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Susan T's avatar

The other day I was walking my dog and I saw some teenagers tearing down signs about something to do with Israel days. When they saw me, they looked guilty and stopped what they were doing. When I saw them, I smiled and said "good job, keep it going". They did. There is hope.

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gypsy33's avatar

Great job by those kids, Susan!

Shortly after the genocide began, an “I Stand with Israel” sign sprouted in the yard around the corner from my home. I didn’t hesitate: I parked the Jeep on the shoulder of the road and I stomped that motherfucking sign to death.

It ain’t been back either. Does this make me a vandal? Don’t give a shit!

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

👍👍 Proud of you Gypsy! That is the way to go!

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gypsy33's avatar

Why I thankee Chang😁

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Bradley Lacke's avatar

one of your most compassionate pieces I've seen lately. it's very easy to become angry at the people around us who have been lied to and manipulated their whole lives - they're not blameless, but it's important not to lose sight that they, too, have been wronged

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Whatistobedone's avatar

"Human animals." That's what Israelis call Palestinians. Will they ever be held to account? NO. Just as Amerikkans will never be held to account for serial genocides and slavery. EVIL is real to me now...my flesh and blood FEEL it. The depraved on this earth are KILLING US ALL....along with the earth....one way or another. Where are the spiritual leaders?! Nowhere....just as EVERY SINGLE INSTITUTION in this failed state has failed us. This is what collapse...and eventually extinction...feels like. In real time.

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Liana Chenoweth Kornfield's avatar

There is no question but that they will be held to account.

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Judy Bancroft's avatar

I wish I could agree that they will be held to account, but I don’t see it (except maybe by a lone attacker and godspeed to them). UN organisations - ICC etc take years and years to even arrest war criminals let alone convict and punish them. Governments get ‘distracted’ or caught up in mutually beneficial agreements with other rogue states like Israel or by other things - trade mostly - or attacked themselves. And then there’s the multiplyer effect of the climate…... We, the people, are powerless - too many insidious ways to observe, control and split us - I’d love to believe it was otherwise. Re-reading my response here I sound a paranoid person - full of ‘conspiracy theories’ etc etc - but I assure you I am not. I want to be hopeful of humanity - but it’s done f… all so far to stop this. We all know why……

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jill chambers's avatar

no, you don't sound paranoid. i totally agree with you and so do millions more. western governments have proved without a shadow of doubt that we do not live in a democracy. the lie they've been perpetuating for years is blown wide open now, the only people who can't see the truth are those who don't want to see the truth.

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Peter Sawchuk's avatar

Sad part is at this time there appear to be more of them than of us.

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Todd Tipton's avatar

I mourn the loss of the world that never existed. I'm not broken. The world is.

https://toddtipton.substack.com/p/mourning-the-loss-of-the-world-that

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Stephen Walker's avatar

The current “world order” (outlaw US empire) will not hold them to account. But there is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity. The global south is not going to forgive and forget when the US empire disintegrates, which is not far off.

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Mary Wildfire's avatar

You do not sound paranoid at all. The trouble with the trope about "conspiracy theorists" is the implication that anyone espousing a conspiracy theory must be cuckoo, that conspiracies never happen (except among 19 hijackers in 2001). The reality is that there have been many conspiracies among the powerful to shape events (justifying wars of aggression, mostly, along with plenty of conspiracy theories that ARE cuckoo--which I think the PTC encourage, in order to discredit those suspicious about the actual conspiracies.)

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Kojo's avatar

The rich gather at Davos every year to plan out how to rob everyone. But its of course not a "conspiracy". Because they are the ones who own the newsaper and the government, so they define what a conspiracy is: namely those oppressed gathering to trying and break off the shackles.

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Peter Sawchuk's avatar

Climate change, aka the great distractor, is a weapon they use with great skill. For those of you who don't know carbon is the building block of life, Without carbon we and all other life will cease to exist. How many of you are aware of the hemlock forest that is preserved in permafrost on the shores of the Arctic Ocean? How did reptiles survive in Siberia and Northern Canada if it was not considerably warmer? The world has been through many many warming and cooling periods throughout its history and yet so many of us blindly bai on the Climate change train. Follow the money and you will quickly see the likes of Soros, Gates, Schwab and Carney stand to make millions, billions or possibly trillions of of the lie. We are not Gods and can no more control these changes than we can stop the tides from rising or falling or the sun from rising. This is nothing more than a con game to make rich people richer at the cost of our livelihood and indeed our lives and its all for the profit of the few.

