Every year or so around my birthday I like to pause and write an essay outlining where I stand and what I’m doing here as clearly as possible. I do this partly because I think it’s important for crowd-funded media to be fully transparent about where they’re coming from so that people can decide if it’s something they want to support, and partly because the sheer volume of material I publish makes it possible for people to spin false narratives about my worldview in a way that’s difficult for others to fact-check without combing through hundreds of essays.
So here are 11 things my readers might want to know about me, with hyperlinks to my relevant writings on the subject.
1. On a political compass graph I look like this:
I don’t put a ton of stock in these tests and I could have answered different questions a number of different ways, but for what it’s worth this is the result I got when I took it just now. I think the key to peace and harmony on this earth is an enlightened collectivism balanced with a respect for self-sovereignty, both for individuals and for nations.
When taxation-is-theft types ask me how I reconcile my support for enlightened collectivism with my holding as sacrosanct the value of self-sovereignty, I always reply that money is a made-up conceptual construct whose only value is given to it by the will of the collective; the only reason a dollar is worth what it’s worth is because we as a collective have agreed to pretend that that’s true. Money exists to serve the collective in the way that the collective wishes, and it is the sovereign right of the collective to change how money works as drastically as it likes at any time. It isn’t some force of nature that is separate from human imagination, and it most certainly doesn’t by itself contain the wisdom our species needs to navigate the travails we now face.
2. I’ve only been doing this for a little over three years.
It feels like it’s been a lot longer, but I only started writing essays about this stuff in the latter part of 2016.
That first year was really rough, to be honest. I was a total newbie just sharing her opinions online, but because I’m good with words I quickly found my name commonly being mentioned in the same breath as high-profile figures who’ve been doing oppositional reporting for many years. I had to quickly learn as much as I could about the US government, global power structures and geopolitics, all while creating near-daily content in the full view of the public. I look back on my old essays from that first year and I see plenty of good ideas that I continue to use today, but I also see the baby scribbles of a much less experienced analyst.
A lot of my early essays were basically just me saying “Hey, what’s the establishment doing over there? I reckon that’s a bit suspicious!” It took a lot of time and effort to be able to describe the dynamics I’m seeing in concrete, positive terms within a unified conceptual framework, and to have to figure out how to do that while being intensely scrutinized by alternative media commentators who’d already garnered their 10,000 hours of mastery was more than a little intimidating. Most of the clumsy arguments I’ve made that my haters like to bring up were authored in that first year, while everyone was staring at the new girl on the scene awkwardly trying to figure out how to do this thing a lot of people wanted to see her do.
3. I see the US-centralized oligarchic empire as the primary enemy of human thriving.
US Foreign Policy Is A War On Disobedience
"So now you’ve got this weird dynamic where the US is constantly working to make sure that no other countries surpass it and gain the ability to treat America the way America treats other countries."https://t.co/AVJoxuLOSq
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 6, 2019
In a system where power is relative and money equals power, you will always necessarily see the rise of a plutocratic class which has a vested interest in keeping everyone else poor in order to maintain its relative wealth/power. In a system where wealth translates directly into political power and the ability to do whatever it takes no matter who it hurts is rewarded with wealth, you’ll naturally find yourself ruled by sociopaths.
These oligarchs form alliances with each other and with government agencies, working to advance agendas with complete indifference to the imaginary lines that are drawn between nations. This globe-spanning power alliance between plutocrats and government power structures is loosely centralized around the United States, where the lion’s share of the military firepower (and billionaires) is located. I often refer to this tight alliance of nations bent to the will of a transnational oligarchy as an “empire” because, while it doesn’t have an emperor, this cluster of nations does function as a single entity as far as international agendas are concerned. Governments which align with the economic, military and resource control agendas of the empire are absorbed into its blob, while those which do not are sabotaged and subverted until they collapse or comply.
The end goal of the imperialists (those who support this empire and its agendas) is a world that is fully unified under this power alliance, where nations are separate and sovereign in name and narrative only and all work to advance the power and wealth of the ruling oligarchs. It’s a twisted mockery of the world people like me are trying to create: one where there’s no more war not because humanity has figured out that war doesn’t serve its interests, but because everyone will have been beaten down into total obedience to and dependence on the empire. One where people accept the status quo not because it is just, but because they’ve been propagandized out of the belief that things could possibly be any other way.
4. I see propaganda as the primary obstacle to ending the oligarchic empire.
Society Is Made Of Narrative. Realizing This Is Awakening From The Matrix.
This is the clearest I've been able to sum it all up so far.https://t.co/JqbZMKn7ov
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 22, 2018
The status quo has been so firmly locked into place that the only hope for changing it is by the people using the power of their numbers to rise up and force change. But they don’t. Despite the fact that they are being kept poor and disempowered by the ruling class, despite the fact that the needs of the many are being subverted for the greed of the few, the people don’t rise up and force change. This is because they have been propagandized.
The oligarchs who control both the political class and the media class (the dynamic I’m referring to when I talk about “the political/media class”) use this control to determine what dominant narratives members of mainstream society tell themselves about what’s going on in the world. A narrative is just a “how it is” story, a story about what’s going on with some aspect of your world. Human experience is dominated by mental narratives, so if you can control the dominant narratives in human society, you control human society itself.
