Listen to a reading of this article:

The US-centralized empire’s use of propaganda, censorship and Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation is the single most urgent issue of our time, because it’s what prevents attention from being drawn to all other issues. And all signs indicate it’s set to get much, much worse.

I feel the need to reiterate once again that the censorship we’re seeing about Ukraine is of a whole new kind than anything we’ve seen before. There’s no pretense that it’s done to save lives or protect democracy this time around, it’s just “We need to control the thoughts that people think about this war.”

Once it was accepted that disinformation and misinformation must be curtailed from above, government and tech institutions took that as license to decide what’s true and false on our behalf. We know this because now they’re just openly propagandizing and censoring us about a war.

You didn’t know that you were granting government and tech institutions authority to decide what’s true and false on your behalf when you agreed that it’s fine for them to work together to censor and sanctify Official Narratives about Covid, but it turns out that’s what was happening.

It looks pretty obvious in retrospect now though, doesn’t it? You can’t regulate “disinformation” and “misinformation” without first determining what it is, and you can’t determine what it is without assigning someone the authority to make those distinctions. There are no benefecent, impartial and omniscient entities who can be trusted to become objective arbiters of absolute reality on our behalf. There are only flawed human beings who act in their own interest, which is why we’re now being censored and propagandized about a war.

In literally the very next instant after being given the authority to decide what’s true and false on our behalf regarding Covid, those same government, media and tech institutions launched into World War II levels of propaganda and censorship over a war we’re not even officially in. It was like they all said “Oh good, we get to do that now, finally.” The consensus that it was fine to launch into a shocking information lockdown about Ukraine was already formed and prepped for roll-out the day Russia invaded. It was taken as a given that they had that authority.

Over the last two years you’d get called an “anti-vaxxer” and worse if you said you didn’t think government-tied monopolistic megacorporations should be restricting speech about Covid measures that affect everyone, but it turns out those who issued these warnings were 100 percent correct.

It is clear now, as we see what we are becoming, that granting these powerful institutions authority to sort out fact from fiction on our behalf is far more dangerous than misinformation about a virus ever was. Now here we are, with the empire setting up “disinformation” boards while it escalates aggressions with Russia by the day and prepares to do the same with China in the not-too distant future. Our whole civilization is being organized around winning US propaganda wars.

Censorship is bad because free speech is how society orients itself toward truth, course-corrects when it’s going astray, and holds power to account. This is true whether censorship is by the government or by tech oligarchs. Only morons act like this is some weird right wing thing.

People say, “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach!”

And the answer to this is always, yes it does you idiot. If people who support status quo power have access to all the largest voice amplification platforms while critics of status quo power don’t, this kills the very purpose of free speech protections. Free speech protections are enshrined exactly because unrestricted speech puts a check on power. If critics of status quo power structures are being banned from the platforms where people get their voices heard, this function has been nullified.

You can’t say your society has free speech if critics of status quo orthodoxies aren’t free to speak where they will be heard, for exactly the same reason you can’t say people have free speech in Saudi Arabia as long as nobody hears their criticisms of the government.

Because free speech is designed to put a check on status quo power, it is exactly the voices who criticize the status quo that must be protected. Some of these voices will be unpalatable, but the alternative is permitting a Ministry of Truth to decide what dissent is permissible, an authority that’s certain to be abused.

Speech isn’t free if it isn’t free in all the areas where people congregate to speak. If only mainstream supporters of the status quo have free access to all platforms, then free speech isn’t happening, and power has a lot more ability to do what it likes unchecked by the public. Saying it’s fine because people are still free to go to Gab or Truth Social to voice their criticisms of establishment Ukraine narratives or whatever is the same as saying it’s fine because people can still speak their criticisms of the government into a hole in the ground. Free speech is not happening.

Consent for this was given when we allowed these powers to assume complete narrative authority over what constitutes “misinformation”. It’s never too late to revoke consent, though. It just means the fight to pry our voices out of the hands of our rulers is going to be a tough slog.

___________________

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76 responses to “Western Civilization Is Being Organized Around Winning US Infowars”

  1. Of course, not a word about the Tribe that pulls the strings.

    Hell no.

    Might get spanked if you tell THAT Truth.

  2. Nonsense. What were the ukranians doing since 2014? Killing Russian citizens in their war against the Russian speaking areas. That is an act of war. Thanks for promoting the yankee propaganda.

  3. Technocracy is Unsustainable Avatar
    Technocracy is Unsustainable

    “Out of 195 countries, only 30 have honored the US sanctions on Russia. That means about 165 countries in the world have refused to join the sanctions.”

    On Ukraine, the World Majority Sides with Russia Over US https://www.sott.net/article/467280-On-Ukraine-the-world-majority-sides-with-Russia-over-US

    The empire has become a fragile bubble, a virtual world of make believe. The bubble brains escape into economic math models that never work in the real world, into In Silico cookie-cutter medical models that don’t resemble actual individually unique bodies, into a massive stock market bubble that pretends that all is well as long as the QE life support injections keep coming. The propaganda bubble that US citizens have been cocooned in for decades can no longer be sustained. Once something is discredited and the erosion of belief begins, even a clenched fist can’t stop the sand from falling through.

    “Freedom, like love, come from places of strength. Dictatorship, like fear, come from a place of losing control. And power is like water, the more you grasp at it, the faster you lose it.”

