The genocide in Gaza portends the emergence of a dystopian world where the industrialized violence of the Global North is used to sustain its hoarding of diminishing resources and wealth.
Naming our darkness: I see the primary "virtue" of western corporate capitalist societies as parasitism. Corporations and the nations they underpin are excellent and efficient parasites. Pay us and we'll provide mediocre service or product and support that will make you laugh at its absurdity. Or even better, be poor and we'll simply come and take what we want, from your minerals to the red blood cells in your veins. Until we recognize ourselves in those mediocrities of both parties in the Senate who want to call Ed Snowden a traitor, this country will never move on from its ability to do what it's done in Gaza. Israel's crimes are entirely America's crimes.
You certainly did find the ideal people to man your outpost in the Middle East....I think many good Americans are shocked by the degree of complicity between the two countries...not to mention by the ease with which what we'd take to be the tail is wagging the dog.
Never know for sure what you're gong to get when you create a monster.
Many of us see it as a unitary animal, almost as though Israel is the right side and the US the left side of the heart pumping in synchrony, or any number of biological analogies I could fabricate. But make no mistake; separating this monster (you're entirely correct) into component parts would be a bit of a hopeless endeavor. The Billionaire Zionist lobby has America by the throat.
I've come to realize this.......and the saddest part of it all is this: as more of us see the complete rapaciousness of the Zionist ideology......many will come to harbour the suspicion that the Nazi's knew something we didn't.
In short, the conclusion will be reached that if this is Judaism....eliminated it might be a necessity.
I don't imagine that any Zionist recognizes that extermination theologies breed extermination theologies......but history suggests its so.
It's incredibly sad, especially when I consider both my personal friends and the more globally known rabidly anti-Zionist Jews in the world, who are generally great people. Gabor and Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, and especially Miko Peled who's been an outspoken Palestinian ally for decades, as was his father. Extermination theologies --> evoking the profoundest of resentments of which the human brain's amygdaloid complex is capable. Of course, as you so eloquently assess, "extermination theologies breed extermination theologies".
The Ku Klux Klan who, despite their burning crosses, have by their acts and beliefs renounced any association to the true meaning of that cross as a symbol of Christ’s teachings. Zionism, which follows none of the teachings of the Jewish religion, symbolically burns the Star of David, and the principles which it represents. Just as the KKK is anti Christian, Zionism is an antisemitic movement.
Thank you again for your wisdom. If I can offer the merest silver lining, I want to say how proud I am of the Palestinians for returning the Israeli hostages with shiny hair, big smiles, and, as far as I could see, completely unmolested. It went unremarked by the mainstream mess, but it was a proud moment for anyone who cares about humanity.
The second proud moment is the spirit of these people as they return to their piles of debris ready to face tomorrow. This is a people which will never, never, be vanquished.
I saw photos of Palestinians leaving Zionist jails and they looked like they were leaving from Auschwitz. Had no way to fact check that, but I suspect it was true. One kid had been their since 14 YO and was now 20. Did he throw a rock or what?
I don’t remember if it was Hedges or another writer who interviewed a Palestinian Mother from the West Bank whose son was abducted and held for a year without charge. When he was finally released she went to court, and didn’t recognize her son until their attorney pointed him out.
I just saw Piers interview Mearsheimer. Pier's was full of questions about the future, and I found it quite annoying since I think it is too soon to go there. The release of hostages was much more a focus then were the Palestinians, and what they are going home to. Not even their dead were left in peace, or that they are going home to rubble where death lies under it. Right now the focus should be in the present and with the Palestinians. Not what is going to happen to Netanyahu and his health, and his prostate issues. etc. etc. It was like the genocide implemented by Israel and the US was a past event.
But how do we stop this suicidal direction that the west seems to be pursuing?? I'm reminded too often these days of how successful the demonization of anything resembling socialism or communism has been....every day I seem to learn of more atrocities visited on the earth's poor by representatives of the west. Just last week I learned one more detail from the Argentinian generals....supported by America and it's School of the Americas training centre.
