46 Comments

It is of scant relief to the suffering people of Gaza but this hideous episode marks, I think, the start of the end game for the fiscally and morally bankrupt US empire. The US has stripped itself of any remaining moral authority and exposed itself for the vile, blood-soaked regime that it truly is. The Global South will not forget US participation in this genocide, nor will the current US regime (of both parties) ever be trusted diplomatically, economically, nor militarily.

Couple this with the sanctions overreach in its other imperial bloodletting, Ukraine, and you will start to see a move away (we already are) from US dollar hegemony, which is THE economic driver of the empire.

The only real question is will the world survive this decline or will the dying US empire thrash about tossing nukes around. The goal of reasonable people is to call attention to the mass murderers in the US government and work toward as much harm reduction as possible by showing the world (and especially the US public) the reality of the depths of the US moral collapse. Peace Now! God help us!

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This is an astute comment because we in the world are completely 'fed up' with American hegemony.

The HATE and disgust 'we the people of the world' feel toward Israel's genocide/coupled with Bidens ignorance (toward Israel)is telling.

The Americans NEED Israel to be a front against the rising tide of US Hegemony in the Middle East!

I don't want war.

I don't want humanity killing each other.

I don't want the US to be arbitrators of mass genocide.

I don't want our people involved in 'never ending wars.'

What I do want:

Is to stop the killing all over the world.

I want us to live side by side (without religion.)

We have the chance to make a better world for everyone.

The US is in the 'death throes' of so-called Democracy.

I have lived through this with the British Empire and I do not want to fight against humans of any nation.

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It can’t nuke its own people. Most US people, especially the young, will get rid of this corrupt government state. Unfortunately, they are not in charge for a few more years. Let’s hope that the ICJ has the muscle and teeth to decide the obvious

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I think the global majority will survive. They've had enough. I don't think 'nukes' as we understand them exist fortunately, they're just a very lucrative deterrent to scare people and show how manly, butch and committed a leader is, if he or she threatens to use them. https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/just-like-scary-contagions-and-911

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While I agree with all that you say about the "morally bankrupt US empire," I don't think the end game has yet begun. The US will not relinquish power so easily, unlike Britain, and my fear is that they will take everything down with them. Perhaps if NATO can be abolished, although I don't have any idea what that would look like, the US dollar hegemony replaced, a slow deterioration could begin, and ultimately be successful, although it will take years. Israel has become a monster and it is the creation of the US, which, must be an even greater monster. Of course none of this could happen without the cooperation of other power hungry countries. Maybe we're all just doomed.

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Thanks, Aaron! Your coverage, as always, is stellar.

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Interesting to compare the reaction to the sowing of fear in civilians by the US/Israel, which is to go right on doing it, with Russia's reaction to the killing of Russian civilians in Belgorod, which was to continue to target military and strategic positions as much as possible, rather than go on a killing spree; as was no doubt hoped for.

Israel, US and UK only have the 'aura' of power left. NATO has been totally depleted by the proxy war, the EU is de-industrialised. There is nothing left. Just a downward spiral of lunatics trying to hold on to power. They can't win a war against the might of Hezbollah nor Iran, even if it wasn't about to join BRICS and get the backing of battle hardened Russia.

All they can do is shoot at old men and women and boys and girls in barrel.

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The two most dangerous countries on planet Earth are the United States and Israel. Both are armed with nuclear weapons and both have repeatedly demonstrated their psychopathic willingness to slaughter without care or concern millions of innocent civilians across the globe. Aggressive warfare in order to dominate has been their calling card. While playing the ‘victim’ is their standard justification. That act, however, is wearing thin and no longer convinces anyone with critical faculties still intact. The US and Israel are becoming the new ‘Nazis’ in terms of being recognized as universal pariahs. Genocide Joe Biden and his partner Netanyahu have quickly moved into first place

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I agree but what frightens me even more is that Trump (our other choice) would not do anything different regarding our backing Isreal and being complicit in the current genocide.