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Mary's avatar

I hope I live to see it. I hope at least a handful of Gazans survive to see it.

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Patrick Powers's avatar

I think our epoch will be The Era of No One Held To Account. Whenever I hear that X should be held to account I think, X is gonna get a promotion.

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Todd Tipton's avatar

I mourn the loss of the world that never existed. I'm not broken. The world is.

https://toddtipton.substack.com/p/mourning-the-loss-of-the-world-that

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Jo Waller's avatar

The fact that we treat other animals (human's are animals) like inanimate objects in testing and agriculture (95% on factory farms but all slaughtered as babies apart from dairy cows) is the root of our ability to treat people with different colour skin, of a different sex or different beliefs in the way that we do.

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gypsy33's avatar

Jo, YES!

I believe it was Albert Schweitzer who maintained that a society can be judged by the way they treat other-than-humans.

Doesn’t bode very well for the hellhole known as Amerikkka.

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Wizard's avatar

The empire is going down, people will be held to account.

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Mary's avatar

Yes. And all for what? That's what's so sad.

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

Caitlin, thank you for laying out many of the TRUTHS so clearly for ALL to see ->

(1) Our rulers murder children.

(2) Our rulers sponsor genocide and ethnic cleansing.

(3) Our rulers lie to us and manipulate us.

(4) Our rulers work to censor, silence, marginalize and deport anyone who criticizes their criminality.

(5) We do not live in a free society that is guided by truth and morality.

(6) We live under the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on the face of this planet.

🎯💯👏🙏❤️

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michael janket's avatar

.....and we Americans tolerate these vermin who attack our civilization.

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

I would say we Americans elect these vermin who attack America. We Americans vote in people that are against the interests of Americans itself. We Americans choose leaders and support the 1% (intended or otherwise) that oppress the 99% of Americans.

We Americans are to blame (to a certain extent) for the rulers we elect and support!

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Richard Parker's avatar

You are making the huge error that you actually have a vote and can choose .

your choice in US elections is A or B.

Both A and B are sponsored by the same interests, and the huge swathe of people working in the US government are not changed at all.

Ultimately you only engage in the performative circus show once every four years. And the result is always either the left or right cheek of the same butt gets put into the Whitehouse.

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

Most people on Caitlin's substack already know this - i.e. it's not new information or a new realization.

From my article -> "The U.S. is a Global Corporation masquerading as a Country (The image vs. the reality, the illusion vs. the unmasked actuality.) [https://changchokaski.substack.com/p/the-us-is-a-global-corporation-masquerading]

“In theory, the U.S. has two major parties. In practice, they are two branches of the same party. Their stances on policies that affect core material conditions of the American people are similar. Even on the handful of issues where they ostensibly disagree, the disagreement is more performative than substantial. Opposition is heavily controlled and managed. This brilliantly contrived system gives the outward impression of public choice, while still preserving the same power structures regardless of who is in power.”

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Richard Parker's avatar

Thanks. I'll go and read that later.

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Patrick Powers's avatar

Interviewer : "What do you think of Western civilization?

MK Gandhi : "I think it would be a good idea."

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Stephen Walker's avatar

The BBC is complicit in genocide. Their editors and managers will be indicted for crimes against humanity and put on trial. There is no statute of limitations.

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Malcolm MacPhail's avatar

I wonder if Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN realize they will be remembered in the same way as the Hutu radio announcers who fanned the flames of the Rwandan genocidal.

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Contrarian 33's avatar

Including the leaders of all the world's churches, I trust.

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Robert H Stiver's avatar

Insha'Allah.

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jill chambers's avatar

we can but hope

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Linda Snider's avatar

Linda Snider

Thank you Caitlin. And the horrific part of all this is that the US government is

so entrenched in the belief that if they

(Biden, Trump etc) say NO MORE billions for Israel they will lose the election. Instead history will hopefully

reveal them as the genocidal murderers of an entire group of human

beings.

