Government charges are wrong, but Assange  betrayed us all when he joined the Trump Campaign and acted as a conduit for the emails Russia hacked to promote the election of our first fascist  President.  He is no hero; he used the power he gained speaking truth to power to become a kingmaker...betraying our trust.

1. It's easier to understand what's going on in the world when you mentally "mute" people's narratives about what's going on and just look at the material movements of wealth, resources, weapons, and people. That's how you separate what's real from the manipulations and empty narrative fluff, how you see who's doing the taking and hoarding, and how you figure out who the real aggressors are in international conflicts.
2. The three most overlooked and under-appreciated aspects of the human experience are consciousness, the extent to which conditioned thought patterns dictate our lives, and the influence of propaganda.
3. We live in a civilization that's so pervasively steeped in lies and manipulations that the only way to have a truth-based relationship with reality is to drop all your assumptions and premises about what's true and begin examining everything from the very beginning with fresh eyes.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Fifteen Useful Facts

CNN reports that President Biden has nominated criminal neocon Elliott Abrams for a position on the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which according to the US State Department is responsible for "appraising activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics" and pays "acute attention" to the US government's official foreign propaganda arm, the US Agency for Global Media.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Presidents Keep Hiring Elliott Abrams Because The US Empire Is Just That Evil

The New York Times excludes some crucial information about cluster bombs from its headline, The Washington Post and Guardian have some interesting views on NATO membership for Ukraine, and, surprise! John Bolton loves cluster munitions.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Today In War Propaganda

I saw a video clip of Julian Assange speaking in London in 2010 where he made an important observation while explaining the philosophy behind his work with WikiLeaks. He said that all our political theories are to some extent "bankrupt" in our current situation, because our institutions are so shrouded in secrecy that we can't even know what's really going on in the world.

"We can all write about our political issues, we can all push for particular things we believe in, we can all have particular brands of politics, but I say actually it's all bankrupt," Assange said. "And the reason it's all bankrupt, and all current political theories are bankrupt and particular lines of political thought, is because actually we don't know what the hell is going on. And until we know the basic structures of our institutions — how they operate in practice, these titanic organizations, how they behave inside, not just through stories but through vast amounts of internal documentations — until we know that, how can we possibly make a diagnosis? How can we set the direction to go until we know where we are? We don't even have a map of where we are. So our first task is to build up a sort of intellectual heritage that describes where we are. And once we know where we are, then we have a hope of setting course for a different direction. Until then, I think all political theories — to greater and lesser extents of course — are bankrupt."

Reading by Tim Foley.

Real Change Is Impossible While Our World Is Shrouded In Secrecy

Julian Assange is a journalist who's been imprisoned for doing journalism on war crimes, by an empire that claims to defend journalists and oppose war crimes. 

Assange and his persecution expose the giant plot holes in every story the western power structure tells about itself. About its love of free speech and the free press. About its opposition to tyranny. About its wars and why it wages them.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Assange Exposes The Empire's True Face

"Let the market decide" really means let the manipulators decide, because the markets are dominated by those who excel at manipulating. We're taught that letting the market decide means letting supply and demand take its natural course, as though we're talking about ocean tides or seasons or something, but in reality both supply and demand are manipulated constantly with extreme aggression. Manipulating the supply of diamonds. Manipulating the supply of housing. Manipulating the supply of oil. Manipulating people into wanting things they'd never thought to want before through advertising. Manipulating women into feeling bad about their bodies so they'll buy your beauty products. Manipulating people into paying $2000 for a $20 bag using branding. Manipulating people into buying Listerine by inventing the word "halitosis" and convincing them to be worried about it. Manipulating people into believing Beanie Babies were prized collectors items when they were just standard stuffed toys. 

Capitalism gives us a civilization that is dominated by trickery. Those who get to the top are those who succeed in tricking as many people as possible. Tricking them into paying more. Tricking them into buying your product and not someone else's. Tricking people who actually produce something of value into making you their middle man who gets paid despite producing nothing. Tricking competitors into making the wrong move. Tricking people into asking their doctor about your extremely lucrative pharmaceutical product. Tricking people into buying or selling certain stocks or cryptocurrencies or NFTs. Tricking people by using the legal system and your team of lawyers who understand it better than normal people do. Tricking people into letting you privatize their own drinking water and then selling it back to them in bottles. 

It's a scam competition. Whoever scams the best wins. How can you save the planet from destruction by human behavior when all of human behavior is driven by a bizarre scam competition? And the biggest scam of all is the narrative that this system is totally working and is entirely sustainable. That's the overarching scam holding all the other scams together.

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

Capitalism Is A Giant Scam

Most propaganda isn't of the Yeonmi Park "communists are so poor that they have to eat mud and get out of the train and push it because there's no electricity" variety. It's subtle. It's these tiny little adjustments where US allies are reported on more sympathetically than US enemies, claims made by unaligned governments are reported with much more scrutiny and skepticism than aligned governments, and the sins which take place within the US-centralized power structure are overlooked while those outside it are amplified and condemned.

Reading by Tim Foley.

It’s Not The Really Blatant Propaganda That Gets You

In a recent CNN interview of US presidential candidate Cornel West, former CIA intern Anderson Cooper argued that the US invasion of Iraq was morally superior to the Russian attack on the city of Grozny.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Anderson Cooper Is A Disgusting CIA Goon

The Pentagon should feature centrally on the US flag. It should be on the coins and on all the bills, and it should appear next to the name of every American in the Olympics. When anyone sees a five-sided polygon, they should immediately think "United States of America".

Reading by Tim Foley.

The True Symbol Of The United States Is The Pentagon

The US could strengthen its arguments about the legitimacy of its military buildups on the borders of Russia and China by opening the door to Russia and China militarizing Latin America.

Reading by Tim Foley.

A Helpful Suggestion

These stories about the space militarization race aren't getting the attention the much more entertaining UFO stories are getting, but it seems likely that those who are responsible for moving the war machinery around are paying a lot more attention to the former than the latter. The US Space Force took its first steps toward becoming a reality in 2017, the same year these mainstream UFO stories started coming out, with the explicit purpose of countering Russia and China.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Funny How The UFO Narrative Coincides With The Race To Weaponize Space

Readings of all Caitlin Johnstone's articles, usually by her co-writer Tim Foley.

Assange Exposes The Empire's True Face

Caitlin Johnstone

Recent comments

Dale Ruff

Related tracks