On 2 November 2008, the New York Times Magazine headlined “Questions for James K. Galbraith: The Populist,” which was an “Interview by Deborah Solomon” of the prominent liberal economist and son of John Kenneth Galbraith. She asked him, “There are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis” which had brought on the second Great Depression?

He answered: “Ten or twelve would be closer than two or three.”

She very appropriately followed up immediately with “What does this say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science?”

He didn’t answer by straight-out saying that economics isn’t any more of a science than physics was before Galileo, or than biology was before Darwin. He didn’t proceed to explain that the very idea of a Nobel Prize in Economics was based upon a lie which alleged that economics was the first field to become scientific within all of the “social sciences,” when, in fact, there weren’t yet any social sciences, none yet at all. But he came close to admitting these things, when he said: “It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.” His term “useless” was a euphemism for false. His term “blot” was a euphemism for “nullification.”

On 9 January 2009, economist Jeff Madrick headlined at The Daily Beast, “How the Entire Economics Profession Failed,” and he opened:

At the annual meeting of American Economists, most everyone refused to admit their failures to prepare or warn about the second worst crisis of the century.

I could find no shame in the halls of the San Francisco Hilton, the location at the annual meeting of American economists. Mainstream economists from major universities dominate the meetings, and some of them are the anointed cream of the crop, including former Clinton, Bush and even Reagan advisers.

There was no session on the schedule about how the vast majority of economists should deal with their failure to anticipate or even seriously warn about the possibility that the second worst economic crisis of the last hundred years was imminent.

I heard no calls to reform educational curricula because of a crisis so threatening and surprising that it undermines, at least if the academicians were honest, the key assumptions of the economic theory currently being taught. …

I found no one fundamentally changing his or her mind about the value of economics, economists, or their work.”

He observed a scandalous profession of quacks who are satisfied to remain quacks. The public possesses faith in them because it possesses faith in the “invisible hand” of God, and everyone is taught to believe in that from the crib. In no way is it science.

In a science, when facts prove that the theory is false, the theory gets replaced, it’s no longer taught. In a scholarly field, however, that’s not so — proven-false theory continues being taught. In economics, the proven-false theory continued being taught, and still continues today to be taught. This demonstrates that economics is still a religion or some other type of philosophy, not yet any sort of science.

Mankind is still coming out of the Dark Ages. The Bible is still being viewed as history, not as myth (which it is), not as some sort of religious or even political propaganda. It makes a difference — a huge difference: the difference between truth and falsehood.

The Dutch economist Dirk J. Bezemer, at Groningen University, posted on 16 June 2009 a soon-classic paper, “‘No One Saw This Coming’: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models,” in which he surveyed the work of 12 economists who did see it (the economic collapse of 2008) coming; and he found there that they had all used accounting or “Flow of Funds” models, instead of the standard microeconomic theory. (In other words: they accounted for, instead of ignored, debts.) From 2005 through 2007, these accounting-based economists had published specific and accurate predictions of what would happen: Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Stephen (“Steve”) Keen, Jakob B. Madsen, Jens K. Sorensen, Kurt Richebaecher, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Robert Shiller.

