combat, slugging it out in the trenches as the Ukrainians are doing against the Russians???? That they mostly avoid.
Which is also why they're bombing in Lebanon....again.........and mainly just talking about boots on the ground. It's the same reason why Amerikkka lost in Vietnam...
Aerial bombardment, napalmed jungles..........that they could do.
But they were an invading force.......an invading force has to subdue the people who live there. That takes 'boots on the ground'..........American/Israeli men and women dying.
They trust their firepower. And that makes them, over time, careless. So its also possible Israel just got careless...............believing in their walls and surveillance technology as gods. I'm hoping that's the case for America now in her illegal bombardment of Iran. Careless arrogance built on machine intelligence might take them down.
There is zero question in my mind that Israel knew of the impending attack by Hamas, and allowed it to happen to lend justification for a planned genocide. Is it any more shocking that they provided the US with a hit list of countries to take out at the beginning of this century in which we became willing partners. Do you really put it past them that they wouldn't sacrifice their own to obtain their objectives? They did implement the Hannibal directive, as well, and are still lying about dead babies, and rape which have been shown to be proven lies, and they think can be used to justify their barbarism.
The bit about rape actually made me laugh. You have to know 0 about the conditions Palestinians have lived with for decades to imagine that in the midst of an attack, fighters who likely went knowing they most likely wouldn't be coming home, would pause for a bit of sexual fun......
Demonizers always make the mistake of going too far....concocting fantasies of evil that no mere human would be capable of. But then it is likely true, they know less about the limits of being human than most.
Why I always stop reading anyone who makes the sweeping generalization common to the entitled.......I've been shocked by all the BS about Maduro that tells me the commentator knows zip about either him or Venezuela....Canada had civil organizations monitoring the 2018 election......when the United Church says everything was fair and square, I believe them....but if you read and know nothing about a country.......its' easy to let your paranoid imagination run wild.
when you tell others - over&over&over again - how invincible you are, you start believing it yourself at some point. when someone eventually exposes your actual weakness, they catch your wrath & ruthless revenge until the very end.
Yes, and then the hubris which usually follows, will have more cheerleaders than sympathetic supporters.
American bombs, and sanctions and depleted uranium shells have killed so many beautiful little children that at 80, I can't forgive them.
I'm too busy being sad for my own grandchildren, trying to imagine ways to protect them from the lethality of the morons.
I heard something to that effect as well.
This is an excellent interview by Chris Hedges with Ahmed Eldin that really digs into what’s driving mainstream media’s capture, capitulation and complicity with today’s wealthy elite.
I think Elon Musk’s quote from the Joe Rogan show that "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy" reveals the Faustian deal most of today’s elite have done with the devil and the world they’re shaping ruled by self-interest, domination and ignorance.
We are ruled by sociopaths. It's that simple. Sociopaths inevitably come to dominate any organization with power, because, unlike normies, sociopaths will do whatever it takes to get that power for themselves.
MSM journalists are simply fluffers to power, renaissance courtiers, but without the classical learning or the colorful outfits.
I really appreciate your direct statements. It is that simple. There are few if any complexities when you drill in and expose these people for who they are.
Confucius said that if you really seek justice on earth, start by using exact definitions of words.
Orwell wrote "Politics And The English Language" on this. Once you cut through the crap and write in plain sentences, it tends to make the right or wrong of a position stand out starkly.
Long live reality in spite of the war being conducted upon it
It's 2003 all over again with the liars in the Corporate Controlled Conservative Press.
Relevant is Huntington's 1996 book /The Clash of Civilizations/ developed originally as a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute (right wing think tank.) Basically, the west and the rest. The west being western Euro and colonist descendants; the rest includes the Islamic world, the Eastern Orthodox Christian countries, South Asia, East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Conspicuously absent is any mention of Indigenous peoples--but of course they're not civilized, thus irrelevant.
He was right the west is under siege. He was wrong about the cause. The smug certainty of the Enlightenment was that if the lower classes and the inferior cultures of the world were taught how to think properly, they would become like the best, or at least defer to them. This is why colonization was beneficial. World War I blew that apart. It was about empire and power through the instruments of war--heavy weapons and propaganda.
The west IS under attack. Its economic and political powers are trying to keep the remnants of power at all cost. Therefore any possible opposition, like the western values of democracy, a free press, independent higher education, religious moral traditions, all must be suppressed. During the Vietnam war we heard the claim "it was necessary to destroy the village to save it." That disingenuous horror is now at home.
What goes around, comes around. But the west is also coping with something else that we should be aware of.......because many of us are part of it.
The west has a growing enemy within...........thus the Trumpster's ICE battalions, being trained/primed to deal with the defectors when the time comes.
