Listen to a reading of this article:
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Most Americans now understand that it was wrong to spend centuries enslaving millions of people. Not many Americans yet understand how equally wrong it is that their government has spent the 21st century killing millions and displacing tens of millions in its post-9/11 wars.
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The US is more dangerous now as it loses global primacy than it has been at any other point in its history. There really are just two options currently on the table: either the US empire relinquishes unipolar domination voluntarily and leads a peaceful transition into a multipolar world, or it takes increasingly drastic and dangerous action to maintain planetary control. The latter choice is both horrifying and likely.
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People in western imperialist nations pretending to care about Muslims in China will never stop being hilarious.
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Remember kids: false flags are crazy conspiracy theories that only ridiculous crackpots believe in, except when they’re reported as fact by news outlets who’ve lied to you about every war.
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Putin has been reading The Art of War in preparation for his unprovoked Ukraine invasion. pic.twitter.com/vukLvJBAL2
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) January 15, 2022
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Sure is an interesting coincidence how all the (still completely unproven) narratives about Russian 2016 election interference and Trump collusion served perfectly to manufacture consent for all the bat shit insane US/NATO escalations we’re seeing in Ukraine today.
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Everyone who’d support going to war with Russia or China over Ukraine or Taiwan should be regarded with the same revulsion and social rejection as child molesters.
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Capitalism is so innately absurd that its proponents always respond to questions about systemic problems by babbling about what people can do as individuals. People are homeless? Get a job. Jobs don’t pay enough? Get a better job. It’s like addressing the problem of a skyscraper being on fire by saying “Don’t go to the floors that are on fire.”
It’s like if there was a locked room full of ten prisoners and you only gave them enough food to keep seven alive, and you responded to their complaints by saying “Better make sure you grab the food first when I throw it in your cell, then.”
It’s a belief system you can only hold in place with psychological compartmentalization. Tell that one suffering guy to get a better job and save his money, and then simply do not think about the millions of people who are working low-paying jobs and unable to save any money.
Any competition-based system will necessarily have losers as well as winners in those competitions. Saying “Compete better than those you’re competing against” does nothing for the part of the population who must necessarily lose. A collaboration-based system is what’s needed.
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You don’t even need compassion for the poor and disadvantaged to oppose capitalism. You just need some basic self-preservation and an understanding that in a system where human behavior is driven by profit, war and ecocide must necessarily continue as long as they are profitable.
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It's so easy to get lost in the narrative matrix without a good moral compass. You start off opposing right wingers to be a good person, then you fall down a few rabbit holes and before you know it you're telling a Rasmussen pollster you support taking kids from unvaxxed parents. https://t.co/2vrpo5lUJ5
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) January 18, 2022
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Seems like every day the media have an urgent new report explaining why the free flow of ideas on the internet is dangerous and needs to be curtailed. Today it’s one thing, tomorrow it’ll be something else. It’s not about this or that person or issue, it’s about controlling information on the internet.
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It was pretty clever how they redefined fascism as “being kind of racist” while actual fascism was rebranded as “just normal party politics”.
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Saying propaganda doesn’t work is the same as saying advertising doesn’t work, and advertising is nearly a trillion-dollar industry. Also, advertising would be much more effective than it already is if corporate ads were allowed to disguise themselves as news reports in The New York Times.
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Having strong political opinions on social media is no substitute for doing the work to heal your early childhood trauma.
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If you’re the same person you were a decade ago, you just wasted ten years of your life.
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40 responses to “The US Empire Is More Dangerous Than Ever Before: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”
…..one reason amerikkkan politics are as such is the fealty given to ass rant and other antiquated/archaic ideologies political celebrities of the “con you, serve me” fascist movement have shown……
Caitlin, check this out! Microsoft is buying the maker of “Call of Duty” videogame, which is “modern warfare”, aka urban warfare. This is how young Americans play, imagining killing other people. The US military is known to recruit young people via violent videogames.
This is the same Microsoft that pushes their %$*& news headlines onto my screen.
Microsoft promotes recreational, cyber, and information warfare.
And this is why the monopolies should be broken up in a timely manner.
