Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

If the logic that "there are no innocent Russians" because the Russian people have a moral obligation to overthrow their warmongering government were evenly applied, it would also apply to Americans. Even more so, really, since their government is vastly more warlike than Moscow. Per the "there are no innocent Russians" argument, Americans should be banned from participating in international events. Americans should be kicked out of foreign universities. Cinemas should stop playing Hollywood movies. Hemingway should be banned from schools. Reading by Tim Foley.

I get funny reactions from people who are new to my work, often because I don't act like the other indie media figures they follow. I'm unrefined and swear a lot. I engage on social media with both followers and critics far more than most do. I talk about elite conspiracies to create a totalitarian dystopia, but I differ from other conspiracy analysts in that I assert that the dystopia is already here and has been for generations. One of the main things that sets me apart from other people whose names I often get mentioned alongside is that I don't just publish anti-establishment commentary on news and politics and polemics against the empire; I publish art, poetry, philosophical musings, and big-picture assessments of what's going on with humanity as a whole. In case anyone's curious, I have a number of reasons for doing this. Reading by Tim Foley.

There's a thread going around on Twitter by Columbia University's Sophie Fullerton advancing the claim that I have promoted crazy conspiracy theories about child "crisis actors" in Syrian war atrocities. Fullerton has me blocked on Twitter so I can't respond to her there, but in her thread she brings up one of the most egregious instances I've ever seen of US war propaganda in the mass media, so it's worth taking some time to unpack her claims here as a public service. The "interview": https://youtu.be/R7MRWhZzL5k Reading by Tim Foley.

One of the main differences between myself and other commentators who talk about an elite conspiracy to implement a totalitarian dystopia is that the others warn that we are being pushed toward this dystopia, while I insist that we're already there and have been for generations. Reading by Tim Foley.

Well you know kids these days they're so entitled
. They'll quit a job just because they don't like it
, or because it doesn't pay enough
, or because they're not grateful for the privilege of turning a gear 
for a silver dollar and an attaboy sammy. And you know kids these days they're scary and strange, 
because what are they doing on them smart phones anyhow
? And how do we keep track of what they're getting up to
 when we can't see it through our front windows 
from between the gaps in the blinds?
 And how are we supposed to mind them 
when we don't understand their jokes or their references, 
or why they're being so nice to freaks? How can we teach them to hate their bodies
 when they insist that all bodies are beautiful? And how can we teach them to fight like a man
 or submit like a woman when they insist that they are neither? And how can we teach them what to think about things when they'd rather watch other kids create content than listen to the pundits we put on TV? And how can we teach them

You are not separate from the universe. How could you be? The whole thing worked together to give rise to you through an unbroken chain of occurrences over billions of years, and the stuff you are made of comes from the same Great Whatever as everything else. Since the dawn of life on this planet organisms have been exchanging water and other elements back and forth through eating, drinking, reproducing and dying, and you are inseparably one with that dance. And your own elements will not die. When your incredible heart stops beating and the stuff your amazing body is made of begins to come apart, your own molecules will simply continue the dance of the elements that has been going on for billions of years. You won't die, you'll just return. Some elements born of stardust arranged themselves on two legs, looked around, experienced countless wonders, laughed, cried, fell in love, learned and unlearned, and then changed form, like a ripple ceasing its movement and becoming indistinguishable from the surroundi

The Washington Post has an article out with the brazenly misleading headline "Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters". Anyone who reads the article itself will find its author Tim Starks acknowledges that "Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior," but the insertion of the word "little" means anyone who just reads the headline (the overwhelming majority of people encountering the article) will come away with the impression that Russian trolls still had some influence on 2016 voters. "Little influence" could mean anything shy of tremendous influence. But the study did not find that Russian trolls had "little influence" over the election; it failed to find any measurable influence at all.  Starks does some spin work of his own in a bid to salvage the reputation of the ever-crumbling Russiagate narrative, eagerly pointing out that the report does not explicitly say Russia definitely had zero influence on the election's outcome, that it doe

The science of modern propaganda arguably got its start over a century ago during World War I when a young Edward Bernays was recruited to help sell the conflict to a reluctant American populace, after which he took what he'd learned on that front and folded it into a lifetime of work on the study of mass-scale psychological manipulation. That was when propaganda as we know it today came into being, with the scientific method applied to the task of refining techniques for manipulating large-scale human behavior using modern media distribution. Those methods have been in research and development this entire time, and have advanced at least as much as our other instruments of warfare have advanced since World War I. But that wasn't the beginning of mass-scale psychological manipulation by the powerful. That has been going on since the dawn of civilization. Reading by Tim Foley.

They don't just call Democrats "communists" and "Marxists" in order to attack Democrats, they do it to disappear the entire giant expanse of political spectrum that exists to the left of the capitalist imperialist Democratic Party. They want you to think that's as far left as it gets. Democrats refer to themselves as "the left" for the same reason. Both mainstream factions work to shrink the Overton window into a tug-o-war between Republican capitalist imperialists and Democrat capitalist imperialists. Between two opposing factions of neoliberal neocons. Reading by Tim Foley.