False narratives which the political/media class pummels our consciousness with day in and day out include:
- We live in a free and democratic society
- Your government is your friend
- Capitalism is totally working just fine
- Putin is trying to take over the world
- Maduro must go
- Assad must go
- The governments of Iran, North Korea, and every other nation which doesn’t bow to imperialist interests must go
- Assange is a rapist Nazi Russian agent who mistreated his cat so it’s good he’s locked up
- The TV would never lie to you
Probably the majority of my writing focuses on attacking the empire’s narrative control in some way. I see it as the only worthwhile line of attack.
5. I sincerely believe we can win this thing.
How To Defeat The Empire
"What I do advocate, in as many different ways as I can come up with, is a decentralized guerrilla psywar against the institutions which enable the powerful to manipulate the way ordinary people think, act and vote."https://t.co/4F5dWaURdq
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 10, 2019
The good news about imperial narrative control being our only real obstacle is that that means the only thing chaining us in place is a thin strand of mind fluff. People’s trust in the mass media is at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high. All we need to do to break the spell of relentless propaganda which holds the entire empire in place is exploit and exacerbate this reality. Without public trust, the imperial propaganda machine cannot function. Without the ability to propagandize its citizenry, the imperialists cannot rule.
You can’t tell me that’s impossible. You can’t tell me we’re incapable of escaping this prison when its bars are only made out of narrative. Out of stories. Out of fairy tales for grownups. We are capable of awakening ourselves from the propaganda dream. Of course we are. They’ve left the door wide open for us. All we have to do is turn and walk out.
6. I believe it’s going to take a shift in consciousness, and that that shift is in the mail already.
I don’t think we’ll hit a critical mass of people waking up from the narrative matrix without a significant collective shift in our relationship with mental narrative, so sometimes I write about the dynamic commonly referred to as spiritual enlightenment since it’s often the most truthful way I know how to talk about where we need to head as a species. I’ve compiled some evidence here explaining why I believe we’re headed toward such a shift.
7. I oppose all forms of racism and prejudice.
Some Common Criticisms Of My Work Addressed, By Caitlin Johnstone
"I thought it might be good to just tap out a few responses to common criticisms of the writing I’ve been doing since I started this gig two and a half years ago."https://t.co/yzL7ddcCVf
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 31, 2019
Some of the poorly constructed arguments I made in that first year left people with the impression that I endorse aligning with white nationalists. I believe that much of this arose from a combination of (A) bad faith interpretations of what I wrote from people with preexisting grudges and (B) my own inability to defend against those spin jobs skillfully. But the failure to preempt and/or counter those narratives effectively was my own. Basically I’d noticed that increasingly shrinking and factionalized ideological echo chambers are being used by propagandists to manipulate people into supporting establishment interests, and I wanted to punch holes in the walls of those echo chambers. You can read more about this here, here, and here. I also oppose antisemitism in all its forms, which you can read about here.
According to my 2017 haters I was supposed to have been turning leftists into goose-stepping Nazis for years by now, or at least transitioned from the left into supporting Trump like Cassandra Fairbanks, Zach Haller, An0maly and HA Goodman. They all insisted that that’s what was happening, despite my own objections to the contrary. History has proven them wrong, and it will continue to do so. People just didn’t understand what they were looking at, because I act a little different from the other analysts in similar circles. Racism and prejudice run counter to everything I stand for, and they always have.
8. I regret the following decisions in my career:
- Ever having anything to do with Zach Haller
- Using Mike Cernovich, who I have nothing to do with, as an example of a conservative I’d overlap with to fight establishment narratives. I should have used Ron Paul. My haters still currently attack me for collaborating with Paul, but he would have been a better and less distracting example.
- Not responding earlier, stronger and more skillfully to the “Caitlin is a secret Nazi” smears
- Appearing with Robert David Steele
- Saying anything about Pizzagate at all
- Getting into a Twitter argument with antisemites in a way that produced screenshots that can be spun out of context to make me look like the antisemite
Again, almost entirely blunders made in my first year, but these are all going to dog me for the rest of my career and come up every time my name gets anywhere near mainstream attention. If I got any do-overs I’d use them on these.
9. I actually love America and Americans.
The American people have needed to be tricked into going to war virtually every single time since the Spanish-American War. This is proof that Americans are overall a deeply good people who detest war. They wouldn't have to trick you otherwise.
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) June 22, 2019
I love Americans so much I married one. I love Americans so much my readers often gripe about how gushy I can get about them sometimes. I think the fact that Americans need to be propagandized in a way that appeals to their sense of goodness (“The people must be rescued from their evil oppressor!”) says so much about what healthy people they are underneath all the media-induced madness. And what little I’ve seen of America in my travels there has left me with the distinct impression that Americans are far too proud of their government and their military and not nearly proud enough of the staggering beauty of the land they live on.
10. My work is done with my husband Tim Foley
Almost everything I publish is the result of the ongoing conversation Tim and I have throughout the day about what’s going on in our world. We share ideas, we share the links, tweets and stories we find, we discuss them, and it turns into an article. There was one persistent smearer (who I’ve since busted) who was going around circulating the narrative that this means Tim is the author of my work, but I have full control over everything I publish under my name and I decide what gets written.
