The US didn’t re-enter Iraq in 2014 to stop ISIS, they re-entered Iraq in 2014 to stop Soleimani from stopping ISIS.

This is important to note right now, because that’s the main argument we’re hearing against withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan: “Oh the terrorists will take over and we’ll just have to go back like in 2014.” They didn’t have to go back in 2014; the people who actually live in the Middle East could’ve resolved it on their own if there wasn’t a world-dominating empire trying to control everything.

The “war on terror” has never been about defeating violent extremist factions, it’s been about keeping the nations in the region from relying on Iran to defeat them, and about justifying endless military expansionism in a key geostrategic part of the world. It’s been about ensuring the US power alliance, not Iran, is the dominant military force in the Middle East.

Soleimani was the strongest argument that the “war on terror” isn’t actually necessary. And that’s essentially why he’s dead now.

I’m thinking of writing a horror story about a dystopian world where weapons manufacturers are allowed to pay large amounts of money to agencies called “think tanks” which circulate narratives designed to convince government policymakers to start wars that profit the arms industry.

It’d be just like those other dystopian horror novels about giant corporations butchering the poor for money, except instead of selling human flesh they’re selling the weapons used to kill them.

What do you think? Too out there and unbelievable?

In tyrannical regimes they don’t let political dissidents speak. In free democracies they just refuse dissidents any influential platforms and use algorithms to keep revolutionary ideas from being heard by a significant number of people.

The US has killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century and its Secretary of State spends all day tweeting about how other countries are human rights abusers.

No other government has done this. No other government has killed millions and displaced tens of millions since the turn of this century. Yet when you say this, you get accused of “whataboutism”. No, idiot, distracting from the world’s very worst offender is the “whataboutism”.

Even if all US narratives about China were 100 percent true (and they aren’t), Washington would still be a far, far worse human rights offender than Beijing and in no position to criticize human rights abuses at all.

Every time George W Bush makes news headlines and it’s not because of a war crimes tribunal, it’s a reminder that laws are for the little people.

What if EVERYONE threw their shoes at George W Bush?

In a remotely sane world creatures like John Bolton would not be given mainstream platforms for decades on end, they would be driven out of every town they enter until they’re forced to crawl into a cave eating bats in the darkness for the rest of their miserable lives.

The simple fact that this reptile keeps getting platformed is by itself complete evidence that our world is dominated by psychopaths. You never see anti-imperialists on the mainstream media, but John fucking Bolton gets the spotlight whenever he wants it. That’s how bat shit crazy our world is. The status quo has no legitimate claim on anything ever.

The rising threat of nuclear war is the most urgent matter in the world and it’s insane that we’re not talking about it all the time.

The day the world ends will start like any other. People will go to work, argue with strangers online. No one will expect it. Then there will be a miscommunication, misfire, miscalculation or malfunction which leads to a nuke being deployed among heightening cold war tensions.

The end of the world won’t be the result of some epic Hollywood struggle between good guys and bad guys. It will be the result of garden variety human stupidity. Someone being a little careless amid the day-to-day management of the US empire’s struggle to maintain global hegemony.

It will be a stupid mistake, just like all the other stupid mistakes humans have made since we first stood upright. Only difference is we won’t be around anymore to recognize and appreciate how stupid this particular mistake was, and to learn from it, and to grow.

There are mountains of evidence that the US and its allies bombed Syria on false grounds in 2018, and yet people who point this out get called “Assadists” and “atrocity deniers”. For scrutinizing the most powerful and destructive government on earth using evidence and journalism.

The entire argument that the OPCW scandal is fake boils down to a bizarre conspiracy theory that OPCW investigators collaborated with Damascus and Moscow to spin Douma as a false flag for some reason. This would’ve been laughed out of the room if it weren’t backed by the empire.

It’s freakish that you get accused of war crimes denial when actually trying to get a war crime solved. The facts are in, the Douma incident needs to be ripped wide open, and Aaron Maté needs to be showered with awards for his excellent work exposing this scandal. It’s crazy that it’s 2021 and people are still acting like you’re a treasonous freak if you believe the US power alliance might lie and manipulate about a government it openly wants to topple, whose country it has been bombing and occupying, right next door to Iraq.

It will never stop fascinating me how full online discussion forums are of accounts who spend their time supporting the foreign policy objectives of the most powerful and destructive government on earth while pretending they’re brave, up-punching rebels.

