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The single most overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of our society is the fact that immensely powerful people are continuously working to manipulate the thoughts we think about the world. Whether you call it propaganda, psyops, perception management or public relations, it’s a real thing that happens constantly, and it happens to all of us.

And its consequences shape our entire world.

This should be at the forefront of our attention when examining news, trends and ideas, but it hardly ever gets mentioned. This is because the mass-scale psychological manipulation is succeeding. Propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening.

To be clear, I am not talking about some kind of wacky unsubstantiated conspiracy theory here. I am talking about a conspiracy fact. That we are propagandized by people with authority over us is not seriously in dispute by any well-informed good faith actor and has been extensively described and documented for many years.

More than this, the managers of the US-centralized empire which dominates the west and so much of the rest of the world have straightforwardly shown us that they propagandize us and want to propagandize us more. They have shown us with their actions, and they have at times come right out and told us with their words.

Here are just a few of those times.

1. Operation Mockingbird

Let’s start with maybe the best-known example. In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird.

It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media are meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

But it only got worse from there.

2. Intelligence operatives now just openly working in the media

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news punditsThe Washington Post has consistently refused to disclose the fact that its sole owner has been a CIA contractor when reporting on US intelligence agencies as per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price, Rick Francona, Michael Morell, John McLaughlin, John Sipher, Thomas Bossert, Clint Watts, James Baker, Mike Baker, Daniel Hoffman, David Preiss, Evelyn Farkas, Mike Rogers and Malcolm Nance, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.

Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting as the media. Any meaningful separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, has been dropped.

3. Richard Stengel’s CFR remarks on propaganda

Former US State Department official and Time Magazine editor Richard Stengel expressed full-throated support for the use of propaganda on both foreign and domestic audiences during a 2018 event organized by the supremely influential think tank Council on Foreign Relations.

“Basically every country creates their own narrative story,” Stengel said. “My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist. I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

Interestingly, years earlier during his time at the US State Department under the Obama administration Stengel actually provided his own definition of what precisely he means by the word “propaganda”, and it’s not nearly as innocuous as he made it sound for his CFR audience.

“Propaganda is the deliberate dissemination of information that you know to be false or misleading in order to influence an audience,” Stengel wrote in 2014.

Those are two mighty interesting positions for an empire manager to hold at the same time, especially one who just served on the presidential transition team of the current president.

4. US officials telling the press they’re circulating disinfo about Russia to win an information war against Putin

Last month NBC News released a report citing multiple anonymous US officials who said the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out “intelligence” about Russia’s plans in Ukraine that is “low-confidence” or “based more on analysis than hard evidence”, or even just plain false, in order to fight an information war against Putin.

The report says that toward this end the US government has deliberately circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin’s advisors misinforming him, and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.

So they lied. They may hold that they lied for a noble reason, but they lied. They knowingly circulated information they had no reason to believe was true, and that lie was amplified by all the most influential media outlets in the western world.

That this happened while the mass media is continually churning out reports warning the public about the dangers of “disinformation” is an irony that was lost on almost everybody.

5. Senators telling Silicon Valley representatives it’s their job to manipulate public thought to prevent dissent

In 2017 representatives from Google, Facebook and Twitter were called before the Senate Judiciary Committee and told they must “quell information rebellions” and were instructed to come up with a mission statement expressing their commitment to “prevent the fomenting of discord” on their platforms.

“We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America,” the tech giants were told by think tanker and former FBI agent Clint Watts, who added, “Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced — silence the guns and the barrage will end.”

When monopolistic billionaire corporations are faced with demands from a legislative body that could easily make their lives a lot harder and a lot less profitable by taking action, up to and including major antitrust cases, they are being made an offer they can’t refuse. This was made abundantly clear by Senator Dianne Feinstein during the 2017 hearings in her threat to intervene if those corporations failed to curtail the spread of unauthorized information online.

“You have to be the ones who do something about it — or we will,” Feinstein told the online platforms.

