Propaganda is so advanced that rank-and-file members of the public will openly cheerlead their government’s imprisonment of Assange so that their government can continue to lie to them.
~
The focus shouldn’t just be on bad things done by individual plutocrats – Gates did X, Bezos did Y etc. The primary focus should be on how we shouldn’t have a system which allows any individual to have that much power over our world. No individual should have that much power to do that much harm.
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You couldn’t create a more perfect profit-generating scheme than war. Entire civilizations can be streamlined into the task of cranking out top-of-the-line, name-brand killing machines at the drop of a false flag. War will continue as long as human behavior is driven by profit.
~
If you want more of something, apply capitalism; if you want less of something, apply socialism. Capitalism is great for making a ton of stuff, but for making less stuff it’s shit, whether that be making less illness, less pollution, less ecocide, less war, less prisoners, etc. Right now we live in a world that needs a great reduction of a great many things, and there’s just no way to get there as long as human behavior is driven by profit.
This is obviously true of things like healthcare, where actually eliminating illness kills demand. But it’s also true of even things like charity programs, where if you actually fix the problem people are throwing money at then a lot of professionals lose their income sources. You’ve got to actually incentivize people to disappear the problems, but capitalism doesn’t have an effective way of disappearing things. It necessarily incentivizes people to perpetuate them.
This is just common sense business practice that anyone who’s ever run a business should understand. If you make products, your goal is to create and sell as many products as possible. If you sell services, your goal is to create as many clients as possible. So if your business is war machinery, you will necessarily be incentivized to lobby for as many wars as possible. If your business is medicine, you will be incentivized to keep as many sick people around as possible. As long as we’re motivated by profit, such things persist.
Trying to consume our way out of our current predicament is like trying to eat your way into weight loss.
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“That’s not real capitalism!” is not an intelligent response to leftist criticisms of our current approach to money and profit as a motivator of human behavior, it’s just playing pedantic word games. Nobody cares if you feel like your pet word is being mistreated. Address the damn argument.
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In the debate about “cancel culture” it’s important to remember that the rank-and-file public yelling that someone has shit opinions is completely different from powerful media-controlling plutocrats deciding who does and does not get a voice. These two separate things should not be conflated.
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If cancel culture could keep John Bolton from ever having a job more prestigious than cleaning bathrooms I would embrace it with all my heart.
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I don’t like talking about this, but what the hell is the point of the US Green Party if it’s going to run candidates that aren’t disruptive to mainstream establishment narratives? It looks like the whole strategy this year is to avoid confrontation and controversy at all cost.
If you actually want to be the party of change, you must not only be unafraid of controversy and conflict, you must actively seek it out. Nothing about the status quo deserves to be coddled or left undisrupted. The whole machine needs to be forcibly exposed in front of everyone.
Obviously Hawkins will be overall better on policy than anyone else on the ballot. I’m not disputing that. He will also refuse to aggressively attack the mainstream candidates and force himself into the mainstream conversation. He’ll play a small target and let them ignore him.
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Liberals hate leftists because leftists are a constant reminder that liberals aren’t what they pretend to be.
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Liberals often say “Have you read the Mueller report??” as a way of arguing that there was some legitimacy to the Russian collusion narrative. Funny thing is they themselves have never read it, or they’d know that narrative had no legitimacy. They just read bullshit pundits said about it.
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I feel like in all the fuss about Jesus we too often overlook the fact that the empire which became the backbone of western culture was so sociopathic and sadistic that it had a policy of nailing dissidents to pieces of wood and leaving them to die slow, torturous deaths.
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The Catholic Church getting corporate welfare is the most 2020 thing ever.
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The most important job of a parent is to help their child make their mistakes as safely, as quickly, and with as little trauma as possible.
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Anyone who’s done real inner work knows it’s seldom comfortable when subconscious things become conscious. There’s a reason that stuff was kept out of consciousness in the first place. This is true of large-scale collective movements into consciousness as well. It’s awkward, and it ain’t pretty.
~
My pet conspiracy theory is that the world is conspiring to awaken the human species into a healthy relationship with its newly evolved capacity for abstract thought.
_____________________
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93 responses to “Propaganda Brainwashing, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”
Well here you are knock, knock, knocking at the doors, yet nobody answers, they cannot hear you as they are all sitting in front of the mind numbing T.V., with their little magic boxes and the earplugs in their ears. The perfect tool for mind control is here now. The people would be terrified if they were to be removed, why they might have to sit quietly for five minutes and observe the thought process of their own minds; horror’s, God forbid that should happen…..We dare not let Real Life intrude into our fantasy world, why we might feel inclined to (Gasp) take some action. There is some hope when the people take to the streets. Of course the government cannot allow people to effect (Gasp) change, so wherever you see a peaceful protest take place watch them send in the agitators to break windows, set fires, thus allowing the so-called peaceful protest to be called a riot, and then the tear gas flies, the stun grenades are launched and arrests are made, heads are thumped with those wonderful billy clubs, what fun! What I think it will take to effect any change at all is for millions of people to take to the streets, water in hand and porta-potties on site and just sit down in the damn streets and be prepared to spend days there, maybe crews set up to provide food. And believe me, it will take many millions of us out there all sotto voce of one voice. I do not see that happening anytime soon, but one always has hope……
somebody hs to go first…step out the door….
“That’s not real capitalism!” is not an intelligent response”
Its impossible to create a society with large concentrations of wealth without the wealthy controlling the state in a conspiritorial way.
If the world wants to be free of all manufactured dis-ease.
To be free of all fear, lockdowns and individual violence controlled and directed by the State.
Then politicians should disappear entirely from this planet.
They are the enemies of humanity.
Humanity has to be freed from their chains and their presence.
Humanity is a victim of these power seekers, mad people whose only ambition in life is their ego.
The whole of politics is nothing but an ego game.
The politician is not interested in solving problems, they are interested in making them as complex as possible.
So they become absolutely essential, you need them always.
The politician is very cunning, they are not clever.
They substitute cunningness for cleverness.
They are not wise, because to be wise in this world is to be condemned by the masses and the politician cannot afford that.
The whole of politics depends on lies.
They want to keep you always afraid of hidden enemies.
The coronavirus crisis is a great example of this, to keep every country locked down in fear and permanent crisis.
Adolf Hitler has written in his autobiography:
“Unless you have enemies, you cannot become a great leader.