    Is the Great Reset Failing? When Great Narratives Fall Apart
    https://canadianpatriot.org/2022/02/27/is-the-great-reset-failing-when-great-narratives-fall-apart/

  4. I lived first in “Autocracy” then after 20 years of struggle in kind of “Democracy”. When A. lying they are just silent, so, you must look into, not what they say, but to what they didn’t say or you just “look between lines” hoping there will be some logic or hidden double meaning from some brave journalist. (if you don’t care about politics and you are kind a stupid or just pretend – you will live very happy life in ignorance and equality)

    When D. lying, i must say, its much worst because on every truth there are 1000 lies. So silence of A. looks like meditation compering with never stopping info bombing of D. When it goes on for years and decades it is truly hearting mentaly even strongest “Spock” intellects. It is overloading like DDoS attack and at the end even strongest who challenge every info start to “pass” them getting more and more untruth “picture/logic”.

    Most intellectuals I know last hope is “diversification of info sources” and then they are seeking for mathematical average of those info to be as close as possible to truth. BUT what is average of lies? Truth or average lie?

  5. New video has surfaced of Zelensky back when he was an anti-Nazi pro-peace Russia-loving comedian.
    Zelensky really wasn’t all that bad before he was puppetized by the US, according to Jackson Hinkle.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl2A6RQ-X0w
    I agree, with the caveat that his life was threatened at some point during the puppetization process.
    If his life wasn’t threatened, and he volunteered to be a puppet so he could remain rich and famous, well then he always was a neo-Nazi piece of shit, wasn’t he?

    1. thorsjackhammer Avatar
      thorsjackhammer

      They don’t bother with threats or blackmail any more, the elite now use advanced ‘cult’ brainwashing techniques. I know it sounds like science fiction, but it isn’t. That’s why they had all their experimentation units hidden in plain site for decades perfecting brainwashing/mind control as a science – i.e. All the various well known Cult ‘religions’, particularly the post WWII ‘new age’ belief cults.

    2. @MAX424 – I am curious as to what you would normally expect a “peace loving” leader of a country to do, when their country was invaded?

      It’s one thing to be peace loving, but another thing to simply lie down and give in.

      It’s an imperfect example but if someone was a pacifist and their house was invaded by thugs that threatened their family, would you expect them to simply give in and take it? Or would you expect them to take some action to defend their family and house from the home invaders?

      No matter how peaceful a country’s leader may be, I would expect them to fight back when their country is invaded, as long as the country has the capacity to do so.

      1. No, because he is elected with Russians votes (and other anti-fascist in Ukraine) promising them basic human rights and that he will stop war in Donbas – stop killing Russians. (war didn’t start 2 months ago but 8 years ago). He was never in charge for anything just actor in TV show about honest teacher who becomes president of ukr. Even in that same TV show (you can watch on Netflix) secret service of ukr is just playing with him as they play now + fascist + USA/UK. In all human history from caves to now never no “Jester” was ruling anything. Problem now is that all politicians on west are just jesters (Yanis Varoufakis https://youtu.be/GB4s5b9NL3I ) Putin/Xi didn’t kill democracy they can not do that even they wish to. So, who is killing democracy?

      2. Nonsense. What were the ukranians doing since 2014? Killing Russian citizens in their war against the Russian speaking areas. That is an act of war. Thanks for promoting the yankee propaganda.

  6. ‘…the bigger the lie the more it is believed..’ to paraphrase fascist advertising. Western democracy means choice over which lies to believe.
    I adhere to the “hunk of cheese, half a loaf of bread and eight pints of water” history of warfare. Without the most basic of supplies – conflict cannot continue.
    WWII was about Germany and the USSR – Russia. Fascism vs Communism. National Socialism vs International Socialism. Guess who won?
    At best, the UK and Commonwealth nations and the US were peripheral players, only the US took upon itself the role of director. Subsequent formation of NATO was not anti USSR per se, but designed to destroy socialism within Europe. European partisan fighters who represented the majority of the ‘underground’ in occupied countries were pro-communist or socialist.
    The capitalist ‘west’ still needs Russia as the ‘bogey-man’ only it now appears that the ‘bogey-man’ has had enough and is calling the shots. Capitalism carries within its financial ideology the seeds of its own destruction, as in “Capitalism eats its own children”.
    As an aside, one of the world’s biggest ‘fakes’ was the Battle of Britain, yet so deeply entrenched in the British psyche that even the reigning monarch lays a wreath on BofB day.
    Russia and Ukraine conflict? It is a war, no matter what it is called. Guess who is going to win? The one with more cheese and bread and supplies of water.
    Only the dead have seen the end of war. Plato.

    1. The Brits had bombed Hamburg for three months before Hitler unleashed the bombing of Britain. Very interesting book by Nick Kollerstrom about that: How Britain Initiated Two World Wars.