Gabor Mate informed me, in a zoom about 'weaponizing trauma' that 600 to 800 Jews had been killed by the generals in Argentina....not because they were Jews, because they were progressive.
A year ago, I finally read John Pilger's THE NEW RULERS OF THE WORLD...published I think in 2002. Imagine the horror with which I received the old news of how western corporations engineered the murder of half a million communists prior to setting up a western backed pupped and essentially strip mining Indonesia........so that at the time of writing......a country that had no debt prior to the western take, now had so much debt it was considered unlikely they'd ever get out from under it.
I think what we all need in the west is a crash course on the crimes of Capitalism. We've been taught to rever a system that exploits other countries, hauls the booty home, and deposits it in the off shore accounts of criminals who advertise themselves as 'Wealth Creators'. Most of us have bee too busy making a living...trying to do so honestly....to be able to keep up with the crimes of the entitled.
The Genocide in Gaza however is opening a lot of our eyes. The problem is.......the horror is overwhelming...........the work being done to silence any protest is massive....and its hard to see what any of us can do. That we're often isolated in our ghettos....expensive though many of them be...makes it even more difficult. Few want to even discuss the extent of the trouble we're all in...Chris being the exception some of us listen to.
And there's a new emergency rears its head every day.....Trump and his crazy tariffs being the terror of the hour, up here in peace loving, well meaning Canada.
I'm not surprised the empire is coming for what we have........but I doubt Gaza's crucifixion will figure into anything we decide to do about it.
One problem, as we all know, is that those who pretend to be the intellectual elite are now as docile, gullible, and ignorant as any historical population I can think of.
John Pilger was a great man. The day he died The New York Times seemed unaware of this great loss and ran instead the obituary of some guy who invented a new kind of donut. Had they mentioned Pilger, I’m not sure that even six readers would have known who he was.
The intellectual loss is immeasurable....I myself was too busy at the time, teaching and being a mother......then I opened a B and B for hospital patients from out of town and though I've always been a reader, and anti war........I didn't know about Pilger until I married my current partner.
A life long reader, he had many books I'd not seen in my mainly literary career.....so I discovered John late.....only a year or two before we lost him.
Still.....what he conveyed about Indonesia, in about 20 pages galvanized me. Western corporations have been pillaging the third world for ever.....but they certainly didn't let up after World War II.
We are the evil Empire......and a recent little Canadian book CANADA'S LONG WAR AGAINST DEMOCRACY...I think the title is, very concisely filled me in on how long Canada has been Corporate America's willing partner.
So in a way, Thanks for Trump and his stupid Tariffs..........its waking a few more of us up...to what those 'western values' and long lasting 'global partnerships' actually mean. You don't maintain your innocence by being the Joker's willing side kick.
Thank you for your brutal honesty! We need more awareness of human history. It is filled with horror. Nobody wants to talk about the US war in Vietnam anymore, but it was as brutal as the Israeli assault on Gaza, if not more so. I think the human future looks very dark since human history reveals who we really are as a species. We cannot be trusted with power, but science and technology continue to provide us with ever more power on a daily basis. It seems very doubtful that the human story will end well.
What we have wrought in Palestine is coming for us sooner than later. And it will likely play out with a Red and Blue civil war on top of climate change, an economic crash and so forth and so on. The arc of the USA has always been coming down to this dystopian future, of which the genocide in Gaza is a prelude to the shit show of the ever accelerating collapse of the USA. The only way to stop that collapse is if every citizen of all political stripes, including the cultural bigots and anyone who have divided themselves from others, is for all of them to band together and say: WE WILL NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE! Could that ever happen in the USA with how far it has descended such outright division. I guess that is for the future to unfold.
Given the tariffs your President has slapped on Canada and Mexico today, I'd guess the strategy will be more of the imperial same.......find as many ways as possible to blame others, rob others, and imagine America as the victim of universal evil.....rather than the persistent perpetrator of it. You can bet a lot of Canadians are thinking overtime about how to do without you.......turning on your friends is not a political tactic we have much use for.