Our old colonial stories of white exceptionalism are breaking down........we're not ethnically pure any longer. Three of my grandchildren are half Cuban.......I worry about their Cuban grandma, who has come here three times to help care for each child in their second year of life.
My youngest is half Philipino...I love my Philipino daughter-in-law. She's family
We have a god daughter who is El Salvadorian, another who came from Iran with her mom and dad....we're an international family with roots spreading beyond the classical west.
We hate America now........for reasons you can easily imagine. My daughter-in -laws head office is in Los Angeles. I told her last weekend at the family dinner she cannot take Zach to her yearly meetings ever again, at least not until Trump is gone........
"He wouldn't survive it, if separated from you" I said.......and she knows its true.
The west has to stop attacking. Stop imagining it gets all the marbles and others have to beg for one or two.
And perhaps our family will be rounded up and disposed of..........but we aren't alone. There's lots of us capable of loving and living and working together....lot's of us in happy multiracial communities. We need to stand together, against war, racism and fearful bigotry masquerading as Christian.
And we're sick of the white right nationalistic pseudo-religious bigots intent on taking back something that was't theirs in the first place.
What a delightful, and charming guest.
This was a beautiful interview..........though at the beginning I felt impatience with the sometimes fractured sentences, or the thoughts that went uncompleted because other qualifying thoughts intruded. By the conclusion, I felt I'd participated in the process of articulating something very hard to completely articulate.
I have no idea what it must feel like to be a Palestinian, a journalist, a middle aged male caught up in these times, from this particular perspective....but I felt the confusion, the fragmentation, and at the same time, the sense that the unseeing wasn't working.......that the turning away, the capitulations, the evasions to suit the powerful.........were part of the wake up so many of us are experiencing now.
The neoliberal corporate western power structures cannot hold......they're becoming houses of cards, iron gates through which we see the gulags on the other side of privilege and power....
We might be white. Privileged. Economically secure.......but we know people who are none of these things. What's more, the violations Trump engages in daily, the kidnapping of Maduro, the starving of Cuba, the killing of American citizens who refuse to look away.......all these events are chipping away at anything resembling collective blindness.
Many still choose to look away. Many still imagine partial blindness protects the pristine view........but even for these many the frame is eroding at the edges, the blood and violence is seeping in.
150 plus or minus little Iranian girls went to school the other morning, likely attired in their little hijabs that westerners feel contempt for. Most of them didn't come home.
The night before last, almost asleep, I saw them laughing as they walked to school and suddenly, the callousness our culture teaches us to cultivate so as not to feel too much or be too often afraid dissolved. I cried uncontrollably, as if my own grand daughters had been taken.
Try as we might, we can't inure ourselves to the atrocities visited daily now on civilians, men, women, children, elders.........more all the time, they are our people being erased, for no good reasons we can discern.
We must all join the resistance, embrace empathy and abandon fully the official lies.
So thank you Chris and Ahmed, for having done so in so many ways, already.
"The neoliberal corporate western power structures cannot hold......they're becoming houses of cards, iron gates through which we see the gulags on the other side of privilege and power...."
Why can't it hold? They don't care what we see or think or know, as long as they can smash your face in any time they feel like it.
Yes, they are doing that.........but that is no way to build a prosperous country, it's a way to destroy one. Missiles that cost 3 million apiece to build will impoverish the country that has to build them ...........there's simply 'too many faces to smash'....and the survivors may be temporarily silent, but they can't forge the devastation white America brought them.
Plus, inside the empire built on weapons of mass destruction, more and more people don't swallow the propaganda lies...........
We mistake silence for agreement too often......there may be a kind of peace at the heart of empire, but more quickly than many imagine, it will be the peace of the graveyard....or the insane asylum. Trump is of the asylum faction. He imagines a gaggle of autocrats can make a riviera rise on the poisoned ground of a genocide.
It's an asylum he's actually contemplating. Where the spiritually and emotionally dead can congregate. To hallucinate the good life they've actually destroyed.
As long as the rich continue to prosper, they could not care less about peons like you and I.
Oh I know that's mostly true Feral..........but from where I sit, the real problem is that they've taught most peons, like you, not to care about each other, or find ways to work together.
I leave myself out of that, because I've worked for solidarity all my life......coming from Tommy Douglas country.............so I know how many of us find competition, even if its just verbal wins, more satisfying than working together to protect the children, the commons, or the ecosphere.
The success of the rich is that they've made us all rich wannabes. It never took with me......most of those wannabes are boring...self centred....and don't want to talk about anything real. Reality scares them.
So now you're an expert on me and what I've been taught?
"Look to the mote in thine own eye..."