Even if you don’t have enemies, create the fiction that your country is in danger, because when people are afraid they are ready to become slaves.
When people are afraid they are ready to follow politicians.”
Although he was an insane person, once in a while he made statements which are very significant.
Beware.
Become aware!
In your fear is the politicians power.
The more they make you afraid, the more powerful they are.
Outside the country they go on creating fictions, and inside the country they also continue.
Until they remove all of your freedoms.
These are the politicians who don’t want to be interfered with, who want absolute control of humanity, where nobody is above them.
Is nobody interested in human life?
Continuously around the world people are still believing Covid 19 to be more dangerous than seasonal flu?
Is nobody interested in finding out what our priorities should be?
Politicians certainly need exposure because as far as I can see, if politicians are exposed completely, humanity, for the first time, will be able to be free from politics.
Wherever there is domination, there is politics.
Politicians are dominating all of your life not only from outside but from inside.
Through propaganda and psychology they have become your voice, they have become your mind, they have become your conscience, they have enslaved your very being.
From inside they go on dominating you, saying what is right, what is wrong.
If you follow them, you start feeling fearful, divided, neurotic, because you are not following your own nature.
All these politicians have created for humanity is a situation in which individuals cannot be at ease, they cannot enjoy life, they cannot live it in its totality.
Let humanity be free from all these sociopathic criminals which have dominated so badly, and distorted human nature so immensely.
You can see the humanity that is the result.
You say that a tree is known by its fruits.
If that is true, and that is true, then your whole past should be judged by the humanity that you find today.
This insane, divided humanity, miserable, suffering, full of anger, violence, rage, hate.
This is the result of all your political leaders.
Remember, humanity is just a collective name.
There exists no humanity, only individuals.
Don’t depend on anybody else to save you, only your own work on yourself can do that.
Individuals have to be politically free, free in every dimension to function out of their own still small voice, out of their own consciousness.
Intelligence is never out of the mind.
Intelligence is not the quality of the mind at all.
Mind is blocking the fountain of intelligence like a rock.
Intelligence arises only when the mind has been discarded.
When the mind has been put aside, only then intelligence arises.
Mind is always mediocre, mind is always stupid, unintelligent.
To be in the mind is to be unintelligent.
To be beyond the mind is to be intelligent.
All meditation is the search for this intelligence.
That is the real revolution.
https://whenwardisappears.wordpress.com/
Thanks for this insight, Caitlin — “If you want more of something, apply capitalism; if you want less of something, apply socialism.” For those of us who prefer to live our lives beyond the rigid dictates of any absolute system, be it capitalism, socialism, Marxism, libertarianism, authoritarianism, fascism, totalitarianism, anarchism, or any other -ism (except maybe populism), your suggestion of a dash of this and a dash of that, as required by circumstance, could work out pretty well for everyone. The goal would be peace, freedom, and the means to satisfy our material, social, aesthetic, intellectual and spiritual needs without harming or depriving others.
Agreed. Good insight. Hopefully will clarify things moving forward. (So long as we don’t get hung up on what “capitalsim” and “socialism” means)
URONG.
The socio-economic system of voluntary exchange is distorted, perverted, and exploited by corrupt power structures (public and private) that are hell bent on absolute wealth concentration. However, that fact does not change the fundamental fairness that exist in a system of self-determination and personal choice.
Contrary to progressive (leftist) ideology, there never will be a sustainable human organization at scale that rewards life based on some arbitrary determination of fairness and need. What mythical benefactor would supply that essential production required for all human life, the state? The state has nothing to give anyone that it doesn’t first take (by force) from someone else.
From what source of moral authority does one group of people derive the right to command another group of people to labor and supply for its’ needs (or wants)? What if an industrious group of people wanted to work and produce only enough to meet their needs, and then work no further? What then? Does the unproductive group (through their democratically elected representatives) have the moral right to violently attack and expropriate the production of the industrious group?
No sustainable system of human organization has ever existed absent individual initiative, creative effort, and productive consumption. If we don’t produce our food, exchange something of value for our food, or beg for our food, the only way we can eat is by violent conquest and expropriation, i.e. the state. It doesn’t matter what we call a particular form of social-political-economic human organization at scale–communism, capitalism, socialism, et. al.– every human organization at scale is violent, corrupt and exploitative. For those who want to live peacefully according to the dictates of our own conscience, provide for our personal needs through initiative and independent effort, and to be left alone, there are only two options–we will fight to live free, or we will die under the yoke of oppression.
Only a person with the mind of a slave would submit to the will of a 51% voting majority? Two wolves and one sheep voting on the dinner menu is not a sustainable model for peaceful human co-existence and prosperous development.
No egalitarian human condition can be achieved at scale in a multi-cultural collective (regardless of the social-economic-political label it adopts). The closest we could ever get would be a micro-scale society where the entire population voluntarily subscribed to a moral code that is guided–not by racial or religious identity; not by politics; not by ideological labels; and not by jingoistic slogans and flags–but, by an informed personal conviction and choice regarding the accepted moral code. In other words, freedom of association based on clearly defined, immutable common values. If you reject the code, then you leave. Period.
In this hypothetical micro-scale human organization no superficial identity would be recognized, only the moral “rightness” of a commonly accepted moral code based on peaceful, voluntary, co-existence and self-defense. Native American and Asian cultures maintained variants of this social order for thousands of years before they were overwhelmed by rapacious external power structures. Through voluntary cooperation and mutual support, the universally accepted moral code can produce peaceful, charitable, creative and constructive advancement of the species–but, only for a time. Ultimately, the darkness that resides in the human condition will choose violence and exploitation, over truth, justice and peace.
Maximum human freedom can exist only when power structures (public and private) are severely constrained and controlled by a dominant moral code, a code that tightly regulates money creation, prohibits the leverage of debt, and strictly limits the concentration of unearned wealth. The moral code must place the pursuit of truth and justice above all else in society, and enforce the law against violent aggression, financial corruption, and the theft of private property (including wage labor). The minute that unearned wealth is allowed to concentrate, it will exploit the weak and devour the culture.
For ambitious ideologues left and right, power is the single objective. The levers of unearned wealth provide the means. Every nation state in the world is a collaboration of ideological capitalists and communists. They’re all whores plying their trade in the same brothel, just serving customers with different preferences.