Someone could publish all the darkest secrets of the western empire online and within hours the imperial narrative managers would have everyone convinced that the leaks don’t matter because the person who published it knows somebody who knows somebody who is anti-semitic.

White supremacism is a lot easier to see when you zoom the camera all the way out and look objectively at the way resources, bombs, and human labor are moving on the world stage as a whole.

The majority of people get that the news is at least somewhat bullshit; the problem is there’s no consensus on why. Is it incompetence? A liberal conspiracy? The plutocratic class protecting its interests (ding ding)? Our job is to clarify both that the MSM lies to us, and why.

If people understand that plutocratic and imperialist interests are being protected by the billionaire media, they know what lies to watch out for. Otherwise all the confusing white noise leaves them screaming at the TV about trans people trying to destroy society or whatever. There’s so much bullshit swirling around that it’s hard to know which way is up. The key is to help people figure out what way’s up, using simple pointers, so they can orient themselves to truth and reality.

Watch this video if you’re unsure why I focus on US politics over Australian politics:

People are so kind to me. I’m basically a digital street busker, relying entirely on reader donations, and I somehow wound up on the kindest, most generous online street corner where people give me money to do what I love full time. I’m really lucky, and I’m very, very grateful.

The internet is a consciousness-expanding substance and our rulers are working to censor it for the same reason they censored psychedelics: dysfunction and awareness cannot coexist.

It’s also the same reason abusers work to isolate their victims and cult leaders seek to isolate their members: outside eyes bringing consciousness to their abusive dynamics makes the abuse much harder to perpetuate.

It’s also the same reason the ego tries to convince us not to look too hard at its nature. At every level of the human fractal it’s a struggle between consciousness and unconsciousness, and between those forces who would benefit from each.

People fail to live their lives in awe, wonder, delight and deep peace for the same reason people keep consenting to abusive governments: our lives are ruled by narrative. And the solution to both is the same: intense curiosity about what’s going on underneath the narratives.

Governments are made up and their economies are collective hallucinations and their money is imaginary and our society is pure narrative construct and the individual self is an illusion.

Have a nice day.

____________________

I’m celebrating the hardback release of Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers by making a pay-as-you-feel PDF available.

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18 responses to “What If EVERYONE Threw Shoes At Bush? Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”

  1. Robert Greenshields Avatar
    Robert Greenshields

    While our purse string pullers, and their comfortably ensconced cohorts use a combined media influence to deliberately distract the gullible general public away from real truths with shallow, expedient inducements, the remaining, thinking, resolutely determined will forever be compromised by numbers alone.

  2. In America attacks upon Asian Americans is on the rise. The media act like it is nothing of concern. I also notice on a couple platforms Chinese are the butt of jokes and ridicule. A hostility toward China is brewing. Along with unacceptable behavior toward other minorities, this is somehow allowed. I do not like the implications.

  3. Hey there, come peek behind that big capitalistic curtain and look at some of your owners and masters!!
    ~
    The unregulated shadow banks are now the owners of even the regulated big banks, but also of, for example, all the big digital corporations. At the same time, BlackRock & Co have managed to remain virtually unknown to the general public.

    BlackRock Corporation is currently a co-owner or a shareholder, in 18,000 banks, companies, and financial service providers, primarily in the United States and Canada, in the European Union, and in Western-oriented nations. Such a numerous simultaneous presence of a single owner has never been seen before in the history of capitalism.

    Yet BlackRock is only the tip of the current, newly formed capitalist iceberg. The next largest capital organizers of this new kind are Vanguard, State Street, Capital Group, Amundi, Wellington, Fidelity, T Rowe Price, Pimco, Norges. BlackRock is exemplary for these currently determining players of United States-led Western capitalism. Smaller new capital players with related, also hardly regulated business models such as private equity investors (“locusts”), hedge funds, investment banks and venture capitalists are also part of the current phase of the newly formed capitalism at the latest since the banking crisis of 2007 – they here are only briefly referred to. (1)
    ~
    This very revealing article can be read here:
    BlackRock, Vanguard & Co – How the New Capitalist Players Are Acting Against Labour, Environment and International Law and How They Use the Corona-Pandemic by Werner RÜGEMER!
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/04/23/blackrock-vanguard-co-how-new-capitalist-players-acting-against-labour-environment/

