Paul Haeder, Author

commentaries in local rags for a readership that is, well, lobotomized and in need of hand holding and less reality, reality

Note: This was written for my regular gig at Dissident Voice, awaiting approval.

Yeah, this came out Dec. 31, in the Lincoln County Leader. You have to understand my method, though: while I am a full-fledged communist, I have to navigate my local community. I have already been banned from teaching in the k12 system, at the local community college. I am an unemployable schmuck, here, since a hiring manager could do one Google search and sear through my writings and deem me not only Scralet Letter ready, but a blight on America, Americanism, Capitalism, the norms of the day.

Of course, some of the UN’s “stuff” was aspirational and with good intent and held onto universal rights of all humans and ecosystems:

“We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations (Earth Charter Preamble).”

Sixteen years ago:

Of course, I was always the sticky wicket in the crowd, knowing that we are Homo Consumopethicus, and moving into Homo Neuroperversity with decades of plastics and poisons in our guts and brains, with decades of Edward Bernays on Steroids manipulating in every aspect of modern life, with a smaller and more deadly group of people, the 130 Jewish Billionaires now, and other billionaires, for sure, spreading their deadly pathogens of social and financial and expression and daily activities of living CONTROL from each corner of the earth.

Pink or blue or green washing? Think green pornography, the very essence of delusion and dementia a la capitalism and the marketers.

For me, it has ALWAYS been the uniformed mercenary and soldiers of fortune military, from the Gomer all the way up to the Powell.

It is overused by me, but underappreciated by most:

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” — DH Lawrence

But even worse:

“Democracy in America was never the same as Liberty in Europe. In Europe Liberty was a great life-throb. But in America Democracy was always something anti-life. The greatest democrats, like Abraham Lincoln, had always a sacrificial, self-murdering note in their voices. American Democracy was a form of self-murder, always. Or of murdering somebody else… The love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” ―D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature

So what I have had to do is enter arenas wherein I certainly never felt comfortable — education, higher education, union organizing, sustainability, social work, journalism, newspaper work, environmentalism.

It is always the case that Americans need soothing, need their mythologies, their exceptionalism, their great white hope and great white malice to hum along. “We may not be perfect, but I’d never want to live anywhere else on planet earth.”

Working with local readers and local politicians, it is the same infantilization and Costcoization challenge I’ve had everywhere. America, White America, European America, Puritan America, Jewish America, Catholic America, Americans in general are in a land of their own genocide and their own acceptance on a massive scale of this Monroe Doctrine.

I’ve ground-truthed so far and wide and hard that most readers over at Dissident Voice take my negativity, my hardline, my boy-were-we-sold-down-the-river-hundreds-of-years-ago character as too extreme, off the mark, hyperbolic, and more.

So what can I expect of a local floundering rag, or any of the newspapers and magazines where I worked?

The crocodile tears for the men and women in uniform, the swooning over muscle men on the gridiron or on the silver screen or on the various hundreds of iterations of professional and college sports teams is just one aspect of how Disneyfied and Lobotomized and Edward Bernays snookered this class of hellish global citizen has become.

Amerikkkans, in large numbers, in the 80-plus percentage, favor that one federal agency under the Glosser-Miller Gestapo Team — ICE, or Homeland Security.

One hundred million people these Nazi’s want to deport, dudes, by 2030. When that natural borne accused rapist and self-declared boozer Hegseth is VP, or when Rubio, truly Goebbles like, is POTUS, and how about VD Vance, and then you got other youngsters — Bondi, or Telsi, well, you get the picture.

So, average Americans I speak to have NEVER ever heard of Chris Hedges, who is great but wrong on 9/11, for sure, and the planned-demic. So how can they frame all those other sites DV highlights?

Can anyone seriously make the argument that the U.S. is a democracy? Are there any democratic institutions that function? Is there any check on state power? Is there any mechanism that can enforce the rule of law at home, where legal residents are snatched by masked thugs from our streets, where a phantom “radical left” is an excuse to criminalize dissent, where the highest court in the land bestows king-like power and immunity on Trump? Can anyone pretend that with the demolition of environmental agencies and laws — which should help us confront the looming ecocide, the gravest threat to human existence — there is any concern for the common good? Can anyone make the argument that the U.S. is the defender of human rights, democracy, a rule based order and the “virtues” of Western civilization?