6. The Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board”

The Department of Homeland Security’s hotly controversial Disinformation Governance Board, which critics have not-unfairly labeled a government-run Ministry of Truth, has “paused” its operations pending a review in light of public outcry. That review will be headed by corrupt imperial swamp monsters Michael Chertoff and Jamie Gorelick, of all people.

No government entity has any business appointing itself the authority to sort information from disinformation on behalf of the public, because government entities are not impartial and omniscient deities who can be entrusted to serve the public as objective arbiters of absolute reality. They would with absolute certainty wind up drawing distinctions between information, misinformation and disinformation in whatever way serves their interests, regardless of what’s true, exactly as any authoritarian regime would do.

Whatever happens with that review we may be sure that the board’s mission will continue, either under its current name or under some other more carefully disguised iteration. The empire is expressing far too much enthusiasm for greater and greater control over public thought to just let this one slip past.

7. The Smith–Mundt Modernization Act of 2012

In December of 2012 the US congress passed a revision of the Smith-Mundt Act as part of the 2013 NDAA which critics said ended restrictions that were put in place to prevent the government from propagandizing US citizens.

The legislation was first highlighted in a BuzzFeed News article by journalist Michael Hastings, who the following year would die in a rather suspicious car wreck while reportedly working on a major story.

“It removes the protection for Americans,” an unnamed Pentagon official told Hastings. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”

Hastings’ report sparked online controversy, with many agreeing with his analysis of what would become known as the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 and others saying concerns were unfounded. Either way, with all that’s happened over the last ten years, it’s clear now that Americans were right to be worried about a dramatic escalation in domestic propaganda.

8. Reagan’s Psychological Operations

The late Robert Parry wrote numerous articles for Consortium News about the Reagan administration’s operations of mass-scale psychological manipulation, which related directly to Parry’s extensive work on the Iran-Contra affair during that time.

Parry described how Reagan and his neocon goons were obsessed with countering the public war-weariness and distrust of US interventionism which followed the Vietnam War in order to gain more consent for the depraved agendas the administration was working to roll out in Latin America. Central to this goal of consent-manufacturing, which the White House called “public diplomacy” in public and “perception management” in private, was a particularly odious-sounding spook named Walter Raymond Jr.

In an article titled “The Victory of ‘Perception Management’,” Parry wrote the following:

During his Iran-Contra deposition, Raymond explained the need for this propaganda structure, saying: “We were not configured effectively to deal with the war of ideas.”

 

One reason for this shortcoming was that federal law forbade taxpayers’ money from being spent on domestic propaganda or grassroots lobbying to pressure congressional representatives. Of course, every president and his team had vast resources to make their case in public, but by tradition and law, they were restricted to speeches, testimony and one-on-one persuasion of lawmakers.

 

But things were about to change. In a Jan. 13, 1983, memo, NSC Advisor Clark foresaw the need for non-governmental money to advance this cause. “We will develop a scenario for obtaining private funding,” Clark wrote. (Just five days later, President Reagan personally welcomed media magnate Rupert Murdoch into the Oval Office for a private meeting, according to records on file at the Reagan library.)

 

As administration officials reached out to wealthy supporters, lines against domestic propaganda soon were crossed as the operation took aim not only at foreign audiences but at U.S. public opinion, the press and congressional Democrats who opposed funding the Nicaraguan Contras.

9. Canadian military leaders using Covid regulations as an opportunity to test out psyop techniques on civilians

Last year Ottawa Citizen reported that the Canadian military used the Covid outbreak as an excuse to test actual military psyop techniques on its own civilian population under the pretense of assuring compliance with pandemic restrictions.