He should have added several others. Paul Krugman, wrote a NYT column on 12 August 2005 headlined “Safe as Houses” and he said “Houses aren’t safe at all” and that they would likely decline in price. On 25 August 2006, he bannered “Housing Gets Ugly” and concluded “It’s hard to see how we can avoid a serious slowdown.” Bezemer should also have included Merrill Lynch’s Chief North American Economist, David A. Rosenberg, whose The Market Economist article “Rosie’s Housing Call August 2004” on 6 August 2004 already concluded, “The housing sector has entered a ‘bubble’ phase,” and who presented a series of graphs showing it. Bezemer should also have included Satyajit Das, about whom TheStreet had headlined on 21 September 21 2007, “The Credit Crisis Could Be Just Beginning.” He should certainly have included Ann Pettifor, whose 2003 The Real World Economic Outlook, and her masterpiece the 2006 The Coming First World Debt Crisis, predicted exactly what happened and why. Her next book, the 2009 The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers, was almost a masterpiece, but it failed to present any alternative to the existing microeconomic theory — as if microeconomic theory isn’t a necessary part of economic theory. Another great economist he should have mentioned was Charles Hugh Smith, who had been accurately predicting since at least 2005 the sequence of events that culminated in the 2008 collapse. And Bezemer should especially have listed the BIS’s chief economist, William White, regarding whom Germany’s Spiegel headlined on 8 July 2009, “Global Banking Economist Warned of Coming Crisis.” (It is about but doesn’t mention nor link to https://www.bis.org/publ/work147.pdf.) White had been at war against the policies of America’s Fed chief Alan Greenspan ever since 1998, and especially since 2003, but the world’s aristocrats muzzled White’s view and promoted Greenspan’s instead. (The economics profession have always been propagandists for the super-rich.) Bezemer should also have listed Charles R. Morris, who in 2007 told his publisher Peter Osnos that the crash would start in Summer 2008, which was basically correct. Moreover, James K. Galbraith had written for years saying that a demand-led depression would result, such as in his American Prospect “How the Economists Got It Wrong,” 30 November 2002; and “Bankers Versus Base,” 15 April 2004, and culminating finally in his 2008 The Predator State, which blamed the aristocracy in the strongest possible terms for the maelstrom to come. Bezemer should also have listed Barry Ritholtz, who, in his “Recession Predictor,” on 18 August 2005, noted the optimistic view of establishment economists and then said, “I disagree … due to Psychology of consumers.” He noted “consumer debt, not as a percentage of GDP, but relative to net asset wealth,” and also declining “median personal income,” as pointing toward a crash from this mounting debt-overload. Then, on 31 May 2006, he headlined “Recent Housing Data: Charts & Analysis,” and opened: “It has long been our view that Real Estate is the prime driver of this economy, and its eventual cooling will be a major crimp in GDP, durable goods, and consumer spending.” Bezemer should also have listed both Paul Kasriel and Asha Bangalore at Northern Trust. Kasriel headlined on 22 May 2007, “US Economy May Wake Up Without Consumers’ Prodding?” and said it wouldn’t happen – and consumers were too much in debt. Then on 8 August 2007, he bannered: “US Economic Growth in Domestic Final Demand,” and said that “the housing recession is … spreading to other parts of the economy.” On 25 May 2006, Bangalore headlined “Housing Market Is Cooling Down, No Doubts About It.” and that was one of two Asha Bangalore articles which were central to Ritholtz’s 31 May 2006 article showing that all of the main indicators pointed to a plunge in house-prices that had started in March 2005; so, by May 2006, it was already clear from the relevant data, that a huge economic crash was comning soon. Another whom Bezemer should have listed was L. Randall Wray, whose 2005 Levy Economics Institute article, “The Ownership Society: Social Security Is Only the Beginning” asserted that it was being published “at the peak of what appears to be a real estate bubble.” Bezemer should also have listed Paul B. Farrell, columnist at marketwatch.com, who saw practically all the correct signs, in his 26 June 2005 “Global Megabubble? You Decide. Real Estate Is Only Tip of Iceberg; or Is It?”; and his 17 July 2005 “Best Strategies to Beat the Megabubble: Real Estate Bubble Could Trigger Global Economic Meltdown”; and his 9 January 2006 “Meltdown in 2006? Cast Your Vote”; and 15 May 2006 “Party Time (Until Real Estate Collapses)”; and his 21 August 2006 “Tipping Point Pops Bubble, Triggers Bear: Ten Warnings the Economy, Markets Have Pushed into Danger Zone”; and his 30 July 2007 “You Pick: Which of 20 Tipping Points Ignites Long Bear Market?” Farrell’s commentaries also highlighted the same reform-recommendations that most of the others did, such as Baker, Keen, Pettifor, Galbraith, Ritholtz, and Wray; such as break up the mega-banks, and stiffen regulation of financial institutions. However, the vast majority of academically respected economists disagreed with all of this and were wildly wrong in their predictions, and in their analyses. The Nobel Committee should have withdrawn their previous awards in economics to still-practicing economists (except to Krugman who did win a Nobel) and re-assigned them to these 25 economists, who showed that they had really deserved it.

And there was another: economicpredictions.org tracked four economists who predicted correctly the 2008 crash: Dean Baker, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Med Jones, the latter of whom had actually the best overall record regarding the predictions that were tracked there.