Americans seem to think of politics as a football game: there's the Red team and the Blue team. A civil war between the Red team and the Blue team is exactly what the elites want.
We need to grow up and realize that we're manipulated on a daily basis. This is not a game.
We need to put aside our cosmetic differences and see how much alike we are. Then join together and fight our real enemies, the capitalist elites who will do the same to us as they are doing to Gaza.
"But the genocide in Gaza is only the start. The world is breaking down under the onslaught of the climate crisis, which is triggering mass migrations, failed states and catastrophic wildfires, hurricanes, storms, flooding and droughts. As global stability unravels, the terrifying machine of industrial violence, which is decimating the Palestinians, will become ubiquitous."
I apologize for the dystopian indulgence, but the unprecedented global nature of the catastrophe, the magnitude of sheer numbers, the social breakdown, within the context of the current and concentration of powers controlled by technocrats, has for some time brought to mind an interim period (before even that fails) of global spheres of authoritarian regimes, each granted hegemony over their domains, a dystopian (Metternich/Kissingerian?) agreement, running on the nerve network of the internet, a constant shifting of chaos and re-imposition of draconian order, as areas become uninhabitable or mired in war, a nightmare caricature of states.
The image of multiple Willi Herolds comes continually into mind, in the worst instances of regional chaos, in places like New Idaho. (There is a regional movement where I live to redraw borders along what are national conservative lines. It's very chilling the first time to see a militia convey on a local highway. It makes the upcoming possibilities very real.)
The global 1/10th of 1% think they're going to ride out the economic, social, and ecological devastation on their megayachts and private islands. They've always been exempt from whatever befalls the insignificant masses and they've always been able to buy whatever they want, including governments. As if the rest of us will remain quietly unemployed, choking on the air pollution, and unsure where our next meal (or water) will come from.
The pols are not only sponsored by the corporate and 1%er elite, but also face the pressure of voters who don't want to hear bad news. Plus they notice the hypocrisy of someone who himself lives in a McMansion while urging everyone else to conserve.
Younger people continue to buy huge houses and SUVs. They have families and don't want to see how such behavior impacts the planet or what the increasing load on finite resources means for a future rapidly approaching.
See, hear, say nothing; everything could turn out just fine.
Disrespect for human life leads us into disaster, as James Baldwin sadly is quoted in this article. Our long history of killing, now with industrial technology, continues to defeat us. We have a choice to make: leave and cleave from our past or?
Ceasefire or no ceasefire; scam or no, we cannot allow Israel to escape the legal consequences of their war crimes. The Hind Rajab Foundation has, among other things, filed a case with the ICC against 1,000 Israeli soldiers for war crimes in Gaza.
They have taken further steps in recent days, and vacations are becoming a lot more difficult for IDF soldiers, worldwide. The Hind Rajab Foundation can use our help. Please join me in making a contribution.
You might find meaningful to watch the recent interviews that Glenn Greenwald did on his Rumble platform, and Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, did with the head of this organisation, Dyad Abou Jahjah. It was very informative.
Here's a petition calling for accountability for the arrest of Ali Abunimah in Switzerland:
I do not look at the happenings in Gaza as an isolated incidence. The map of the Middle East was probably drawn a long time ago. Before World war one ended, and probably before it even started. It was waiting for the right circumstances and the right actors.
The same goes true for other wars, WW1 and WW2 included.
No greater argument about the futility of war than WWI. Why was it fought? Over empires. The outcome? Soviet Communism, Nazi Germany, WWII. Plus the so-called victors carved up the Middle East (West Asia) to suit themselves regardless of what the people actually living there might have wanted. The world is still living with that problem. Then after WWII, the people of the same area, but especially the Palestinians, got to atone for the sins of Europeans by paying with their lands and lives.
possibly … but given the now unavoidable climate catastrophes it would only happen. minus about 8 billion of us. And even then it’s a slim possibility.