World Bank questioned the transaction, good questions! https://finance.yahoo.com/news/world-bank-chief-takes-swipe-223601269.html
…as one wag puts it, ‘i care not what puppet is placed in high ‘public office’ anywhere…the people who control ‘the money supply’ LARGELY control the planet…and have for centuries…and on the eve of the 2022 U$ $election$,160 million republicrats are much more versed and energized about transvestite bathrooms, puppet trump versu$ puppet biden, etc. puppet circuse$ ad goddamned nauseam’…
Congratulations cowards.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/supreme-court-rejects-abortion-providers-again-on-texas-suit
Don’t forget to quarantine your kids in the basement in their “booster” seat until St Bourla DMV says the auto death pandemic is over.
Can you really blame them for putting off such a case. They know its a can of worms and want it to play out in the lower courts first. They simply kicked it back down and let current rulings stand giving no indications of their final intent. If they had granted an injunction it would have signaled their interest instead of pretending to ignore the whole thing until it is forced upon them.
How many quarantine camps does it take to bring a Socialist/Progressive to climax?
I doubt it’s the ‘U.S. Empire’, it’s more likely the FIVE EYES (Anglo alliance) Empire, or, WESTERN Empire. I’ve heard a lot of various ‘conspiracies’ of late. The sequence that seems to make the most sense (to me, at present) for where things are going is – 1. Pandemic and ‘climate change’ narrative 2. The willful political incompetence narrative, then, 3. food and essential product shortages narrative, then, 4. massive global civil unrest narrative (a revolt), then, 5. False Flag to start a major conflict narrative, then, 6. an actual WWIII, then, 7. Western Victory (rescued by a ‘savior/s’) narrative, then, 8. hello NWO narrative, or, maybe, the ‘new normal’ illusion of democracy version 2. narrative. Let’s see what transpires? And happy to see others MUD MAPS of where things seem to be headed.
climate change is not a narrative. giant fossil fuel corporations are not helpless victims. you dont need to shoehorn that bs into your thesis.
Personally I think grouping climate change with the pandemic narrative makes perfect sense. They are both very effective global propaganda campaigns.
pretzelattack – You don’t have to take it as a narrative, take it as a reality if you like. I agree that we all need to be ‘greener’ with the environment, that just makes solid sense. All I’m saying is that ‘climate change’ is being used as political leverage for other goals, one centralized global government (NWO?) for 100% political and therefore, 100% environmental control, for example.
pretzelattack – and where’s your mud map of where things are headed, I’d love to compare where we are proven correct or not, and change opinion along the way.
Don’t know if you ever watched the YT video of Ayn Rand’s last public speech, but during the Q & A afterward an audience member asked, “How can we help the poor?” Her response: “Don’t become one of them.”
Like saying “Don’t get sick.” to someone wondering what to do about Covid…..Fuckin’ people are nuts.
…..i am the same person i was 10 years ago…..saw, heard, smelled, but never touched OR tasted the bullshit seriously….but could never escape the spectacle as none of us really can …it’s just how much one can recognize, and navigate the way through to avoid it and have some cognitive abilities left intact to preserve ones dignity and integrity…….
…….vf….the pitch is the 2 min. hate…..the former is just an amerikkkan using his ability to use cognizant, intelligent assessment of his environment….a bit in the face, but that’s amerikkka!…….a people that spend time solely on themselves don’t tend to see much beyond their noses, let alone the world……
“If you’re the same person you were a decade ago, you just wasted ten years of your life.If you’re the same person you were a decade ago, you just wasted ten years of your life.”
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That is golden.
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Good writing today comrade.
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I am curious, being opposed to the American Empire how can you call Putin’s actions unprovoked.
…..the first paragraph is bullshit…..i know firsthand……being an amerikkkan….watching the drama over voting rights is a pretty good indicator of how effective amerikkkan bullshit is…..the consumers haven’t a clue to what’s coming….selection day is just another media event……chinese made flags and yellow ribbons are ready to be distributed as the bullshit about war with russia?….china?….swirls about……the amerikkkan consumers don’t give a shit about anything except more consumption ….and the plutocrats/oligarchs know that…..5G….gimme, god, guns, gold, and glory is coming…..that’s what they want…no clue at all about how the rest of the world has been subjected to the vampire empire for the last 500 years….as h.l. mencken once observed with the amerikkkan people, ” no one went bankrupt underestimating the intelligence of the common man”…..bankrupt?…corrupt?…..not hard to choose which applies…..the last chance amerikkkans had to have even a slight chance of making any kind of difference in their banal existence is gone….and, for the most part, they don’t really give shit…..except for bare shelves……by then it’s too late, as they get preoccupied with making amerikkka great again………..for$19.99 a month you can be one of the patriotic few to own and display….. THE PIKE!…… that’s right!….THE PIKE!…..a flagpole with an interchangeable sharpened point to put marxist heads on display(make sure heads are firmly attached before waving to prevent injury)……CALL NOW to take advantage of this great offer and we’ll include a FREE GOLDEN EAGLE to replace THE PIKE when viewing the flag only……..BE PATRIOTIC!…CALL NOW!….1/800/666-4355…..what are you waiting for?……don’t wait until the 4th!…….CALL NOW!…….
