Listen to a reading of this article:
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If you get the feeling that all this Ukraine flag-waving is one more vapid mainstream propaganda initiative used to manufacture consent for an agenda that has nothing to do with what you’re being told, it’s because that’s exactly what is happening.
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In this war Russia has killed many Ukrainians and Ukraine has killed many Russians and the US empire has killed many Ukrainians and Russians.
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It’s nuts that there are still grown adults who think Putin invaded Ukraine for no other reason than because he is evil and hates freedom.
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Focus less on the Azov Battalion and more on the fact that the US deliberately provoked this war with the goal of toppling Moscow and is threatening all our lives with increasingly reckless brinkmanship against a nuclear superpower.
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People who promote a US/NATO war with Russia are more dangerous and depraved than racists, homophobes, transphobes and antisemites, and they should be treated accordingly. They are the most dangerous extremists on earth. This should be completely uncontroversial and obvious to literally everyone.
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More Americans know Marge Simpson’s sisters’ favorite TV show than know their government is waging a deliberately provoked and profoundly dangerous proxy war against a nuclear superpower. This is because mainstream western media — all of it — is propaganda.
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Everyone should be able to say whatever the fuck they want about a proxy war instigated by the world’s most powerful government that could very easily end up sparking a nuclear war.
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If you’re on the side of the US empire on any issue you are on the wrong side. This doesn’t mean the other side is always necessarily in the right, it just means a globe-spanning empire that’s held together by lies, murder and tyranny will always be in the wrong. Yes, it is that simple.
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It must be the most soul-destroying thing in the world to go to journalism school, study hard, graduate in front of your whole family, work your ass off building up a resume, get a steady job, and then find yourself writing hit pieces about disobedient Youtubers for The Daily Beast.
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Twitter is nature’s way of dispelling the common misconception that liberals are smart.
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If I was the world’s biggest narcissist, I’d probably try to become the richest person on earth, and do everything I can to make sure everyone’s always talking about me, and convince everyone that I’m going to save the world with my technology so I get a weird cult to worship me.
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Twitter being biased in favor of one nation’s government is vastly more consequential than Twitter being biased in favor of one US political party. So far we’re only seeing emphasis on the latter, indicating that Twitter will continue functioning as a US propaganda/censorship apparatus. It should probably get more attention that it’s effectively impossible to have any kind of major media company in the US and not have it be absorbed into the US propaganda machine.
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The Assange case is very simple: the most powerful government in the world is trying to criminalize journalism about its nefarious behavior anywhere in the world. You can sum it up in a breath. It’s only narrative spin and smears that make it seem like some big complicated thing.
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Empires haven’t disappeared as the world grows more conscious of the evils of empire, they’ve just gotten sneakier and bitchier. They used to nail you to a piece of wood in public if you defied them, now they’ve got to go through this whole deceitful lawfare process just to kill one journalist.
Empires used to just openly conquer foreign territories because they want to own them. Then it became about “civilizing” them. Now they pretend it’s about “freedom and democracy”, and they don’t even make you change your flag to theirs.
Empires used to exterminate entire towns who dared to disobey them, now they have to launch these giant bitchy propaganda operations to psychologically manipulate populations into hating their enemies.
Empires are just really sneaky, bitchy, gossippy, backstabby versions of what they’ve always been. They’re just as oppressive and violent, but the fact that there are more eyes on their behavior means they have to be so much more manipulative and covert about what they do.
The more visible things become, the more hard work and cleverness is required to run an empire. That’s why they’re working so hard to make things less visible via censorship, propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and the criminalization of journalism.
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The biggest mistake you can make is to trust that your leaders’ actions would seem more sensible and appropriate if you knew what they know and understood what they understand. The wars really are as horrific and as pointless as they appear. The escalations in tyranny really are as bad as they seem. It’s not that you don’t understand what you’re looking at, it’s that you’re not a sociopath.
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Your thoughts and opinions matter. Know how you can tell? Because every single day the world’s most powerful people pour an immense amount of wealth and energy into trying to manipulate them.
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When a loved one is very self-destructive you can’t control their fate; at some point you’ve just got to let them make their mistakes and hope something in them wakes up before they wind up dead. That’s pretty much how you’ve got to be with the entire human species at this point.