Time for an economic lesson. All economies are “capitalist”, the differences being who controls the capital. Currently, the capital is being controlled by the bank cartel. They have instituted a monetary system that punishes delayed gratification, aka saving, and rewards constant acquisition, aka debt. Any one with two or more brain cells that get along should easily determine that the former encourages thoughtful behavior, while the latter encourages frantic behavior. Of course one must USE those two or more brain cells for other than how many likes they get on their antisocial media page in their world viewed through a 3″X 5″ screen.
Hope you see and have time to read this Caitlin
https://risingtidefoundation.net/2020/07/11/prometheus-and-america-the-true-story-of-the-american-system-by-anton-chaitkin/
URGENT information for WOMAN! MASK TESTS PROVE TOXIC FOR CHILDREN!
WHY THE HELL IS THE GOVERNMENT & MSM, HIDING THIS INFORMATION
“Glyphosate Linked To Aggressive Breast Cancer, Alarming Generational Changes In Offspring, New Studies Find”
https://thehighwire.com/glyphosate-linked-to-aggressive-breast-cancer-alarming-generational-changes-in-offspring-new-studies-find/
https://thehighwire.com/mask-test-proves-toxic-for-children/
Del Bigtree gives a lot of important true information. He proved oxygen depletion on his own son wearing a mask, live on camera.
WAR is on our doorstep, and Australian’s are NOW going to become a TARGET for destruction by China and or Russia, maybe even North Korea.
We ALL may thank the current neo-con facist pig called Morrison, one of the gutter rats in this little facist club for cock suckers and whores alike, it does not matter, Labor, Liberal, they both have sold their souls and the Australian people, down the drain!
The cock sucker Morrison whore, working FOR the Cabal, (and not the Australian taxpayers), has decided to aline with the GLOBALIST WAR MONGRELS, the UN, IMF, ICC, along with all the rest.
Morrison has decided Australian doesn’t need good wholesome jobs, so we should all build missile systems as slave labor, very similar to the present day I would say, and go and kill innocent men women and children in another country because the US an Allies want their oil and resources, for free. And they don”t give a fuck if its a Sovereign Country or not, after all they have the fire power to destroy Nations, and they DO!
Who has China waged war on? China like Russia, believes in mutual benefit through dialog, that is how they gained trade in Australia, how they have gained elsewhere with other Nations. It has NOT been by brute force, as has been the case with the US, UK, FR and Israel, whom use and breed terrorism with the intent of causing kaos, death and destruction before an invasion, because they didn’t get what they want, they are nothing but cheap nasty thugs, that NEED to be removed from world, and taken to the other, or we could put them in a jetliner and throw them out at 30,000 ft! Something I would certainly support!
https://citizensparty.org.au/magnitsky-sanctions-shadowed-war-profiteers
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/07/12/629470/US-Daesh-terrorist-group-imperial-agenda-Stephen-Lendman
The two men cruxified next to Jesus deserve more print! Sure, Jesus was a radical; but we all know what happens to radicals. The other two? They were nailed to their crosses for petty theft.
Not petty theft. The Greek text says those two were brigands. Rebels often robbed traders and travelers crossing mountain passes to provide for their livelihood and to provide the means to carry out acts of terrorism against Roman soldiers.
Perhaps I am misremembering––the source of my memory is way gone. But there are some things in need of a little clarification.
One, what is this Greek text to which you refer? In my hasty research I was not able to find this mysterious text let alone translate it.
Two, the Wikipedias pages to Dismas and Gestas seem fairly well sourced, which includes the only passage that details the “criminals,” from Luke 23-39:43 (apparently they were only obliquely mentioned in the gospels of John, Matthew, and Mark). There is no mention of rebels or brigands (translation?), only criminals and thieves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penitent_thief
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impenitent_thief
Crucifixion was a particularly gruesome punishment inflicted under Roman law only on non-citizens convicted of insurrection or of capital murder. We may not think much of Romans today but our inheritance from them is the rule of law. Not necessarily just laws, same then as now.
Rome was not in Judea for plunder – it had barely a subsistence economy and the temple priesthood were already taxing peasants to the hilt – but because of its strategic location on the overland corridor to the immense riches of Africa and Asia, and as a buffer state to Rome’s most dangerous military rival, the aggressive Parthian Empire to the northeast. Pompey the Great had secured the flyspeck kingdom for Rome a century before Jesus almost as an afterthought, to safeguard his army’s rear on the advance to his primary military objective.
Donald Trump Jr traveled to Mongolia last year to hunt argali, the largest wild sheep in the world. The sheep are a protected species under Mongolian law, and internationally listed as “near-threatened” by world agencies.
American taxpayers paid 60,000 pounds so the Prince could go hunt an endangered species. The Prince of course required elaborate protection while he was hunting. It would of course be a shame if a royal hunter was ever at any risk.
The Trump’s must go.
The story has gained publicity because the evil American dentist who murdered Cecil the Lion a few years ago has been busted for paying 80,000 pounds to kill one of the same endangered species.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/walter-palmer-cecil-lion-hunt-ram-sheep-mongolia-a9613856.html
Remember, if you hate animals, people and the entire planet Earth, please don’t vote for Biden.
If you love animals, people, and the entire planet Earth, the Trump’s must be defeated.
I am a poet: i propagandize the Truth. I’d lie for a kinder, gentler nation, better than Geo Bush Sr. did…
i advertise empathy.
i strive to really feel the pain of people everywhere, of economic fascism and environment disaster capitalism.
i cannot tell a lie for love. i only cry for it.
i sweep my mind clear of ambition every morning and every night but it keeps roiling though and out my brain into my vocal musings.
i need an agent tough and cold-hearted as a hitman or warrior-femme, who can squeeze my words into the commonweal.
i would tell her she’s sweet for fighting my fight for my financial future…a little white lie…if i make it.
i used to steal second. knock the ball. away and go to third.
some of us were born on 3rd and thought they hit a triple.
some of us shoot animals the likes of which we may never see again. i killed a squirrel once. i still regret it. decades later. with a bat. don’t eat bat!
i dodged Nam. my #1 accomplishment. i followed Socrates and had a daughter (he said son) built a house and wrote a book. it’s called VAGO which is Tramp in English. it’s about the kind of virus that we can count on like a guard god to kill other viral invaders.
we have them inside us already. maybe vaccines are passe. we shall see.
i’m gonna give it away. pretty soon. i don’t care anymore. there is no future for selfishness. AynRand had a “flaw in her wold view.”