Hedges has said it many times, that what is needed and perhaps our only option is massive general strikes and boycotts. Perhaps you could start a community group to facilitate discussions on how to implements strikes or other solutions you might come up with. Just a thought.
Thank you, Sir, for putting forth the truth of the Industrial/Genocidal States. Continued industrialization, unchecked, is continuing genocide. Our sweet Mother Earth will respond in kind.
In my worst moments, I consider cheering for the nuclear option. But then I remember the millions of Indigenous peoples around the world who treat the living Earth with respect. Plus the exuberant diversity of life--angler fish, orchids, quetzal birds, snow leopards, redwoods...none of whom deserve to die because a very small percentage among that species of upright apes is so vicious and uncaring.
Like a torrent you have hit us hard, in detail, with context and most important history of the madness that pervades us today.
Then you warn us all that industrial violence is coming for us all with the changed climate wreaking havoc and mass migration movements everywhere as the elite try to hang onto their ill gotten gains.
Gaza is us.
Thanks Chris for telling us how it is and might be unless we retake control of our collective future.
The reason that there is no longer such pious objection to Trump 2.0 is because the United States is rapidly dropping any pretense to being anything other than an empire.
As such, it no longer is necessary to maintain the polite fictions and pious lies.
Naming our darkness: I see the primary "virtue" of western corporate capitalist societies as parasitism. Corporations and the nations they underpin are excellent and efficient parasites. Pay us and we'll provide mediocre service or product and support that will make you laugh at its absurdity. Or even better, be poor and we'll simply come and take what we want, from your minerals to the red blood cells in your veins. Until we recognize ourselves in those mediocrities of both parties in the Senate who want to call Ed Snowden a traitor, this country will never move on from its ability to do what it's done in Gaza. Israel's crimes are entirely America's crimes.
You certainly did find the ideal people to man your outpost in the Middle East....I think many good Americans are shocked by the degree of complicity between the two countries...not to mention by the ease with which what we'd take to be the tail is wagging the dog.
Never know for sure what you're gong to get when you create a monster.
Many of us see it as a unitary animal, almost as though Israel is the right side and the US the left side of the heart pumping in synchrony, or any number of biological analogies I could fabricate. But make no mistake; separating this monster (you're entirely correct) into component parts would be a bit of a hopeless endeavor. The Billionaire Zionist lobby has America by the throat.
I've come to realize this.......and the saddest part of it all is this: as more of us see the complete rapaciousness of the Zionist ideology......many will come to harbour the suspicion that the Nazi's knew something we didn't.
In short, the conclusion will be reached that if this is Judaism....eliminated it might be a necessity.
I don't imagine that any Zionist recognizes that extermination theologies breed extermination theologies......but history suggests its so.
It's incredibly sad, especially when I consider both my personal friends and the more globally known rabidly anti-Zionist Jews in the world, who are generally great people. Gabor and Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, and especially Miko Peled who's been an outspoken Palestinian ally for decades, as was his father. Extermination theologies --> evoking the profoundest of resentments of which the human brain's amygdaloid complex is capable. Of course, as you so eloquently assess, "extermination theologies breed extermination theologies".
In my opinion Zionism is not a Jewish movement.
The Ku Klux Klan who, despite their burning crosses, have by their acts and beliefs renounced any association to the true meaning of that cross as a symbol of Christ’s teachings. Zionism, which follows none of the teachings of the Jewish religion, symbolically burns the Star of David, and the principles which it represents. Just as the KKK is anti Christian, Zionism is an antisemitic movement.
"Zionism is antithetical to Judaism." Rabbi Dovid Weiss, NYC.
Zionism isn't Judaism.
It's a secular, fascist system.
Well, Zionism isn't all of Judaism........but so far, not enough Jews are disowning it. Long term, that may well be an expensive oversight.