Some excerpts:

  • “Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test out propaganda techniques on an unsuspecting public, a newly released Canadian Forces report concludes.”
  • “The plan devised by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, also known as CJOC, relied on propaganda techniques similar to those employed during the Afghanistan war. The campaign called for ‘shaping’ and ‘exploiting’ information. CJOC claimed the information operations scheme was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic and to bolster government messages about the pandemic.”
  • “A separate initiative, not linked to the CJOC plan, but overseen by Canadian Forces intelligence officers, culled information from public social media accounts in Ontario. Data was also compiled on peaceful Black Lives Matter gatherings and BLM leaders.”
  • “’This is really a learning opportunity for all of us and a chance to start getting information operations into our (CAF-DND) routine,’ the rear admiral stated.”
  • “Yet another review centred on the Canadian Forces public affairs branch and its activities. Last year, the branch launched a controversial plan that would have allowed military public affairs officers to use propaganda to change attitudes and behaviours of Canadians as well as to collect and analyze information from public social media accounts.”
  • “The plan would have seen staff move from traditional government methods of communicating with the public to a more aggressive strategy of using information warfare and influence tactics on Canadians.”

So empire managers are not just employing mass-scale psychological operations on the public, they’re testing them and learning from them.

10. The US government funding “independent” media in Ukraine

Lastly, there’s the fact that the infamous $40 billion proxy war package sent to Ukraine includes funds allocated to “Counter Russian disinformation and propaganda narratives, promote accountability for Russian human rights violation, and support activists, journalists, and independent media to defend freedom of expression.”

So information warfare. The US government is funding information warfare to manipulate public perception of this war and running cover for those manipulations by calling them activism, journalism, and independent media.

Given that the mainstream western press have been uncritically reporting even the most outlandish stories coming out of Ukraine without a shred of evidence, we can expect this government-funded propaganda to spread throughout the western world.

_________________

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50 responses to “Ten Times Empire Managers Showed Us That They Want To Control Our Thoughts”

  1. “Whether you call it propaganda, psyops, perception management or public relations, it’s a real thing that happens constantly, and it happens to all of us.”

    With Respect, you left off the largest category of attempted thought-control …. advertising.

    After all, advertising is simply an attempt at mind control with the goal of either getting you to buy something which you would not have bought without the advertising, or to get you do choose a particular brand when you buy something you were going to buy anyways.

    And notice, that if you were going to buy something anyways, and then buy the cheapest option, the advertising for that would be wasted. Thus, the advertising exists to get you to do something besides buy something you needed with the best deal available. That you would have done anyways, and they could save the millions they spent on mind control in that case.

    Yes, we live in a world where we are surrounded every day by incessant attempts to control our thoughts. And, you’d be staggered if you could see the total spent on all forms of mind control, including political and commercial. What is the annual expenditure on advertising alone?

  2. This article is really well said. It is going in the files as a touchstone on this most important of issues.

  3. thorsjackhammer Avatar
    thorsjackhammer

    ‘Reagan’s Psychological Operations’, This backfired somewhat, as Ronnie was my first realization that political leaders were often just puppet mouthpieces of the actual ruling elite, that is, likely the European royal bloodlines. Reagan was a total clown that even a half bright child could see was not a genuine national leader.

  4. Michael Chertoff was born on November 28, 1953 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. His father was Rabbi Gershon Baruch Chertoff (1915-96), a Talmud scholar and the former leader of the Congregation B’nai Israel in Elizabeth. His mother is Livia Chertoff (née Eisen), an Israeli citizen and the first flight attendant for El Al.

  5. Regarding #8 and Ronald Reagan, he did have some interesting ideas.

    If his plan to chlorinate the Pacific ocean to protect swimmers had been implemented we might have had less people with bacterial infections, at least until the bacteria became resistant.

    Overall propaganda is necessary to try to finish the assimilation process in a melting pot.

    Unfortunately, a big part of that assimilation process also involves exterminating cultures and languages of tribes that don’t cooperate.

    The U.S. and Australia have been on an extermination frenzy which will only slow down soon because the number of tribes left has dwindled.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_time_of_extinction

  6. Susan Mercurio Avatar
    Susan Mercurio

    I regularly come across chat line comments decrying the “apathy” of American citizens as a reason why they don’t revolt, and I send them all to you, Caitlin, to learn that it’s not apathy that is afflicting the US public, it’s brainwashing through the use of propaganda.

