Month: June 2019

You Are Fighting In The Most Important Battle Of All Time – Caitlin Johnstone

You Are Fighting In The Most Important Battle Of All Time – Caitlin Johnstone

If you are reading this, it’s most likely the result of a series of events in your life which have drawn your interest and attention to the fact that our world is quite a bit different from what we’ve been told by our school teachers, by the news media, by Hollywood, and by politicians.

At some point, for whatever reason, you’ve come to realize that the consensus narratives in our society about what’s going on are false. The tools that people are taught to use to inform themselves about their government, their nation and their world are not just full of inaccuracies, but deliberate distortions, ranging from the reasons we’re given for why wars are started, to the way our political systems work, to where real power and authority actually lies, to the way nations and governments actually behave in the world.

This awareness has come with a degree of alienation. Not buying into the same consensus narratives about the world as your friends, loved ones and peers comes with an inability to relate to them on some levels, which can cause you to feel a lack of intimacy in those areas. You may have also found yourself the odd one out in conversations about politics or other controversial issues, maybe even lost old friends over it.

But you kept going anyway. For some of us, it’s more important to be true to the truth than it is to fit in. You’re one of those people.

So, I just want to say thank you. Sincerely. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m on-my-knees grateful to anyone who sets about untangling themselves and their species from the deceitful narratives which pervade our society. It is the most important battle that can possibly be fought. The most important battle that has ever been fought.

There is nothing more important than this fight. Our species is on a sure trajectory toward Orwellian dystopia if climate collapse or nuclear war don’t send us the way of the dinosaur first, and the only thing that has the power to steer us out of that trajectory is the people using the strength of their numbers to force an end to the oppressive, ecocidal, omnicidal status quo.

But they don’t. The people don’t use the strength of their numbers to force an end to the oppressive, ecocidal, omnicidal status quo, because they aren’t interested in doing so. Why aren’t they interested in doing so? Because their minds are being manipulated on a mass scale by the same people who have been granted immense power and wealth by the existence of that status quo.

All of mankind’s biggest dilemmas are ultimately due to the fact that propaganda is far more ubiquitous and far more advanced than most people realize.

And it’s not their fault. Not really. Nobody teaches you in school that throughout your entire life your plutocratic overlords will be working to control the thoughts in your head using a highly sophisticated arsenal of psychological operations funneled into your mind via their near-total control of the media. Nobody warns you as a kid that if you ever really want to grow up, you’ll first have to extricate the vast network of lies which have been deliberately sewn into your consciousness since birth.

But their tricks didn’t work on you. You found your way out of that matrix of deception. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t comfortable, but you did it. And now you’re ready to fight.

— Read on caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/06/24/you-are-fighting-in-the-most-important-battle-of-all-time/

Why Do You Think They Cross the Border?

I need you to clarify something for me, MAGA friend.

I’ve seen all your incendiary social media posts about the border crossers.
I’ve come across the fictional statistics about their supposed crime and alleged violence, that you so willingly repost.
I’ve read Donald Trump’s rambling, all-caps, alarmists tweets.
I’ve seen the Tomi Lahren’s of the world, daily vomit their sky-is-falling talk of “border invasions.”
I’ve heard Franklin Graham’s furrow-browed sermons about the Godless, lawless threats apparently pouring into our nation.

And you’re buying that?

That’s really why you think all these people come here?

To sell drugs?
To take your jobs?
To sexually assault people?
To overrun us with gang activity?
To avoid hard work?

Is that really the story you tell yourself?

Do you actually think people brave arrest and dehydration and death just to come here and steal from us?

Are they stuffing themselves into stifling storage containers and into hidden compartments of truck beds for hours, because they’re looking to set up illegal activity?

Are they all traversing miles of sun-scorched land, carrying their children and all that they own, because they’re lazy?

Are they leaving the only home they’ve ever known, because they look forward to being in a place where they know that the President, half the lawmakers, and much of the population openly despises them?

This is a vacation, it’s a dodge from responsibility, it’s a conspiracy against America?

Is that really what you think?

If it is, I’m going to suggest either one of two things is true about you: either you’ve been so polluted by the fear peddling, fake news of this Presidency that you’re no longer able to think critically—or you have no compassion left within you.

Honestly, either of those is a pretty grim diagnosis.

The former, means that you’re easily manipulated by the most transparent of scare tactics used to terrify fragile white people.
The latter, means you’re just a lousy human being who doesn’t give a damn about suffering beyond our borders.

Either way, I feel sorry for you.

Yeah, I know what you’re going to say: “I’m not against people coming here, I just want them to do it the right way.”

The ‘right way,” is a phrase used by people who’ve never experienced true desperation.
The “right way,” is a telling symptom of inherited privilege that was born insulated from extreme poverty and violence.
The “right way,” is the rally cry of someone who’s never been faced with the kind of urgency that leaves you utterly hopeless.
The “right way,” is what selfish people say when they don’t want other people to have what they’ve been handed with a birth certificate.

If your house is engulfed in scorching flames and you’re trying to escape, what’s the “right way” to leave? The only way you can.

If you’re driving from quickly rising flood waters, what’s the “right way” to point the car? The way that saves your life.