11. Here’s the kind of world I’m trying to help create:
I want a world where humanity has become so acutely conscious of its relationship with mental narratives that manipulation in all its forms has become impossible. I want a world where we are guided not by what those in power have told us to believe is in our highest interest, but what’s actually in our highest interest, based on objective reality and our actual needs. I want a world where we’ve all reconciled and healed our ancient heritage of pain and cultural mind viruses, where we’ve learned to collaborate with each other and with our ecosystem in the interest of the whole. If that seems like something you’re interested in, then I’m happy to fight alongside you.
_____________________________
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
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72 responses to “11 Things You Should Know About Me And Where I’m Coming From”
To Tom F and Caitland
I recently published a book that resonates with your good ideas. The book is `Take Back The Power!` on amazon books by Motsenbocker. I would like to send Tom a complimentary copy (or I can send a kindle version) if you can give me a mailing address or other by private email.
Just typing this much too late to say this— you are brilliant. I happen to be a regular reader of another brilliant woman ( very different style) who totally misjudged you. She is good on other things, but she got you dead wrong.
I think that the work you put out disproves the haters.
I guess, you are talking about the USA and the citizen. But America is much more than the U.S. – the U.S. is just a part of north America.
Maybe I can give you an Idea, a keyword what this possibly means in coherence “Manifest Destiny” – the depth indoctrinated believe of the “elected / chosen people by God” as Obama has said in front of his Soldiers “Only we count!”.
Again. Maybe you should pay a little more attention to your own words and engraved narratives.
Take care!
I greatly enjoy your statements of conscience, and I endorse your principles. There is much to learn about America from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who asserted that America was a dream in which the enaction of certain principles into a Nation’s governance might lead to a benign and fair self-government.
King was no fool. He did not engage in the hallucinatory self-adulation that many people have about America. America is an experiment in reason, and most experiments do not work. The postulate about America has been that mistakes be sharply defined and corrected. Such action requires a certain degree of humility, which has been wrung out of the American fabric. Scientific analysis is the antithesis of myth and propaganda.
You may enjoy We, by Zamyatin, and Anthem, by Ayn Rand. Anthem is especially worth reading for its brevity and simplicity; We, for its breathtaking narrative and skill. Hole up and do read these, it will do you a world of good.
America erred seriously thirty years ago, in that it did not endorse an international holiday I would call Mauertag, wall-day, to exemplify how the average persons under totalitarian control in several countries slipped off their harnesses peacefully. No greater nightmare can befall authoritarians than this that “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” (Jefferson). For this, we should continue to struggle.
Peace and happy New Year.
Hi Caitlin. I’m with you on #5, have been working on why this is hard TO win for years. I disagree with 4 however: here’s exactly why. Let’s say that tomorrow a news story broke saying that members of the Hell’s Angels were caught dumping toxic wastes of some corporation. A group of incensed Americans would demand that ALL the members of that gang be rounded up, right? Now imagine that it was agents of some foreign nation caught doing so, & that they were doing it in order TO HARM the American people. Demands they be rounded up & perhaps publicly executed.
Propaganda only works if it comes from OUR government: but also, we advance propagandize ourselves.
Everyone KNOWS lobbying exists & what it is: it’s people who work in government helping industry get away with illegal dumping of wastes.
No one in government HAS to tell the American people this is legal. It is not. But the public cannot deal with this simple fact on an emotional level. The reasons are deeply-rooted.
This is not a popular observation. We all want to believe that because people CAN all be rational 100% of the time that they WILL be. But… well, if they were, why would they allow illegal dumping of wastes at the behest of people directly in the pay of corporations?
We’re not going to make any progress on #5 if we deny what’s behind the public’s belief systems because 1) the people in power are not going to change themselves or voluntarily. 2) ANY change potentially carries a change to their power & prestige, as well as may affect the $ they get FROM lobbying. so they also will not only not hand us new, better ways to effect changes, they do actively block our direct attempts to change things through the systems.
3) Only mass public pressure can make them change when they do not wish to. If this rankles, then tell me: what military power can stand against the American one or the financial & M-I complex & other interests that perpetuate it? What other nation’s people can?
So it’s only American citizens that can stop their government’s policies. Which leaves only one question: how do we rally them despite their desire to not stand against what they perceive as their own protector, but also the only place/thing/institution they have to turn to for resolving all their problems?
People won’t abandon their perceived “only” source of protection, unless they have another one to turn to. & since no one is going to give or create one for us…
We’ll have to create it ourselves. ; )
Hope to hear back from you.
Good job. I think you are right on. Don’t listen to the shills.
You really are a “nut”. The kind I like.
It’s so true that most people lack an ability to discern truth from fiction, & that they don’t realize or even suspect that they are falling for &/or pushing false narratives & logical fallacies. They mostly never took a college-level course in logic or made any attempt at logical analysis, & they ridicule & denigrate people like us who have or endeavor to apply it (at least in my case, as I passed my elective courses such as logic, literature, history of ideas & Honors interdisciplinary studies a long time ago at a state U when it still sort of meant something-for a few years afterwards.)
Firstly, Caitlin Johnstone is an awesome person and blogger and she’s inspiring. How many people can I say that about? Few. I have my criticisms, but no one’s perfect. I certainly am not.