    Keep up the good work! And buy a vintage car that was built before computers were put in.

    1. Apathy is part of the training necessary for a stable melting pot.

      Look at the original colonizing religion, Christianity.

      It was fabricated by the Romans to make apathy a virtue among those conquered people who might be rebellious otherwise.

    2. thorsjackhammer Avatar
      thorsjackhammer

      “it’s not apathy that is afflicting the US public, it’s brainwashing through the use of propaganda.” YEP! Indoctrination, patriotism, brainwashing, mind control, coercion, cognitive dissonance, Fabricated boogie men, controlled ops, they all work a treat.

    3. It is apathy though- that’s a main goal of the brainwashing…

  7. thorsjackhammer Avatar
    thorsjackhammer

    “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe and what to think”. – George Carlin

  8. thorsjackhammer Avatar
    thorsjackhammer

    ‘Operation Woke Narratives’ is being conducted by the establishment controlled oppositions for a reason, and that reason is highly likely the reverse of what it appears to be advocating. Like most of the establishments MSM narratives, you need to reverse their purported goals to get closer to their actual goals…..NWO of Global Fascism?

  9. Laurie de marco Avatar
    Laurie de marco

    The word propaganda was invented by the pope gregory of the catholic church in 1540 it means to propagate or spread he created an academy in Rome at the time called the propaganda vide where missionaries and priest were trained in seeking out non hierarchical societies around the globe and indoctrinating them into the hierarchical mindset manufactured by Rome look the meaning of the word propaganda in any good dictionary pre 1980 you maybe lucky to find one later but the empire has been doing the george orwell for quit awhile
    there was no word propaganda before then just ruling class spreading lies before and after all religions are based on lies so is your life wake up people the planet is dying….

    1. Excellent and important comment, aside from your aversion for punctuation.

  10. There is nothing new in propaganda and intentionally misleading citizens, it’s been going on for thousands of years in one form or another. If you think of it as a form of persuasion, then people have been doing that peacefully or violently since forever. It isn’t even just forcing people to do something they don’t want to do – many people subconsciously ‘want’ to be propagandised so that they don’t have to deal with the harsh realities. These are probably the vast majority, the ones who will never rise up and try to stop it.
    Some of the dictators of the late 20th century, particularly those in southern Europe used to put out the message that they were protecting their people from the evils of the outside world, that they were looking after them as if they were children that needed protection from bad adults. This message was easy for the masses to understand and accept.
    By denying them information and tightly controlling what they were exposed to the dictators kept their citizens in the dark about most things going on – it was only the more intelligent and inquisitive minority who made the effort to find out more and rebel.
    The irony of it was the by and large, the majority of those citizens were happier in their ignorance than propagandised people are today (I lived in two of those countries as a child and in my youth). Even though they knew that they were ignorant they mostly believed the messages about the dictator/government ‘protecting’ them for their own good.
    It was far easier for them to deal with their ignorance than it is for people today to deal with so much propaganda.
    We need to get back to the cause, which in my view is bad forms of government. Democracy doesn’t work – it is an illusion that people cling to. Communism, while sounding good in ‘principle’, has not been implemented successfully. Government needs a massive overhaul to create a system(s) that is robust enough to withstand the potential demands of people that know the truth and have multiple conflicting needs. Where people are not treated as lesser humans, and where they are empowered to contribute positively to government on the basis of truth and trust. Utopian perhaps, but in the right conditions quite possible – history has examples of times where small groups have successfully come together to govern.
    The challenge is, as always, to prevent the corrupt people from taking over.

    1. “Government needs a massive overhaul to create a system(s) that is robust enough to withstand the potential demands of people that know the truth and have multiple conflicting needs”.
      Former French president Charles De Gaulle once put it this way: “How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty six different kinds of cheese?”

    2. Susan Mercurio Avatar
      Susan Mercurio

      Could you please work on a model of the kind of society/culture that you have in mind? Perhaps working on that will inspire you to come up with some ideas about how to get from where we are now to there.
      I have faith in you. I think you can do it.