And still others should also be on the list: for example, Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider headlined on 21 November 2012, “The Genius Who Invented Economics Blogging Reveals How He Got Everything Right And What’s Coming Next” and he interviewed Bill McBride, who had started his calculated riskblog in January 2005. So I looked in the archives there at December 2005, and noticed December 28th, “Looking Forward: 2006 Top Economic Stories.” He started there with four trends that he expected everyone to think of, and then listed another five that weren’t so easy, including “Housing Slowdown. In my opinion, the Housing Bubble was the top economic story of 2005, but I expect the slowdown to be a form of Chinese water torture. Sales for both existing and new homes will probably fall next year from the records set in 2005. And median prices will probably increase slightly, with declines in the more ‘heated markets.’” McBride also had predicted that the economic rebound would start in 2009, and he was now, in 2012, predicting a strong 2013. Probably Joe Weisenthal was right in calling McBride a “Genius.”

And also, Mike Whitney at InformationClearinghouse.info and other sites, headlined on 20 November 2006, “Housing Bubble Smack-Down,” and he nailed the credit-boom and Fed easy-money policy as the cause of the housing bubble and the source of an imminent crash.

Furthermore, Ian Welsh headlined on 28 November 2007, “Looking Forward At the Consequences of This Bubble Bursting,” and listed 10 features of the crash to come, of which 7 actually happened.

In addition, Gail Tverberg, an actuary, headlined on 9 January 2008 “Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008,” and provided the most detailed of all the prescient descriptions of the collapse that would happen that year.

Furthermore, Gary Shilling’s January 2007 Insight newsletter listed “12 investment themes” which described perfectly what subsequently happened, starting with “The housing bubble has burst.”

And the individual investing blogger Jesse Colombo started noticing the housing bubble even as early as 6 September 2004, blogging at his stock-market-crash.net “The Housing Bubble” and documenting that it would happen (“Here is the evidence that we are in a massive housing bubble:”) and what the economic impact was going to be. Then on 7 February 2006 he headlined “The Coming Crash!” and said “Based on today’s overvalued housing prices, a 20 percent crash is certainly in the cards.”

Also: Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens issued an analysis and appropriate graphs on 7 December 2007, headlined “When Animals Attack” and predicting imminently a huge economic crash.

In alphabetical order, they are: Dean Baker, Asha Bangalore, Jesse Colombo, Satyajit Das, Paul B. Farrell, James K. Galbraith, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Med Jones, Paul Kasriel, Steve Keen, Paul Krugman, Jakob B. Madsen, Bill McBride, Charles R. Morris, Ann Pettifor, Stehanie Pomboy, Kurt Richebaeker, Barry Ritholtz, David A. Rosenberg, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, Robert Shiller, Gary Shilling, Charles Hugh Smith, Jens K. Sorensen, Gail Tverberg, Ian Welsh, William White, Mike Whitney, L. Randall Wray.

Thus, at least 33 economists were contenders as having been worth their salt as economic professionals. One can say that only 33 economists predicted the 2008 collapse, or that only 33 economists predicted accurately or reasonably accurately the collapse. However, some of those 33 were’t actually professional economists. So, some of the world’s 33 best economists aren’t even professional economists, as accepted in that rotten profession.

So, the few honest and open-eyed economists (these 33, at least) tried to warn the world. Did the economics profession honor them for their having foretold the 2008 collapse? Did President Barack Obama hire them, and fire the incompetents he had previously hired for his Council of Economic Advisers? Did the Nobel Committee acknowledge that it had given Nobel Economics Prizes to the wrong people, including people such as the conservative Milton Friedman whose works were instrumental in causing the 2008 crash? Also complicit in causing the 2008 crash was the multiple-award-winning liberal economist Lawrence Summers, who largely agreed with Friedman but was nonetheless called a liberal. Evidently, the world was too corrupt for any of these 33 to reach such heights of power or of authority. Like Galbraith had said at the close of his 2002 “How the Economists Got It Wrong“: “Being right doesn’t count for much in this club.” If anything, being right means being excluded from such posts. In an authentically scientific field, the performance of one’s predictions (their accuracy) is the chief (if not SOLE) determinant of one’s reputation and honor amongst the profession, but that’s actually not the way things yet are in any of the social “sciences,” including economics; they’re all just witch-doctory, not yet real science. The fraudulence of these fields is just ghastly. In fact, as Steve Keen scandalously noted in Chapter 7 of his 2001 Debunking Economics: “As this book shows, economics [theory] is replete with logical inconsistencies.” In any science, illogic is the surest sign of non-science, but it is common and accepted in the social ‘sciences’, including economics. The economics profession itself is garbage, a bad joke, instead of any science at all.