  4. Glenn Greenwald broke the glass ceiling a couple of days ago by explaining why indeed the corporate media lie to their audience. According to him, it’s because the corporate media’s “audience wants to be lied to for political gain and emotional pleasure”. That was about the corporate media “discovering”, after THREE AND A HALF MONTHS of pushing the conspiracy theory that officer Brian Sicknick had been murdered with a fire extinguisher during the Capitol invasion by Trump goons in order to weigh in on the impeachment process (“we’re doing all we can!” kinda stuff), that this unfortunate officer had in fact died of a stroke caused by a clot in an artery according to a statement Monday by the District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner. This gives us an idea of the gravity laws in effect on the planet where these guys live. We just have to measure the time it took for this info – absent any plausible new data – to go from the autopsy lab to the corporate media’s centralized newsroom via the District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner’s office and divide it by the distance between them. Of course there’s always the possibility that they do live under the same gravity laws as we do but that this information was entirely processed and delivered by snails on the altar of diversity. Will the corporate media ever tell their audience which of these explanations is the right one?

  5. The whole world’s gone to hell, but how are you? I’m super!

  6. Well, a stone can reasonably be considered a weapon of mass destruction. If only words can start World Wars 1,2, 3 & 4; then surely stones would be the nuclear, and biological weapons of the 21st, 22nd & 23rd centuries.

  7. Once again, the Buddha, Ms Caitlin Johnstone has made my day. This entire article brought pease and joy to my old bones. This is priceless:
    ~
    In a remotely sane world creatures like John Bolton would not be given mainstream platforms for decades on end, they would be driven out of every town they enter until they are forced to crawl into a cave eating bats in the darkness for the rest of their miserable lives.
    ~
    The simple fact that this reptile keeps getting platformed is by itself complete evidence that our world is dominated by psychopaths. You never see anti-imperialists on the mainstream media, but John f-cking Bolton gets the spotlight whenever he wants it. That is how bat shit crazy our world is. The status quo has no legitimate claim on anything ever.
    ~
    Ms johnstone, this article also mentions the false ” Bellingcat ” fiasco!
    ~
    There is a sense that Russia has reached the end of its patience over provocations and condescending sanctions imposed by the collective West.
    ~
    The West seems to think its accusations alone are sufficient to “convict” Russia of wrongdoing. That presumption only works if it is based on a premise of Russophobia. Otherwise, it is a laughable travesty.
    ~
    Another indicator of fabrication is the source of Czech information on the 2014 incident. Previously, Czech investigators had concluded that the deadly blast was an industrial accident. What changed was their receipt of new information apparently a few months ago. The source of that new information can be gleaned from media reports as Bellingcat, the British media group which functions as a laundromat for British military intelligence.
    ~
    This so-called independent research group has peddled disinformation concerning chemical weapons in Syria to frame up the Syrian government, as well as the 2014 Malaysian airliner disaster to frame up Russia, and the poison sagas of the Skripals and Navalny.
    ~
    Most bizarrely, the Bellingcat-MI6 “sleuths” informed the Czechs that the two alleged Russian agents accused of the Skripal plot were also involved in the 2014 explosions. That is too far-fetched to be taken seriously. Indeed, it is risible.
    ~
    This fine article can be read here:
    Russias “Reality-Czech” for European Provocation and Hysterics!
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/04/23/russia-reality-czech-for-european-provocation-and-hysterics/

  8. You think Australia is a vassal state? Wait ’til sea level rise has created several Fukushimas. Your country along with New Zealand and other countries South of the equator will be flooded (intended) with illegal aliens from the North. 99% of the nuclear reactors and 100% of the nuclear weapons are in the North. The air and water masses mix very slowly so survival will be more possible in the South. “On the Beach” revisited, sort of.
    Because of that I moved from CA to Ecuador. When civilization rebuilds, I hope to educate on the dangers of privately held corporations and private banking. There are better alternative, safer and more productive.

  9. Tjhrowing shoes is a wonderful tactic. It worked better than anything to move Bush to the left. Who knew?

  10. All because too many Americans are political imbeciles. Shame, shame and more shame. The fates will not deal kindly with that shithole country and their crows are returning home to roost. We can only hope that when their ship sinks that it won’t drag the rest of us down with it. My heart is heavy for the non-imbeciles among them.