No Feral..............I'm using 'you" because your posts often display a cynicism and almost a contempt for people.
I read what you post, as the thoughts of a good man, but isolated and in despair for his fellow humans.
My argument is that we've gone along with a system that isolates us, keeps us in fighting, arguing about things like 'whether the rich, as a class, could not care less about you and me'.............since its a sweeping generallization Feral, that is likely not true.........my argument back at you is not a fight.........its a reasoning.
We are doomed if our ideas about human nature, other people, the rich, etc. etc. are used to claim not only that we're cooked..........but that we deserve to be cooked.
Though I might have guessed you'd take it personal. Isolated intellects end up with more self love.........and prickly reactions to potential allies........than anything resembling an open mind.........or a belief in solidarity.
As a Canadian democratic socialist...........I see it all the time...in-fight, take offence, accuse...............my post was about our society.......and the isolated semi rage it produces.
Your one liner illustrates it perfectly. I await your thoughtful reaction...lol
It felt relaxing to listen to a conversation where sentences weren't always completed, and now and then a shift in focus. Made me feel I wasn't being lectured to, but just eavesdropping on an interesting conversation.
Correcting student essays for 25 years makes me desire the completed sentence......I have to struggle not to be irritated by interruptions in the form........that often leave the original clause dangling.....
Call it a weakness.
You are forgiven since I was also a teacher, science, and I to had my quirks.
I know from whence my weakness comes..........it often feels, in interrupted sentences, that the person was hesitant to reach the conclusion the beginning of the sentence promised.
I suspect that stopping in mid sentence and introducing another clause, often one that muddles the meaning...........is part of the hesitation the 'know it all, know nothings'....build into us over the years.
I have an 11 year old grand daughter whom I suspect may be gifted.
At 3 she told her mom most people were 'stoops', and she feared her dad might be one as well. We laughed.
By 6 she was prefacing her observations with the phrase, "no offence"
I told her nothing she said could offend me, but I also realized she was already experiencing the silencing society brings to the bright....when bright children are young, they blurt out what they see. It's natural. But in our blighted age, much of what they see, most of us learn 'not to see'.........so we grow up feeling like simple truths are rubbing our noses in something unpleasant. And we grow up competitive, not wanting anyone to know or see what we don't or won't.
She's not saying it any more, I fear that by 11 she's learned to keep her thoughts to herself. Power operating at the capillary level.......as Foucault taught me.
Great piece, thank you.
I recall the interview mentioned with Norman Finkelstein when he brought up the Nat Turner rebellion and what was behind it. One can only take so much crap from a bully before they retaliate.
Recent Guardian quote: Christiane Amanpour "We are truthful, not neutral".
Lingua imperii Americani
Can we all admit that it's actually quite easy to build a following by simply denouncing genocide, the Epstein class or mainstream media bias? ... did you know that the sanctimious Mr Hedges capitulated to big pharma during the lockdowns? ...
In 2022 Hedges actually said "the constitution remains a sacred document" AFTER he refused to stand with us against the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports.
But first, here's proof that COVID “vaccines” actually killed people …
https://www.medicine.news/2023-12-11-proof-covid-vaccines-have-killed-millions.html
Jimmy Dore, August 21, 2021 …
Not a word here from Hedges about the illegal and unconstitutional nature of the mandates, passports and the jab ... after preaching direct confrontation to tyranny for the past 20 years, watch him dance and listen to him equivocate before sheepishly blowing it off: “… that was just a decision that I made” ... yup NBD, right Chris?
Go to the 8:12 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NusQH0pnX7Y&t=514s
Useful idiots, September 21, 2021 …
“It’s a hard question I guess, do you force people to get the vaccine”
No Chris, it's not a hard question - not at all ...
Go to the 1:53 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ZGT8raQS8
And on DEC 2, 2021 the explosive FDA FOIA release revealed that Fzr's Vx trial data documented 1,223 deaths and 25,000 medically verified injuries to trial participants in the first 90 days of their trial period.
https://www.medicine.news/2021-12-10-pfizer-vaccine-documents-42000-reactions-1223-deaths.html
This proved the Vx was not "safe and effective", but only 30 days later on the K&K podcast, he brazenly took sides when he knew better …
EP 54, Hedges said: "I don't think we can stop the pandemic and mutations until everyone gets vaccinated” without saying a word about the revelations of the FDA FOIA release – not a word!
Krystal, Kyle & Friends, EP 54
1:08:46 mark
https://krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/p/episode-54-audio-chris-hedges
So stop praising this guy, he doesn't give a hoot about us ... COVID scared the pants off him, so he tucked his tail between his legs and snuck out the back door on us.
He was just hoping nobody would notice.