WE are gonna need a Basic Minimum Income TORN from the bank accounts of the AMerd Rican shit-rich US A-holes of the Upper 10,000. Or people will starve. And/Or get very very cold at night.
do the shitrich feel their pain?
no. they only want more.
Lots of propaganda here.
Yip there is and these folks still believe the mainstream media news( and this blog) about the CIA media celeb agent Assange !
Assange and Private Manning are national heroes: the gov’t lies are growing more voluminous and outrageous than ever before.
Wikileaks is the only way to stop them. the police are a frat rat gang of thugs! GED’s notwithstanding.
We’d be lucky to get a real investigation from the FBI. who’s gonna investigate the local police. without a few leaks we’re all in the dark.
without cell phone videos we’d be blind to it.
black boys got too much firepower. In Chicago they killed 14 and hit 1-4 over Father’s day weekend.
in Atlanta they carry AR-15s and shot a 8 year old black girl. she dead. they were black like her.
police are insane. but still they keep their jobs. black boys are insane also, but they might never had a job.
Covid is bad but not that bad.
black boy, 22 beats up black boy 19 on BART, rapid transit, with a baseball bat for looking at him because he was wearing a “scream” mask….two days ago. they caught him. he pled not guilty. there were several witnesses, and he was still wearing the mask. this whole thig reminds me of Blade Runner. or the Dark Ages.
religion is stuck preaching to the choir.
gov’t is stuck screamin’ out for war.
i am stuck writing down the score
what you stuck for? you want more.
Like today, Roman officials impaled anyone who opposed their oppressive empire, including Jesus, the Great Liberator and 11 of His Ambassadors. For 1700 years their revolutionary message and strategies have been twisted, corrupted by translation errors and/or hidden by the Roman Catholic church, the mother of abominations. His name “Yeshua” (translated Jesus in Greek) derives from the Hebrew word meaning LIBERATOR. He said: “I am way, the TRUTH and the life…..If you remain in my message, you will know the truth and the truth will liberate you.” Liberation starts in the mind and will eventually end in revolutionary action. But His message and tactics are so brilliant, exceptional and powerful that this is way above the mental abilities even for highly intelligent and well-educated people who fail to grasp what he said and meant.
If his message and tactics are so brilliant, then why is it that his religion died within the first few hundred years. It has now been replaced with a religion that despises everything that Jesus tried to teach. For a long, long time, Christians have brought forth upon the world torture, despair, war, evil businesses and the only people Christians seem to honor these days are the moneychangers in the temple that the real Jesus took a horsewhip too.
I’d say at this point, Jesus’ message and tactics have been an utter failure.
Its my belief that this is the reason why so many in the world believe that God is Dead.
Because, God gave up on humanity and this world after she let her son try one last gasp attempt to see if he could save humanity. That humans nailed him to the cross and now use his name for murder and torture and spitting upon the needy was too much for God to stand, so she left a long, long time ago.
Jesus also said only a few will be saved through the narrow gate. His message is not dead just largely ignored.
His Message is like a treasure trove buried in a field. When someone finds it they bury it again and sell their possessions so that they can buy the field. The Secrets of God’s Kingdom cannot be published or else our oppressors will find out and counteract the tactics we will use to subvert and conquer the military-industrial-complex.
“…in all the fuss about Jesus we too often overlook the fact that the empire which became the backbone of western culture was so sociopathic and sadistic that it had a policy of nailing dissidents to pieces of wood and leaving them to die slow, torturous deaths.”
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They had no choice. They had to send a message, right? “Go against The System and this is what you can expect, sucka”. What’s additionally sociopathic and sadistic is that religious organizations that profess to be followers of Jesus have no trouble nailing dissidents to whatever happens to be around if they go against their Entrenched Religious Human Doctrines and Creeds Dressed Up As If They Were Divine.
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“The Catholic Church getting corporate welfare is the most 2020 thing ever.”
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That organization plays a great service to The Empire. It keeps the “faithful” occupied with ritual and ancient ideas and keeps their attention averted from current-day evils being done all around them both inside and outside their sanctuaries. They have earned their welfare checks. The money to pay big judgments against misbehaving priests has to come from somewhere, right? Let’s do what we always do. Bill the AMERICAN TAXPAYERS. What, you don’t think That Church has issues? Read what Martin Luther had to say a long damn time ago about them. He’d have a field-day writing about them today.
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Actually, the most 2020 thing ever will happen in November when a group of Americans will vote for an ego posing as a man while believing they are saving the nation, while another group of Americans will vote for an empty suit posing as a presidential candidate and thinking THEY are saving the nation while all the while they are ALL contributing to the ongoing United States Going Out Of Business Sale.
Psychopath-in-chief, Donald Trump, is a prime example of many Christians. Their only excuse is that they have been totally indoctrinated and now they are puppets of bigger psychopaths.
Howie Hawkins is a Russiagater, prima facie evidence that he’s just, another apologist for empire.
You talk about msms propaganda mind programming then you use it quoting msms info and news on the media Celebrity CIA Agent Assange’s alleged imprisonment.
Then you go on about msms memes lies programming, anti capitalism( we don’t have it or a free market), abstract conceptual thinking which is older than dirt then a bunch of (ego) us v them hate speech.
Is that the ultimate mind programming.
Thats why the oligarchy use alt right sites like these to mind program all your unsuspecting woke followers.
The lack of inner peace creates war.
And a good example of ego mind based people without peace…why you’ve created in your mind your own enemies, that is a war.
“the media Celebrity CIA Agent Assange’s alleged imprisonment.”
You signal right away that your mind is full of bullshit, then proceed to deepen the mess of confusion. Do you really believe anyone who is a regular reader of this site is dumb enough to buy your ignorant allegations?
That is a rhetorical question mike.
They do believe msm (and Caitlin) about Agent Assange.
Let the truth be revealed
Amen
Yeah Jane its shocking how everyone here, or at least the shills, just believe everything the media tells them about CIA Agent Assange and Wikileaks the CIA’s honeypot for whistle blowers. And they follow a cia agent media celebrity as though he’s a hero!
This is a mind programming site as people turned off mainstream and moved to alt right blogs . Thats why you get the same memes embedded repeated over anti America, pro Russia, anti capitalist (when there is no such concept), Ciatlin is pro cia Agent Assange, I’m a victim, and then some pseudo spiritual lingo thrown in for the ” woke” followers.