  7. For a little while longer “Western Civilisation” may seem to be prevailing because of its ability to dominate the propaganda wars with its bombast and facile deceptions, but all that is soon coming to an end when this so-called “civilisation” absolutely destroys the complete essence of what running a society should entail: ensuring peace and prosperity. Enjoy your last days of the already sad facsimile we have of that.
    ~
    According to sources never allowed to be read or listened to by the entire Western bloc, Nato is about to essentially go to the equivalent of def-con-0 and initiate a full scale war with Russia on multiple fronts. Poland, Romania, Ukie regulars and a whole fucking zoo of foreign mercenaries are soon to overrun Russian Transnistria which abuts Moldova and from there its on to Lvov in Western Ukraine and Odessa in Southern Ukraine. After that, on to Moscow I should think.
    ~
    That $33 billion check Lord Biden presented to Zelensky is going to cover shit loads of F-16 jet fighters to be piloted by Ukies who have already been trained in Natostan and are ready to commit to their suicide missions. There are also hordes of regular Nato soldiers clothed in counterfeit Ukie uniforms ready to roll into Western Ukraine on the multitude of new tanks and armored personnel carriers. With its newly minted “lend lease” program to keep Ukraine equipped with endless state of the art weaponry, Washington is essentially writing a blank check for Zelensky to turn his country into some fucking on-line video game. I surmise that Lord Biden is so enraged with fear and loathing of Russia, Putin and being swept in the next scheduled elections that he has decided to go for broke and end this now. If he can’t rule the world, no one can.
    ~
    This scenario is excerpted from articles that the Saker, the Moon of AL, and PCR have posted in recent days. Where is the sanity, the proportionality of risk to benefit, the necessity for anything even approaching the carnage that Washington has planned? Only a mentally diseased society that produces a top foreign diplomat who claims it was worth killing half a million kids through starvation, disease and collateral combat casualties to constrain the actions of a foreign despot within the confines of his own borders would even fleetingly consider putting the entire population of the whole world at risk of nuclear annihilation just to retain strong-arm control over the failed artificial nation of Ukraine run by Nazis, just to use it as a cudgel against Russia! What madness, yet the intel says the damned murderous imbeciles are going for it. If ever there was a case to be made for a pre-emptive nuclear clean sweep of the United States, the monsters in Washington are making it themselves! If it comes down to “use ’em or lose ’em,” both sides will use them. Time for the UN to throw off the American hegemony and order the Americans out of the Eurasian continent as being too big a threat to civilisation itself, their SC veto be damned. Without Washington in the picture, there is NO conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
    ~
    I realise that many liberals refuse to listen to any conservative source, especially a former Reagan Asst. Secretary of the Treasury, but see what Mr. Roberts succinctly has to say on this matter. (I don’t agree with him on several other unrelated issues.) It’s a scenario we had better hope somebody blocks before it can be set into motion. As I alluded to above, these analysts have access to sources that the Washington establishment will neither allow nor even admit, so the media say nothing and the American public remains totally ignorant of the real dangers posed by their own leaders.
    ~
    https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/05/02/washington-moscow-have-combined-to-make-the-ukrainian-situation-into-armageddon/

    1. Yeah the split was there from the beginning, wasn’t it, the Russians Saker, Moon, and Andrei Martyanov vs the American contingent of Ritter, MacGregor and Paul Craig Roberts. All superb geo-political thinkers, all in agreement about what must be done, eveyone grasping the basics that war in the 404 was over on Day 1 and would be of short duration.
      But what is the definition of a war of short duration?
      The Russian side for the most part agreed with the Federation’s determination to fight this war like gentlemen, whereas the Americans were like no, no, no, you can’t go pussyfooting around in the Ukraine because it will take too long, and it will give the Americans too much time to ramp up their mutually assured suicidal machine.
      My contention always was the Putin was neo-liberal nit who never fully grasped what was really going on, and the Americans played him for the fool he was, spent a decade and half expanding to his borders without any real complaints and when we crossed his line in the sand, that one we drew for him, and forced him to attack our proxies, we had him right where we wanted him all along.
      In the Escalate to Suicide Zone, where his role now is to play the Hitlerian madman threatening all us little innocent lambs over here with nuclear annihilation.
      Too funny. Who are the real 7th dimensional chess players I ask? I started calling Putin the Neville Chamberlain of Russia back in 2008, because it seemed obvious to me that he would never let go his Western neo-liberal dreams, and would allow his nation to get surrounded in order to hold on to them to the last.
      So who’s to blame here? Humans. The Russians sold out en masse to those same neo-liberal bauble and trinket dreams that West holds so dear. And that’s includes you Andrei, and both the Alex’s. You are all against MMT ( public banking) and socialism? But you are all for what, private centralizing banking, old style unfettered capitalism with “conservative” values … and autarky?
      Sorry boys, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t be both for neo-liberal global banking and patriotic devotion to the nation. That makes you oxymorons. Yeah, you want the baubles and trinkets but without the Western interference in the gathering of them. I get it. Well, you will become nothing but nation-states filled with whores and run by whores, just like mine … if you succeed.
      Why is the treasonous noe-liberal Elvira Nabiullina still in charge of your central bank, and MMT advocate, and patriot, Sergey Glazyev, still shunted to the sidelines?
      Autarky my ass. That you are the most self-sufficeint nation-state, at the moment, is purely an accident of geography and the fact that you were forced, by sanctions, to relectantly pursue such a path.
      Dragged kicking and screaming.
      By the way, climate change is real and it’s coming for us all, and if Russia is a peer of the United States, well, whip-de-fucking do. All it means is we are a couple of ball clubs battling it out in poorly lit small town parks at the Triple A level, looking up at the bright lights and big cities of major league China.

