it's so very true and I've been saying it forever and it's so painful, because many Americans especially peace activists civil rights activists feel so hopeless about what can actually be done

WEALTH HISTORY EP.6 นี้ ชวนพูดคุยถึงพลังงานนิวเคลียร์ ที่หลายคนรู้จักอานุภาพในการทำลายล้าง แต่อีกทางหนึ่งก็เป็นแหล่งผลิตพลังงานไฟฟ้า อันเป็นพื้นฐานสำคัญของเศรษฐกิจอุตสาหกรรมได้ด้วยเช่นเดียวกัน ติดตามเรื่องราวนี้ได้กับโฮสต์ประจำรายการ วิทย์ สิทธิเวคิน

WEALTH HISTORY EP.6  วิวัฒนาการพลังงานนิวเคลียร์

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

The truth of the matter is that you can't vote your way out of a mess you never voted your way into in the first place. You never voted for any of this.

You never voted for your government to circle the planet with hundreds of military bases and continuously work to destroy any government which disobeys it. 

You never voted for your government to imperil the world with rapidly escalating brinkmanship against nuclear-armed nations.

You never voted to base your entire civilization on the pursuit of profit while shoving your biosphere into the capitalist machine like a tree branch into a wood chipper.

You never voted to let plutocrats and war profiteers make decisions for your government while normal people suffer and toil to scrape by.

You never voted to let billionaires live as kings while homeless people shiver in tents.

You never voted for surging authoritarianism with more and more police militarization, surveillance, censorship, propaganda and control.

You never voted to create this freakish dystopia where all political oxygen gets funneled toward vapid culture war debates which threaten the powerful in no way while any effort to effect meaningful change is ground into the dust.

None of those things were ever on the ballot, and they won't be in November of next year either. What will be on the ballot is whether you want all of those things to continue under the office of someone with a D or an R next to their name. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

You Can't Vote Your Way Out Of A Mess You Never Voted Yourself Into

The biggest impediment to free speech is people's belief that they have it. Not censorship. Not refusal to platform critical voices. Not the war on journalism. It's the fact that most people are propagandized into saying what the powerful want them to say, and don't know it.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Propaganda Restricts Speech More Than Censorship Does

The biggest problem with the western left is that it doesn't exist.

To look at leftist discourse you'd think the left's biggest problem is that some leftists have the wrong beliefs about this or that issue, or that the left pays too much or not enough attention to identity politics, or places too much or not enough emphasis on electoral politics, or is too sympathetic toward enemies of the US empire or not sympathetic enough, or that this or that faction gets it all wrong — but it's not. The biggest problem is that there aren't anywhere remotely close to enough leftists to get anything done in the west today.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Biggest Problem With The Western Left Is That It Doesn't Exist

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

The destruction of a major dam in southern Ukraine has caused devastating flooding as a highly-anticipated Ukrainian military offensive gets underway. U.S. officials immediately declared that Russia was responsible but where’s the evidence and does that have any military logic? 

Brian Becker is joined by Walter Smolarek, editor of Liberation News.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at https://patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Ukraine Dam Bombing: Information War and Endless Escalation

Inter

As the clock ticks down on the truce in Gaza, Israel has attacked and killed at least two children in Jenin, a city in the West Bank.

Brian Becker is joined by Abby Martin, creator & host of the Empire Files and director and narrator of the documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom, at GazaFightsForFreedom.com.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/TheSocialistProgram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Israel Attacks During ‘Truce’: Will West Bank Explode? w/ Abby Martin

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

You Can't Vote Your Way Out Of A Mess You Never Voted Yourself Into

Caitlin Johnstone

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