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

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Contrarian 33's avatar

4,500 amputees, so many who are just little kids this action being the equal to any crime committed by the Third Reich, hundreds of children snipered to death.

Netanyahu's snipers. He must be proud. Hundreds of Western countries dual passported killers making their contribution to ethnic cleansing, all approved by their home town governments. Fly out .....kill, rape, kill children bombe everything they can..... and fly home, heroes in their local communities. The crime of the century.

You really have to be some kind of mentally deranged country to set out to purposely sniper a young boy, whose painful screaming attracts 20 odd people to help him and they in turn, get bombed to death.

It is behaviour such as that that has made the current rulers of the Israel supporting Western governments and Christian Churches equal participants in this ethnic cleansing crime.

Criminals and morally bankrupt, one and all.

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Mary Wildfire's avatar

Christian churches were complicit in the Holocaust too. Christianty clung to the teachings of its founder for maybe a century--then it morphed into the empire-supporting ugly thing it is today.

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Joy in HK's avatar

And those early Christians are the ancestors of the Christians in the Levant that are being wiped out by the so-called Christians of today. They are as distant in their ideas and beliefs from Jesus' teachings as Ptolemaic epicycles are to modern astronomy.

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Kojo's avatar

What's going on in Gaza: the genocidal butchery by the Israeli regime....IS the Holocaust.

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Mary Wildfire's avatar

Yes.The Nazis called the Jews untermenschen (subhuman), called themselves the Master Race, said they needed lebensraum and thus justified wars of conquest all over Europe, then went for the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem. The Zionazis called the Palestinians "human animals" (actually we are all animals, but we know what he meant--subhuman), say God gave them Israel thousands of years ago and they're the Chosen Race, have now decided it's time to go for Greater Israel by seizing parts of surrounding countries through wars of conquest, and are going for the Final Solution in Gaza (if they succeed in cleaning out Gaza of Palestinians, they'll turn to the West Bank.

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Peter Sawchuk's avatar

Actually I think the Roman Empire over took the church when they realized it was going to be the end of them. Why do you think they called the "The Holy Roman Empire"? amazingly it survives to this day. Since the beginning of recorded time nothing has changed. Our civilization is nothing less than Imperialism for the profit of the elite.

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MakeTheWorldSafeForDiversity's avatar

It's like watching the genocide and dispossession of land from Native Americans in the 1700s in real time. It's like looking in on jim crow alabama in real time. It's like looking at apartheid south africa in real time. It's like looking at Nazi Germany in real time. I can look at it through the screen and through the window.

In my House.

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Dawn's avatar

Absolutely. History repeats itself over and over. Nothing new under the sun.

The difference this time is that we can see it live streamed for ourselves. Little harder to deny the truth of what's happening. However, the lies and distractions are over the top and the evangelical churchs in the states are huge supporters of the genocide although they avoid that word. Palestinians are called Amalekites, and I have actually heard folks say that they should all be wiped out down to the last of them.

Shocking behavior by those who claim to know Jesus. Very sad that so many have been fooled by the powers that ought not be.

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gypsy33's avatar

May I add one, MTWSFD?

It’s like watching the enslavement of Africans in real time.

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Peter Giaschi's avatar

This beautiful post truly merits some kind of support.

I am in Cuba, though, and am on a burner phone... Have to transit through Miami and Dallas, so in this moment of psychosis I need to be as clean as possible...

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suzykoch's avatar

Yes. Finally, 54% of People in the U.S. agree that Israel is in the wrong - too late and notvsure it would have helped if this had happened sooner.

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martin's avatar

it would be good to educate people that most of our 'leaders' and 'press' already knew this back when it was still less than 50%.

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Mary Wildfire's avatar

No, it doesn't matter hat the people think, unless it's really overwhelming, and unless the cult supporting Trump and his puppetmaster and acolytes divorced him.

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Patrick Powers's avatar

But They don't care.

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Ron Stockton's avatar

A three or four of decades ago in Nova Scotia, a woman who had been severely abused for years met her husband as he pulled into the yard and as he got out of the truck she let him have it with both barrels of a shot gun. She was acquitted on the basis of a new concept at the time, battered wife syndrome. Would that we could do the same with America, Israel, and the capitalist oligarchs.