      1. Pretty much.
        ~
        It was always clear that the US chronically over reaches and would set in motion its own demise some day. Some day is at hand.
        ~
        Putin’s caution was always seen as wisdom, but this latest corner that the US has backed him into rather seems to indicate the pitfalls of being indecisive. And he did let the Atlantic Integrationists in his government (Why were any of them there? They belonged in jail with Navalny.) basically sabotage the national cause by investing all the country’s foreign currency and gold in Western banks! A cursory view of how America operates should have suggested that the feds would simply steal everything, like government and “law enforcement” do to American citizens in civil forfeiture seizures.
        ~
        Either Putin (or a hardliner replacement) will now be forced to escalate the war, operation or stagecraft (pick a term) being conducted in ZioNaziLand to avoid an entirely unacceptable existential defeat and a repeat of the catastrophic 1990’s under the boot of the cocky, terminally arrogant Americans. There is no silver lining whatsoever for a Russian surrender, so it will be escalation followed by counter-escalation until the nukes fly and we are all dead.
        ~
        The ridiculous thing about all of this is that Washington has had so little to gain from this entire fiasco, and so much to lose when it all comes a cropper. I know that the country is crumbling on numerous other fronts, the most conspicuous of which is its self-inflicted economic collapse, its mindless racial divide, push by the Deep State for open borders and black supremacy, and continued fleecing of the bankrupt treasury by the MIC, but this absurd military adventurism does nothing but fleetingly distract from all that, as if being dead in a nuclear Armageddon is somehow preferable to a futile civil war.
        ~
        Maybe the big league players you mentioned (China) can nip this in the bud by suitably threatening the Banditos Yanquis, announcing that they will under no circumstance allow Russia to be conquered by the US, and then demonstrating their resolve by sinking the entire American fleet in the South China Sea with their vaunted (if real) ship-killer missiles. That will either smack some sense into the demented fools in DC or simply serve as the inevitable trigger for a three-way MAD session. China should know that if they don’t confront the Western devils now, they surely must in the near future.

        1. The Duran lads and former Ukraine deep state prisoner Gonzalo interview Martyanov.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPrDl414AFM
          What’s left unanwered by Andrei is Gonzalo’s – twice repeated – query as to what the Russian’s were doing in the first month of the war, if not trying to shock and awe their opponents into negotiating a quick peace via operational hocus pocus.
          All this “a permanent Iron Curtain has descended upon us and we embrace it” is a load of horseshit. The last thing Russia wants is to leave 400 years of European integrationist dreams behind, to become a minor Chinese satellite. Then they really will be gas station with nukes.
          Or not. They can embrace the Chinese way, which is basically, function as a nation-state (because that’s what you fucking are), and not as regional muscle for the global neo-liberal class.
          A very junior partner in other words, but a proud and independent one. There are worse fates .And who knows, maybe China can teach them how to build high speed rail.
          The race IS on as to which nation will have HSR last, the US or Russia.
          I know it won’t be Afghanistan. I’ve seen the Chinese plans for the HSR station in the heart of Kabul. It’s $1 billion beauty.
          Note: Wouldn’t that be ironic for the two old antagonists, who each wasted so much time and treasure in the Graveyard of Empires.

          1. High-Speed Trains in Russia
            High-speed trains are European-standard high-speed inter-city trains, capable of typical ground speeds of 250 kph (or 155 mph). They currently run between Moscow, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and Nizhny Novgorod. These trains are called “Sapsan” within Russia, or “Alstom” on the Helsinki – St. Petersburg route.
            https://www.russiantrains.com/en/page/high-speed-trains-russia

            1. I apologize to my Russian friends. Well, it’s race between my country and Afganistan.
              Thanks for the correction.

          2. The whole bruhaha stems from Washington insisting it be the world’s hegemon in all things. Once it gets that notion knocked out of its head by reality (and Chinese ordnance) there is no reason why the BRI, Lisbon to Vladivostok trading union, should not thrive inclusive of the United States. There will be globalism, just not administered out of Davos. Or, Earth can try functioning as a monolithic slab of green glass.

  8. 6.26 dead worldwide from covid. Conspiracy nuts think it’s just a statistic because that’s how they’ve been trained to think.

    1. There was a Covid death in my neighbors immediate family.

      The neighbor said the death was fairly quick, lasting only 3 weeks between being healthy, diagnosis, and then death.

      But I didn’t go to the wake and hold a mirror under her nose to see if she was actually dead.

      I have friends who don’t believe carbon monoxide is deadly.

      After all it can’t be seen tasted or smelled. So it seems like something magical or spiritual, like a false god.

      Hard to believe that people tried injecting bleach to cure covid on Trump’s advice.

      I’m looking for a Trump 2024 hat for myself.

      Trump was not afraid to talk to Putin, but the tongue tied cowardly Democrats are leading us into WWIII.

      I haven’t voted for an R or D for decades, but Trump is the only one who made an effort to talk to Putin, for which he has been demonized.

    2. Biden got the jab and look at him…

      1. The jab is not a fountain of youth.

        He was old and decrepit long before the Democratic Party made him president.