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47 responses to “Siding With The US Empire Is Always Wrong: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”
I think the best way to understand American leadership is to picture an alcoholic: while he is busy drinking, he is not thinking, “yum, how perfectly satisfying this wonderful drink is,” but he is scheming how he will get his next drink. This is the sickness that is addiction, whether it is to substances or behaviors – drugs, money, power, sex, food – that what the addict has is never enough to fill the gnawing inner emptiness. The driving illusion is that satisfaction always lies in the next fix. That next one will finally give him or her the peace of mind that no other ever has. In this mad race to destruction, the addict’s moral character disappears. He will gladly lie, cheat, steal, murder (if he thinks he can get away with it), because his insanity tells him he must surely die if he does not.
Ukraine feels to me like the final battle in the Hundred Years War the US declared against Russia when it sent in an invasion force in 1919. When the addicts lose this one, they’re going to have to go to rehab, and they know it. Insane as they are, they are sure they can defeat Russia as if it was Panama or Granada. Having a senile fool for a president at this pivotal moment seems a perfect metaphor for the nation that once dreamed of “liberty and justice for all” but which is now a hollow (yet infinitely dangerous) mockery of its founding ideals.
Alcohol is an anti depressant. If you’re not depressed, there’s something wrong with you. When Putin was elected president, alcohol consumption in Russia dropped 40%. “When my mind’s messed up, my body don’t care”, Frank Zappa. “Garbage in garbage out”.Your mind is now a battle space. We are witnessing the advent of global cognitive warfare. Drink up my friends.
Alcohol is actually a depressant – but it doesn’t mean that it makes you depressed (although some people do become very maudlin while drinking). Rather, it means that it depresses (ie decreases) inhibitions – so alcohol reduces the normal inhibitions that people apply to their behaviour, and may exaggerate or expose tendencies (such as aggression, confidence etc).
Yes, Caitlin, so very true.
And now we have the Ministry of Truth in the US. No dissent, no misspeak, no variety of opinions. YOu will follow the Dem’s line or we will deal with you.
Tucker Carlson spells it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4inJSblCUY
Danny Haiphong intervies Pepe Escobar, for anyone interested.
http://thesaker.is/pepe-escobar-and-danny-haiphong-russia-china-and-the-post-dollar-world/
When does Mr. Musk take over Twitter? Just wondering, because maybe the first thing he could do to promote good will amonst devotees of the 1st Amendment, or fringe maniacal radical right-wing leftist anti-censorship libertarian nomads, is to reinstate the account of Mr. Escobar.
“It’s effectively impossible to have any kind of major media company in the US and not have it be absorbed into the US propaganda machine.”
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The general public is unaware. A few of us have experienced a Galileo moment.
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On June 22nd, 1633, Galileo was shown instruments of torture. Say the Earth revolved around the Sun again and they would be used.
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I don’t like ‘effectively impossible’. IMPOSSIBLE is accurate. Technology can cancel anyone and technology is used.
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Used by those with an unaccountable war mentality that do not answer to the rule of law. A mentality that is the law of the land using technology that can change your data.
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And ruin you. When men in suits can show up to make sure you toe the line. ‘effectively’ becomes without meaning. It only confuses.
Then again, there might be more people than we think in the deep state bureaucracy who are aware that reducing the Overton window to the size of North Korea means building a Third World country for their grand-children…
Macguyver, I believe.
Efficient as I am, I know this *and* that other thing…
1. I don’t use “vapid” enough.
2. I was thinking #3 was your best point until I got to #4.
3. Maybe you should number your points.
4. And then #5 logically expanded on #4.
5. Finished watching The Simpsons movie last night, watching the bonus stuff tonight.
6. Everyone should be able to say whatever the fuck they want generally, and especially about proxy wars that might lead to nuclear war, though if they’re for that you should argue with them.
7. I read a bit of the dailybeast link and Jesus, it’s no shit getting hard to tell satire from reality anymore. I try to take comfort from the fact that most of them couldn’t change a tire and will keep the zombies sated at first.
8. I must check this twitters thing.
9. Elon can’t help it he’s famous. Besides which, he’s a peep. Google “tall poppy”.
10. In the unlikely event Assange ever gets a Nobel Peace Prize he should refuse it with some kind of massively staged F bomb. I will personally help with this.
