The US is raging about Russia jailing a Wall Street Journal reporter on espionage charges, while the US is:

- Jailing Julian Assange for doing good journalism.
- Threatening to imprison Matt Taibbi.
- Charging African People's Socialist Party members with "propaganda" crimes.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Empire Of Hypocrisy

This civilization is so mentally ill that you'll get treated like a gibbering lunatic for expressing the most sane and rational opinions anyone can possibly express. Something as basic as "The world's most powerful government should stop ramping up nuclear brinkmanship on multiple fronts" will get you treated like a kook, when really it's so obvious and common sense it shouldn't even need to be said. That's how crazy mass-scale brainwashing has made everyone.

Reading by Tim Foley.

This Civilization Is Mentally Ill

So of course people who see this express despair. When you first punch through the lies and start to gain an understanding of what's really going on, it can be really unpleasant at first. It feels like what it probably felt like to be a lucid thinker back in much less enlightened times when civilization was dominated by religion and superstition. Lonely. Depressing. As Terence McKenna said, "The cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation."

But it gets better. Or at least it does if you allow it to. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

You Don't Have To Choose Between Happiness And Being Informed

The Biden administration has signed off on both F-16s for Ukraine and attacks on Crimea using US-made weapons. Both of these moves have drawn dire warnings from nuclear-armed Russia, and both would have been unthinkable a year ago.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Biden Okays F-16s For Ukraine, US Weapons To Attack Crimea

Many people turn to conservatism and religion because they perceive — correctly — that mainstream culture is a fraudulent sham bereft of meaning and authentic values. Their solutions are misguided, but their reasons arise from a perception of a very real problem. 

It isn't actually necessary to turn to religion or conservatism to find depth, meaning and groundedness; depth, meaning and groundedness are always abundantly accessible. But nothing about western culture makes this obvious, especially in the mainstream.

Turning to religion and conservatism as a solution to the degradation of mainstream culture is just replacing the modern systems of mass-scale thought control with the old ones. It's a completely maladaptive solution to the problem, but you can't ask people to just keep participating in a worldview that feels like it's sucking your soul out of your body 24/7. You need to offer them something nourishing and authentic. Nothing in mainstream liberal culture offers this; it's self-evidently phony, soulless and vapid.

This isn't something the left can just dismiss. There needs to be something on offer which meets these needs better than both mainstream culture and the regressive belief systems which caused so much suffering in the past.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Escaping The Prison Of Mainstream Culture

There are no adults behind the wheel of the vehicle that's driving us toward World War Three. We're on a bus that's being driven straight toward a cliff, and it's being driven by infants. If we survive this it will not be because of the experienced leadership of western governments, but completely in spite of it.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Everything's Getting Way More Dangerous And Way More Stupid

If you watch western news media with a critical eye you eventually notice how their reporting consistently aligns with the interests of the US-centralized empire, in almost the same way you'd expect them to if they were government-run propaganda outlets.

The New York Times has reliably supported every war the US has waged. Western mass media focus overwhelmingly on foreign protests against governments the United States dislikes while paying far less attention to widespread protests against US-aligned governments. The only time Trump was universally showered with praise by the mass media was when he bombed Syria, while the only time Biden has been universally slammed by the mass media was when he withdrew from Afghanistan. US media did such a good job deceitfully marrying Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks in the minds of the public in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq that seven in ten Americans still believed he was connected to 9/11 months after the war began. 

That this extreme bias occurs is self-evident and indisputable to anyone who pays attention, but why and how it happens is harder to see. The uniformity is so complete and so consistent that when people first begin noticing these patterns it's common for them to assume the media must be controlled by a small, centralized authority much like the state media of more openly authoritarian governments. But if you actually dig into the reasons why the media act the way they act, that isn't really what you find.

Instead, what you find is a much larger, much less centralized network of factors which tips the scales of media coverage to the advantage of the US empire and the forces which benefit from it. Some of it is indeed conspiratorial in nature and happens in secret, but most of it is essentially out in the open.

Here are 15 of those factors.

Reading by Tim Foley.

15 Reasons Why Mass Media Employees Act Like Propagandists

Anything you can do to help make humanity a little more aware of the abusive nature of the systems which drive the problems we now face makes a difference, even if it's a difference as small as making one single person a little bit more aware of one specific aspect of the tyranny we're being subjected to. It doesn't make a huge difference, but it does make a difference. And as long as it makes the slightest bit of difference, it is worth doing, because a lot of slight differences adds up to a massive difference. And there are a whole lot of people who have the ability to do this.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Your Efforts Make A Difference, And We Can Win This Thing

Voting in a western "democracy" is like that bit in the opening intro of The Simpsons when Marge is driving with the baby and the baby has a toy steering wheel. The baby thinks she's driving the car but it's just a fake toy to keep her busy and let her feel like she's participating.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Elections Are Like A Toy Steering Wheel For Babies

In just a few years Democrats flipped from freaking out about Nazis, shrieking that Trump was going to start a nuclear war, and denying US election results to cheering for Nazis, demanding more nuclear brinkmanship, and accusing anyone who denies election results of treason.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Liberals Are Tyrannical Imperialists

President Biden accidentally referred to Putin's war in "Iraq" when answering questions from the press, a year after former president George W Bush made the same gaffe. Both men played crucial roles in the push to invade Iraq.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Aging Iraq Invaders Keep Accidentally Saying 'Iraq' Instead Of 'Ukraine'

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

Escaping The Prison Of Mainstream Culture

Caitlin Johnstone

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