Regarding her statement above:
“…the only hope for changing it is by the people using the power of their numbers to rise up and force change. But they don’t. Despite the fact that they are being kept poor and disempowered by the ruling class, despite the fact that the needs of the many are being subverted for the greed of the few, the people don’t rise up and force change. This is because they have been propagandized.” Caitlin has half of this narrative correct. Completely absolving people, automatically, for all their evil behavior by blaming it on propaganda doesn’t work for me. (Caring is knowing is caring. No one has to give in, completely, to the system designed to dumb them down completely. Good people can choose to not care and many do. Obviously, ‘that’ is not good. But it is reality.) No, I don’t hate people. I simply see what I see and tell it like I see it.
Caitlin thinks that we really can fix things ourselves, via people power. I don’t agree. (And I am ‘not’ saying that we weren’t meant to manage ourselves. We were. But when so many screw it up and cause problems for others, that’s not fair; and the Creator is only allowing that for a limited time and that’s so that we can see that independence from him, and deviation from his standards, doesn’t work.) Nor am I forced to believe that demonstrably weak proposition. I have faith – in God (and in his plan of salvation for imperfect humankind). I’m a Christian first and a progressive (with an end goal that is further along our path than Caitlin’s end goal) secondly. We can’t fix our inherited imperfection, except in the sense that we can put ourselves in the hands of the ‘doctor’ who can. It is, afterall, a matter of choice.
We all possess free moral agency (and weren’t created as robots who ‘have to’ worship God) and get one opportunity – after we have been sufficiently educated and possess sound enough minds – to decide where our loyalty lies, with consequences for our everlasting – You read that right – future. Those who reject God and prefer manmade philosophies come up with ideas like those expressed by Luke Skywalker who told his sister that ‘No one’s ever gone.’ If that was so, then our planetary home would forever be the manmade hell that self-modified people have made it. That’s because we could never get rid of them. (They could slaughter planets full of women and children and, as long as they were of the right tribe, then we could forgive them while pleading with them to forgive themselves so that we can take them back from the dark side. With that cosmology – which prevails – you can, theoretically, go back and forth your whole life being evil and good. Where’s the guarantee in that of a world that works for everyone? I guess if you define ‘world’ as a place where the evil live with the righteous, then that might work.) Robert Plant tells us in “The Stairway To Heaven” that “Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there’s still time to change the road you’re on.” He’s just wrong. If he wasn’t, We’d be in trouble.
It saddens me to find so many of my fellow progressives absolutely hate God and Christianity (and offer up very, very weak excuses for that hatred), but, again, It’s a free universe. That’s between them and Jehovah. In the meantime, Do ‘they’ accept me?
“Unless Jehovah builds the house, It is in vain that it’s builders work hard on it.” (Psalm 127)
I’m very fascinated with The Political Compass. Perhaps I’m too eager to quantify things with numbers, but it really lays out the false left-right narrative and shows the real authoritarian-anti-establishment separation that people need to see. If anyone else wants to take the test, it’s at https://www.politicalcompass.org/
I am right down in the anti-establishment left with Caitlin. I would like to point out The Political Compass attempts to place current politicians and historical figures on the chart for comparison, and no one is closer to us than Green Party candidates:
https://twitter.com/HowieHawkins20/status/1156796868401102848
The false Left/Right narrative is a narrative that, in my view, only works when you’re talking about fake leftists and their fake opposition to those who self-identify as rightwingers or Conservatives.
I’m leftwing, although I do not agree with every position taken by most leftwingers. My way of understanding it is: Real leftwingers believe in a system that works for all (excluding criminals who should be locked up), while rightwingers believe in a system that works for their tribe only. They are composed of individuals who have self-modified, which we are all free to do, into being believers in inequality, deceit and violence. They now possess twisted needs and wants and eagerly play the evil game of ‘riches for the strongest’, as Netanyahu expressed so bluntly. They survive by taking the means of survival (basically, money, which, in this unnatural system, means life) from those who make the ‘mistake’ of trying live peacefully. They are the sucker sheep who like the law & order narrative of their political leaders, but end up getting only the rhetoric as the wolves among them strategically break agreements and laws in order to get ahead of and on top of others.
The Right absolutely loves socialism but can’t call it that because it would bring attention to bear, lazer-like, on the fact that they only like it for themselves (while they seek glory, which they now ‘need’ to do, gained via taking [neoliberal capitalism for example] the means of survival from others, leaving those others with austerity [and death for resisting too much or just because]. Glory that is unseen isn’t glory. That’s the paradigm or operating principle of this dark world: ‘Riches For The Strongest’.
The Left wants socialism, or whatever, for all. Some leftists don’t want to call themselves leftists, possibly because they misunderstand what others mean about the phony Left/Right narrative, but I choose to label things the way I label things and believe that I’ve got it about right.
Thanks, I invite everyone to expose themselves. https://www.politicalcompass.org/chart?ec=-2.13&soc=-2.41
Thank you, and thank goodness for you and your magnificent voice in our world. (and you too, Tim). I’m down with all that you’ve stated here. I’m in. I want that shared better world for all of us, too.
With our greater numbers and in solidarity and firm resolve, we will take our world in a much better direction for all beings.
Amongst your regrets you forgot to mention promoting Seth Rich conspiracies, or are you still a believer?
Do you have proof he wasn’t?
Do you have proof that he was?
Here is the same style of argumentation back at you:
When did you stop beating your wife?
That is called “begging the question”, taking the conclusion you are advocating (and still need to prove) and making it the premise of your statement.