11. You really nail your crucifixion analogies.
12. You used sneaky and bitchy twice, but the Empire is a lot of both.
13. Your third point from the bottom is maybe the best one. People, myself included, have a tendency to think things aren’t as crazy as they seem, but adjust your assumptions and it all makes sense.
Good stuff and good list – although I wish you would’ve stopped at 12 or gone on to 14, because the fear-mongering propaganda centered around the number in-between I’ve never been able to shake off.
“… it’s no shit getting hard to tell satire from reality anymore. ”
Yup. One of the tragedies of “the descent” for me is I no longer find The Onion funny. If I read it all, The Onion functions as another – rather mundane* – avenue by which I keep up with the daily news.
*Albeit in a freakishly weird sort of way.
Agreed! The Onion is pretty much aligned and has become utterly uninteresting in the past year or so. Musk used to be an Onion reader. Dunno if he still is.
Fear of #13 actually has a name, I don’t recall it and apparently don’t have it because I didn’t realize I had stopped at 13. True story: STS-13 was changed to STS-41C, everybody knew the numbering system was changed so we wouldn’t have to fly mission #13. Apollo 13 didn’t help. I slipped up and called it 13, being a newbie, and was corrected by the mission commander- “You mean 41 Charlie”. For at least once in my life, argument didn’t cross my mind.
I actually thought for a moment I was on a satire site reading dailybeast. Really does kind of make The Onion superfluous.
Yup, superfluous is the word. What a shame.
Triskaidekaphobia
Ah.
I have a fear of being unable to correctly pronounce long words.
People prefer their own self delusions to reality. Reality sucks and they would rather be fed lies. Thus governments gladly comply.
don’t forget about dogmatic religion! george carlin certainly didn’t:
OK, I”ll bite. What is marge simpsons sisters favorite tv show?
Macguyver, I believe.
Efficient as I am, I know this *and* that other thing…
Amen, I shudder to think that your constantly increasing pith and incisiveness are inversely proportional to the prospect of the human species to avoid the catastrophes we now know could easily happen (nuclear war and environmental collapse). Your clarity is a gift, but I have wondered if it is a sign of how blinkered its reception is among those who need to get it. Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will.
The problem is that, best case scenario, the empire’s movers and shakers don’t care if there’s a nuclear war or environmental collapse — holding and expanding power and profit is far more important to them — and, worse case scenario, they *want* those things as a means to holding and expanding power…
In the best case scenario, on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero but these globalist lunatics have managed to convince themselves that mankind would find a medical way to physical immortality, which of course only the rich could afford. Their eugenicist cacotopia apparently consists in replacing new generations with folks we’ve seen since the Roman Empire like the WEF mob. Brave old world! :o)
“It’s an honor to be smeared by the Daily Beast.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmsWvhG2o7k
Kim Iverson is a muckraker, which I define as, a breath of fresh air.
“They used to nail you to a piece of wood in public if you defied them, now they’ve got to go through this whole deceitful lawfare process just to kill one journalist.”
I assume we are talking about Julian Assange? Wasn’t the CIA boasting awhile back that it was seeking ways to assassinate him? And failing that, they were going to kidnap him?
That would’ve been interesting. What would CIA do after it kidnapped him? Waterboard the shit out of him and force him to confess that he was doing journalism, and then hand over to a US kangaroo court,* evidence of Australian national’s treasonous wrong doing firmly in hand?
Or would the CIA have just kept him? But how would keeping him be any different than the permanent detention he is experiencing now?
The motivations of the CIA have always puzzled me. Do they see themselves as the grand defenders of neo-liberal globalism or do they do what they do just for sake of sheer malevolent fun?
*Speaking kangaroo courts, how is Steven Donziger doing? His story seems to have gotten lost a little bit in this recent Ukraine neo-Nazi kerfuffle.
The CIA is probably a permanent pissing contest with bosses trying to find out how much they can get done without a magic wand, solely out of charisma and connections (Satan being on top of the list as Khomeini pointed out). Obviously a lot of these guys have said “Kill Castro!” in my lifetime and didn’t live long enough to have the pleasure of seeing him dead at 90 yo, dodging even cancer of the lungs after their 638 alleged failed attempts. Gotta laugh :o)
‘Always’ statements can be very tricky, and one can probably say, best not say.