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Contrarian 33's avatar

We could arrange a meeting with Trump and all his highly paid pack of acolyte puppets with Netanyahu and his hated extremist followers......... in Dallas, Texas on a suitable day.

Then a motor car ride down Dealey Plaza **

Following a successful result, yet another multi-yeared investigation Commission in the local Branch of the Hans Christian Andersen Criminal Court, the last similar case being 9/11.

Another outstanding figment of the USA's fertile imagination. Hollywood at its best.

**Dealey Plaza is a city park in downtown Dallas, Texas. It is sometimes called the "birthplace of Dallas".

Also known more realistically as the death place of America.

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Peter Sawchuk's avatar

And who would oversee this? The former Biden Democrats? There is an endless lineup of charlatans waiting in the wings to take up the reigns. The only way is to tear down the whole rotten structure and start again.

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Mary Wildfire's avatar

Well uh--Luigi started it, didn't he?

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gypsy33's avatar

Mary, we need thousands of Luigi’s.

Where to start….

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

Maybe even millions of Luigi's (spread across the globe)?

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Rod Dawson's avatar

This is Big. By choosing to support Israel's vile, supremacist scumminess, Governments are pretending their electorates support it too. We don't. They're lying. Our own governments, by their stance, suggest we're no better than religitard genocidal supremacist racists. How dare they? They have taken our countries' reputations, and trashed them. They have told the world: my own people stand for what Israeli thugs stand for. They have shamed us. And they have gone too far beyond the pale to ever pretend it was a mistake, or a misunderstanding, or even a tactical manoeuvre that misfired, that there's a possibility to reverse. Our governments not only support genocide, they arm, fund and defend it. In the name of their people. They say its okay to drop 2000 lb bombs on refugee camps. To obliterate hospitals. Target journalists. Hold children and medics in torture centres. Rape civilians to death. Use starvation as a weapon of war. They say that's what their countries stand for. They say that's what we stand for. It is disgusting. My government has, for the first time ever, made me ashamed of my nationality. These supporters of Israeli scumminess have got to go.

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

Rod Dawson, there is a concept/reality known as 'BLOWBACK' (that you might be aware of). The unfortunate part about 'blowback' is that ordinary citizens/denizens may land up paying the price for the EVILS of the Empire perpetrated on the world by American/Western rules and TPTB.

The book "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire" by Chalmers Johnson (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40709.Blowback) is an excellent read and goes into detail about the repercussions you mention.

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gypsy33's avatar

Great post Rod, but I’ve been ashamed of my country ( which I reject) for a very long time now. I renounce my Amerikkkan-ness.

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Diana van Eyk's avatar

Together, we're gathering information and we're gathering power. And I think we're becoming wise and strong.

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Elizabeth Morley's avatar

Yes but we don’t have the power to put our wisdom to effect. To use the Trumpian expression: we don’t have the cards; THEY have.

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Qudsia's avatar

I'm a person of faith and believe God does not let evil go on unpunished. Reading religious scriptures, e.g. the Bible, a common criticism is that 'God is too harsh', 'too quick to punish'. But that's because decades and centuries are compressed in those few pages. Going through it, we tend to complain, 'where is God?', 'why is He not responding to this ongoing evil?'. I believe Gaza would be the last straw, where not only is the evil doers evil reached an epitome, but it's been laid completely exposed for all to see. It has exposed not only the perpetrators of terrible crimes against humanity, but the onlookers throughout the world who did not take a single step to stop it. When the planet is engulfed in misery via ww3 or whatever means, no one would have the right to ask 'why?'. This world would have brought it upon itself. The level of apathy, cowardice, selfishness, and sheer evil has far surpassed every measure of humanity, except for a few who are consistently speaking up and trying. May God bless them and may He help us all!

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Alison Oliphant's avatar

Sadly it is the Christian Fundamentalists/Zionists (30 million of them) plus their paymasters at AIPAC etc, that have created the monsters at the US helm. Not sure what excuse we in the fairly godless UK have

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Qudsia's avatar

It truly baffles me how the religious and especially those claiming to believe in a merciful God accept this level of evil for any cause. Might as well worship the devil if this is what their God supposedly needs/demands to establish his kingdom on earth. They've been duped by their clergy into thinking this will hasten their god's arrival. Let's say it does... if He IS truly merciful and just, these genocide enablers will be among those who are hell bound and not among those strolling in the meadows of paradise. It's next level psychopathy to think 'God's kingdom' where peace will rule can be established by fueling the carnage of an entire people, majority of which consists of children.