These 33 were actually only candidates for being scientific economists, but I have found the predictions of some of them to have been very wrong on some subsequent matters of economic performance. For example, the best-known of the 33, Paul Krugman, is a “military Keynesian” — a liberal neoconservative (and military Keynesianism is empirically VERY discredited: false worldwide, and false even in the country that champions it, the U.S.) — and he is unfavorable toward the poor, and favorable toward the rich; so, he is acceptable to the Establishment.) Perhaps a few of these 33 economists (perhaps half of whom aren’t even members of the economics profession) ARE scientific (in their underlying economic beliefs — their operating economic theory) if a scientific economics means that it’s based upon a scientific theory of economics — a theory that is derived not from any opinions but only from the relevant empirical data. Although virtually all of the 33 are basically some sort of Keynesian, even that (Keynes’s theory) isn’t a full-fledged theory of economics (it has many vagaries, and it has no microeconomics). The economics profession is still a field of philosophy, instead of a field of science.

The last chapter of my America’s Empire of Evil presents what I believe to be the first-ever scientific theory of economics, a theory that replaces all of microeconomic theory (including a micro that’s integrated with its macro) and is consistent with Keynes in macroeconomic theory; and all of which theory is derived and documented from only the relevant empirical economic data — NOT from anyone’s opinions. The economics profession think that replacing existing economic theory isn’t necessary after the crash of 2008, but I think it clearly IS necessary (because — as that chapter of my book shows — all of the relevant empirical economic data CONTRADICT the existing economic theory, ESPECIALLY the existing microeconomic theory).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

So, too, and just as clearly, today’s Israelis and their supporters are in reality-denial by denying that Israel today perpetrates at least ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide, to clear the Gazans from Gaza. South Africa’s legal case against Israel actually quotes many of Israel’s top leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that the Gazans don’t belong in Gaza and won’t be allowed to stay there — that their being there is itself a crime against Israel. Netanyahu actually said, citing the Torah, that God Himself authorized this to be done; and, so, it must be done.

The talk-show host and Washington Post columnist Hugh Hewitt headlined in that newspaper on 31 October 2023, “Does Israel have a right to exist?” and started by saying that he automatically excludes as guests on his show anyone who rejects the official account of 9/11 or else rejects the Republican position on the Cold War, and that he now will add to that list anyone who denies that Israel has a right to exist. He said:

I’ve never even considered that I would ask someone, “Did the Holocaust happen?” I’ve never knowingly had a Holocaust denier on the air, just as I’ve never had on a proponent of white supremacy. It’s pretty easy to build walls against such pollutants entering the airwaves under my jurisdiction. But now I will have to add the basic question about Israel’s nationhood.

He added that only anti-Semites — Jew-haters — deny Israel’s “right to exist”:

In the past three weeks, it has become painfully clear that hundreds of thousands of Americans and Europeans marching in demonstrations across campuses and in the streets of major cities do not accept the state of Israel’s legitimacy. That view is radical and dangerous. And it can no longer be considered so marginal that it need not be discussed in polite society. Instead, the view is one that must be exposed and its believers obliged to explain themselves.

And at that point he changed his tune to becoming: Now I want to expose those people, instead of to exclude them from speaking on my show: He went on to emphasize that to question Israel’s “right to exist” is unacceptable because Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist, and Hewitt assumed that whatever Hamas believes, has to be labelled as false, and that Israel is targeting for killing ONLY Hamas, and NOT the Gazans, but that any Gazans who die in this war are okay to be killed, because of Israel’s necessity to exterminate Hamas, which necessity justifies anything that Israel does in order to eliminate Hamas. In other words: the end justifies the means — ANY means.

He closed by saying:

We in the media should not silence the Israel deniers, but we would perform a public service if we invited them to reveal themselves. As with those who presume to address 9/11 without a basic grounding in the facts, or who deny the reach of Soviet espionage, when Israel deniers begin to spew, the audience deserves fair warning.

So: he closed his defense of Israel’s right to exist, by saying that “the audience deserves fair warning” that a kook is a kook. And throughout his article he was aiming to make his appeal to Republicans, against Democrats.

Throughout, Hewitt’s focus isn’t on verifying what is true and what is false, but instead on who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’. And he was equating Holocaust deniers with everyone who supports Palestinians against Israelis; and equating anti-Israel with anti-Jew — he was implying that only anti-Semites are against Israel: that to be against Israel is to be against Jews (as-if ALL Jews support or endorse Israel against the Palestinians).

The way to reality-denial is to personalize — argue ad-hominem — INSTEAD of to present evidence — argue ad-rem. And that was Hewitt’s entire case for answering Yes to his titled question, “Does Israel have a right to exist?”