Seth Rich was a DNC staffer who was shocked by Clintonite sabotage against Sanders. He stole the DNC emails and released them to Wikileaks. He was eliminated so that the “Russians did it” meme could be protected from him later confessing.
Let’s face it, too many relatively low I.Q. goobers are caught up with this “Great Work” thing who took the “Do as thou wilt” thing backwards. Present company excepted of course. 😉
Bravo Caitlin, and happy birthday as well. Thank goodness for quality, truth telling blogs and independent media sites that speak truth to power.
Unlike the presstitutes in the mainstream ‘media’.
I agree with, and appreciate your definition of anti semitism as well.
If a country, such as Israel is slaughtering unarmed protesters, shooting 9 year old kids in the head, forcibly evicting Palestinians from their homes, blockading Gaza; you call that out for what it is: war crimes.
It’s not anti semitic to criticise the barbarity inflicted on the Palestinian people.
Hi Caitlin. Enjoy reading you most every day and share most of your beliefs about reality.
However, I was surprised to learn that you regretted appearing with Robert David Steele.
Would you care to say why?
Also, I would like to know why you regret saying “anything at all” about Pizzagate.
Thanks.
Happy birthday Caitlin! Talking of narrative, the 1600 (!) “NGOs” funded by the notorious National Endowment for “Democracy” have recently been exposed: https://swprs.org/organizations-funded-by-the-ned/
There is now a writer named Caitlin
Who always brings home the bacon
She connects all the dots
Of our very best thoughts
And her blogs are a viral sensation
Fighting and War are the stupidest of all human actions ( in my estimation ); this article clearly shows that:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/humanity-is-riding-delusion-to-extinction/
Bravo, I’m with you Catlin
and many
“HAPPY BIRTHDAYS!”
I knew it, a Ron Paul enthusiast! Paul changed my life and thinking.
Your comment about $ being a collective construct makes cents 🙂
Happy Birthday and thank you for what you do.
Dr Mike Vasovski
South Carolina State Campaign Chairman
Ron Paul 2012
1. I know now why i like your work. We are both strong libertarians.
2. Only three years. Incredible. You are an excellent writer and blogger.
3. Empires histotically stabilize and destabilize the world.
4. Propoganda is bad now more than ever eith our digital age.
5. I am more pessimistic on fixing anything that ibdont have total control over.
6. Paradugm shifts ate always painful. I agree one is coming.
7. Everyone one should oppose racism, prejudice and oppression due to inequality.
8. Evrryone makes mistakes and want to turn bavk the clock for a do over.
9. Sometimes i toovwonder if America is a product of this great land of bounty.
10. Your work is too passionate to be written by your husband.
11. We all need dreams.
Happy Birthday Cait. I’m not going to be a twit and complain about the 10% of issues I disagree about with you. I’m going to be amazed and happy that we agree on 90%. Therein lies one big key to this maddeningly crazy quilt called humanity surviving and thriving into a fantastic future.
Thanks Cait. The fact that I sometimes disagree with you is a good thing. Without disagreement, there is only uniformity: Big Brother.
Something’s puzzling me and I wonder if you have any reaction. I used to love RT and RI. Recently, RT’s gone totally anodyne as if it’s terrified to say anything or punch back, and RI seems to have gone all-out white supremacist. Any idea why?
Nice to see you disavow Pizzagate (or weighing in on it, at least) publicly. I’ve asked you to do that many times since we became embroiled in some unfortunate and unnecessarily ugly exchanges fueled by someone I barely knew and quickly blocked on Facebook over this issue. I apologize sincerely for my poor judgments at the time. I’ve been following your work closely for the last few years. While I don’t always agree with your views, I believe they’re well-thought-out and clearly expressed for the most part. Some of your writing and analysis is brilliant. Yours is a voice worth heeding.
The world you invision in #11 is one I believe most of us naturally seek. Unfortunately, sociopaths are typically quite intelligent, charismatic, and very effective manipulators. Our species has demonstrated susceptibility to their charms throughout our history and prehistory. I think we are going to have to evolve a little more to accomplish it. My applause for your effort to help us do so.
Regarding #7, some prejudice is required for survival. For an extreme example to demonstrate the concept, if a dog is approaching you with its hair standing up and growling, it’s a good idea to prejudge it’s likely to bite you. Or, if someone claims to have your interests in mind while claiming this gives them moral authority to confiscate your property and tell you how you must live, it’s a good idea to prejudge they’re a sociopath.
Happy birthday Caitlin. You are a treasure. I forward your articles to friends and family in the hope of spreading your message. Humans are at a crossroad where we either have a sea-change in consciousness, or mother nature heals herself from a 24 hour virus. Your work is priceless.
“…money is a made-up conceptual construct whose only value is given to it by the will of the collective….” When the collective numbers about 7.4 billion, there is a ot of will in it.
Brilliant stuff. I have been wanting to have this conversation all my life….and here I am an old man, and you writing it.
Can you comment on how you see the Palestinian vs Israel conflict? Do you think it is antisemitic to criticize Israel for crimes against the Palestinians?
Palestinians are treated brutally by the Israeli government, with the blessing of the entire US-centralized empire which benefits from having a close nuclear-armed ally in a key geostrategic region. Due to their inconvenient existence inside a pivotal imperial military outpost, Palestinians are treated the same way animals on a military base are treated when they interfere with a drill, or the way whales and dolphins are treated by the navy when they want to test sonar in a way that harms those animals. They’re in the way and they’re treated the way the military treats animals that are in the way. It isn’t antisemitic to criticize a government.