Religion is just one element that is exploited. Hatred, mistrust, selfishness are very easily bred by those in power to stay in power and gain more power. Nationalism, economic prosperity, racism... there's a variety of evil that can be invoked to make one people hate, dismiss, persecute another. The 'other' is usually scapegoated to distract the populace from real problems which its political masters have been unable to solve for them.

We're also assuming, they've all been watching what we've been watching. Some stick to mainstream media and we know whose bidding that has been doing.

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Elizabeth Morley's avatar

“…then leaving the abusive relationship once and for all becomes a possibility.” But can anyone tell us HOW to do it? I see nothing this side of suicide. To any other option the avenue has long ago been blocked. Expecting a simultaneous global revolution is fairytale stuff.

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Mary Wildfire's avatar

Realistically, the odds of a peaceful transition are tiny. BUT. Those in power are obsessed with getting ever richer, and many have weird technocratic fantasies involving moving to Mars or space stations, living forever, downloading into computers, replacing ourselves with AI--so there is certainly a risk of their creating the dystopia they seek, but there is also a likelihood of their bringing on a massive collapse as they have no realistic plans. The collapse is entirely unpredictable and likely will be horrific, but it WILL be the one thing that breaks the psychopaths' hold on power. After that, what happens in each locality ill be up to the people there, and if there are wise people prepared to lead, those will be the good places.

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Robert H Stiver's avatar

"It’s hard to know the truth." But you see and know the truth, Caitlin, and write truth to power day after day after endless day. Beaucoup kudos to you!

Pity Palestine! Viva Palestine!

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Mary Wildfire's avatar

:"And when enough eyes open, leaving the abusive relationship becomes a real possibility." Yes but it makes all the difference if, when that moment arrives, someone is at hand with a suitcase and money for bus fare and a plan, a place to go. In other words, There needs to be a plan for exiting empire, which is a much more complicated affair than an abused wife or girlfriend leaving her partner. We likely need to leave a lot more than allegiance to the Washington-centered empire--we need to leave capitalism, and acceptance of war as normal, and the notion that nation-states are immutable, semi-sacred entities to which we owe loyalty, each to whatever one they happened to have been born in. With eight billion of us on this beleagured world, transition to a just, healthy system in which all life, as well as all humans, can survive would not be easy even with full cooperation from everyone.

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gypsy33's avatar

Correct, Mary. What do we have to do: every one of us leave this godforsaken country and deprive it of the tax revenue needed to fund the genocide?

Leaving my abuser was so much easier than shutting down an abusive government. The bottom fell out when he punched me in the face while I was holding our baby. But the house we were residing in was rented in MY name, and belonged to MY employer, so when I threw his shit into the front yard, that was that.

How do I throw the Evil Empire’s shit into the trash can?

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

>>"and deprive it of the tax revenue needed to fund the genocide?"

Gypsy, tax revenues don't fund genocides (or wars or many other things that people assume taxes are used for).

The U.S. printing machine can create as much U.S. dollars as it needs, when it needs, for whatever it deems necessary. Examples: $6 trillion Covid spending created out of thin air, trillions created to bail out banks during the 2008-2011 financial crisis, and a million other examples.

The LOCAL and STATE governments need our taxes for spending, but the Federal Government does NOT need our taxes for spending. Taxes are used for other purposes.

Check out MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) for more info. BTW, this is not a 'theory' (as in the name), but how countries with sovereign currency monopolies ACTUALLY create money.

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gypsy33's avatar

Chang, I stand corrected!

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Peter Sawchuk's avatar

Good for you! Any man who would hit a woman is not a man. He like his belongings is a piece of shit! You should have waited for him to fall asleep and given him the Bobbitt treatment. Lorena! Now there's a woman I admire!

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gypsy33's avatar

Thank you Peter. ❤️

I’m tough but it’s hard to defend yourself against a 6’3” former Marine.

If I’d have had a gun at the time, I’d had shot him for the abuse he heaped on me.

I swore I’d never again be in a relationship but six months later I met the man who was to become my husband of 44 years.

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