I wrote on March 9 “Should Israel Exist?” as a logical analysis of this question, given the clear fact that Israel is either ethnically cleansing or else genociding the Gazans. As regards the broader HISTORICAL argument concerning that question, the case is open-and-shut that Israel should never have been created in 1948. So: to Hewitt’s question, of whether Israel has a right to exist, I would answer “No.” The historical record is clear and unequivocal that Israel had no such right, any more than that any thief has a right to the property that he or she has stolen.

Historically speaking, the war between the Israelis and the Palestinians was started by that enormous theft of not only land but a hidden number of lives from the Palestinians. This war did not begin on 7 October of 2023 when Israelis say that their war against ‘Hamas’ (but really all Gazans) started, but instead back in 1948. However, like all thieves do, Israelis lie in order to ‘justify’ themselves. As regards the October 7 attack by Hamas, I have headlined on 11 March 2024 “What You Didn’t Know About Hamas’s October 7th Attack”, which introduces and links to a highly informed discussion about that attack. Apparently, Israel lies massively about that event, too, so as to ‘justify’ whatever they do to the Gazans. However, in any case, this war certainly didn’t start on 7 October 2023 like Israel alleges it did.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

So, too, and just as clearly, today’s Israelis and their supporters are in reality-denial by denying that Israel today perpetrates at least ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide, to clear the Gazans from Gaza. South Africa’s legal case against Israel actually quotes many of Israel’s top leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that the Gazans don’t belong in Gaza and won’t be allowed to stay there — that their being there is itself a crime against Israel. Netanyahu actually said, citing the Torah, that God Himself authorized this to be done; and, so, it must be done.

The talk-show host and Washington Post columnist Hugh Hewitt headlined in that newspaper on 31 October 2023, “Does Israel have a right to exist?” and started by saying that he automatically excludes as guests on his show anyone who rejects the official account of 9/11 or else rejects the Republican position on the Cold War, and that he now will add to that list anyone who denies that Israel has a right to exist. He said:

I’ve never even considered that I would ask someone, “Did the Holocaust happen?” I’ve never knowingly had a Holocaust denier on the air, just as I’ve never had on a proponent of white supremacy. It’s pretty easy to build walls against such pollutants entering the airwaves under my jurisdiction. But now I will have to add the basic question about Israel’s nationhood.

He added that only anti-Semites — Jew-haters — deny Israel’s “right to exist”:

In the past three weeks, it has become painfully clear that hundreds of thousands of Americans and Europeans marching in demonstrations across campuses and in the streets of major cities do not accept the state of Israel’s legitimacy. That view is radical and dangerous. And it can no longer be considered so marginal that it need not be discussed in polite society. Instead, the view is one that must be exposed and its believers obliged to explain themselves.

And at that point he changed his tune to becoming: Now I want to expose those people, instead of to exclude them from speaking on my show: He went on to emphasize that to question Israel’s “right to exist” is unacceptable because Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist, and Hewitt assumed that whatever Hamas believes, has to be labelled as false, and that Israel is targeting for killing ONLY Hamas, and NOT the Gazans, but that any Gazans who die in this war are okay to be killed, because of Israel’s necessity to exterminate Hamas, which necessity justifies anything that Israel does in order to eliminate Hamas. In other words: the end justifies the means — ANY means.

He closed by saying:

We in the media should not silence the Israel deniers, but we would perform a public service if we invited them to reveal themselves. As with those who presume to address 9/11 without a basic grounding in the facts, or who deny the reach of Soviet espionage, when Israel deniers begin to spew, the audience deserves fair warning.

So: he closed his defense of Israel’s right to exist, by saying that “the audience deserves fair warning” that a kook is a kook. And throughout his article he was aiming to make his appeal to Republicans, against Democrats.

Throughout, Hewitt’s focus isn’t on verifying what is true and what is false, but instead on who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’. And he was equating Holocaust deniers with everyone who supports Palestinians against Israelis; and equating anti-Israel with anti-Jew — he was implying that only anti-Semites are against Israel: that to be against Israel is to be against Jews (as-if ALL Jews support or endorse Israel against the Palestinians).

The way to reality-denial is to personalize — argue ad-hominem — INSTEAD of to present evidence — argue ad-rem. And that was Hewitt’s entire case for answering Yes to his titled question, “Does Israel have a right to exist?”