You're an anti vacc covid denier.......of course Chris Hedges didn't stand with you dumkoffs.
He's educated enough to tell the difference between vaccine science and the many patent medicines constantly being pushed in the ads on MSM.
Conservative estimates say at least 675k American "dumkoffs" were killed by that untested "vaccine", and millions more in other countries.
Utter bullshit..........you merkins are so stupid it makes the head spin.
Explains why you had the highest per capita death count in the west.........while up in Canada we listened to the science (apart from some convoy crazies) and kept more of our people alive.
You sound like a real free speech type, Ingamarie ...
Only if the speech makes sense. We're in difficult times..........and many look for those responsible in some of the weirdest places. That Hegseth monster now.....he's looking more and more like a deadly virus.
That's pretty scary Ingamarie ... So if you could push a button to block my post here, you'd do it, right?
Yup, everybody's now scrambling for parachutes, including Hedges. He's just in it for clicks, he's an expert at telling you what you want to hear ...
Conservatives do estimates more ideological than scientific.
Been reading Chris for 20 plus years. I've heard from his detractors for as many years and usually ignore them - responding to you was an error on my part. Adios
I too, have followed him very closely for the past 20+ years, I read all but one of his 12 books ... followed him so closely that it was impossible to not notice a dramatic change in his words AND tactics since the lockdowns ... he's said some pretty nasty things ...
Just listen to what he says here in his otherwise terrific AMERICAN SADISM speech, as he demeans those of us who question the motives and tactics of our elected officials by conflating us with Q-ANON types ...
Go to the 44:32 mark:
https://scheerpost.com/2021/06/29/chris-hedges-speaks-on-american-sadism/
What is the purpose, even if what you claim is true, for giving us a long list of complaints about Hedges, or is this list meant to undermine the validity of what was under discussion which was mainstream journalism sucks?
I stand for the integrity of the written and spoken word, just as Hedges once did ...
I followed him very closely these past 20 years, read all but one of his 12 books, used to love the guy ... but he ceased being a journalist and activist years ago ... he flipped on us with the lockdowns after promising to be there to fight the good fight with us when the time came ...
I have more links to more head-scratching quotes by this sacred cow ...
All ya gotta do is ask ...
I don't know whether he flipped with the lockdowns during Covid, and if he did he had a lot of company. He really was in no position to make an assessment of things in regard to Covid, since it was a great unknown and you relied on what the medical field and what Fauci bastard said. I know a couple of people who died from the disease. Too often put on ventilators operated by people who didn't know what the hell they were doing. Of course many people die in hospitals from medical issues they never came in with as a result of poor quality care, or mistakes, or lack of cleanliness. Also, Covid was used by the democrats to undermine Trump, and now that he has helped implement a war in Iran they're applauding him. Others, like Cuomo made some terrible decisions in NY which killed a whole lot of people. I was challenged by sub-stack because of my insecurity about Covid, and thought implementing measures to prevent it seemed okay to me. My fear was greatly enhanced because a friend's mother died of it. I attended her funeral which consisted of staying in your car, listening to a priest on a loud speaker, and not being allowed to go to her gravesite. My brother died of Aids in the late 1880's, and way too young to die. Fauci scared the hell out of people when he commented to a journalist and lied that children of 3, and 4 were contracting AIDS because they lived in homes of people who had it. Bullshit! Maybe his purpose was to make people feel that it wasn't restricted to gay men, and drug users to encourage people's concern, or he was just being a liar drumming up business. Who knows. I could have a lot of anger about how my brother was treated, and how primitive people's mindsets were, but I have let it go.
"... you relied on what the medical field and what Fauci bastard said" ...
No I did not, not at all ... so don't put words in my mouth!
This is what I said. "He really was in no position to make an assessment of things in regard to Covid, since it was a great unknown and you relied on what the medical field and what Fauci bastard said." Not "you" personally! I was using you in it's broadest context, referring to people in general. Wow, what a self centered perspective. Goodbye!
I now undestand, thank you ...
But Hedges actually did make an incredibly reckless assessment of COVID by essentially endorsing the jab "for everyone" when Phizer's own records proved the vax was actually killing and injuring people.
Just got this and don't know if you will find it interesting.
Judicial Watch announced that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense for records on funding proposals submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Biological Technologies Office prior to the Covid-19 outbreak (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:26-cv-00433)).
https://www.judicialwatch.org/gain-of-function-records/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=corruption+chronicles&utm_term=members
I down vote your comment with conscious vigor.
If that's the case, I question how much you really know about this man - or for that matter, how much you really care what these sacred cows do and say ... Hedges flock of highly trained "clapping seals" can only recall what he said in the past two weeks.
"Capitulation?!" They had to be coerced?