I’ve never been able to determine how much of what Gates does is beneficial and how much is not. That said, I do agree that no one should have as much power to control as he and Bezos do.
The difference is that it is not obvious whether or not Gates is a criminal, while it is clear to me that Bezos is. Since I cannot have him arrested, I boycott ever business that Bezos owns or with which he is affiliated.
There is so much in this article that is spot on that I cannot comment on it completely, so will share it and urge others to read it for themselves.
I find Bezos to be a ruthless capitalist like many in his past. Evil, no. Gates on the other hand is a closet eugenics supporter just as is father before him who was far more open with his beliefs. Such people are a danger to all humanity.
I never paid attention to Gates until now. This article on The Gray Zone a few days ago was quite eye opening:
“Why the Bill Gates global health empire promises more empire and less public health”
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/07/08/bill-gates-global-health-policy/
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I suspect Gates was an actual expert on exactly one thing, and having a billion dollars makes you love the smell of your own farts. Now he thinks he’s an expert on everything, and he thinks it’s fine for himself to be in charge of so many people without their consent. I think he’s super dangerous, and a prime example of why what Caitlin said was right – that we need a system that doesn’t allow billionaires to make the rules.
I’m reading “Stillwell in China” by the excellent historian and writer Barbara Tuchman.
In the early chapters, describing as she describes the history or both the Stillwell family and China, she manages to catch in one paragraph the hypocracy of America which existed even in the 19th century.
“As the predatory spirit sharpened, talk of the partition of China was increasingly heard, causing an
agony of concern to the United States, caught between hunger and principle.
America in the flush of post-Civil War boom had joined in the exploitation of China without
compromising her scruples against taking territory. In 1898 this combination of profit and principle was
elevated to a doctrine of foreign policy by John Hay. Called the Open Door (though not by him), it
managed to sound generous, high-minded and somehow protective of China while meaning, if
anything at all, that the door for penetration should be opened equally to everybody. ”
—————-
America at that time thought of itself as a radical democracy in a world of monarchs. It thus did claim to have a belief against taking territory by force. Except ….. if one looks at America of this time, almost all of it had been taken by force. California and the Southwest had been seized from Mexico during the Mexican-American war. The Southeast had been taken by force in the misnamed Civil War. The Midwest and Northwest had been taken from Indian tribes in a series of Indian wars. Even if one adopts the strange morals of Europeans that the rest of the world is their oyster just waiting to have someone come and ‘civilize’ them and thus discount the Indian Wars, a majority of the territory of the USA at that time had been taken by force from people who showed no interest in being a part of Yankee America. One is tempted to say that the only neighbor that America had not invaded and taken land from was Canada, but America had twice attempted to invade Canada and only been stopped by the power of the British Empire (see invasions towards Montreal in both the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.) The only parts of America that had not been taken from somebody were the nine original British colonies north of Virginia.
And we also see what would be the common pattern of the late 20th century, which was a highly propagandistic naming of a policy, in China’s case “The Open Door”, which pretends towards freedom but which really just said that the property owner has no right to lock a door to keep thieves out and that it would only be “fair” if all thieves were allowed equal entrance and granted the ability to steal whatever they desired.
This is America in the 1880’s and 1890’s. Just after fighting a murderous war against Filipino insurgents who objected to having Uncle Sam take their country.
America has always been famous for saying one thing then doing another. Common with all empires. It is part of empires consolidating power.
The land does not speak propaganda.
All Govts lie, 94% humans say one thing and do another.
This is just more “anti American” propaganda.
UN Agenda 21/30 cries about “sustainability”, having to wreck the middle class worldwide in the name of natural resource conservation. JUST BUILD THINGS TO LAST AGAIN. The underlying goal of neoliberalism (radical right libertarianism that believes in capital rights only) is to reduce the world to serfdom in the name of “sustainability”:
What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?… In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?
~ Maurice Strong
Developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma. It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class-involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing-are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.
~ Maurice Strong
So rather than using the free energy solutions that have long existed and investing in QUALITY education for everyone to unlock new innovative solutions to our challenges, the thieving class’s best imagination for our future is the soft genocide of humanity… to engineer more homelessness, poverty, disease, etc. Only the aristocracy is allowed a good education, which is what Hayek, father of neoliberalism, actually believed.
Michael Moore’s film is about how the environmental movement has been completely co-opted by Big Oil. They’ve even agreed to use timber biomass rather than hemp!
We can do better.
Planet of the Humans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
The Lightbulb Conspiracy – Planned Obsolescence
An hour well spent. Everyone should watch this film. Thanks for posting.
The UN is the shadow global govt and has a 2030 agenda so duhhh.
Not watching not wasting of an hour.
“It looks like the whole strategy this year is to avoid confrontation and controversy at all cost.”
This needs to be amended. The strategy is to avoid confrontation after Biden secures the nomination, when this means shutting up Sanders supporters. While Sanders is a contender, it is O.K. to place defeating Trump second to defeating Sanders, including having confrontations. If we really did have an all-out effort against Trump, Sanders would be the nominee.
Caity, Hawkins is not only willing to criticize the corporate-party candidates, he has done so, eloquently and passionately. He certainly pulled no punches (OK, maybe a few) in his speeches yesterday. He will be just as willing to make a nuisance of himself & risk arrest as Jill Stein was. He & Angela Walker have both been on the front lines in the labor movement, and they’re willing to claim the label “socialist” for younger generations who have proved receptive to socialism.
Sure, he’s fumbled on Russiagate, but for me he’s successfully backwalked his earlier positions. Those who heard his early missteps & still cling to the notion that he’s an unapologetic Democratic tool need to open their minds & learn to embrace nuance. Some folks are gonna cudgel him on that point like liberals framed Jill as an anti-vaxxer. The Primo Nutmeggers & Jesse Ventura cultists, if they keep that shit up, are no better than MSNBC-echo-chamber Democrats.
Hawkins is a tool of the DNC. He’s there to suppress the vote for third parties. He perpetuates the « Trump is dangerous » rhetoric which will actually make voters too scared to vote Green. If he walked back his Russiagate blathering It’s because George Galloway exposed hîm. He’ll be the death of the Green Party.
are you too scared to vote green?