        1. Relax, I was just joking. Is joking still allowed or did I miss something in the free speech debate?

      2. He’s almost as senile as you are.

        1. Flattery won’t get you anywhere.

    3. thorsjackhammer Avatar
      thorsjackhammer

      I’m not claiming there is or isn’t a deadly covid virus/virii, but how do you personally know, with 100% certainty, that all these deaths are due to (or partially due to) a deadly corona strain? I mean, have you personally scientifically confirmed each case of death to confirm your confident claim? Can you say with 100% certainty that the tests used are at least 95% accurate? Did you use the scientific method and peer review to confirm with 95% confidence that the testing procedures and equipment are 100% accurate? Or, do you simply take other peoples hearsay as 100% proof of all matters? I know I don’t. I simply say I’m not sure either way, unless I can confirm things for myself, like I can confirm gravity, leverage, force, speed, temperature, nutrients and anti-nutrients, or maybe a dodgy food van where I’m almost guaranteed to get food poisoning or have a 50/50 chance, for instance.

      1. “Modelling suggests that by the end of 2021, some 18 million people had died because of the pandemic.”
        https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00708-0
        In Zambia, for example, where the dead generally get buried without much inquiry into what killed them, analysis of corpses at a Lusaka morgue “found that 32% of the dead in the morgue tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. The numbers testing positive rose to 82% during one week of Zambia’s deadliest wave in June. Most had died at home without seeking treatment, and fewer than 10% had tested positive while living—a criterion health authorities required to count them as part of the official covid-19 toll.
        Although some of the deceased who were infected with the virus likely died from unrelated causes, interviews with relatives and records of those who’d sought treatment for covid-like symptoms before succumbing suggest that roughly 70% of adult dead testing positive were “probably” or “possibly” victims of covid-19.”
        https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/08/1049107/real-covid-toll-africa-morgue/

  9. A very nice steel and glass pic of the MINISTRY OF TRUTH at the beginning of the article.

    if you don’t know what I mean Google it.

  10. BB Benderhaus Avatar
    BB Benderhaus

    Misinformation is not the biggest threat of our generation. The people behind the new world order, planned parenthood, climate change hysteria, fighting terrorism, covid panic and build back better is the greatest threat of our generation. They mean to reduce the world population by any means possible be it starvation, war, sterilization or disease. Misinformation is just the grease making this all possible. The danger is the forces behind all of this.

  11. From Russiagate to Ministry of Truth in such a short amount of time. It’s like there is a Matrix-like overlay of data and drama divorced from the real world, until someone starves or is lead away or blown to bits. Is it Biden and Pelosi having senior moments or is it Netflix? Everything seems like a show. Switch it off. I notice traffic beginning to return after the empty streets of COVID, helping to stress the planet. Homeless tent encampments that linger on while our rulers dole out billions for war. At least there was a chickadee with a yellow breast in the tree outside my window yesterday. I actually do pick up my guitar and play just like yesterday. We are forever being fooled again. Thanks, Cait, for a window into it.

  12. thorsjackhammer Avatar
    thorsjackhammer

    There are token ‘free speech’ concrete platforms (70s period?) in one dusty spot along the yarra river in Melbourne, not too far past Fed Square. I suppose the ‘authorities’ had to get individual protesters out of the CBD away from potential mass awareness of issues somehow. The ‘soap box’ platforms are in a perfect location where no one would hear you unless they went well out of their way. Seems similar tactics are used in cyberspace now, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
    *
    Zelensky is a typical engineered for MSM cult of personality figure. How anyone buys that he’s genuine is beyond me. But then again, this whole ‘Russia/Ukraine ‘war’ is as suss as they come, likely a false flag for something bigger to come, China?

    1. The fact that imperialist think tanks and like-minded media would try to impose Zelensky as a war hero when this diminutive gnome looks like a wet rag, has grown a beard that doesn’t even remind anybody of what it’s supposed to look like (El Che), has a rather original past for a guerillero, let alone a head of state, of playing the piano with his dick and dancing with drag queens, goes to show the satanism (i.e. the Frankist ideology of transgressing all traditional values and calling things their contrary, at the root of the newspeak and doublethink of the Ministry of Truth) of the neocon bastards.

      1. Not even mentioning his nazi connections that would condemn any other world leader to the media pillory.

      2. thorsjackhammer Avatar
        thorsjackhammer

        Zelensky’s nazi connections could be part of a broader plan to eventually ‘normalize’ and heroize NAZI’s. Looks to me that Nazism (white power) has been building in a relatively obvious way for at least a decade now in social and MSM. Initially I thought nothing of it, like a ‘bad ass’ fad for the youth.

    2. “The ‘soap box’ platforms are in a perfect location where no one would hear you unless they went well out of their way.”

      In Free World America, the benevolent government set up Free Speech Zones around party conventions. (sarc)

      This, (should have been) a shock to Americans who held the notion that the USA itself is a free speech zone.

      Protesters, to avoid arrest, were guided into chain link enclosures where they could have their “free speech” among themselves without disturbing the convention attendees who had the serious work of determine who would rule the USA.

      1. thorsjackhammer Avatar
        thorsjackhammer

        Sounds about right. Free speech where the authorities designate/allow it to occur, generally in echo chambers like this.

  13. Third-Eye Roll Avatar
    Third-Eye Roll

    The Western world is fast becoming everything they used to accuse the old Soviet Union of being: authoritarian; censoring; suppressing dissent and punishing protest. Somehow, even “liberals” have become haters of free speech and supporters of the establishment and its false narratives and war mongering. If we become the very things we claim to hate about our enemies, then what exactly is it we are fighting?