You’ve got Two Minutes Hate down pretty solid.
To me, the only way to start to fix things is
1) elect a disruptor president (someone like George Washington) who will only stay long enough to make the improvements.
2) free every person in prison for NON-violent drug crimes
3) establish term limits (we don’t need 90-year-old Senators). Serving 2 terms in the legislator should be considered civic duty like jury duty NOT a career (Government of the people, by the people and for the people)
4) end corporate donations to politicians ( a lot of winning on here about democrats, but don’t forget Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers bought and paid for the Republicans)
5) introduce a WAR tax – every time the country goes to war your capital gains tax doubles. Whoa, there would be tons of pressure to END the war.
You cubicle fake-left crapped all over working people. Then you crawled into bed with Capital and the Credentialed. Finally you spent the last 2 years hiding at home demanding your corporate farmers fill you full of poison.
You cowardly fools have created a Reaction that’s going to make Franco look like Barney the Dinosaur.
I’d tell you to head for the hills, but you wouldn’t know what to do once you got there.
Thats the attitude we need. Mary Anne knows whats up
Caitlin.this is somewhat unrelated but as I don’t use social media, I’m taking advantage of your article to make this comment. Here are the words today from the “distinguished” US senator from Mississippi:
“As of yet no one has given Vladimir Putin a bloody nose,” Mississippi’s Roger Wicker told reporters. “I think the alliance, our friends in NATO and a bipartisan majority are prepared to assist Ukraine in making sure that, if it happens, this time Vladimir Putin will get a bloody nose,”
This idiot believes a possible nuclear exchange between two countries armed to the teeth should be characterized in such a way. I’m not a religious person but God help us all.
Thank you for the opportunity to vent.
Check out Sen Wicker’s bio on Wikipedia.
He has degrees in Political Science, Journalism, and Law, and he “serves” on Arms Services Committee, i.e. he serves LMT and Raytheon.
He is skilled at putting his masters ideas into words so they get picked up and carried by the Mass Media.
He is not an idiot, he is getting paid to make inflammatory statements.
Of course he comes off as a coward. Getting his “friends in NATO” together to give one guy “a bloody nose”.
Sometimes smaller kids pick on my kid on a school bus and tell him they can beat him. I explained to him they must be abused at home and he should feel sorry for them.
Let us feel sorry for Sen. Wicker from Mississippi, he must have had rough life.
Quoting you here:
‘Any competition-based system will necessarily have losers as well as winners in those competitions. Saying “Compete better than those you’re competing against” does nothing for the part of the population who must necessarily lose. A collaboration-based system is what’s needed.’
But, Caitlin, what you are missing here is that free enterprise IS a collaboration-based system. You do compete with people who are doing the same job you are doing, but you collaborate with everyone else in the world who is providing things you don’t have and can’t make, and who accept in exchange the things you can make.
This is a marvellous essay in which you skip all over the place (like me), and say a lot of things I agree with. In particular, it is good to see someone on the left who argues for freedom of speech.
You may be right about the U.S.A. being more dangerous than it ever was before, now that it is declining. In that context, I note that we in Australia have just signed a treaty, the AUKUS pact, in which good English-speaking, mixed-race people agree to fight the good fight against the purebred Chinese.
I still pretend to care about the Moslems in the western part of China who are being exterminated by the Han. I remember writing a letter to our local newspaper here (Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia), defending the Moslems in the Philippines, when the paper published a propaganda piece portraying them as part of the worldwide Moslem terrorist scene. I pointed out that they were locals who hadn’t been successfully exterminated by the Jesuits when they ran the country.