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He wouldn't change a thing. The difference is that Trump wouldn't be hypocritical about his intentions. He doesn't hide his motives behind false morality, unlike the Democrats.

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A small ray of hope is that I really do believe that those who now do see, finally, what is going on, will not be able to unsee it, nor will those truth-tellers be easily silenced. This, I hope, will cause untold problems for TPTB going forward.

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Israel will not survive this catastrophe if it does not change course radically and soon. It cannot continue to defy the world. And the U.S. is at risk of accelerating its decline and fall too if it continues as Israel's enabler. Only antisemites can now be cheering Israel and the US on this suicidal and delusional enterprise.

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Jan 5·edited Jan 5

It's hard to believe the attack by Hamas came as a surprise. Israel had their plans a year before, but dismissed them as being too difficult for Hamas to implement. People monitoring Gaza's borders  reported suspicious behavior, and they too were dismissed. Egypt provides a warming 3 days before the attack which is also ignored. I recently saw "The Fence", a Frontline documentary. The fence was built to protect the Israeli's that lived close to the Gaza border from any possible incursion by Hamas. Many of them were disarmed due to that lie. Hamas came through and hit 20 towns before a response came. I read that those at the musical festival weren't forewarned, and as a result many died, and those left are suing, although Hamas denies they hit that festival. Israel was also willing to attribute many deaths to Hamas that were either lies, or misinformation, or caused by their own carelessness. They claimed babies were killed and women raped, nothing but lies. Of course the attack provided them the excuse to implement a genocide which for Netanyahu provides him what he always wanted, a one state solution. Ironic and loathsome that a people who lost so many in the holocaust implemented by a monster, implement one of their own. I don't think Israel's genocidal response will have their neighbors, or the world  perceive them as "scary" just loathsome, and it is the US that is supplying their weapons of mass destruction. 

How different is it from the US and Biden who pushed every war where millions of Muslims died, or were displaced based on lies he was willing to tell, but now sells himself as someone who cares about humanity with his open borders,  and lets pay off your debt college students,  and all the wokism bullshit this administration has pushed, and now complicit in a genocide not to mention hundreds of thousands dead in Ukraine to see Putin gone. To hell with them all.

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Biden the Buffoon and Netanyahoo are committing heinous, unforgivable crimes, and are even proud of it: that "bullies flexing muscles and howling" behaviour demonstrates an innate stupidity and ignorance that is bound to resonate in a negative way. The global south is gaining traction, and they don't like that attitude, having been its traditional victim, beside the fact it is nauseating in itself. But I would bet the real players behind it all will take a subtler approach once the two idiots are out of the picture, and denounce the pair as outliers and renegades who worked completely independently.

While this is a blatant lie, it is the case that many ordinary Americans publicly protested these crimes, in the streets and in social media. But most Americans did not/do not seem to tie their much reduced standard of living to the $billions that make the obscene crimes against Ukraine and Gaza possible. Ignorance of this magnitude in a modern democracy is not neutral and benign: it is culpable, and borders on the criminal.

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It is pathetic to watch Washington's haggard souls try to defend the indefensible. Their self-alienation is utterly transparent.

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May God help bring these criminals to justice.

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Why are we funding and supporting this genocide / ethnic cleansing (you pick) by our “partners”?

Someone just tell me why

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because our Commander and Chief talks 2 state but walks genocide. Guess he thinks he'll get more votes talking from both sides of his mouth into dumb numb Americans ears.

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FWIW, US joined Israel and practically nobody else, in the UN, to vote *against* Palestinian rights to self determination and control of their land

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Isn’t the simplest answer power and control? The US wants the resources of the Middle East and the simplest method is to back certain powerful factions. It’s isn’t like Europe where the US can control all of the countries. In the Middle East, the US has to back a side due to the ethnic conflicts in the region in order to have any influence at all.

What is interesting is that the US media and pundits are so focused on Israel while ignoring Yemen, Azerbaijan, Syria, and every other proxy war the US is currently fighting. How is this one different and how did the US administration lose control of the narrative?

