Thank YOU! Caitlin!! I needed to hear your view and appreciate very much!! Keep on keeping' on, Beautiful!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaeVLd4G1Zg

The Joe Rogan/Spotify controversy is still going on and has only gotten more vitriolic and intense. Claims that Spotify must walk away from its $200 million contract with the world's most popular podcaster for promoting vaccine misinformation have sparked a lot of debates about freedom of speech, online censorship, what exactly those terms mean, and whether they can be correctly applied to the practice of Silicon Valley deplatforming.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Let's Back Up A Sec And Ask Why Free Speech Actually Matters

I am convinced that mainstream culture's fascination with World War II has made us all dumber. Everyone just lives in this dopey children's cartoon now where every US enemy is Hitler and they're the brave hero who is fighting Hitler.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Every US Enemy Is Hitler

Just your regular reminder that the US empire (A) had solid intelligence that this war was coming, (B) knew they could prevent it by making very reasonable, low-cost concessions like promising not to add a nation to NATO that they didn't want to add anyway, and (C) chose not to.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The US Chose This Conflict: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

The word "detente" has been deliberately scrubbed from the western lexicon. This has created a false dichotomy where everyone thinks the only choices are either escalate until we have a nuclear war or "OMG SO JUST GIVE PUTIN WHATEVER HE WANTS AND LET HIM TAKE OVER EUROPE???"

Any time you oppose freakish world-threatening escalations that's the response you always get: "So just give into the bully and let him have everything?? That's appeasement!" They're sincerely unaware that there's a third choice between World War 3 and crowning Putin Emperor of Planet Earth.

This is by design, because detente and US unipolar hegemony are mutually exclusive. You can't dominate the entire planet and also let Russia be its own nation; it's either one or the other. Detente was a popular concept back when we lived in a multipolar world, during the USSR, but since it's been dominated by one single superpower that word has been phased out of public awareness. Now that US unipolar hegemony is the normalized mainstream consensus ideal within the western empire, any talk of working toward peaceful solutions that don't subjugate one power to the other show up before indoctrinated minds as outrageous heresy.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Let's Re-Learn The Word 'Detente': Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Ukraine's only chance at stopping Russia in the near term would be if it could persuade NATO powers to take a more direct role in combat, like setting up a no-fly zone as President Zelensky has persistently pleaded with them to do. One way to get around NATO's rational resistance to directly attacking the military forces of a nuclear superpower would be to appeal to emotion via atrocity propaganda. By circulating a narrative that Russia has done something heinous which cries out to the heavens for vengeance, regardless of the risks entailed.

The United States would also benefit from circulating atrocity propaganda about Russia, in that it would further consolidate international support behind the agenda to economically strangle the nation to death in facilitation of the empire's struggle for unipolar planetary hegemony. Even before the invasion the US was already pushing the narrative that Russia has a list of dissidents, journalists and "vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons” who it plans on rounding up and torturing.

To be clear, it is not conjecture that the US and its proxies make use of atrocity propaganda. The infamous Nayirah testimony for example helped manufacture consent for the Gulf War when a 15 year-old girl who turned out to be a coached plant falsely told the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she'd witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators in Kuwait and leaving them on the floor to die. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

The US And Ukraine Have Every Reason To Lie About The War

Let's be clear: you're not paying more for necessities to punish Putin and save Ukraine, you're paying more for necessities to fund an economic war of unprecedented scale geared toward collapsing Russia to help secure US unipolar domination of this planet.

It's not "Putin's price hike". This was all orchestrated by the empire, from root to flower. The goal is to use economic warfare and a costly counterinsurgency against western-backed Ukrainians to either collapse and balkanize the Russian Federation or foment enough discontent to secure regime change in Moscow. This is because Putin refuses to kiss the imperial ring.

The western empire could not possibly care less about Ukrainians beyond the extent to which they can be used to roll out this agenda. There hasn't been nearly enough public rage about the fact that the US government knew this war was coming, knew exactly how to prevent it with very low-cost concessions to Moscow, and chose not to. They made that choice in order to advance this agenda.

That's what you're paying for as the your cost of living skyrockets. Not freedom and democracy. Not saving Ukrainian lives. Just the very mundane and unsexy unipolarist objectives of a few sociopathic empire managers. Empire managers who, of course, will have no trouble paying for things like fuel and groceries while ordinary people struggle.

And if you think these cold war escalations against Russia are hurting your bank account, wait til the imperial crosshairs move to China.

Reading by Tim Foley.

This Ain't Putin's Price Hike

Australian whistleblower David McBride just made the following observation on Twitter:

"I’ve been asked if I think the invasion of Ukraine is illegal.

My answer is: If we don’t hold our own leaders to account, we can’t hold other leaders to account.

If the law is not applied consistently, it is not the law.

It is simply an excuse we use to target our enemies.

We will pay a heavy price for our hubris of 2003 in the future.

We didn’t just fail to punish Bush and Blair: we rewarded them. We re-elected them. We knighted them.

If you want to see Putin in his true light imagine him landing a jet and then saying ‘Mission Accomplished’."

Reading by Tim Foley.

International Law Is A Meaningless Concept When It Only Applies To US Enemies

Sometimes I can only stop and stare in awe at the power of the US propaganda machine. Almost the entire global north has been paced into perfect alignment with cold war agendas geared toward securing US unipolar dominance by an unprecedented propaganda and censorship campaign.

There's nothing intrinsic in Russia's invasion of Ukraine which says the nation must be strangled to death by unheard-of levels of economic warfare from Washington-loyal governments. A huge international consensus needed to be manufactured for that specific response, and the public needed to go along with it. Just absolutely incredible.

By securing control of global narratives via Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and plutocratic "news" outlets, the US empire has effectively supplanted the UN and international law in its ability to get whole groups of nations moving in a certain way with the consent of the governed. The human species is being led around like a dog on a leash by a collective mind control system of unparalleled and unprecedented sophistication that hardly anyone even notices. Imperial propaganda is the single most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of our society.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Awesome Power Of US Propaganda: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

It's not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the US is pouring weapons into a foreign nation to defend freedom and democracy.

It's not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe serious military conflicts consist of Good Guys fighting Bad Guys like a children's cartoon show.

It's not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe a war is being fought between an evil monster who is the same as Hitler and a virtuous sexy comedian of surpassing bravery and wisdom.

Reading by Tim Foley.

It's Not Okay For Grown Adults To Think This Way About Ukraine

Fucking ridiculous that it's 2022 and it's still a shocking and controversial position to say your government and media are lying to you about a fucking war.

You know you're living under an empire with the most sophisticated propaganda machine that's ever existed when it can lie about literally every war it's ever been involved in and then when you say they're lying about the latest war people still act like you're a paranoid lunatic.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Sure, Ukraine Is The First War The US Hasn't Lied About

It's impossible to overstate how completely blanketed by propaganda distortion the Ukraine war is. US spooks saying they're leaking disinfo to the press, Ukrainian war propaganda, the blackout on Ukrainian losses, the uncritical media acceptance of allegations against Russia, etc. This war is a propaganda campaign wrapped in a psyop.

Reading by Tim Foley

A Propaganda Campaign Wrapped In A Psyop

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

This Ain't Putin's Price Hike

Caitlin Johnstone

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