Thank you again for your wisdom. If I can offer the merest silver lining, I want to say how proud I am of the Palestinians for returning the Israeli hostages with shiny hair, big smiles, and, as far as I could see, completely unmolested. It went unremarked by the mainstream mess, but it was a proud moment for anyone who cares about humanity.
The second proud moment is the spirit of these people as they return to their piles of debris ready to face tomorrow. This is a people which will never, never, be vanquished.
I saw photos of Palestinians leaving Zionist jails and they looked like they were leaving from Auschwitz. Had no way to fact check that, but I suspect it was true. One kid had been their since 14 YO and was now 20. Did he throw a rock or what?
I don’t remember if it was Hedges or another writer who interviewed a Palestinian Mother from the West Bank whose son was abducted and held for a year without charge. When he was finally released she went to court, and didn’t recognize her son until their attorney pointed him out.
I just saw Piers interview Mearsheimer. Pier's was full of questions about the future, and I found it quite annoying since I think it is too soon to go there. The release of hostages was much more a focus then were the Palestinians, and what they are going home to. Not even their dead were left in peace, or that they are going home to rubble where death lies under it. Right now the focus should be in the present and with the Palestinians. Not what is going to happen to Netanyahu and his health, and his prostate issues. etc. etc. It was like the genocide implemented by Israel and the US was a past event.
Wouldn't that be nice.......if we could just relocate it all to 'history'.....over and done with.
That's what was feeling and interesting I come to this site and Hedges is referencing the same thing. So much of what happens just becomes data.
But how do we stop this suicidal direction that the west seems to be pursuing?? I'm reminded too often these days of how successful the demonization of anything resembling socialism or communism has been....every day I seem to learn of more atrocities visited on the earth's poor by representatives of the west. Just last week I learned one more detail from the Argentinian generals....supported by America and it's School of the Americas training centre.
Gabor Mate informed me, in a zoom about 'weaponizing trauma' that 600 to 800 Jews had been killed by the generals in Argentina....not because they were Jews, because they were progressive.
A year ago, I finally read John Pilger's THE NEW RULERS OF THE WORLD...published I think in 2002. Imagine the horror with which I received the old news of how western corporations engineered the murder of half a million communists prior to setting up a western backed pupped and essentially strip mining Indonesia........so that at the time of writing......a country that had no debt prior to the western take, now had so much debt it was considered unlikely they'd ever get out from under it.
I think what we all need in the west is a crash course on the crimes of Capitalism. We've been taught to rever a system that exploits other countries, hauls the booty home, and deposits it in the off shore accounts of criminals who advertise themselves as 'Wealth Creators'. Most of us have bee too busy making a living...trying to do so honestly....to be able to keep up with the crimes of the entitled.
The Genocide in Gaza however is opening a lot of our eyes. The problem is.......the horror is overwhelming...........the work being done to silence any protest is massive....and its hard to see what any of us can do. That we're often isolated in our ghettos....expensive though many of them be...makes it even more difficult. Few want to even discuss the extent of the trouble we're all in...Chris being the exception some of us listen to.
And there's a new emergency rears its head every day.....Trump and his crazy tariffs being the terror of the hour, up here in peace loving, well meaning Canada.
I'm not surprised the empire is coming for what we have........but I doubt Gaza's crucifixion will figure into anything we decide to do about it.
One problem, as we all know, is that those who pretend to be the intellectual elite are now as docile, gullible, and ignorant as any historical population I can think of.
John Pilger was a great man. The day he died The New York Times seemed unaware of this great loss and ran instead the obituary of some guy who invented a new kind of donut. Had they mentioned Pilger, I’m not sure that even six readers would have known who he was.
The intellectual loss is immeasurable....I myself was too busy at the time, teaching and being a mother......then I opened a B and B for hospital patients from out of town and though I've always been a reader, and anti war........I didn't know about Pilger until I married my current partner.
A life long reader, he had many books I'd not seen in my mainly literary career.....so I discovered John late.....only a year or two before we lost him.