Happy Birthday dear sage.
Best wishes for you and for all those who have ideas like yours and who try to see and follow the truth. We are all successful at our own levels if we can tell the beautifully constructed lies from the truth. We are all successful if we speak about this with all of our surrounding humans.
You are at it, and many others like me are with you. Stay happy sage.
“Taxation is Theft…will of the collective…”. Well isn’t it always the will of the collective? Doesn’t it just depend on which queen bee or bees are running the hive or if the hive is running the queen? As far as that goes can’t the collective choose, just because, who is in or out or which gender is superior however the hive social power is organized? Can’t it consider you an inferior bee if the stripes don’t line up the same as the rest “just because”? It’s
Interesting how you use the word “sovereign”. You are hardly sacrosanct to self-sovereign if the collective rules and can make you responsible for the dreams, schemes, wants, riches, desires, failures, wars and… that your neighbor could not make you do without force. What kind of “self-sovereignty that makes me do or contribute where it violates my sovereign conscience and sense of right and wrong. That enlightened collective will find itself where we are now. Legal to do this or not do that regardless of sovereignty of the individual or right or wrong.
Who will get to be the enlightened ones in the collective? Those who will pretend to know better but are still basically human that too often think, act, speak as if passing bad gas? Oh and they fart too.
Income tax is theft: PERIOD. It robs not only your money, but your also your dignity and self respect. It makes your hard work go for stuff and causes you want nothing to do with. It’s a form of rape, where you don’t dare say no because it will ruin your life and future if you say “no”. If your inspired highly enlightened collective can collect income taxes (not excise taxes which support things like roads and bridges) we already have that now and all you want to do is change leadership of who controls the collective and the legal plunder.
The “king and queen” are always so more enlightened on how to spend your money and the length of leash to your neck.
Are you one of those neoliberal Jordan Peterson worshippers who needs to be better than someone else and simply can’t imagine a world that doesn’t look like some grey cubicle farm with subordinates and bosses, preferably with you in the latter position? Your narrative sucks and it’s made by rich people for rich people. I kindly suggest you lurk more.
The left calls me right. The right calls me left. What does the left or right call you? Stupid? Tell me how you’ve taken on the IRS (federal government), AT&T or traffic court and how you fared? Right now I’m talking down to an idiot, so I’m quitting here lest I be accused of attempting intelligent conversation with stupid and give you standing.
Didn’t take much effort to get Mike to introduce his true self to the world, HUNKERDOWN, is it a gift you have or something you acquired through years of study and training?
Sanctamonious.
A couple of trolls triggered here? Ad hominem attack followed by self-endorsement. Mike I think you gave the idiot all the respect it was due.
Beautifully written Mike. The rights of the individual must always come before the rights of the collective.
Exactly! Thanks.
I didn’t know I had the power to trigger a single troll and his multiple personalities.
Happy birthday Caitlin and i look forward to reading more of your works
From little things Big things grow
Kind Regards
Jupiter
Everything you want the world to be is everything the oligarchs don’t want it to be, so that pretty much makes you enemy number one to them. And, then I need to ask; how many powerless people do get to ruthlessly murder before you pretty much give up any right to be considered, ‘human’? And, I can’t even begin to mention the worse of it that you don’t even know about.
Ultimate reality as science and spirit meeting inside the eternal is the evolutionary inevitable destination of every human soul. Whether it comes very, very soon or years from now, true and forever peace on Earth will become achieved and established, and there is nothing any individual soul can do to stop that eventuality from manifestation.
“Carry on, my wayward daughter/son; there will be peace when you are done.”
And nothing we must do to make it so apart from weave meaningless sentences.
I had always assumed ultimate reality would be magic and mind meeting inside the temporal.
I can’t believe you’ve only been doing this for 3 years. Thank you Caitlin. You give me hope in a world that I sometimes despair Of! Take a day off and have a wonderful birthday.
“I also oppose antisemitism in all its forms…”
I think all people of empathy agree that discrimination based on race, religion, gender, etc. is wrong and damaging, but the ruling sociopaths know we feel that way. They naturally see the enormous utility in using our distaste for discrimination as a tool to manipulate us. The program to stamp out antisemitism is precisely what is driving most of the censorship occurring on the Internet this past year, and it is also the tip of the spear meant to undermine freedom of speech. Antisemitism, meaning discrimination against Jews only, is being used by the ruling sociopaths as a proxy for being anti-sociopath, or anti-criminal. Imagine the crime organizations of the world brainwashing humanity, via controlled narrative, into believing that it is wrong to discriminate against criminals based on their wayward behavior! The ruling sociopaths have essentially pulled this off with their psy-op to eliminate antisemitism. This is a natural fit, since the ruling sociopaths are closely tied to the Jews. Many of them are of Jewish descent and allegiance, like the Rothschilds who control the central banks of the world and started Israel specifically for Jews (that in itself is highly discriminatory). Most, if not all, of Israel’s leaders have not only been sociopaths, but also loyal members of the ruling sociopaths’ private cabal. This is no accident as the Rothschilds maintain tight control over their creation of Israel, a private for-profit nation much like the Federal Reserve is a private for-profit central bank. Israel is used by the ruling sociopaths like a bullhorn that broadcasts the accusations of antisemitism against all opponents of the sociopaths’ goal of global domination and control. This goal has been test marketed against the Palestinians for several decades now, with hopes to expand the program to Israel’s neighbors, such as Syria and Iran, which has already started.