    1. What are we fighting for?
      Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn.
      Open up the Pearly Gates –
      Whoopee! We’re all gonna die.
      https://youtu.be/3W7-ngmO_p8

      1. Another anti-war song from the same wartorn era.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLsElbW9Xo
        My country used to produce great art when it was at war, but after 50 years of neo-liberal indoctrination, we have neither the energy, nor the inclination, to produce much anything other than ever grander displays of obediant acceptance.

        1. Madonna pulled the first video for her 2003 song ‘American Life’ when the US invasion of Iraq started, saying “I do not want to risk offending anyone.”
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Life_(song)#Music_videos

        2. “Sign in” to hear a song I was listening to, on the radio!, at 18 back in 1965?
          ~
          Will this insane Kulturkreig never stop intruding in every corner of modern life? Snowflakes go home!

    2. thorsjackhammer Avatar
      thorsjackhammer

      The majority are duped into fighting to keep the establishment in control of the majority (themselves). The establishment are, for some reason, shitting themselves, they are at hyper anxiety levels of losing control (within the recent decade) when they have only gained more and more control, bizarre times.

    3. “what exactly is it we are fighting?”
      Ourselves. It’s an old truism that each one of us is their worst enemy and that what we hate most in people is what we hate in ourselves, hence the perpetual USG accusations against folks around the world doing exactly what they themselves have always been doing and is standard operating procedure in institutions like the CIA: lying, cheating, bullying, warmongering, looting…
      The Covid scam has brought about the inner fascist in millions of people who welcomed the opportunity (fascism doesn’t suddenly spring out of nowhere) to bully their contemporaries with a good conscience, to advocate the persecution of the non-vaxxed (even those at ridiculously low risk like young folks and children) to be on the right side of history, the “good guys” (TM) as had happened many times before, starting with the pagans persecuting the Christians under Diocletian and the Christians in turn persecuting the pagans under Constantine a couple of decades later for exactly the same reason: the state told them it was the right thing to do. And it’s not these guys’ fault if the state’s position had moved 180º for political reasons. They were willing executioners anyway.
      Archimedes famously said ““Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” A “good” reason, like responsibility to protect or pre-emptive strike is this kind of lever. And propaganda is its prophet :o)

      1. You think the US government and CIA hate things like lying, cheating, bullying, warmongering, and looting?
        If you ask me, they despise anyone who doesn’t do it all as well as them. I’ve rubbed shoulders with some of the UK’s elite, many of whom are proud of their lying, cheating, bullying, warmongering, and looting, though of course they don’t want the plebs to know that.

        1. No, I’m talking about people when they look at themselves in the mirror while shaving or blowing their hair dry, not the social masks they carry around and that you rub shoulders or have pissing contests with. Like they might brag about cheating on their wife after a couple of drinks with friends but deep down inside, they don’t feel that good about it. Sometimes burst out crying too…

          1. Well, I really don’t think those British upper-class types I once knew shed private tears about looting or warmongering, let alone cheating on their partners.

            1. It’s what the Asians call yang (hard) outside yin (soft) inside. It’s like a nut and a cherry. Nuts are tough to break but once you do, they’re very soft inside. Cherries on the other hand are easily squashed but the stone inside is very hard. Most people are either one or the other. Strong inside and outside is very rare. A hard shell generally conceals fear.

              1. Some of those brats I was briefly at school with have gone on to prove themselves hard in practice, whatever they feel inside. Fear is a part of their class motivation – fear of reprisals by those they exploit and oppress, fear of losing their privilege, and maybe personal fear of being hurt or exposed, but I wouldn’t equate that fear with softness or cowardice. They’re as tough and ruthless as any street thug or gangster in their way, and with far more resources at their disposal. (And when I said I rubbed shoulders with them, it was at one of England’s more famous boarding schools, so I got to see them shaving and so on, not just when they had their public personas on.)

      2. thorsjackhammer Avatar
        thorsjackhammer

        “The Covid scam has brought about the inner fascist in millions of people who welcomed the opportunity (fascism doesn’t suddenly spring out of nowhere)”
        *
        That’s part of my take ‘at present’, based on the MSM. Fascism, eventually leading to overt white power fascism, is what is being engineered to be the ‘new normal’. Currently they are still busy wheeling out their massive (at times comical) array of WOKE agendas, until, they pull the veil and reveal their true ideology. You can pretty much bet the top of the establishment hate ALL the ‘woke’ agendas they are currently financing and giving MSM mass exposure to. Reverse psychology to enrage all the whities (yes I’m a whitey), particularly the deliberately disenfranchised whities.

      3. thorsjackhammer Avatar
        thorsjackhammer

        The western world’s success is based on conquering the rest of the world to sustain itself. Nationalism was created to keep the emperors/kings/tribal chiefs in power, and it promises ‘trickle down’ benefits to the rest of the tribe. But, conquest has to be made palatable to the tribe by demonization of other tribes and their kings/emperors/chiefs. The western establishment are guided primarily by Darwinist realities that most of us don’t like to see in ourselves due to rose colored glasses social indoctrination from birth. Rose colored glasses indoctrination is beneficial with interactions within a nation/community/tribe. It becomes an obstruction that needs switching off when the establishment needs its subjects to conquer the world.