The true position of Howie Hawkins on RussiaGate, as shared by campaign press secretary Kevin Zeese.
https://howiehawkins.us/the-russiagate-obsession-is-mass-distraction/
Zeese has also pointed out that the linked statement is largely a retraction and correction of things Hawkins said in a Primo Nutmeg interview last May, at a time when he was exhausted and low on blood sugar. See his comment at the end of this article:
https://popularresistance.org/exploiting-russiagate-coma-democrats-raped-climate-movement/
I’ve always liked Howie Hawkins.
That said, the Green Party, as representative of their role of being a wing of the Democrats (as seen after each vote when the Greens run the recount efforts for the Dems) is obviously sitting this campaign out.
That is why an activist like Hawkins can get the nomination, and the campaign appears not be run by the “safe state” Green (Dems) who only run in areas where they can not compete while avoiding the happy hunting grounds of progressive concentrations where they could built the party (but be dissaproved of by the Dems)
So, you see a different pattern this time. Last time you saw a loud Green campaign early in the year when the Dems were doing thier rigged primaries. But then Stein disappeared from view as Safe-stater David Cobb was named campaign manager. This time the Greens have none of the Dem support early in the year, so you hear less about them, but hopefully may not just cede the field like Stein has done in the past.
We push for recounts (and paper ballots marked and counted by hand and other efforts to have all votes count and all votes counted) because one of our Ten Key Values is Grassroots Democracy.
If the Democratic Party organization doesn’t support these policies — even when it could mean Democratic candidates win — then that shows us how little they value Grassroots Democracy. Or at least how much more they value something else.
I urge grassroots voters who have until now identified themselves as Democrats to consider what that “something else” is . . . and support a party and candidates more in line with their own values.
A good read , thanks for it . However even the Romans forbade the nailing of Roman citizens to crosses. America crossed that Rubicon some time ago.
From the day we are born since our lives began, We Have been Conditioned… Parents that are conditioned, condition their children… S#ending us to State run conditioning educational systems… History written by the victors… Science and pseudo science mixed with psycological freudian theory… Competitivism’s nurilogical formulas that seperate humans in favor of military style behaviours… religion that says there is a soul that trans migrates, leaving humans in fear of death.
Hello, Caitlin. Commenting from the US. Love your writing. It is thought-provoking, and I agree with you more often then I disagree with you. I do have two questions. In your comment about Jesus, and the empire that nailed dissidents to the cross and let then slowly die, are you referring to the Roman Empire or the Catholic Church? Even though it was the Jewish leaders that turned Jesus into the Romans, (according to the story in the Bible) I would not consider the Jewish organization to be an empire, and the Catholic Church did not become an “empire” until around 300 BC. And with the Mueller Report, it is pointless to try to read it, because there are so much redacted that it is impossible to make any sense of it. And it begs the question: why exactly are things redacted? If we are ever able to read it in full, then a conversation could be made as to whether there was a point to that particular exercise, or was it an act of futility. What is being hidden.
As you know, the Second Temple priesthood, at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, was almost an appendage of the Roman Empire, consorting with it to exploit and attempt to pacify the Jewish “rabble.” As best we can tell, the empire and the priesthood collaborated in the killing of Jesus, as he was shuffled from the chief priest to Pilate, who had the authority to crucify him rather than stone him. You and Caitlin also point to one of the most tragic ironies in history; i.e., that the prophetic Jewish movement that Jesus founded (picking up where John the Baptist left off) wound up marrying the empire that murdered its founder. The rest, of course, is checkered Christian history now culminated in its second unholy marriage to empire, this time to the American one. WWJ think?
You need to take off your shoes and use your toes if you want to count all the Empires the Christian church has married between the Roman Empire and the American Empire. Actually, you’ll probably need to acquire an abacus, since even your toes won’t handle all the empires from Russia to Spain that the slutty Christian Church has bedded. Calling yourself an empire seems to be all that is required to get that slut to jump you.
You’ve got a point there. Something went wrong early, damn early, with the Jesus movement. You can see it already in parts of Paul’s letters, in the other epistles, and in the editorializing of the oral traditions and saying collections behind the “official” gospel accounts, sources which scholars have long attempted to reconstruct.
According to so-called “gospel” reports, Jewish leaders accused Jesus of sedition, advocating tax evasion and claiming to be the rightful political leader of His nation. The name “JESUS” comes from “Yeshua” (translated Jesus in Greek) derives from the Hebrew word meaning LIBERATOR.
So much to comment on…
1. Please give me one past system where someone at the top did not have immense power, pharoah, kings, caesar, etc etc. It is how the world operates.
2. Crucifixtion was considered so terrible by the Romans that caesar had to approve it until just a few years before Jesus was crucified. Palestine was such a pain in ass for Rome, much like today, that the govenor was given authorization to approve it. The crucified was scourged first to make them weak and die quicker on the cross. Their legs broken so they could not hold themselves up to breathe and die quicker. Humane by the standards of the day. Discontinued just a few years later.
3. Yes we have too much stuff. But it keeps people busy making and delivering the stuff. Just like war keeps people busy.
4. Yes, I was also shocked seeing the Catholic Church get money. Where is the seperation of church and state.
5. No the world is going insane just as many times in our past history nog moving toward enlightenment.
The number one rule of rightwingers and conservatives is that there is no progress and only that which has occurred previously in ‘history’ can ever happen again. The constant bleat of the conservative sheep is that people have never been decent in history, so it can’t happen now.
However, conservatives are always surprised by the people when the people do show the capacity for human growth and human progress. An example of this is watching outraged conservatives fight and complain as a radical people’s movement eliminates slavery.
It had never happened before in history. But, the lesson is that it did happen, so there is human growth and human progress and the present does not have to be as evil as the past like the rightwingers always try to tell us.
Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it. Wise saying. You call them conservatives and progressives. I call them dreamers and realists. I also call them perpetrators and victims. Left and right have nothing to do with it. They inhabit both sides of the political spectrum. Rulers and serfs is how these people see the world.
“People lived much more peacefully, in an egalitarian way for most of our 250,000 year history. They were highly organized and highly developed with towns and trade, but they didn’t have privileged rulers. In the last 3%, (6,000 years ago) … quite suddenly… kings appeared, priests appeared, temples, slaves, wars appeared. Rather than believing that this is something that simply you necessarily have to have when societies develop, I think it was an innovation.