I feel in this case it degrades your credibility, as being a known Socialist you tend to support Russia
Russia is NOT a socialist country. It stopped having any kind of pretensions to being socialist with ther fall of the Soviet Union. What is happening now is a tale of two imperialisms. The imperialism of Russia towards Ukraine which has provided the US (and its neo-liberal NATO allies) the perfect cover for US led Imperialism – the aim of which is to dominate Europe and isolate/weaken Russia IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN ITS ECONOMIC ORDER. Its sister organisation AUKUS provides that function in the southern hemisphere – and is about hemming in China. The US will try and provoke a conflict with it – and then do the same to them. The key thing here is propaganda. You have fallen for it. While Putin should be condemned (and has been stupid), US Imperialism is a global threat.
Putin fell into a trap. The big problem that few seem to consider is this: how does he get out of it without using nuclear weapons. This is much worse than Cuba.
self defense is not imperialism. Putin had no choice. the US put Russia in the position of not having a choice.
Nikita Khrushchev split Crimea from Russia into Ukraine territory when it was the USSR. To understand the way people think about Slavic identity and territory, you would have to look it the last few hundred years of war in that area — the Ukraine Poland war (similarly about ethnic borders) was just about interrupted by WWI, by the way.
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Anyway, the writing has been on the wall with Ukrainian / Rus conflict over Crimea since Khrushchev’s time. Ukrainians and Rus have been fighting territorial conflicts there since before the US existed.
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And this is the weird part, for proxy wars the empires are often involved in conflicts that otherwise would also happen. The US is a fourth party to this war, but “seeing an opportunity” to benefit.
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It’s a mess, but to think of “taking a side” on it is a limiting frame to start with. Strategy of conflict between nations is actually complicated.
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If you want a simple answer, you have to think systemically, not in characterizations of “who is wrong.” History shows that you eliminate one empire, there’s another waiting in the wings.
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Unless we fix things systemically, there’s probably nothing wrong with having an opinion which empire you prefer to live under, because unless we fix things systemically, get real — empire will remain inevitable.
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TL;DR: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
the game is using Ukraine in a proxy war against Russia. get real.
In what way did I not just say that?
Sorry reality is complex and “sides” is a childish frame to think of things.
If you want to understand things (and have more of a chance to make a difference), you have to think systemically, not like a couples’ argument about who is most wrong.
you don’t have to be a socialist to oppose the violent warmongering of the United States. anybody who pretends that is the basis for opposing it degrades their own credibility.
We were due for another proxy war. US in vietnam, russia in Afghanistan, US in middle east and Afghanistan, now Russia in Ukraine. This is how China and Russia battle the US, through proxy wars. The difference is this time we are getting too close to the an adversaries border. Same thing happened in Vietnam. The US got too close to China and knew to back off and withdraw. It is not Nato attacking Russia, it is about Natobpissing off Russia enough that they attack them. Russia is getting pissed enough right now that flattening Ukraine like the US did Iraq is not far off.
It’s not Russia that attacked Afghanistan but the Soviet Union. Afghanistan bordered the Soviet Union (not Russia) like Ukraine borders Russia. Russia and China’s imperialism has always been about borders and bordering nations. The difference with the European empires (British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, German and Italian) is that they fought wars and subdued countries everywhere they thought they could make money, often thousands of miles from home. The US being ethnically, culturally and historically essentially European has picked up the latter tradition.
Agree. Russia inherited the Soviet Union onus since both were centralized in Moscow and the Kremlin.
Is it all about “the weapons?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3pnFR7DeZA
You tell me. Weapons are after all, America’s number one export!
Export number two is of course, waste. That’s my country, waste and weapons!
Too funny. The last line in video is a classic. Our highly paid propagandist informs us that when it comes to promoting war and the outflow of US war material, “staying focused on this – front and center – is our obligation here in the media.”
Note: Personally I think this little local Ukraine scrap is ultimately about oil, and if we can’t win it, break up the Russian Federation – the gas station with nukes – into bits and pieces via neo-liberal thought control, to allow our private Western oil majors a free run at Russia’s oil fields, the next target on the list won’t be China, it’ll be Saudi Arabia.
The US has two countries completely surrounded by military bases, Venezuela and the Saudi kingdom. Venezuela has the planet’s largest oil reserves, but it would be a grinding, long term extraction project for our oil majors, just tar sands gunk mostly, but Saudi Arabia is a ready made gas station without any nukes, just take the place over, pull out a nozzle, and start pumpin.’