  14. It’ll be interesting to see where this comment ends up. One of my old stomping grounds, r/collapse, haven’t really commented on the subreddit since the beginning of the Ukraine imbroglio, because every post on Ukraine got pulled as soon as I commented, so it became pointless.
    I’m at the bottom of the thread,
    https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ugki4e/russian_tv_host_says_nuclear_war_is_the_most/
    At minus 8 after 38 minutes. Almost a record for me. During Covid, when I would defend Ivermectin on the grounds that it was a drug that had been prescribed to humans 4 billion times. Those type of posts usually ended up in the minus 30 range.
    Also, defending Vitiman D on the grounds that it was generally accepted in the scientific community that it was in fact, a vitamin, usually got me into minus 20s.
    I am try to hit minus 50, so wish me luck.
    Note: There’s no cheating involved here either. It’s not like I’m courting downvotes by calling Nancy Pelosi a drunk, or saying bad things about Dr. Fauci. I’m simply laying out the same kindergarten scenario that the Russian TV host is, the one that everyone on the panel is accepting with bored detachment.

    1. Well I didn’t make it to minus 50. The post got deleted, as was expected. My comment was up for 8 hours though, and it never did crack minus 30, so that’s … GOOD NEWS!!!
      Kidding. But not kidding. After 12 years in the place, you get a feel for the voting. It’s a quick pole of mostly American sentiments on any given topic. What this means, I believe, is roughly 65% of the American population thinks that sleepwalking their way into WWIII and extinction is preferrable to other less pleasant alternatives, like accepting that reality is real, whereas I thought the figure would’ve been closer to 75%, which it very much was at the beginning ofthis vexing Ukraine affair.
      So progress is being made.

  15. Hoseyn Vosouq Avatar
    Hoseyn Vosouq

    Here, Here…!!!
    Was that a British “thing”?
    Though it’s not heard as of LATE

    KUDOS

  16. pretzelattack Avatar
    pretzelattack

    btw that Time magazine cover reminds me of its Adolph Hitler cover, as Ms. Johnstone intended.

  17. JEFFREY EMSHOFF Avatar
    JEFFREY EMSHOFF

    Caitlin, do you have a link to some reliable site that posts leftist articles beyond what the algorithms allow? ☭✊️

    1. Carolyn L Zaremba Avatar
      Carolyn L Zaremba

      Rokfin, Substack (where many banned reporters now report), Multipolarista. Check out the RadIndieMedia page. RadIndieMedia is an aggregator of antiestablishment reporting. Check it out. And most of all, read the World Socialist Web Site. The WSWS just held a May Day Rally today witih speakers from all over the world. I recommend listening to what they have to say.

  18. I get Strategic Culture e-mails but can no longer bring in the articles (Canada).

    1. If you can get to an article’s URL, try pasting it into either of these sites:
      https://archive.ph/
      https://archive.is/

  19. https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/time?s=w
    It’s About Time, Edward Curtain
    In 1898 the yellow press screamed Spanish devils and today it screams Russian devils. Then and now the press called for war. If the human race is still here in another 124 years, time and the corporate media will no doubt have told the same story – war and propaganda’s lies to an insouciant and ignorant population too hypnotized by propaganda to oppose them.
    This despite the apocalyptic sense that permeates our lives because of demonic technology and its use to transform humans into machines who can’t think clearly enough to perceive reality and realize the threat posed by that quintessential technological invention – nuclear weapons…
    ..So time is my focus, for the last days have arrived unless there occurs a radical awakening to the obvious truth that the US government is pushing the world to the brink of disaster in full awareness of the consequences. Its actions are insane, yet insanity has become the norm. Insane leaders and a catatonic, hypnotized public lead to disaster.
    ​ ​I write these words with an old fountain pen, a high school graduation gift, to somehow comfort and remind myself that when we were this close once before in October 1962, Kennedy and Khrushchev miraculously found a solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis; and to find hope now, and that when my time is up and I join John Patrick in the other world, things will have changed for my children and grandchildren.
    ​ ​It is admittedly the hope of a desperado.​..
    ​..Everyone is now doing time while scrolling messages on the walls of their cell phones. A twisted, convoluted, distorted, mechanical time in which it seems that there is no history and the future is an endless road of more of the same.
    ​ ​Some say we have all the time in the world. I say no, that we have entered a new time, perhaps the end-time, when the world’s end is a very real possibility. Hypnotized people can agree to anything, even mass-suicide, unless they snap out of it.
    https://off-guardian.org/2022/05/01/its-about-time/

    Moon of Alabama notes that, “The typical US reaction to losing is doubling-down.”​
    That works if you have enough to keep betting, until you don’t or until Game-Over.
    Ukrainian soldiers willing to die fighting Russians may be running low.
    The soldiers know, and their families know, that they are expendable.
    They want to live their lives.
    “Ukraine is a victim here but not a victim of Russia but of much bigger plans in the U.S.”
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/04/ukraine-doubling-down.html#more