      1. The solution is in tribal societies.
        Melting pots are the problem.
        Sovereign tribes with hard secure borders are the solution.
        Homogenous groups project aggression outwards which can then be sublimated through things like diplomacy.
        Melting pot empires ultimately always fracture, as is happening.

  11. You knocked it out of the park today, Caity! Brava!! This is great. I will be using it for referencing.

  12. All we have to do is say ” I disagree” and there is nothing the CIA can do about it.
    The lying cheating stealing house of cards is supported by our silent agreeing to them acting in our “national interest”.
    I do not agree with or support American empire of lies.

    1. Susan Mercurio Avatar
      Susan Mercurio

      I hate Walmart. I hate that the Walton family makes several million dollars a day per family member. I boycotted them for a long time.
      Finally I realized that boycotting them had no more effect on them than a flea jumping off a dog’s back.
      What it will take is a way to cut into their bottom line. Even stealing from them would have more effect than a boycott.
      The moral of the story is: simply withholding your consent doesn’t affect them at all (while it may keep your consciousness clear, which is no small feat). We will eventually have to do something more active than simply refusing to listen.
      Watch How to Start a Revolution DVD documentary (it’s no longer on YouTube; you’ll have to find the DVD) and read From Dictatorship to Democracy,the book by Dr Gene Sharp.

      1. Still on Youtube.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKnoUbDIpjo
        But the notion that dictatorships can be conquered through nonviolence is coming from the dictatorships ultimately.
        Violence should be precisely targeted and only when necessary, but refusing to use violence guarantees you will lose.
        Education always.
        Violence when appropriate.

  13. It reminds me of Van Morrison’s Great Deception on his 1973 – Mockingbird’s finest hour -album Hard Nose the Highway:
    Did you ever hear about the great deception
    Well the plastic revolutionaries take the money and run
    Have you ever been down to love city
    Where they rip you off with a smile
    And it don’t take a gun
    Don’t it hurt so bad in love city
    Don’t it make you not want to bother at all
    And don’t they look so self righteous
    When they pin you up against the wall
    Did you ever, ever see the people
    With the teardrops in their eyes
    I just can’t stand it, stand it no how
    Living in this world of lies
    Did you ever hear about the rock and roll singers
    Got three or four Cadillacs
    Saying power to the people, dance to the music
    Wants you to pat him on the back
    Have you ever heard about the great Rembrandt
    Have you ever heard about how he could paint
    And he didn’t have enough money for his brushes
    And they thought it was rather quaint
    But you know it’s no use repeating
    And you know it’s no use to think about it
    ‘Cause when you stop to think about it
    You don’t need it
    Have you ever heard about the great Hollywood motion picture actor
    Who knew more than they did
    And the newspapers didn’t cover the story
    Just decided to keep it hid
    Somebody started saying it was an inside job
    Whatever happened to him?
    Last time they saw him down on the Bow’ry
    With his lip hanging off an old rusty bottle of gin
    Have you ever heard about the so-called hippies
    Down on the far side of the tracks
    They take the eyeballs straight out of your head
    Say son, kid, do you want your eyeballs back
    Did you ever see the people
    With the teardrops in their eyes
    Just can’t stand it no how
    Living in this world of lies
    Did you ever hear about the great deception
    Well the plastic revolutionaries take the money and run
    Have you ever been down to love city
    Where they rob you with a smile
    Instead of a gun
    Have you ever heard about the great deception

    1. Sorry wrong track. Here it is (cross fingers :o)

      1. Nope… Looks like I’m doomed. It’s Mockingbird’s vengeance: how to make a fool of yourself in two lessons. Anyway, it’s called the Great Deception and it’s in YouTube. Sorry 4 the mess (nice pitcher anyways :o)

  14. william wesley Avatar
    william wesley

    If this were the former Soviet Union or China you’d get “disappeared” for saying what you are saying, but in the USA the propagandists are clever, extreme solutions would only legitimize your words, they leave the truth tellers on the sidelines as example for what happens to they whom speak honestly while simultaneously ensuring that propagandists get conspicuously rewarded with great fame and acclaim

    1. Don’t forget Julian Assange….
      he’s being disappeared in plain sight….

      1. pretzelattack Avatar
        pretzelattack

        and the puppet Priti Patel is going to make a decision very soon, almost certainly, based on her past performance, she will decide to extradite him. I hate that.

