The truth Caitlin lays out in this essay is so readily apparent to anyone paying attention outside the sphere of Western corporate media, which no longer, and for many years, no longer pretends to be anything except a mouthpiece for Western hegemony.  You don't need to read Russian sources to come to this conclusion.  Insiders within the US empire have spoken the danger of NATO expansion for decades. People like George Kennan, architect of US stragety against the USSR after WWII; Jack Matlock, the last US ambassador to the USSR: the late Russian scholar Stephen Cohen; present CIA director and former ambassador to Russia (2008); geopolitical Realpolitik advocate John Mearsheimer; all have warned and predicted the out come of NATO expansion for decades.  Unfortunately. the uni-party neocon ideology and the psychopaths who run US foreign policy have no counterforce in US politics.  The election of Trump  (and Obama for different reasons) has made this possible.

We Knows

zoom out

Here's a chill lo-fi beat to help you sleep at night <3

Thanks for listening!

Can't Sleep

18.8 85BPM

As I learn more and more about global power dynamics and interact with more and more people around the world responding to the things I have to say, I find myself growing more and more disdainful of those who live directly under the thumb of the US empire and yet spend their time criticizing unabsorbed governments like Russia and China. It's literally the most pathetic, snivelling, power-serving position anyone can possibly take at this point in history.

Reading by Tim Foley.

It's Gross To Live Under The US Empire And Spend Your Time Criticizing Other Governments

“Germ and chemical weapons may often be weak in their battlefield applications but they are always strong in their emotiveness. Accusations of association with them have for centuries, even millennia, been used by well-intentioned as well as unscrupulous people to vilify enemies and to calumniate rivals. Can onlookers protect themselves against the possibility of such assaults upon their common sense today?”- Julian Perry Robinson

I interview journalist and geopolitical analyst for the Libertarian Institute - William Van Wagenen about his article covering the 2013 Eastern Ghouta alleged chemical attacks in Syria. Van Wagenen has done an incredible job of drawing all the threads together and demonstrating the collusion of Western, Israeli, Turkish and Gulf Intelligence agencies in the staging of events designed to provoke US/UK-led military intervention and to topple the Syrian government. 

His full article is here: https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/sarin-doesnt-slice-throats-the-2013-ghouta-massacre-revisited/

‘Sarin Doesn’t Slice Throats’: The 2013 Ghouta Massacre Revisited

Our heroes, with guest, lose their entire minds.

We Just Watched... Knightriders (With Robert Evans)

The Guardian has joined The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País in signing a letter from the five papers which collaborated with WikiLeaks twelve years ago in the publication of the Chelsea Manning leaks to call for the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange. 

The Guardian's participation in this letter is particularly noteworthy, given the leading role that publication has played in manufacturing public support for his persecution in the first place. If The Guardian really wants to help end the persecution of the heroic WikiLeaks founder, the best way to do that would be to retract those many smears, spin jobs and outright lies, and to formally apologize for publishing them.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Guardian Could Help Assange By Retracting All The Lies It Published About Him

The recent push to expand NATO in Ukraine along with nations like Finland and Sweden as justified by "Russian aggression" is a good example of what professor Richard Sakwa has called the “fateful geographical paradox: that NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.” As the late scholar on US-Russia relations Stephen Cohen explained years before the Ukraine crisis erupted in 2014, Moscow sees NATO as an "American sphere of influence," and the expansion of NATO and NATO influence as expansion of that sphere. It reacts to this with hostility just as the US would react to China or Russia building up aggressive military alliances on its borders, and arguably with vastly more restraint than the US would.

Reading by Tim Foley.

NATO Exists To Solve The Problems Created By NATO's Existence

If you live in one of the so-called free democracies of the western world, the worst mistake you can make is to buy into the hype. To believe you are a free individual in a nation that respects and protects your freedom and individuality.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Biggest Obstacle To Real Freedom Is The Belief That We Already Have It

You can't just conduct yourself as though these propaganda campaigns aren't a thing. If you live in one of the member nations of the US-centralized power alliance, you can't just pretend your expressions of support and solidarity mean the same thing as if they were coming from someone in Latin America, Asia, or Africa. You're not the same. You're speaking from within the most powerful empire that has ever existed, and you are always necessarily in some kind of relationship with that empire's campaign of global conquest and the propaganda operations which grease its wheels.

And you need to be responsible with that relationship. If you live in the US or any of its imperial member states like the UK, the EU, Australia or Canada, it simply is not possible for you to lend your voice to the cause of protesters in empire-targeted nations without facilitating the empire's propaganda campaigns about those protests. It cannot be done. You either have a responsible relationship with this reality or an irresponsible one.

Western leftists who go out of their way to amplify protests that are part of an ongoing imperial propaganda operation have an irresponsible relationship with that reality. They're not doing anything that actually helps the people in those countries, but they are absolutely doing something that could end up hurting them. And if they're really honest with themselves they know this. But they do it anyway because it looks good in front of their propaganda-addled leftish friends and followers.

Reading by Tim Foley.

You're Not Actually Helping When You "Support" Protesters In Empire-Targeted Governments

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

NATO Exists To Solve The Problems Created By NATO's Existence

Caitlin Johnstone

Recent comments

Devamitta

Related tracks