I wrote on March 9 “Should Israel Exist?” as a logical analysis of this question, given the clear fact that Israel is either ethnically cleansing or else genociding the Gazans. As regards the broader HISTORICAL argument concerning that question, the case is open-and-shut that Israel should never have been created in 1948. So: to Hewitt’s question, of whether Israel has a right to exist, I would answer “No.” The historical record is clear and unequivocal that Israel had no such right, any more than that any thief has a right to the property that he or she has stolen.

Historically speaking, the war between the Israelis and the Palestinians was started by that enormous theft of not only land but a hidden number of lives from the Palestinians. This war did not begin on 7 October of 2023 when Israelis say that their war against ‘Hamas’ (but really all Gazans) started, but instead back in 1948. However, like all thieves do, Israelis lie in order to ‘justify’ themselves. As regards the October 7 attack by Hamas, I have headlined on 11 March 2024 “What You Didn’t Know About Hamas’s October 7th Attack”, which introduces and links to a highly informed discussion about that attack. Apparently, Israel lies massively about that event, too, so as to ‘justify’ whatever they do to the Gazans. However, in any case, this war certainly didn’t start on 7 October 2023 like Israel alleges it did.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

“We weren’t there to kill human beings, really. We were there to kill ideology.” (Lt. William Calley)

Officially termed an “incident” (as opposed to a “massacre”), the events of March 16, 1968, at My Lai — a hamlet in South Vietnam — are widely portrayed and accepted to this day as an aberration. While the catalog of U.S. war crimes in Southeast Asia is far too sordid and lengthy to detail here, it’s painfully clear this was not the case.

In fact, on the very same day that Lt. William Calley entered into infamy, another U.S. company entered My Khe, a sister sub hamlet of My Lai. That visit has been described as such:

“In this ‘other massacre,’ members of this separate company piled up a body count of perhaps a hundred peasants — My Khe was smaller than My Lai — ’flattened the village’ by dynamite and fire, and then threw handfuls of straw on corpses. The next morning, this company moved on down the Batangan Peninsula by the South China Sea, burning every hamlet they came to, killing water buffalo, pigs, chickens, and ducks, and destroying crops. As one of the My Khe veterans said later, ‘what we were doing was being done all over.’ Said another: ‘We were out there having a good time. It was sort of like being in a shooting gallery.’

Colonel Oran Henderson, charged with covering up the My Lai killings, put it succinctly in 1971: “Every unit of brigade size has its My Lai hidden someplace.”

Of the 26 U.S. soldiers brought up on charges related to My Lai, only Calley was convicted. However, his life sentence was later reduced to three and a half years under house arrest.

Never forget, my friends: This is what we’re up against.

But let’s also never forget the actions of a man named Hugh Thompson.

Hugh Clowers Thompson, Jr. wanted to fly choppers so badly that after a four-year stint in the Navy, he left his wife and two sons behind to re-up into the Army and train as a helicopter pilot. Thompson arrived in Vietnam on December 27, 1967, and quickly earned a reputation as “an exceptional pilot who took danger in his stride.”

In their book, Four Hours at My Lai, Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim also describe Hugh Thompson as a “very moral man. He was absolutely strict about opening fire only on clearly defined targets.”

On the morning of March 16, 1968, Thompson’s sense of virtue would be put to the test.

Flying in his H-23 observation chopper, the 25-year-old Thompson used green smoke to mark wounded people on the ground in and around My Lai. Upon returning a short while later after refueling, he found that the wounded he saw earlier were now dead.

Thompson’s gunner, Lawrence Colburn, averted his gaze from the gruesome sight.

After bringing the chopper down to a standstill hover, Thompson and his crew came upon a young woman they had previously marked with smoke. As they watched, a U.S. soldier, wearing captain’s bars, “prodded her with his foot, and then killed her.”

What Thompson didn’t know was that by that point, Lt. Calley’s Charlie Company had already slaughtered more than 560 Vietnamese—primarily women, children, infants, and elderly people. Many of the women had been gang-raped and mutilated.

All Thompson knew for sure was that the U.S. troops he saw pursuing civilians had to be stopped.

Bravely landing his helicopter between the charging GIs and the fleeing villagers, Thompson ordered Colburn to turn his machine gun on the American soldiers if they tried to shoot the unarmed men, women, and children.

Thompson then stepped out of the chopper into the combat zone and coaxed the frightened civilians from the bunker they were hiding in.

With tears streaming down his face, he evacuated them to safety on his H-23.

Never forget, my friends: This is how we can choose to live.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..