    2. pretzelattack Avatar
      pretzelattack

      sometimes they whack people, the guy that exposed CIA cocaine trafficking, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head twice, the guy whose car suddenly and inexplicably ran off the road.

      1. Gary Webb… Among the disappeared, there’s also Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Susan Lindauer… However, nowadays, “disappearing” people from Wikipedia will go a long way toward making them invisible and therefore suspect. It’s the modern equivalent of the medieval “ban from society” which gave anybody the right to kill you without being charged. A catastrophic entry as a knuckle dragger (far-right, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, science-denying, transphobic, racist, misogynistic, anti-vaxxer and flat-earther conspiracy theorist) can also be a warning salvo (like 1984’ Two Minutes Hate) echoed by all the media to pin the wrongthinker against the wall and dissuade him to carry on breaking balls among the establishment while they “lie, cheat and steal” to their soul’s content. Sometimes, it’s even got an element of truth – like doubts expressed about some government dogma -, like all good lies, too… And of course, there’s the cohort of victims of Boston brakes and other accidents (trying to fly out of their window on the sixteenth floor like James Forrestal) as well as the numerous “witnesses” in the JFK assassination who met an early death, not even speaking of the two stars of the show, Oswald and Ruby. As Michael Corleone says in The Godfather II, “If history has told us anything, it’s that you can kill anybody”. He might add today “without being suspected” since, to paraphrase Paul Simon, there are fifty ways to kill your brother – half of the crimes remain unsolved :o)

      2. Susan Mercurio Avatar
        Susan Mercurio

        And in the back of his head, no less

        1. pretzelattack Avatar
          pretzelattack

          oh right! I had forgotten that detail.

          the name of the car accident victim was Michael Hastings, who if iirc was normally a careful driver. i think he got whacked. I don’t think the CIA did Epstein, but it was obviously somebody with too much power to be investigated thoroughly, and it shows how blatant the elites can be.

          1. Everybody did Epstein. There were propably 5,000 “movers and shakers” who plotted his demise.
            “Hey, we’re going to take out Epstein first chance we get. Are you in?”
            “Fuck ya! Whatever assistance you need, just give me a holler.”

    3. The Soviet Union and China never imprisoned as much of their population as the United States has.
      The difference is that the United States is much more clever about who it imprisons and the rationale used.

      1. The Soviet Union was originally an attempt to improve things, turned by Stalin into a nightmare that destroyed the best of those who tried, in the SSSR and Europe, and now used by the West in their propaganda.

  15. Is this BS US hegemony ever going to end? What will it take? Whatever it takes, I hope it happens soon.
    When you have a cuckoo in the nest that keeps misbehaving, there are few alternatives.
    The US was begun on the desire to be free, yet they have been taken over by monsters.
    There are few remedies for such evil.
    If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.

    1. There are remedies. Those “empire managers” read books and articles about psychology, persuasion, and marketing. And kept themselves and each other healthy by getting vaccinated. We can do the same.

      1. Will it be in bad taste to dance on the graves of the vaccinated?

        Asking for a friend….

        1. Putin isn’t dead.

    2. Susan Mercurio Avatar
      Susan Mercurio

      Watch How to Start a Revolution DVD documentary and read From Dictatorship to Democracy the book by Dr Gene Sharp, for starters.
      (You will have to find the DVD; it’s no longer on YouTube.)