Still.....what he conveyed about Indonesia, in about 20 pages galvanized me. Western corporations have been pillaging the third world for ever.....but they certainly didn't let up after World War II.
We are the evil Empire......and a recent little Canadian book CANADA'S LONG WAR AGAINST DEMOCRACY...I think the title is, very concisely filled me in on how long Canada has been Corporate America's willing partner.
So in a way, Thanks for Trump and his stupid Tariffs..........its waking a few more of us up...to what those 'western values' and long lasting 'global partnerships' actually mean. You don't maintain your innocence by being the Joker's willing side kick.
You may not be able to utilize this knowledge right away, but I encourage you to read From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr Gene Sharp.
Thank you for your brutal honesty! We need more awareness of human history. It is filled with horror. Nobody wants to talk about the US war in Vietnam anymore, but it was as brutal as the Israeli assault on Gaza, if not more so. I think the human future looks very dark since human history reveals who we really are as a species. We cannot be trusted with power, but science and technology continue to provide us with ever more power on a daily basis. It seems very doubtful that the human story will end well.
As long as we take ourselves out without destroying all of the other species on the planet, I won't miss the human race at all.
What we have wrought in Palestine is coming for us sooner than later. And it will likely play out with a Red and Blue civil war on top of climate change, an economic crash and so forth and so on. The arc of the USA has always been coming down to this dystopian future, of which the genocide in Gaza is a prelude to the shit show of the ever accelerating collapse of the USA. The only way to stop that collapse is if every citizen of all political stripes, including the cultural bigots and anyone who have divided themselves from others, is for all of them to band together and say: WE WILL NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE! Could that ever happen in the USA with how far it has descended such outright division. I guess that is for the future to unfold.
Given the tariffs your President has slapped on Canada and Mexico today, I'd guess the strategy will be more of the imperial same.......find as many ways as possible to blame others, rob others, and imagine America as the victim of universal evil.....rather than the persistent perpetrator of it. You can bet a lot of Canadians are thinking overtime about how to do without you.......turning on your friends is not a political tactic we have much use for.
Americans seem to think of politics as a football game: there's the Red team and the Blue team. A civil war between the Red team and the Blue team is exactly what the elites want.
We need to grow up and realize that we're manipulated on a daily basis. This is not a game.
We need to put aside our cosmetic differences and see how much alike we are. Then join together and fight our real enemies, the capitalist elites who will do the same to us as they are doing to Gaza.
"But the genocide in Gaza is only the start. The world is breaking down under the onslaught of the climate crisis, which is triggering mass migrations, failed states and catastrophic wildfires, hurricanes, storms, flooding and droughts. As global stability unravels, the terrifying machine of industrial violence, which is decimating the Palestinians, will become ubiquitous."
I apologize for the dystopian indulgence, but the unprecedented global nature of the catastrophe, the magnitude of sheer numbers, the social breakdown, within the context of the current and concentration of powers controlled by technocrats, has for some time brought to mind an interim period (before even that fails) of global spheres of authoritarian regimes, each granted hegemony over their domains, a dystopian (Metternich/Kissingerian?) agreement, running on the nerve network of the internet, a constant shifting of chaos and re-imposition of draconian order, as areas become uninhabitable or mired in war, a nightmare caricature of states.
The image of multiple Willi Herolds comes continually into mind, in the worst instances of regional chaos, in places like New Idaho. (There is a regional movement where I live to redraw borders along what are national conservative lines. It's very chilling the first time to see a militia convey on a local highway. It makes the upcoming possibilities very real.)
The global 1/10th of 1% think they're going to ride out the economic, social, and ecological devastation on their megayachts and private islands. They've always been exempt from whatever befalls the insignificant masses and they've always been able to buy whatever they want, including governments. As if the rest of us will remain quietly unemployed, choking on the air pollution, and unsure where our next meal (or water) will come from.
The pols are not only sponsored by the corporate and 1%er elite, but also face the pressure of voters who don't want to hear bad news. Plus they notice the hypocrisy of someone who himself lives in a McMansion while urging everyone else to conserve.