Your mention of “fascism being kind of racist” reminds me of an incident here in Rockhampton when a friend and I attended one of the right-wing protest meetings that were happening a few years ago. There was some rather involved discussion about race and Nazis and what-have-you, and a lady stood up and said that “Nazis just hate white people.” It makes me at least wonder how much point there is in trying to have a political discussion when there are people around who don’t know more history than that. And don’t try to tell me that leftists wouldn’t be as dumb as that. You yourself show no sign of every having read Adam Smith, for example, or having any idea of economic history – I mean real economic history, not Marx’s somewhat tendentious version.
‘Saying propaganda doesn’t work is the same as saying advertising doesn’t work, and advertising is nearly a trillion-dollar industry.’ I think you are dead right here. Propaganda and advertising do work. However, sometimes they overreach themselves. A strong advertising campaign for a really bad product sometimes kills it off quickly, because too many people learn too quickly that it is a dud. In a way, success in Russia and China did the same thing for socialism. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that American millionaires planned it that way, as an object lesson for their own people. But I’m speculating, of course.
I gather from your last two paragraphs that you are leaning towards the idea that some of us need to self-help. I agree. But it’s not either-or. If I had waited to be seventy years old to write my first letter to a newspaper, I might have saved myself some embarrassment, but I would also have failed to make some good hits that I have made.
Oh, but Caitlin, it’s so much worse because there are so many people who are unwilling to prop up the delusions of the US anymore. See, we bought ourselves some time with imperialism and being “benevolent dictators” (whatever the entire fuck that means) and the internet wasn’t wildly available. Not only is everyone now talking to each other about the emperor’s ass hanging out and passing gas, but we don’t even care about hurting the emperor’s feelings. And we all know how emotional terrorists react when you hurt their feelings.
“Also, advertising would be much more effective than it already is if corporate ads were allowed to disguise themselves as news reports in The New York Times”.
They are! Putin planning a false flag in Ukraine while “unidentified chemical components” have been brought to the Donbass and there are dozens of American contractors working with Ukrainian special forces there (no relation of course) according to the Russian Defense minister Sergey Shoigu, was brought to you by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and the “devastating spread” of the quasi-inoffensive Omicron scariant was brought to you by Pfizer in easily digestible gluten free New York Times format.
“If you’re the same person you were a decade ago, you just wasted ten years of your life.”
I think that continuing to be a wonderful person for the last ten years in spite of the world becoming drastically worse has been a great accomplishment.
And this just in …
Pandemic Narrative Undergoes Radical U-Turn / Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola
Story at-a-glance
In recent days, the pandemic narrative has undergone a remarkable number of U-turns
January 9, 2022, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky sent out a tweet saying “We must protect people with comorbidities from severe COVID-19,” in other words, focused protection, which is what tens of thousands of doctors have been calling for since the creation of The Great Barrington Declaration in early October 2020
January 10, 2022, Walensky admitted that the COVID shots cannot prevent transmission
The CDC is now saying you should not retest once you’ve recovered from COVID, as the PCR can provide false positives for up to 12 weeks after the infection has been resolved. They’re also cutting the isolation requirement from 10 to just five days — probably because the failing economy is hurting Biden’s approval rating so they need people to work
The narrative is also changing on what makes for a COVID case and how deaths are counted. Walensky recently admitted about 40% of “COVID patients” tested positive but do not have symptoms and are hospitalized for something else. She has also promised to deliver data on how many people have actually died “from” COVID and how many died “with” it
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/01/19/pandemic-narrative-undergoes-radical-u-turn.aspx?ui=b1fb18bd6c2f10727c144b2ef704ad4e9ffa5197e5f844138d0096c51ce18e59&sd=20211026&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20220119&mid=DM1094583&rid=1384035092
A lot of internet snakes want you not to get vaccinated. They don’t care if you live or die as long as they never have to admit the libruls are right. Those people are your enemies. Get vaccinated and wear masks so we can get through this together instead of letting people die for some rich jerk’s vain medieval agenda.
Maybe its my short attention span but the “Notes” series is my favourite 🙂
Get perspective John:
Heart disease, stroke 15.2m [in 2016, WHO 2018]
– Cancer 9.6m/year [in 2018, WHO 2020]
– Starvation 9.0m/year [theworldcounts.com 2020]
– Polluted air 8.7m/year from oil alone [Birmingham U.