    Much tighter control of the public discourse narrative will be needed by our ill-fated owners.
    Deep State Response, Dept of Homeland Security Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda
    ..The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced a new Dept of Homeland Security priority to combat disinformation {LINK} on technology platforms including social media.
    ​ ​Many eyebrows were raised as the announcement appeared to be an open admission that the U.S. government was going to control information by applying labels, that would align with allies in social media, who need a legal justification for censorship and content removal.
    ​ ​This CISA announcement was quickly followed by various government officials and agencies saying it was critical to combat Russian disinformation, as the events in Ukraine unfolded. In essence, Ukraine was the justification for search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo, and social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to begin targeting information and content that did not align with the official U.S. government narrative.
    ​ ​Previously those same methods were deployed by the U.S. government, specifically the CDC and FDA, toward COVID-19 and the vaccination program.
    https://www.globalresearch.ca/deep-state-response-dept-homeland-security-establish-disinformation-board-obvious-agenda/5778969

    An Intellectual No-Fly Zone: Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm
    “Censorship is the last resort of desperate and unpopular regimes. It magically appears to make a crisis go away. It comforts the powerful with the narrative they want to hear, one fed back to them by courtiers in the media, government agencies, think tanks, and academia.”
    https://www.mintpressnews.com/online-censorship-ukraine-russa-google-facebook-twitter/280304/

    “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation.” That Twitter intro to a TikTok parody of the song, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” is now indelibly connected to Nina Jankowicz, the new head of the federal government’s announced Disinformation Governance Board.
    https://imageholder.org/nina-jankowicz-of-disinformation-governance-board-sings-a-mary-poppins-style-parody-song/#gref

    1. pretzelattack Avatar
      pretzelattack

      it wasnt really all that miraculous; the US agreed to back down and remove the missiles from Turkey, and the USSR agreed to not install missiles in Cuba. cost Khruschev his position in the USSR, got JFK lauded as “standing up to the commies”, a reputation he had based his career on, our latter day King Arthur with his knights of the Pentagon, not least because Khrushchev agreed not to publicize the bilateral nature of the agreement. it would have been a hell of a lot simpler to just avoid the confrontation in the first place by withdrawing the missiles from Turkey in the first place.

      But then it would be a hell of a lot simpler for the US to call off the attack dogs in Ukraine. the more things change…

      1. It was a little miraculous that Vasily Arkhipov disagreed with the other two submarine captains on the Soviet B-59 about launching nuclear torpedoes, probably preventing all-out nuclear war between the USA and USSR.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov
        https://youtu.be/qr_WkfOMx4c

    2. Nixon case is interesting:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls

      In Russia and China, it is obvious, 2 homo-sapiens Putin/Xi exclusively push red button.

      What about USA? Who is in charge? Algorithms, Corporations, some group… I hope there are homo-sapiens deciding (having children) without corporation algorithms because corporation will go for lose-lose scenario if no win is possible. So, who is real Kissinger nowadays, because Blinken is not that guy.

      PS. Deliberately forgotten science fact is that if even Russia nuclear weapons explode where are they now in silos it will eradicate all except few insects species on Earth by radiation. There are no shelter which can support life for centuries.

      1. thorsjackhammer Avatar
        thorsjackhammer

        ‘Dead Hand’ Nuke activation is also operational in Russia, but likely also operational in China and West as well.

  20. “Saying it’s fine because people are still free to go to Gab or Truth Social to voice their criticisms of establishment Ukraine narratives or whatever is the same as saying it’s fine because people can still speak their criticisms of the government into a hole in the ground”.
    It’s actually worse because when Midas’ barber, who was made to swear not to tell anybody that his lord and master had been given an ass’s ears by Apollo and, unable to keep that secret, whispered it into a hole in the ground, a bed of reeds later sprang up from the covered up hole and began echoing his “King Midas has an ass’s ears”, so everyone would eventually know. Whereas with Gab or Truth Social, what can you expect? :o)

  21. The Ghost of Kyiv has died in battle, reportedly downed by overwhelming Russian forces. In related news, the Easter Bunny has been killed by mortar fire in Khariv, and a Russian cruise missile strike has reportedly resulted in the death of Count Chocula.

    Baghdad Bob redux. Now Khariv Kevin?

    Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, better known to American reporters and TV viewers as “Baghdad Bob,” was the Iraqi information minister from 2001 to 2003. During the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, his outlandish pronouncements of Iraqi military supremacy became the source of amusement to many in the West.

    https://www.liveabout.com/baghdad-bob-quotes-4068522

    1. Poor Easter Bunny…

    2. pretzelattack Avatar
      pretzelattack

      maybe that’s why the Pentagon spokesman had his fake emotional breakdown, over the death of his favorite cartoon character. in related news, some guy married a hologram or something.

      1. Killing the Easter Bunny is a war crime according to the Geneva Convention.

        1. Killing the Easter Bunny is one thing… but to then eat him!!!

      2. As if the Pentagon spokesman gave a damn about a single dead American, while contemplating his own survival in the nuclear arms extinction of countless humans, including Americans.

        He was likely more pained at trying to force tears rather than at holding them back.

  22. It’s a shame that Consortium News has to fight with Paypal but they should have cut ties when Paypal stopped serving Wikileaks. I did.

    1. Carolyn L Zaremba Avatar
      Carolyn L Zaremba

      You can donate directly to Consortium News if you want to. Also you can fund through Patreon.

  23. Eliminating dissent is the path of reckless cowards and ignorant sycophants who guarantee their eventual failure by controlling the “in” group in an ever changing reality.

    As I heard in a Scorsese film: ‘treat em like mushrooms-feed em shit and keep em in the dark’.

    1. Carolyn L Zaremba Avatar
      Carolyn L Zaremba

      That expression pre-dates Scorsese.

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