Younger people continue to buy huge houses and SUVs. They have families and don't want to see how such behavior impacts the planet or what the increasing load on finite resources means for a future rapidly approaching.
See, hear, say nothing; everything could turn out just fine.
Disrespect for human life leads us into disaster, as James Baldwin sadly is quoted in this article. Our long history of killing, now with industrial technology, continues to defeat us. We have a choice to make: leave and cleave from our past or?
Well, we hippies tried to tell you all this in the 1960s, and you were duped by the government and its media into scorning us.
OF COURSE they were going to marginalize us. Who wants a successful movement that shows the populace how to escape the establishment style of life?
Ceasefire or no ceasefire; scam or no, we cannot allow Israel to escape the legal consequences of their war crimes. The Hind Rajab Foundation has, among other things, filed a case with the ICC against 1,000 Israeli soldiers for war crimes in Gaza.
https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/perpetrators/hind-rajab-foundation-files-historic-icc-complaint-against-1000-israeli-soldiers-for-war-crimes-in-gaza
They have taken further steps in recent days, and vacations are becoming a lot more difficult for IDF soldiers, worldwide. The Hind Rajab Foundation can use our help. Please join me in making a contribution.
https://buy.stripe.com/cN228hbY5g7jaM84gg
You might find meaningful to watch the recent interviews that Glenn Greenwald did on his Rumble platform, and Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, did with the head of this organisation, Dyad Abou Jahjah. It was very informative.
Here's a petition calling for accountability for the arrest of Ali Abunimah in Switzerland:
https://chng.it/8D4pkxPhWS
I do not look at the happenings in Gaza as an isolated incidence. The map of the Middle East was probably drawn a long time ago. Before World war one ended, and probably before it even started. It was waiting for the right circumstances and the right actors.
The same goes true for other wars, WW1 and WW2 included.
No greater argument about the futility of war than WWI. Why was it fought? Over empires. The outcome? Soviet Communism, Nazi Germany, WWII. Plus the so-called victors carved up the Middle East (West Asia) to suit themselves regardless of what the people actually living there might have wanted. The world is still living with that problem. Then after WWII, the people of the same area, but especially the Palestinians, got to atone for the sins of Europeans by paying with their lands and lives.
Always succinct Chris thank you.
Is it possible that after 'chaos' new enlightenment begins?
possibly … but given the now unavoidable climate catastrophes it would only happen. minus about 8 billion of us. And even then it’s a slim possibility.
Is there an end to that same repetitive analysis! What is needed is a discussion of how counteract the process and effect changes.
Hedges has said it many times, that what is needed and perhaps our only option is massive general strikes and boycotts. Perhaps you could start a community group to facilitate discussions on how to implements strikes or other solutions you might come up with. Just a thought.
Please read From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr Gene Sharp
Thank you, Sir, for putting forth the truth of the Industrial/Genocidal States. Continued industrialization, unchecked, is continuing genocide. Our sweet Mother Earth will respond in kind.
In my worst moments, I consider cheering for the nuclear option. But then I remember the millions of Indigenous peoples around the world who treat the living Earth with respect. Plus the exuberant diversity of life--angler fish, orchids, quetzal birds, snow leopards, redwoods...none of whom deserve to die because a very small percentage among that species of upright apes is so vicious and uncaring.
Like a torrent you have hit us hard, in detail, with context and most important history of the madness that pervades us today.
Then you warn us all that industrial violence is coming for us all with the changed climate wreaking havoc and mass migration movements everywhere as the elite try to hang onto their ill gotten gains.
Gaza is us.
Thanks Chris for telling us how it is and might be unless we retake control of our collective future.
Thanks Chris
The reason that there is no longer such pious objection to Trump 2.0 is because the United States is rapidly dropping any pretense to being anything other than an empire.
As such, it no longer is necessary to maintain the polite fictions and pious lies.