Our reigning gangsters will accelerate the decline. They will steal as much as they can, as fast as they can, on the way down. The Trump family has pocketed more than $1.8 billion in cash and gifts since the 2024 re-election. They do so as they mock the rule of law and tighten their vice-like grip. The walls are closing in. Free speech is abolished on college campuses and the airwaves. Those who decry the genocide lose their jobs or are deported. Journalists are slandered and censored. ICE, powered by Palantir — with a budget of $170 billion over four years — is laying the foundations for a police state. It has expanded the number of its agents by 120 percent. It is building a nationwide complex of detention centers. Not solely for the undocumented. But for us. Those outside the gates of the empire will fare no better with a $1 trillion budget for the war machine.

And this brings me to Venezuela where a head of state and his wife, Cilia Flores, were kidnapped and spirited to New York in open violation of international law and the U.N. Charter.

We have not declared war on Venezuela, but then there was no declared war when we bombed Iran and Yemen. Congress did not approve the kidnapping and bombing of military facilities in Caracas because Congress was not informed.

The Trump administration dressed up the crime — which took the lives of 80 people — as a drug raid and, most bizarrely, as a violation of U.S. firearms statutes: “possession of machine guns and destructive devices; and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.” — Hedges,  America the Rogue State

Again, I could add to the Venezuela mush coming out of the alt-media Podcasts, YouTube junk, Substacks, what have you. Most DO not point out 80 Venezuelans were murdered, my friends, in that Mafia Delta Force “operation.” Forget about the kidnapping, and the threats against all of Latin America by these neuroperverse Nazis.

The Gazification of the world has already occurred, circa 1967, and we are crash test dummies for the rot of the earth — rich, elite, tech queensw/kings, the lot of them — and they, the Ellisons and Finks of the world are winning by putting us under hundreds of various stress tests. The goal is to see how flabid we are at resistance. There will be no revolution in the streets.

Celebrations of more graves for Arabs.

Laughing it up about these images:

This below is typical of the hand-wringing writers. They have NO idea how mean the American public is — grannies, teens, ministers, bosses, families, dads, grandpas, aunts and uncles. Plus, the headline is a farce. Americans want to rule the world, with Israel. You gotta ask the questions better than this childish thin -Regime change is EACTLY what Americans voted for and which the Talmudist of Schumer and Sanders are a-okay with.

Then this goofball, and what it is might be hopeium or just plain armchair “Che Che, Fidel Fidel, Chavez Chavez.” Fools, man: we all are TRACKED, recorded, put into the massive data dungeon. We put up with more and more rights eroded, more and more 1,000 percent inflation on key goods and services, more and more intrusions, more and more cracked and torched safety nets. We have passed the tests of Schwarzman, Altman, Zuckerberg, Ackman, Adelson, Karp, Catz, Fink, Ellison, Dell, and the rest of the neuroperverse in “that” camp we can’t talk too much about, you know, THAT one with Tel Aviv stamped on their five passports.

Read this on my Substack, after MAJOR fucking surgery, here, dealing with people dying in the ICU, overworked nurses and staff, that same old American travelling fucking carnival/minstreal show from hell — we the people are not we the people:

There is More than Oil in those Hills

Or, this one can get me locked up: SAAA or s.a.a.a. – You Won’t Like This Substack, but boy have I had yet more time to think in my life as I hit 69 Feb.

Try them out for size. But these images our lovely swooning and orgasmic Americans get while wiping their Cheetos-dipped asses in between Super Bowl highlights and the premeire of another Equilizer flick:

My piece in the local rag was intended to get those stodgy and stiff-brained folks to think about what human rights are without hurting their Go Go Go USA sensibilities/feelings too much.

Here it is, and who knows how many more will get into the rag. Does it make a difference when most Americans say this:

• “There’s not anything you can do to change things so why don’t you just settle down in your 69th year?”
• “You can’t fight city hall.”
• “If we weren’t the tough guys and bullies on the block, then China would be.”
• “Why don’t you just make a pollinator garden to get your head out of all this local politics and all these geopolitical issues that are above your and my pay grade?”
• “Just realize this is the cycle of life.”

You get the picture!

It was 77 years ago when the United Nations general assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declaring that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

For an organization for which I am involved, Cultural Survival, Dec. 10 is linked closely to Indigenous Peoples worldwide who are struggling to protect their basic rights and who are suffering gross human rights abuses.