Your typical Khazarian “jew” is NOT a semite, the Palestinians are, however.
I am subscribed to your email list. I have to admit though, that I almost never read your stuff. I am going to change that . Thanks for caring about America, we don’t really deserve it, but I too believe that we can be better.
what’s the deal with Zach Haller?
The Orientals say that the weakest day you will have every year is on your birthday. Conversely the strongest day every year is the date you were conceived. Happy Birthday Ms Caitlin! May the Heavens Bless and Keep You and your Loved Ones!
I’m in your corner, Caitlin (ref. chart) and and take a day off to celebrate your Birth Anniversary.
Everyone only gets one birthday, you know.
“money is a made-up conceptual construct whose only value is given to it by the will of the collective; the only reason a dollar is worth what it’s worth is because we as a collective have agreed to pretend that that’s true.”
A truth I came to after failing to find a cogent explanation of “money” while obtaining a degree in economics. Schools of economics hide this and other other important economic truths – those which might guide us to a better future for humanity and our fellow life-forms while circling the sun on our shared wet rock.
why should you try so hard to defend yourself??? are you under threats and pressure?? of course you have been…. which only means that you are a very effective writer. you have established yourself a public figure in three short years. do not be afraid to speak your mind. i hope to see you stand your ground, and have faith in your readers and supporters.
4. I see propaganda as the primary obstacle to ending the oligarchic empire.
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Couldn’t agree more, Caitlin, could not agree more, however, there is phenomenal propaganda used in 9/11 that you are missing and is extremely helpful to understand because, seemingly, you are still stuck in the ludicrous hypothesis that 9/11 wasn’t a “straight up and down terrorist attack” when there is absolutely zero evidence for it being any kind of terrorist attack at all. 9/11 was – similar to many, many other events but on a much grander scale and involving propaganda very specifically targeted at skeptics of the preposterous official story – something completely different from a “terrorist attack”.
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This is my three-part hypothesis that I provide evidence for and I defy anyone to present a skerrick of evidence to contradict it.
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1. In essence, similar to the ludicrous just-before-the-election London Bridge event happening now but on a much grander scale, 9/11 was a massive Full-Scale Anti-Terrorist Exercise comprising smaller exercises and drills where the only major realities of the day was damage to and destruction of buildings. The plane crashes were faked and death and injury were staged. This was pushed out globally by the media with massive fanfare.
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2. Masses of propaganda has been targeted at those studying 9/11 to distract them from the essential simplicity of the event — and especially to keep them persuaded of the death and injury lie.
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3. While snowing us with propaganda, they have inserted loads of gratuitous anomalies into their story above and beyond the Emperor’s New Clothes facts that 500,000-ton steel frame skyscrapers do not crash to the ground from fire and 200-ton airliners do not penetrate those buildings like a knife through butter.
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Evidence
1. Many drills and exercises were conducted on 9/11 and when you look at the injured for 9/11 they all look “drill injured” or otherwise not convincingly injured. There is not a single convincing image of an injured person. We also have to wonder how 6,000 people were injured in such an event. We would expect any people in the buildings to be killed with only the smallest number of survivors. How were 6,000 people injured (and it’s never been explained) – certainly the photos we’re shown do not suggest such a number. The plane crashes were obviously faked and we can see this from a number of angles: lack of evidence of the flights themselves, witness testimony not clear, lack of wreckage and evidence of fakery in the video footage. There is absolutely zero to support real plane crashes. So the only clear evidence we have is the buildings. That happened – but, of course, not by fire but by controlled demolition. I have pages on fakery of plane crashes and staging of death and injury at link below.
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/11.html
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2. We get loads and loads of stuff on Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, what exactly brought the buildings down – nanothermite, thermite, thermate, nuclear, directed energy weapons, etc, was it plane, missile, military jet, etc, etc, etc. We also get loads on the actual truth of controlled demolition. Yes! The truth can be used as propaganda. It’s all about focus. Have all the truthers running round like headless chickens over the Emperor’s New Clothes controlled demolition to keep them diverted from the key lie of 9/11: 3,000 people died and 6,000 were injured. This is the staggering fact of propaganda that most people do not realise. The truth can be used as propaganda. See my blog post 9/11: Controlled demolition as propaganda
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/blog/911-controlled-demolition-as-propaganda
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The point is that no matter which countries collaborated – and wouldn’t you know it – our own Little Johnny had front row seats for the event in the Big Apple (between the Tampa affair in August and the SIEV 4 in October was another oh-so-very convenient event for the November 2001 election, 9/11) – US officials did the rubber-stamping. They are the ones responsible, worry about the collaborators later. Of course, all the distraction is to make out that 9/11 was a massive, unwieldy, complicated, impossible-to-penetrate affair which it was in some ways but basically as stated in Part 1 of the hypothesis it was actually pretty simple in terms of what happened on the day: loads of exercises and drills, building damage and collapse by controlled means, fakery of planes, staging of death and injury (which actually could have occurred earlier and was simply pushed out by the media on 9/11), massive fanfare by media.