I think that the two things that distinguish our species most from others is that we make tools and we domesticate animals. We harness external sources of energy. Once the Neolithic communities had reached a certain degree of wealth and complexity, it was possible for small groups of men to domesticate the communities.
That is what political power actually is — it’s a system of institutions that were developed with the purpose of putting entire communities under central control.”
That sounds good on the surface but changed because of population density that resulted in consolidation. Thus shoguns appeared in japan. Warlords formed in earliest china. That is the fallacy. Small villages were raided for goods etc. It was not a time of peace but where you lived day to day hoping you were not pillaged. People traded that for the safety of a warlord and all that went with it.
The skills of statecraft were developed out of the skills of animal husbandry.
The terrible truth is that the Green Party (which Caitlin aptly criticizes) has, for some time now, been on enough state ballots to have swept into office at many, if not most, levels of American government. As matter of indisputable fact, Jill Stein, for example, could be sitting in the Oval Office right now instead of Donald Trump. “The People” had it in their power to pull this off; there was enough democracy left in America to have overturned the status quo. AND THERE STILL IS. Yes, “The People” have been thoroughly propagandized, but so was everyone who has come to see through the imperial, ecocidal system. Caitlin was so thoroughly propagandized that, as she told us, she literally had to go through a period of physically retching out the venom that had been injected into her by cultural conditioning. Perhaps the most counterproductive advice frequently given by those who comment on blogs like this one is not to vote. By doing so, they tell us, you will show the bastards, show the world, what you think of their perverted and hopeless electoral process. No, quite the contrary. Despite what you intend to show the bastards and the world by not voting, it will inevitably be interpreted in one of two ways: either you are satisfied enough with the status quo not to make the effort to vote, or you are so apathetic and passive that your political opinions (if you have any) need not be taken into account. BY FAR, a better alternative is to show up at the polling place and vote for a protest candidate, the Green Party candidate being one among possibly other available options. Write-in votes are counted only if the write-in candidate has registered, so a vote for Mickey Mouse or your favorite dissident is treated the same as not voting at all. Thus, if you think this whole election thing through, unpleasant as that is, you come to the inevitable conclusion that the best means–indeed, the ONLY means–of expressing your opposition to the status quo in this potentially (and I stress that word) significant arena is to take the time to cast a legal vote for an officially-recognized protest candidate. If you think that THIS is futile, and it may well be, then I can assure you that not voting at all is even more futile. If the majority of American voters were to come to think like Caitlin, there would be no John McCains in office, to harken back to her prior post. And the seemingly impossible task is to pull off that sea change in the minds and hearts of “The People.” A sharply challenging comment on that prior thread made a rhetorical demand for someone to come up with a plan of action to oust all the “McCains” from office. I think I’ve just come close to doing that, and though it’s about as long a shot as one could imagine, it’s the only shot we’ve got. But only if, BUT ONLY IF, voting for protest candidates is combined with the other essential component of bringing about genuine systemic change that nearly every radical recognizes: massive, relentless, organization and mobilization, including endlessly disruptive acts of civil disobedience, IN THE STREETS. In the words of a kind of cute old song, the two “go together” like “love and marriage” used to, like “horse and carriage” still does. Want systemic change? “You can’t have one without the other.”
The people who say they want change always seem to promote methods that can’t possibly result in change.
To create change, you need to mobilize a majority of the people to your cause. Even if you can’t win an election due to a rigged system, you still got to have that majority of people on your side. That is even more true if you have to use civil dissobedience to try to force through a change the election system is blocking. Such a movement must have a large majority behind it. It is even more true for people who desire to use violence to create change. A violent revolution is doomed to failure if it does not have the mass of the people behind it. A lesson the crazy far-right appears about to learn this fall.
You quote ‘every radical’, but until those people are not radicals but instead are representative of the majority of the people, there won’t be change. The one thing the left appears to have completely forgotten is that you have to listen to the people who are not radicals, because that’s where the majority that can change things lie. Instead we see the vocal parts of the left on the internet today consistently attacking and trashing anyone who is not as radical as them, which is a completely hopeless method of trying to achieve change.
You said it better than I did.
“Perhaps this normalization of the radical changes of the past few decades is why some commentators perceive Bernie’s program—designed to reverse this damage—as “radical.””
Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Radical—He’s a Pragmatist Who Fights to Un-rig the System
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/12/bernie-sanders-isnt-radical-hes-pragmatist-who-fights-un-rig-system
The Koch-funded radical libertarian right (that both parties adhere to) believes that government should have only 3 functions:
– insuring the rule of law to protect property rights
– guaranteeing social order
– providing for the national defense
This agenda is unconstitutional because it does not “promote the general welfare” of its citizens.
Today’s economic policy is against ideas to expand the use of federal power to promote economic, intellectual, and cultural development.
This 19th century mindset, inspired by John C. Calhoun, defender of slavery and instigator of the Civil War, is STILL leading political policy today.
you trying out for Caitlin’s job? that was succinct and brilliant. or at least i think so.
problem defined.
solution please!
Idiot savages.
Fascists.
Yes. As a clever commenter on Jamarl Thomas’s show put it:
“Green party, yellow vest!”
Darn, you’re good!
I know.
“The most important job of a parent is to help their child make their mistakes as safely, as quickly, and with as little trauma as possible.”
PLUS
“Anyone who’s done real inner work knows it’s seldom comfortable when subconscious things become conscious. There’s a reason that stuff was kept out of consciousness in the first place. This is true of large-scale collective movements into consciousness as well. It’s awkward, and it ain’t pretty.”
=
Nature, the parent, reeling in humanity, the child, cuz the child crapped its diapers right in the middle of its biggest mistake, yet: laissez faire capitalism.
Capitalism in a permissive economic/government sociopolitical environment promotes dominance, manipulation, and bullying (violence) throughout society. It feeds the bully. Socialism, unrestrained, does not adequately control the human urge and susceptibility to comfort. Add a dash of self-righteousness to this soup and either way we’re fucked.
All governments are more or less hybrids of capitalist and socialist ideas. Turn the dial too far in either direction and bad news for everybody but the “elite”. The real goal is to find the sweet spot, where everybody benefits from the collective effort to secure all that we hold in common.
PROGRESS IS STYMIED when States and the people they “manage” get too large. Therein lies another sweetspot: what are the optimal populations for local, regional and national efforts?