  11. Peter Hitchens of the UK Daily Mail also deserves some credit for reporting on the OPCW Douma scandal. For those who don’t know, the Daily Mail is a solidly mainstream, generally pro-establishment, right of centre news outlet, which probably reaches a wider audience, especially within the UK, than The Grayzone.
    From 2019:
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7793253/PETER-HITCHENS-reveals-evidence-watchdog-suppressed-report-casting-doubt-Assad-gas-attack.html
    and from 2021:
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9359721/PETER-HITCHENS-Falklands-hero-Lord-West-insulted-Foreign-Office.html
    – “Admiral Lord West of Spithead, 72, a decorated Falklands veteran, former First Sea Lord and a Security Minister under Gordon Brown, was denounced on the record by the Foreign Office for engaging in ‘disinformation and propaganda’ and for helping to distract attention from the war crimes of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Lord West believes there are serious doubts about an investigation into the use of poison gas by Syria in Douma in 2018, and that credible complaints of censorship, made by whistleblowers, have been wrongly ignored.”

    1. The missile attack was theater. It was staged at night so the fireworks would entertain the public. The Syrians and Russians were warned of the intended target so they moved the valuables. Fifty nine million dollar Tomahawks were fired. Only 26 hit the very large target an air base. The other 33 were probably redirected back out to sea by Russian technology. In contrast after the drone assassination of Soliemeni, the Iranians sent 22 missiles. Irag and the US were warned. The time and target were named. The US was unable to shoot down or redirect even one. They all hit their target. The Russians are one or two generation ahead of the US in military technology as demonstrated by that and other examples. The militaries know but the public doesn’t. Because the US knows that Russia, China and their allies are well protected most of the rhetoric is more directed at the public on both sides to give their respective governments public support. I am not worried about nuclear war. I am worried about more Fukushimas.

      1. The continuing sanctions and occupation are more than mere theatre.

        1. Yes of course. Murder and theft are not allowed in theater. I meant that the public threats on all sides serve to support the empire of the international banksters. Syria along with Iran, Cuba, North Korea and China and Russia are the only countries with publicly owned central banks. The last to leave this exclusive club were Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine.The sanctions that you mentioned are enforced by SWIFT & BIS both privately owned and not subject to government control. In fact a case can be made for the opposite. US & UK & EU seem to follow the desires of the international banksters.

  12. Julius Skoolafish Avatar
    Julius Skoolafish

    Speaking of censorship, all my links featuring Professor Sucharit Bhakdi have been removed by the antihuman entities who decide what is allowed on yewtube and who are intent on global genocide because they ‘special’.
    .
    Here is Professor Bhakdi giving us a final warning in an interview with Alex Newman of The New American (he makes one ‘little’ mistake that I will overlook)
    .
    https://rumXXble.com/embed/vdauaz/?pub=4 (remove XX)
    .
    Here is the English version of the chapter from Corona Umasked that he mentions.
    .
    https://www.goldegg-verlag.com/goldegg-verlag/wp-content/uploads/corona_unmasked_engl_leseprobe.pdf

  13. The US military kills thousands of George Floyd’s every year. Johnson, Reagan, Nixon, Bush 1&2, Clinton, Obama and Trump have killed millions of George Floyd’s.Maybe we should build a monument to Derek Chauvin and thank him for his service.

  14. Julius Skoolafish Avatar
    Julius Skoolafish

    Thank you Caitlin – “Narrative Matrix” arrived today via Book Depository.
    .
    Regarding your reference to the OPCW and the atrocity propaganda against the people of Syria, here is an excellent presentation by Aaron Maté of The Grayzone.
    .
    • At UN, Aaron Maté debunks OPCW’s Syria lies and confronts US, UK on cover-up
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge4W9e6YeXQ
    .
    I shared the following as a supporting exhibit:
    .
    • Fabrication in BBC Panorama Saving Syria’s Children: Robert Stuart
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvjTeuSKTW0
    .
    • In moving UN speech, veteran diplomat confronts OPCW ‘stonewalling and smear tactics’ on Syria (Hans von Sponeck)
    .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewGa4S5ZNh4
    .
    I have no idea why airtime would be given to Lawrence Wilkerson, however:
    .
    • At UN, ex-Colin Powell aide calls out ‘egregious’ OPCW Syria cover-up
    .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U8VdAdo8Sw
    .
    “Wilkerson helped prepare Powell’s infamous speech to the United Nations making the phony case for invading Iraq. Wilkerson has since renounced those Iraq war fabrications.”
    .
    My comment essentially:
    .
    Wilkerson’s only interest was in protecting the reputation of the OPCW [and therefore its parent organisation] while still pushing the very same narrative that the Syrian Government somehow did ‘[unspecified] horrible things’. Just “renouncing those Iraq war fabrications” is not enough – what is he doing walking around free? Are there no repercussions for complicity in crimes against humanity?

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