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3. Gratuitous anomalies and giveaways – nose cone of second plane popping out the other side of the South tower, owner of WTC-7, Larry Silverstein, saying he said to “pull it”, newscaster asking emergency responder, “Can you confirm it was No 7 that just went in?” (“went in” and “pull it” are both terms used in controlled demolition) … and many more.
For more on how they TELL us what they’re up to (despite snowing us in propaganda) see:
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/they-tell-us-clearly.html
That may be true, but it is also irrelevant. What is the best outcome of proving beyond a shadow of a doubt 9/11 was a false flag? A different set of oligarchs running the show. That’s it. That’s all you get. Bragging points and absolutely no change in the aristocratic order. To me, that sounds more like a distraction. Hang the ruling class first, then we’ll go through their papers and find out what they knew and when they knew it.
Happy birthday, Caitlin!
I’ve been appreciating your work a lot for a while now, but I’m not in a position to contribute financially. Your mentioning your birthday prompts me to offer to gift you and Tim with horoscopes if you like – a synastry chart for relationships is particularly insightful and useful, I think. Helps a lot if you know your birth times!
On an unrelated topic, are you aware of the book Not-Two IS Peace? I think it is the most important single guide to where we all need to go. You can check it out here: https://www.da-peace.org/
Thanks for all your great work!
Paul
Hah! just as I suspected
We are on the same place on the political spectrum chart. I think you are probably a georgist/geo-libertarian but just don’t know it yet. If you have time after blogging I urge you to look into these ideas as it will hugely enrich your understanding of the world and add an economic aspect to your analysis.
Caitlin, I found you this year and subscribed right away. You are brilliant. Happy birthday! Many blessings in this new journey around the sun!
“3. I see the US-centralized oligarchic empire as the primary enemy of human thriving.”
I stand with you, Caitlin, if you said nothing else. If we all understood this, in depth, we would be after the cowardly oligarchs without restraint. Their evilness masks their secret fear that we are coming for them one day, when “collectively” we have had enough. I believe that day is coming soon, when they have perpetrated their last horrific abuse against us at home and abroad. The use of nukes against China or Russia or Iran? Another perpetrated 9-11? When we are all sick and dying from 5G? What will it take for all of us to rise up against the fascist regime running and destroying this country, along with everyone else’s? WW3? For certain, the US will be everyone’s target.
Nice! Count me in!
Awesome
I believe you should spend some time looking into what gives the dollar it’s value. The fact everyone needs to purchase and sell their hydro-carbons exclusively in dollars, explains Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Russia, Iran, China and Turkey better than a collective agreement.
Of course, the simple and at least partial answer to why Saddam Hussein was taken out was that he advocated selling oil for a currency other than dollars. When the world no longer needs dollars for oil, US economic domination is threatened.
The same reason underlies why the US under Obama and H. Clinton orchestrated the catastrophic destruction of Libya and killing of Moammar Ghaddafi.
Let’s be clear US Economic Domination is definitely due to the Petrol Dollar system. Living in a country that has an extremely overvalued premier world reserve currency has been harmful to the poor, middleclass and everyone but the .1% and their hired servants here in the US.
Much of the Rest of the World is doing what they can to change the system. Today there are several exchange systems that by-pass the SWIFT system involving the dollar.
Russia has three major natural gas pipelines coming on-line in the next few months, Nordstream II, Turkstream and the Siberian Pipeline, all of these will sell for alternate currencies. If Russia and the Ukraine make peace, Russia and the Ukraine could supply Europe with even more natural gas selling in Euros. This is why Russia is being demonized.
Peace in North/South Korea would allow a crude oil and natural gas pipelines connecting Russia with Korea selling in an alternate currency.
China created in Singapore the Petrol Yuan bourse that will bypass Wall Street and London’s monopoly on selling hydro-carbons. The Petrol Yuan is rapidly gaining market share.
The other factor giving the dollar it’s overvaluation is opium and that opium exclusively sells in dollars. Fentanyl is made in a lab and doesn’t require opiates to manufacture. US will probably leave Afghanistan next year because of Fentanyl.
Looks like the Petrol Dollar system is coming to an end in the next year or two. I would think the folks running things in the US would understand the situation.
Happy Birthday⚘
Happy New Year
Thanks for that
Welcome To The Potemkin Village Of Washington Power
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/welcome-potemkin-village-washington-power
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“What American constitutional government most urgently needs at present is for our Madisonian institutions – the presidency, the Congress, and the courts – to wrest back control of national security policy from an unelected and increasingly rogue national security establishment. ”
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“That ominous challenge to constitutionalism was on full display with the recent op-ed piece in the New York Times by retired Admiral William McRaven, in which he brashly warned that unless Trump jumped aboard the Forever War bandwagon, he must be removed, and “the sooner the better.” The U.S. must have a policy, McRaven said, that protects “the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Rohingyas, the South Sudanese and the millions of people under the boot of tyranny.
How did we get to the point where a former senior military officer calls for the removal of a duly elected president because he doesn’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Rohingyas? McRaven’s op-ed represents something new in American politics: the assertion that an elected president is illegitimate unless he works to spread our “ideals of universal freedom and equality” through military action and alliances.
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McRaven also argued that it is “the American military…the intelligence and law enforcement community, the State Department and the press,” all unelected institutions, that now embody the true American civic religion and protect its “ideals.”