Methinks, Nature is about to restart its effort to elevate human consciousness by returning us to tribal survival levels kept small by the a post-civilization environment that is largely inhospitable to humans.
For the sake of full disclosure, methinks civilization is the jungle perceived thru the filter of excessive grey matter. Predators and prey are violent during feeding time. Meanwhile, the jungle is calm during the fasts. Bloody, violent, and amoral, tho all that grey matter does convince us we are special.
The manic destructive era of “The First NATO” was over. But its lessons for 21st century humanity are all too clear: Once again inspiring slogans about human rights and international interventions supposedly on the side of good are being cynically deployed to project power power and disguise aggression for all too gullible publics in the West.
The new dangers in an age of nuclear weapons and other WMDs are greater than ever. As United States President Harry Truman liked to say, there is nothing new under the sun except the history you do not already know. This fine article can be read here:
The First NATO: British and French Joint Aggressions in the Mid-19th Century by Martin Sieff!
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/07/11/first-nato-british-french-joint-aggressions-mid-19-century/
I’m not sure why but people continue to misspell CRAPITALISM. Lets tell it like it is!!
Dog is God spelled backwards.
Is Caity the New Improved Crucified ? She nailed it again !
Is that you Tim?
oh well. golly gee….and i was thinking capital like to drill on public parks i read they want to drill the grrand canyon…because nature did so could we.
capital simply loves clean air and seat belts…why just ask ralph nader. and round up ready is good for ya.
clen water? only where rich people live….dwyer.
You are extremely correct Ms Johnstone. Whenever a person discovers that hidden, sneaky, underhanded, selfish, ego-centric, demon controlling their lives 24/7 from deep inside their own bodies; it ain’t pretty. As a matter of fact it is much worse than discovering that your partner has been cheating on you for a long time. There are lots of human beings that know that the demon is inside of them but they are much too afraid to do battle with it so they continue to follow its orders. As my aunt used to say to us children ” human beings are the only dysfunctional species on this entire planet.” Please continue in your glorious efforts on the pathway to sanity.
Yes, Ron, your aunt was right, and that’s why God being “dog” spelled backwards is no insult to the deity.
“… less illness, less pollution, less ecocide, less war, less prisoners,”
And yet, the expansion of global capitalism has resulted in a drastic decline in infectious disease in the developing world, an increase in access to clean water for the global poor, an improvement in urban air quality in the developed world, an increase in green spaces set aside for nature and in species conservation programs.
It is government that creates ecocide, prisons, and war. Government = collective action. Both left-wing and right-wing governments create conditions anathema to human flourishing. Until all collective action, from sexual activity to infrastructure projects, is characterized by ongoing, enthusiastic consent, humanity will fail to achieve its potential.
Human beings always act collectively; it is their nature. Yet we experience the world as individuals. It is a curious paradox.
There is little if any proof that that either statement you have made in this post is true. That is in fact the paradox, conundrum , or dichotomy? The idea itself is a political device/organizational tool at most ? Subjective – Objective , Ideal – Material , Collective – individual are all badly flawed start points from which to try to make sense of existence ?
You have it entirely backwards. Infectious disease, clean water, urban air quality, green spaces are all on the decline DUE TO Global Capitalism. When there has been improvement in these areas, it has been IN SPITE of Global Capitalism.
Infectious disease, clean water, urban air quality, green spaces are all on the decline due to science and technological development. The situation is worsening both in the capitalist USA and socialist China. The fact is that the population on Earth is increasing, the area of the planet is finite, however. That much Malthus was right. Caitlin Johnson is right noticing that capitalism is based on profits, expansion and competition. Capitalist arms race can never stop the needless expansion. The present system will collapse anyway. The question is about how to collapse more softly. I am not sure about Johnson’s utopia that the socialist system is a remedy, however. There is some ruling elite anyway.
The current Technocratic-military-industrial-complex must collapse to prepare the way for the next civilization which will not include any psychopaths, sociopaths and parasites.
It seems that Caitlin Johnson complains that in the present capitalist system few sociopaths have too much power.
However, your reply that a society without sociopaths must be created is a totally different issue.
This idea cannot be implemented. Any attempt to isolate all the sociopaths, to find a “final solution” to the problem of sociopaths leads to a dictatorship and the leaders would itself be sociopaths.
Lenin, Stalin, Beria – these people were sociopaths. And they had too much power.
More anti capitalism propaganda. We don’t have capitalism as we have a economic and political monopoly.A banking Cabal.
no duh…if we don’t have capitalism we also do not have banks. duh. banks ARE capital’s choice of feeding throughs….in their grand pig sty.
We haven’t had a real government in over 40 years! Privatization of our public services has distorted and destroyed everything.
“Fascism isn’t the merger of corporations and government that is too vague, and too easy to confuse. Fascism is government functions being replaced by private corporations. Fascism is when the public good is replaced by private profit.”
When the power of capital is increasingly untrammeled, all of us are put at risk: the environment, the sacred forests, the beautiful and mysterious creatures of the sea, the ordinary people who, with their strength and brains and inventiveness create community and give to life so much that’s worthy of our respect. The real burden to society is not the poor, but the corporate rich. We simply can no longer afford them.”
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2019/08/18/fascism-a-false-revolution/?fbclid=IwAR0g2OApuUwk4LXJb2aDcEQLXQmXfwyvyIFsaVBYoqXWBauS7OtBSYzWrPM
“Ideally, a fair and equitable society would regulate debt in line with the ability to be paid without pushing economies into depression. But when shrinking markets deepen fiscal deficits, creditors demand that governments balance their budgets by selling public monopolies.
Once the land, water and mineral rights are privatized, along with transportation, communications, lotteries and other monopolies, the next aim is to block governments from regulating their prices or taxing financial and rentier wealth.
The neo-rentier objective is threefold: to reduce economies to debt dependency, to transfer public utilities into creditor hands, and then to create a rent-extracting tollbooth economy. The financial objective is to block governments from writing down debts when bankers and bondholders over-lend.
Taken together, these policies create a one-sided freedom for rentiers to create a travesty of the classical “Adam Smith” view of free markets. It is a freedom to reduce the indebted majority to a state of deepening dependency, and to gain wealth by stripping public assets built up over the centuries.”
― Michael Hudson, Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy
He who dies with the most “stuff” wins?
Maybe there should be a blog (If there isn’t one already) whose title and contents riff on that aphorism. Perhaps “Stuff and Nonsense”?