And reaping profits! The only downside, the kingdom is our number one customer for our number one export, weapons! But hey, every invasion/occupation comes at a price
Drive by, Chongqing. Well, not really a drive by. Chongqing is one of those Chinese cities that it takes a lot longer than an hour and half to get through … if your doing 50 on average.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIc4Vwb_43I
My Walk East tour guide Max is either a crazy rider a fearless one. There’s a thin line between the two I think.
The idea that the US can take on China is so farfetched I am no longer going to consider it. We can nuke em, but that doesn’t count. Anybody can nuke somebody, but what you can’t do is level sanctions, or whatever, and think you can damage a nation like China in the slightest. I’m not even convinced you could produce the equivalent of a paper cut.
A nation-state functioning as nation-state, stacking 5 year plans on top of 5 year plans, with specialized central mega-banks and state run corporations working only for greater good of China, and you think some mindless and erratic privatized Western interests can take this nation on in any meaning way?
What a fucking joke. The deeper I get into this, the more I’m leaning toward the conclusion that China’s one potential weakness going forward is it going to go soft, from too much easy living.
China said they were going to eliminate poverty, and lift every citizen into the middle-class, and by God, they’re nearly there. Two more 5 year plans in my estimation is all it is going to take.
Note: Is central command in Beijing oppressing freedom? I alway thought so, and I would still like to think so, although my views on freedom are rapidly changing, but one thing I cannot say about the Chinese government, is they are not doing their utmost to increase the well being of their citizenry, which is in direct contrast to my government, which not only doesn’t give a rat’s ass about it’s people, but clearly at this stage of it’s devolution is actively working against them..
I’m I freerer to complain about this negative development than I would be in present day China under similar circumstances? Yes, absolutely, but even this freedom that I have that the average Chinese citizen doesn’t, appears to be on verge of being dissappeared.
Surely you mean 50 years plan…
That’s a measly 10 fives stacked up Pascal. When they start stacking 50 year plans, only then will I start paying attention. 🙂
Seriously, China has made it no secret that it admires the concept, most identified with the Iroquios, of thinking seven generations ahead.
They borrow – or steal, depending on viewpoint – everything from everybody, living or dead, pull out the best bits and then take them out for a test drive..
It’s logical strategy methinks, if you’re a nation-state functioning as a nation-state.
Siding with (and believing anything) the US empire (says) is always wrong. The proof is in the pudding – as in what IT actually does. What IT does is usually good for IT and bad for everyone else.
The only truth in what IT says is hidden in ITs accusations, because they reveal what IT is doing, not what the accused is doing.
So when the US accuses someone of something (which it does all the time), IT is usually because IT is doing that very thing and wants to deflect the attention, and blame, onto the accused. It becomes even more obvious when IT claims the moral high ground (which it does all the time, as well).
ITs corruption is complete when IT genuinely believes that ITs own lies and actions are good and right.
When this happens there is no going back, IT can only do more and more (as in escalate more and more) of the same things that didn’t work the first time. IT is incapable of seeing the actual reality because it doesn’t fit ITs corrupted perception of the world. That’s why it ignores the facts – IT can’t see them.
I had to admire Vicky Fuck the EU the other day in her hearing with Marco Rubio for doing exactly that in asserting (evidence-free as usual) that Putin always accuses others of what he’s about to do. Now that’s chutzpah at Guinness levels!
Researching the Russia/Ukraine situation from online sources (Voltaire.net) and several documentaries (Oliver Stone Ukraine on Fire) l have come to the conclusion (unfortunately no solution) that if Putin is a thug then by following the same logic the US govt./regime and NATO are super thugs and nothing less than a menace to all of humankind.
Yet we don’t know if exposing Russian alleged war crimes is gonna land Western presstitutes (otherwise known as fakes workers) in Belmarsh prison :o)
Please, Caitlin, would you mind restoring/increasing the font size of your emails? The new smaller micro font size is killing my eyes and giving me a headache. Thanks!
Ah… a new troll…
(Control) + (+) should deal with your problem. (Control) + (-) takes it the other way.
You’re welcome.
Or in the top right corner under the close file cross, three little dots. Click. Fourth line Zoom + and – Easy…
But it looks like the new troll has already moved on with her (if the veiled doll icon is anything to go by) headache to troll other folks :o)