Longing for a multipolar world where the US has to roll back its military bases across the world and quit threatening the nations of the earth with war, sanctions, coups, insidious work of the IMF and WB, and is forced to become a nations among nations or be isolated if it doesn't.  The US has no ethical reason or positive record to leading the world.

Yankee go home.  Ridiculous to claim that USA is example of democracy to rule the world.  Not happening.

The Washington Post has an article out with the brazenly misleading headline "Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters". Anyone who reads the article itself will find its author Tim Starks acknowledges that "Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior," but the insertion of the word "little" means anyone who just reads the headline (the overwhelming majority of people encountering the article) will come away with the impression that Russian trolls still had some influence on 2016 voters.

"Little influence" could mean anything shy of tremendous influence. But the study did not find that Russian trolls had "little influence" over the election; it failed to find any measurable influence at all. 

Starks does some spin work of his own in a bid to salvage the reputation of the ever-crumbling Russiagate narrative, eagerly pointing out that the report does not explicitly say Russia definitely had zero influence on the election's outcome, that it doesn't examine Russian trolling behavior on Facebook, that it doesn't address "Russian hack-and-leak operations," and that it doesn't say "doesn’t suggest that foreign influence operations aren’t a threat at all."

None of these are valid arguments. Claiming Russia definitely had no influence on the election at all would have been beyond the scope of the study, the report's authors do in fact argue that the effects of Russian trolling on Facebook were likely the same as on Twitter, the (still completely unproven) "Russian hack-and-leak operations" were outside the scope of the study, as is the question of whether foreign influence operations can be a threat in general.

What Starks does not do is make any attempt to address the fact that mainstream news and punditry was dominated for years by claims that Russian internet trolls won the election for Donald Trump. He does not, for example, make any mention of his own 2019 Politico article telling readers that the Russian Twitter troll operation ahead of the 2016 election "was larger, more coordinated and more effective than previously known."

Reading by Tim Foley.

Western Journalists Are Cowardly, Approval-Seeking Losers

The US empire is telling Moscow "I'm the craziest motherfucker around, I'll keep ramping up the brinkmanship looking you right in the eye and daring you to use nukes," while telling the rest of the world "I am the voice of sanity that you should all look to for leadership."

One of the empire's faces is the virtuous upholder of freedom and democracy, while the other face puts on an intimidating show of viciousness like a prisoner biting off someone's cheek in the prison yard. At least one of those faces is necessarily lying.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Let's Nuke The World Over Who Governs Crimea

US-led provocations and escalations against China are becoming a regular occurrence, both from the US itself and from its imperial assets like Australia and Taiwan. Yet according to the western political/media class, the urgent threat of our day is "Chinese aggression".

Reading by Tim Foley.

"Chinese Aggression" Sure Looks An Awful Lot Like US Aggression

The other day I stumbled across a 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian titled "It's not Russia that's pushed Ukraine to the brink of war" by Seumas Milne, who the following year would go on to become the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn.

I bring this up because the perspectives you'll find in that article are jarring in how severely they deviate from anything you'll see published in the mainstream press about Ukraine in 2023. It places the brunt of the blame for the violence and tensions in that nation at that time squarely at Washington's feet, opening with a warning that the "threat of war in Ukraine is growing" and saying there's an "unelected government in Kiev," and it only gets naughtier from there.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Mass Media Used To Publish Perspectives On Ukraine They Would Never Publish Today

People have a fairly easy time accepting that things are fucked because we are ruled by corrupt assholes. They have a much harder time accepting that we are ruled by corrupt assholes because our corrupt asshole systems will always necessarily elevate corrupt assholes to the top.

It's easier to blame our problems on oligarchs or the Deep State or a cabal of satanic pedophiles than it is to blame them on systems that we ourselves participate in and have lived our entire lives intertwined with and which have been continuously normalized within our culture. If the problem is just a few corrupt assholes then it's not a very daunting problem, because all you have to do is remove those corrupt assholes and everything's golden. If the problem is the systems around which our entire civilization is structured, it's far more daunting.

Reading by Tim Foley.

We're Ruled By Assholes Because We Have Asshole Systems

להתעורר על צד ימין עם ארז תדמור - 14-02-23

שרון גל - 27-02-23 - שעה שנייה

שרון גל - 01-03-23 - שעה ראשונה

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

"Chinese Aggression" Sure Looks An Awful Lot Like US Aggression

Caitlin Johnstone

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