2021]
– Tobacco 8.2m/year [WHO 2019]
– Infant mortality 4.1m/year aged <1 year [in 2017, WHO]
– Medical blunders 3.3m/year from blunders [WHO 2019]
– Alcohol 3.0m/year [WHO 2018]
– Diabetes 1.6m/year [in 2016, WHO 2018]
– Diarrhoea 1.4m/year [in 2016, WHO 2018]
– Road accidents 1.4m/year [in 2016, WHO 2018]
– Resistant microbes 1.3m/year in 2019 [Lancet 2022]
– TB 1.3m/year [in 2016, WHO 2011].
There you have it folks. The spreaders think your deaths are just a statistic.
1) If the “vaccines” worked properly, your comment would make sense. But the so called vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission of Covid19. (That’s not just me saying it, the head of the CDC, Dr. Walensky said as much on CNN on Jan. 10th.)
2) The great preponderance of scientific evidence shows that typical masks do not prevent the transmission of viruses. Masks do not work. This whole business of mask mandates has been about social control, not about public health.
Is this how the capitalist globalist US empire collapses?
Several international airlines cancel flights to US over 5G concerns
T REX v T REX…and the comet is coming…
https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/emirates-cancels-flights-to-several-us-cities-over-5g-concerns
The neoliberal neocon Democrats joined at the hip with intelligence agency/MIC/Hedge Funds/Billionaires are more to be feared than the Trumpists. And so, clearly, are Democratic voters. The Democrats have the know-how to impose a “kinder, gentler “fascism while Trump and the Trumpists of January 6 do not have a clue.
Amazing it has been 60 years since John F. Kennedy went to war against the steel industry forcing a backdown of a $5 per ton price increase (aka jawboning), prevented Israel from developing nuclear weapons and vowed to smash the cia into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.
The damn Democrats have made a 180 degree turn: the Clntons, Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Rahm Emmanuel and their financial angels have abandoned the working class and are trying to force everyone to take a USELESS vaccination that does NOT prevent disease or prevent transmission and trying to start wars with Russia and China.
Instead the damned Democrats are jawboning the population via cia/aipac/Israel off the shelf propaganda narrative management … with luck the complete failure of the Russiagate narrative , impeachment and the current covid-is-the-Bubonic-plague narrative is waking people up.
I am not ready to start watching Fox unless someone like Glenn Greenwald is on Tucker Carlson and I damned sure am not ready to vote Republican, especially in GOPfascist Texas.
Had to vote Green, write-in or independent since 2012 bec I cpuld NOT vote for Obama (again). What a failure he was/is! Let alone Hillary. Biden (and Kamala) is the absolute WORST candidate I have ever voted for EVER…and ONLY to get rid of Trump.
If America were a democracy, Bernie Sanders would have been nominated in 2016 and 2020 and would have won overwhelmingly although he is nowhere near socialist enough nor anti imperialist enough.
I am grateful to Cailtin Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, CJ Hopkins and Chris Hedges among others for the regular scorching they give to our betters.
I agree with most of your points, except regarding Kennedy. he didnt prevent them from developing nukes, he sent them some stern memos which they, typically, ignored. compare his actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he took the world to the brink of war over political posturing. democrats often used the power of the presidency in those days to effect their objective; in Kennedy’s case the rise in steel prices threatened his little mission in Vietnam. Frank Church, a few years later, did far more to threaten the CIA than Kennedy did. after all, he needed them to assassinate Castro.
If voting truly changed anything of real importance to the elite, they wouldn’t let you do it.
Americans have been telling the Gallop pollsters that their country is heading in the wrong direction since 2008.
US Government tries to arrange foreign crises to distract from their own domestic crises.
Kind of like “the sky is falling”.
Love the Sun Tzu tweet. Clever!!
There’s a bit missing though where Sun Tzu says: “… and make sure your soldiers are stoned out of their fucking minds all day and drunk all night to the point where they forget where they last got a glimpse of their fucking weapons.” Chinese strategists are often misquoted :o)
Yesterday I read a news report how people in Kyiv where not concerned about Russian invasion. The quoted officials and newsmen from Kyiv said that Western Allies ! where more worried about it than Ukrainian people. They surmised, that ordinary people probably have not heard the news! Some people said they heard about it too many times, others responded that the war has been going on since 2014. Alas, they were not able to reach out of the Anglosphere into Other-sphere.
TODAY, so far I cannot find these news, Google must have removed it from the search results, or downgraded it.
However, the whole point is, Russian and Ukrainian ordinary people have to desire to go into war.
Western Media is trying to absolutely push the narrative about the imminent war.