If you’re in imminent danger from a violent assailant, what’s the “right way” to stay alive? Immediately running in the opposite direction.

You may want to actually meet these people, to hear their stories, to listen to their fears, to ask them why they do what they do—but something tells me you’re not interested in that.

I know the big, simple lie is more convenient than the individual, complex truth.

— Read on johnpavlovitz.com/2019/05/31/why-do-you-think-they-cross-the-border/

Reporters alone can’t bring down a president, especially today – The Washington Post

During the Watergate era, as Zirinsky noted, there were three networks. Now, cable news, talk radio, thousands of websites and social media create a polluted firehose-blast of information mixed with disinformation.
— Read on www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/journalists-cant-repeat-their-watergate-hero-act-the-reasons-should-make-us-grieve/2019/06/07/827e0f02-887f-11e9-98c1-e945ae5db8fb_story.html

Thirty-Two Tips For Navigating A Society That Is Full Of Propaganda And Manipulation.

Excellent article by Caitlin Johnstone

Number 28 — ”Understand that war is the glue which holds the US-centralized empire together. Without the carrot of military/economic alliance and the stick of military/economic violence, the US-centralized empire would cease to exist. This is why war propaganda is constant and sometimes so forced that glaring plot holes become exposed; it’s so important that they need to force it through, even if they can’t get the narrative matrix around it constructed just right. If they ceased manufacturing consent for the empire’s relentless warmongering, people would lose all trust in government and media institutions, and those institutions would lose the ability to propagandize the public effectively. Without the ability to propagandize the public effectively, our rulers cannot rule.”

Read More: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/thirty-two-tips-for-navigating-a-society-that-is-full-of-propaganda-and-manipulation-f3798079fea6

Twitter Post: Walter Shaub former Director of the Office of Government Ethics

This is what I consider a summation of trump’s time in the White House.

“I’m thinking that if I was to “believe” someone to tell me the truth, it would be Walter, an Ethics professional. Please share this with everyone you know.

Here is what he stated:

Heed the signs and don’t underestimate the threat to our republic from within:

-Trump obstructed justice

-A McConnell-packed SCOTUS says precedent can be changed more easily than previously thought

-AG Barr is an open partisan and slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre beneficiary

-White House ignores congressional subpoenas, document requests

-Mnuchin is violating a law on turning over taxes to House

-Barr & Senate allies want to investigate officials who investigated Trump to retaliate against them and deter future efforts to hold him to the rule of law

-State Dept is setting up a commission to supplant human rights with “natural law”

-An Inspector General found standing room only in border detention cells, with detainees standing on toilets to breathe

-children stolen from parents at the border are dying in internment camps

-Trump cut resources for investigating domestic terrorists

-FBI reports a recent significant rise in white supremacist domestic terrorism

-evidence found of a white supremacist plot to add census Q to help gerrymander in ways “advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites”

-Trump is still resisting setting up defenses against foreign election interference

-Trump’s personal attorney solicited foreign govt investigation of current Trump political rival Biden

-AG Barr said something in a weird interview about investigating former Trump rival Clinton

-There’s cause for concern Trump/Kushner personal interests may be influencing middle east policy

-Ignoring Congress, Trump declared fake emergency & abused authority to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia to continue its atrocities in Yemen, after it murdered a Washington Post reporter

-Trump declared fake emergency to get more power to ramp up activity at border

-ethics violations (and ethically dubious conduct not rising to a violation) occurring at an unprecedented rate among Trump appointees

-senior admin official says she doesn’t care about an ethics law

-if impeached, Trump says he’ll try to get SCOTUS to overturn the impeachment

-McConnell, who blocked Merrick Garland ostensibly because it was an election year, shamelessly hinted this week that he’d be willing to fill a SCOTUS position for Trump in an election year

-Trump is praising autocrats, undermining allies

-Tone of OLC’s recent opinions has changed under Assistant AG Steven Engel, who was tied to one of the torture memos

-Military went to the border for Trump

-Military hid a ship to placate Trump

-Airborne seen wearing MAGA patches

-Trump admin & Graham inexplicably advocating war in Iran/Venezuela

-DOJ experimenting with new legal theory for prosecuting those who publish classified information (raising a question as to whether the theory will be limited to hostile foreign actors or expanded to journalists)

-some public voices are normalizing Trump admin conduct

-voicemail from Trump lawyer to Flynn shows a disturbing carrot/stick approach (or worse)

-Trump has seemed to dangle pardons to buy silence or worse

-Trump admin officials are violating records laws to conceal actions

-Trump said “Russia, if you’re listening”

-Trump said “fine people” marched with nazis

-Trump has told over 10,000 false or misleading statements, per Washington Post

-Trump helped cover up Khashoggi murder, and Kushner’s said to have offered advice to MBS on weathering the storm

-a foreign prince is reported to have said he has Kushner in his pocket (but denies saying that)

-Helsinki

-Trump’s behavior is erratic and is marked by frequent lies, bizarre public outbursts, name-calling and confusion

-no press conferences, and no transparency

-Trump allies in congress are either lying about the Mueller report or haven’t read it

-Trump allies in congress are trying to prevent Mueller & others from testifying because they know their base hasn’t read the report and right wing media has kept them from hearing about it.”

~ Walter Shaub 5/31/19