Indigenous peoples worldwide continuously face threats from resource extraction, climate change, land grabbing, deforestation, discrimination, and development projects (like dams, roads) that destroy their ancestral lands, pollute their environments, erode cultures, and violate their rights, leading to loss of livelihoods, forced migration, and even annihilation, especially for isolated groups.

Interestingly, at the most recent climate summit COP 30, in Belém, Brazil (Nov 2025), Indigenous peoples in the thousands attended demanding climate justice, land rights, and an end to destructive projects, leading to some gains like new territory demarcations in the Amazon.

Coming to the close of this Year of the Snake, we must take heed from those guardians of earth at their frustration over slow progress and exclusion from key decisions around a world with rising seas, desertification, drying up rivers and water sources, and chaotic weather patterns.

COP30 host Brazil has created 10 new Indigenous territories, with the climate summit hit by protests daily.

The designation means the areas, including one in part of the Amazon, will have their culture and environment protected under Brazilian law — though this is not always enforced.

The move follows similar actions from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose government recognized Indigenous possession of 11 territories last year.

“Each and every indigenous territory in Brazil is a reason to celebrate and is a reason for us to feel happy,” Dinaman Tuxá from the group Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) told the BBC at COP30.

“Indigenous peoples today protect 82% of the world’s biodiversity. If you demarcate indigenous lands, you guarantee this area will be protected. The traditional way of life of indigenous peoples protects the lands and automatically guarantees global warming will be tackled. Consequently, the entire humanity benefits from it,” he stated.

If readers want a local spin on how vital indigenous cultural survival is to not just tribes and first nations involved but to the wider community of settlers and colonizers, get to the history links over at the  Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians (CTSI) website.

CTSI is a confederation of 27 Western Oregon, Northern California and Southern Washington bands. Think locally about how those 1.1 million acres designated as reservation land — established by President Franklin Pierce on November 9, 1855 – have been stolen over time.

In 1954 CTSI was terminated as a tribe. However, in 1977, CTSI was the second tribe in the nation to achieve “restoration.” In 1980, some reservation lands were reestablished.

​Over the past 45 years, the tribe has increased its land base to 16,655 acres, which includes 15,977 acres of timberland and 678 acres for cultural preservation, housing, economic purposes and wildlife habitat enhancement.

About 56 percent (9,315 acres) of the land base is in Lincoln County.

This is a type of US demarcation and restoration. More specifically, land back movements are unfolding throughout the United States involving 574 federally recognized American Indian tribes.

Now shift yet again to the current neo-fascist Administration and these new dictates:

Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism.”

As Lincoln County grapples with the reality that a concentration camp of the ICE variety might be etched into our future, Bondi and Trump’s target is those of us expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology,” as well as “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-Christianity.”

Trump’s directive National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, or NSPM-7, is a declaration of war on just about anyone who isn’t MAGA.

In addition to compiling a list of undesirables, Bondi directed the FBI to enhance the capabilities (and publicity) of a tipline to more aggressively solicit tips from the American public on turning in other Americans.

This memo also directs the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Forces to retroactively investigate incidents going back five years, authorizing the JTTFs in particular to use everything at their disposal to do so.

We are entering a new Chinese Zodiac year, the Fire Horse, with the likelihood of masked men and women plowing vehicles into Lincoln County citizens deemed DUI  – driving while Indian and DWBS, driving while brown skinned.

How many of the 800 people who showed up at Newport City Council Nov. 12 to register protest against any ICE facility coming to town will be targets of that NSPM-7 directive?

Many of us consider ICE to be neofascist, Gestapo-like, and un-American (sic).

During Wednesday’s meeting, 14-year-old Abril Aldama tearfully recounted the day federal agents detained her father Gemallel on Sept. 17.

“No one knew where he was at,” Abril told the City Council. “No one deserves what I and my family are going through right now.”

Her father is being held at the notorious Tacoma, Washington, ICE facility.

Indian tribes are not officially “sanctuary zones,” but their reservations function as sovereign lands with self-governance, often serving as protected homelands and conservation areas.

Now that would be novel – tribes welcoming in those of us who are undocumented or deemed un-American according to NSPM-7.

Some U.S. judges have accused the Trump Administration’s deportation of legal Americans as “blatant lawlessness.” Will they too have to seek refuge from the long arm of the lawless “law” of Trump?

A new year of hope indeed!