Caitlin Johnstone

Today’s Caitlin Johnstone article has been replaced with a statement from the Editorial Board of the National News Conglomerate, your trusted source for real news and authorized opinions. Obey.

Well, this is awkward.

Many of our readers have been pointing out the recent revelations that some rather significant falsehoods have been knowingly advanced by the British government about Russia and promoted uncritically by trusted media outlets of the western world. Following said revelations, there have been some attempts by the Foreign Office and those same media outlets to cover up said falsehoods.

Rather than double down and risk making a bad situation worse, we here at National News Conglomerate have decided to come clean with our readers about exactly what’s going on with this whole Russia kerfuffle.

It should here be noted that after typing the preceding paragraph, we here at the NNC Editorial Board have spent the last six and a half hours sitting around the conference room table chewing on our erasers and checking our Twitter notifications, not quite sure how to continue. This is the first time we’ve ever tried being honest with our readers about this stuff, and it’s just weird for everyone. We are sure you can relate.

So here’s the thing, see: it isn’t our job to tell you the truth. Large media corporations like ours are all owned by powerful billionaires, all of whom have a vested interest in preserving the establishment upon which they have built their massive kingdoms. Those billionaires hire executives to direct their media empires who are loyal to establishment interests, those executives in turn hire editors who are loyal to establishment interests, and those editors hire journalists who are loyal to establishment interests, effectively creating an environment wherein the only way to get ahead is to unquestioningly promote whatever narratives are being advanced by western intelligence/defense agencies and their plutocratic allies.

At this point in history, this means helping to advance a very aggressive agenda against the Russian government in the US and its client states.

A 2017 Department of Defense Risk Assessment by the US Army Strategic Studies Institute says that the US empire is in what it calls “post-primacy” and may currently be on its way out the door.

“In brief,” the assessment reads, “the status quo that was hatched and nurtured by U.S. strategists after World War II and has for decades been the principal ‘beat’ for DoD is not merely fraying but may, in fact, be collapsing. Consequently, the United States’ role in and approach to the world may be fundamentally changing as well.”

So when we told you, for example, that Russia was the only government with a motive to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter, we weren’t being entirely honest. The international allied intelligence and defense agencies of the western empire have every motive in the world to manufacture international support for sanctions and hawkish agendas which disrupt disobedient governments. In fact, the western alliance has far more motive to stage such an attack and frame Russia for it than Russia has for attempting to assassinate an ex-spy who has been strategically irrelevant for years.

This is also true of the alleged hacking of the DNC in the US and all the other Russia stories we’ve been circulating. We’ve been reporting these allegations as though they are unquestionable facts for many months now despite the complete absence of the sort of evidence you suckers should be demanding in a post-Iraq invasion world, when really the US-centralized empire stands far more to gain by them than Russia does. The western world is becoming increasingly galvanized against Russia and will soon be poised to collectively sanction Putin’s rogue state right off the world stage, leaving nations like China, Iran and Syria far more exposed to subversion and sabotage.

We’re writing all this not because we’ve suddenly become a bunch of peace-loving flower children, but because we think we guardians of the western empire are ready to enter into a more mature relationship with you, the public. Instead of trying to deceive you into consenting to CIA-hatched agendas with fairy tales about Kremlin agents under every bed and “won’t someone think of the children” hogwash, we’re just going to be honest with you about what war and aggression needs to happen in order for this empire to continue.

I mean, think about a world which the US no longer dominates using the carrot of military alliance and the stick of military demolition? Anything could happen! The Russia-China tandem will become more powerful and capable of enacting its agendas throughout the world, and then in a couple of decades, who knows? Those Yellow Hordes we’ve been warning you about for the last century could show up on your shores any minute!

So here’s what we are asking from you, our readers, in an attitude of mutual respect: let us do what we need to do, and don’t make a fuss. We might need to kill a few million Koreans and Middle Easterners and flirt with nuclear confrontation a bit. We’ll have to tighten up on free speech and increase our surveillance programs to make sure we keep domestic dissent under control, and to be honest we’ll probably need to have a world war with Russia, China and whatever other governments take their side… but if you don’t let us do that, the bad guys will win!

So just play along, okay? Let us have our proxy wars and cold war escalations, give us the surveillance and censorship and black site torture programs we’ve been trying to manipulate you into giving us, and this will all be over before you know it. Then we’ll control the whole world at long last, and there will be no mischievous governments or alternative media or thought crimes interfering in the maturation of our beneficent relationship with the unwashed masses.

Because let’s be honest, it’s not like you really have a choice anyway. If you don’t play along we’ll just be forced to brutalize your psyches with even more aggressive psyops while still doing what we want behind your backs. We will get our wars, we will get our internet censorship, we will get our social engineering projects, we will succeed in hoarding all the money to ourselves to deprive you of power and political influence while you suffer and die. And you slaves will learn your place.

So don’t ruin this for us, understand?

Thank you in advance,

The NNC Editorial Board

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