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Have you read the latest Epstein releases, where it appears that the highest and mightiest apparently appear on video with kids... allegedly filmed for blackmail,purposes by an purported Mossad agent?I know I am wearing a tinfoil hat here...

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Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I think that AIPAC and other dedicated funders are finally ready to bring an end to Palestine and Palestinians and are willing to spark WW3. I happened to catch a visual of "Rothschild Street or Avenue" in a video podcast panning over the streets on a podcast panning the scene. I'm well aware that there are many extremely wealthy Jewish people who will continue to fund the efforts to 'rule the world'. I'm one of the elderly, impoverished jews and I'm terrified of what the rabid Zionists and their benefactors want to achieve.

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A terrific article, Aaron. I want to print it out in huge font and plaster it all over bookstores, coffee houses, storefronts, everywhere. Please help keep us on this. Wish I could give so much more to all of Grayzone and all of you who help tell us these things. How to get this to every enabler in government!?

They each will need to weigh in. we need to let them know we see, hear, know their answers. Let each of our officials know we will be here. Standing watch. They will Be Held as an Accomplice.

When these crazy paid fools are held accountable, our taxes will go to prosecuting our war criminals. Our arms manufacturers.

Thank you. Thank you. Excellent work. Please, also rest as much as possible.

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There must be a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, not with Palestinians suffering under oppressive conditions, but as a place where all live with peace and equality. It is time for Pope Francis to do more than talk. He must go to Gaza and make a stand for peace and freedom.

Please sign the petition and share widely.

https://chng.it/CRQ7qw4Gzn

Other petitions, including

Codepink:

https://www.codepink.org/cnngaza?utm_campaign=12_15_pali_update_alert_3&utm_medium=email&utm_source=codepink

Ceasefire Now:

https://www.change.org/p/sign-and-share-this-urgent-petition-calling-for-a-ceasefirenow-in-gaza-and-israel

Signing petitions is one small thing we can do. If we can do more, let us do more.

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Sorry Joy, but Pope Francis has made it obvious he has no intention of doing anything moral or brave.

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That's on him. Regardless of his decision, it doesn't mean we should stop asking.

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What the heck do you think the Vatican can do about this? Send the Swiss Guards?

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Take a stand against genocide.

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This pope has been condemning this and calling it genocide and calling for a ceasefire for months... and has done so loudly and clearly. He stands alone among Western Leaders in this. @Joy in HK - the Pope is not in a physical condition to go to Gaza. He's bound to a wheelchair most of the time now.

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He did. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2023-12/pope-francis-holy-family-parish-gaza-appeal-civilians.html

He was really clear about it. He 'condemned' state terrorist and the attacks against civilians in the Gaza as forcefully as a pope can.

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Thank you for all the articles and I stand corrected as I had only read a couple previously and his comments appeared in those articles, lukewarm. It sounds like he’s doing what he can - which isn’t much realistically— to urge a ceasefire.

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This is another corporate media thing. When the pope approved blessing gay couples, it was on the front pages. When he called for a ceasefire, called what was happening a genocide, repeatedly called for peace - he was ignored and it barely raised a mention in the “respectable” press.

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Recently heard that Israel planning on sending the Palestinians to the Congo. Not sure if it’s true. Palestinians are the new native Americans very sad

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It's worse: it's what was once considered a solution for the "jewish problem". It was called the Madagascar Plan, proposed by the Nazi German government to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, proposed the idea in June 1940, shortly before the Fall of France. The proposal called for the handing over of control of Madagascar, then a French colony, to Germany as part of the eventual peace terms.

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Rwanda.............same as the Brits want to do with their immigrants.

I saw today that Rwanda has denied this.

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It's good to know you know Trumps intentions would never be hypocritical. He's so honest, so caring of all humans, so empathetic towards the down trodden. For sure his intentions are out there in his tweets, in his actions he hides nothing and the crap he spewns his followers gobble up. Yummie

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