  16. re: countering Russian disinformation and propaganda narratives
    Sheeet, the Russians are so bad at this propaganda stuff they’ve got freedom of speech breaking out right in the middle of their goddamn house!
    https://www.youtube.com/c/1420channel/videos
    I was reading a USAToday a couple of days ago, and there was this short article (they’re all short thankfully) on why China is a threat to the Universe, but two paragraphs in it strangely morphed into a report on how US “officials” were urging YouTube not to stop operating in Russia, because they are doing some really fine work over there.
    I found that interesting. As someone who follows quite a few Russian YouTube vloggers, I can see why US “officials” might believe this to be true. The Russian people, despite their overwhelming support for Putin, which I believe to be geniune, also seem dispirited, deeply cynical, and at a complete loss as to why their nation is suddenly looking East when all them want to look West.
    Above all, it is readily apparent that the Russian people are almost as badly informed as their American counterparts.
    Still, call it gut feeling, but once the Russian Federation gets off their stupid asses; and they will, I know they’re busy at the moment; and propagandizes their own citizens by simply telling them the truth, I mean that is all that it will take, and I think they turn this YouTube problem around rather quickly.
    And should this happen, no doubt US “officials” will be telling YouTube to get the hell our of Russia or face espionage charges.

    1. We all know that Ukriane mined it’s coasts and hundreds of those mines were cut loose during a storm and are now randomly floating around in the Black Sea. This is why Ukraine can’t export it’s wheat. It accidently blockaded itself.
      However, the Russian Federation is being blamed for blockading Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in attempt to do various rotten and devious things, including forcing a hyper-inflation event to commence in the West and to starve the nations of the global South, just because these are the type of things you do when you are the personification of evil.
      Jimmy Dore reports on this development, a week or four late to the party but as far as Western medium-sized media platforms go, Jimmy is the first to the punch once again.*
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiJzonNHpf4
      I have linked to Beau of th 5th more than a dozen times now for a reason, because I believe him to be the most saavy pro-slaughter propaganist in the West, and because he has a following of 1.2 million followers across all media platforms, which means he ain’t no joke to be lightly dismissed.
      This how he falsely framed this “blockade” while adovating for more war against the Evil Empire at the same time. Quite brilliant is this lad in my opinion.
      NOW THINE ENEMY.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGOq1ze-OgM
      Is Beau working for the CIA? I don’t know, but if he isn’t, he should be, because the pay is better and you don’t have to work your ass off doing you own research to spread the same lies that the CIA is spreading.
      And little ole Beau working out of his own garage (?) does seem to be a veritable fountain of inside information.
      *Hinkle reported this a few days ago I believe, so he deserves much credit as well, and of course anybody who follows Moon or Saker – or anyone else on the other side – has known all about this idiotic blockade “narrative,” perhaps the most impossibly ridiculous one the West has put out so far, for a long, long time.

  17. My brother lives in the UK. I’ve sent him articles, references, recommended books, tried to talk to him, educate him, but he’s utterly propagandized. These days we simply avoid the subject.
    It occurred to me that watching somebody try to escape the propaganda is like watching a mime trying to escape an invisible box. There’s no box there, but the prisoner’s simply incapable of realizing it.

  18. When you’re up against incessant propaganda, reacting to it by repeating it and then refuting it only makes you its captive in a mirror image sense. The propaganda is still controlling what you think about, talk about. The only escape from incessant propaganda is to speak the truth (as you see it) from square one, choosing your own subjects by degree of importance, not by the latest line of BS. Caitlin is at her best when she speaks about a self-chosen topic, an original insight, and we could use more of that. At least I could.

  19. Thanks, Caitlin, this article should be in the NY Times, front page, above the fold. Instead, it’s like a lamp under a bushel basket.

  20. George Cornell Avatar
    George Cornell

    Brilliant!
    This should be required reading for all muppets and muppeteers. Thanks Caitlin. Your work is becoming historic imo.

    1. Agree. Brilliant is the word. And fearless. You could throw that one in there too.
      “… muppets and muppeteers.” Lmao … That’s a good one.

      1. hi Max
        “Numpties” is fine, but I do like Jim Jeffries “F**king Dumb C**ts”

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