A couple of months into Elon Musk's control of Twitter, it's fair to say that from an anti-censorship, pro-transparency perspective there have been a few positive results of the platform coming under new management. The revelations from the Twitter Files about US government involvement in influencing a massive social media company's policies and actions have been indisputably newsworthy information that's absolutely in the public interest to have, and some anti-establishment voices have been saying their accounts have been noticeably more visible since the changeover. It's also fair to say at this point that Musk has allowed far more negative practices to continue than he has ended. In an excellent new article titled "Under Musk, Twitter Continues to Promote US Propaganda Networks," Fair.org's Bryce Greene breaks down the many different ways that Twitter is still manipulating the information its users see in ways that serve the interests of the US government. Greene contrasts the wildly unbalanced way media

Western “liberal democracies” are just totalitarian regimes with more money and better narrative management. The US-centralized empire controls the global south with bombs, bullets and blockades and controls the rest of us with mass-scale psychological manipulation. Sure it's more pleasant to be sitting where we are rather than at the barrel of the gun, but don't confuse pleasantness with freedom. It's nice that here they let you criticize your government and buy whatever you can afford at the store. It would be pleasant to live in a vat with your brain plugged into a virtual world of endless pleasure, too, but it wouldn't be freedom. Psychological tyranny is still tyranny. Reading by Tim Foley.

CNN has shattered the speed of light in its haste to recruit former representative Adam Kinzinger to its punditry lineup the millisecond he left congress.  Reading by Tim Foley.

Really growing up means doing the hard, earnest work of extracting all the bullshit that was placed in our minds over the course of our lives by people who were just as immature, traumatized and confused as us. It means really excavating our beliefs about ourselves, about life, and about our world, all the way down to the old subconscious beliefs that are buried so deep inside us that we don't even normally notice them. This isn't easy. It takes work, it takes dedication, and it takes courage, because truly relinquishing long-held core beliefs is like a kind of death. But unless we've done it we can't really say we have matured as human beings, because we're still existing in more or less the same state we were in when we were children: sponge-like imitators who soaked up whatever was placed in our minds by trusted authorities. And to make things even harder, it turns out that there's a whole other category of people who've been placing beliefs in our minds, and they're complete strangers. It turns out that

I'm often criticized as being "anti-west", but I am not anti-west, I am pro-west. I am so pro-west that I want our values of peace, freedom, democracy, truth and justice to be real life things that exist in actual western civilization and not just a fiction that is taught to western schoolchildren. I am so pro-west that I want the west to embody the actual western values it pretends to embody. I am so pro-west that I support the practice of spreading western values to the west. I'm a western cultural imperialist, except I want to do western cultural imperialism to the west. I'm like a conquistador, a western colonialist setting sail to spread the wonders of western civilization to these godless western savages. Except instead of actually just bringing them murder, slavery, theft and disease I really am trying to bring them western civilization. Reading by Tim Foley.

Do you remember voting for government agencies to insert themselves into the regulation of online speech? I don't remember any such vote. I don't remember any politician campaigning to do this or any part of the public being asked for their permission at all. It sure seems like they appointed that authority to themselves without the permission of the electorate, solely for their own benefit. It's almost like democracy is an illusion and our rulers do whatever they want to us, up to and including restricting the ways we're allowed to communicate with each other, in whatever way benefits them and their agendas. Reading by Tim Foley.

Love crashes in from all directions, so peel me off the ground like Wile E Coyote and blow on my thumb to unflatten me. Love crashes in like an ACME anvil, like an ACME exploding rocket, like an ACME exploding female roadrunner doll, like an ACME exploding orgy of divine light erupting from the Great Mother's breasts and ripping me to shreds leaving nothing but gratitude, so shake the black soot off from my fur and clean the coyote-shaped blast marks off the wall behind me. Love crashes in through my bare feet on the grass and the wind in my hair, through the laughter of my children, through the flying creatures in the air, through my lover's hands on my flesh, through the unknowability of the future, through the ineffability of the present, through the ecstasy of existence, through the boundless Heart in which all arises, so give me a sign which says "YIPE!" that I may hold before I start falling. I am in love with everything, head-over-hormones in love, gishy, sticky in love, in love like an idiot, in lo

It actually isn't an exaggeration to compare the mainstream worldview to the virtual world depicted in The Matrix. The only difference is that instead of AI keeping us imprisoned, it's psychopathic oligarchs and secretive government agencies, and instead of code, it's narrative. Reading by Tim Foley.

One of the empire's strongest assets is the widespread assumption that propaganda is something that only happens to other people. Another is the widespread assumption that propaganda only comes from other countries and other political ideologies. Reading by Tim Foley.

War is over If you want it War is over If you want the health of your people more than global domination, War is over If you want everyone's prosperity more than you want to be richer than others, War is over If you want peace more than the illusion of security, War is over War is over If you want to move forward more than you want your team to triumph, War is over If you want to get the things you want more than you want the glory, War is over If you want things to be right more than you want the story of being wronged, War is over War is over If you want happiness more than you want to win, War is over If you want connection more than you want ambitious achievements, War is over If you want this moment more than you want your future fantasies (that will always fail to satisfy even if they do come true), War is over War is over If you want to relax and repair more than you want to defend the story of yourself, War is over If you want to seek understanding more than you want to win the argument, War is ov

You see US empire lackeys gushing all the time about how extraordinarily efficient and cost-effective the proxy war in Ukraine is for furthering US interests against Russia, which is funny because they spend the rest of the time talking about how this invasion was "unprovoked" and rending their garments about how horrible it is. The official imperial position is somehow simultaneously (A) "We hate this war and never wanted it," and (B) "This war benefits us tremendously." Reading by Tim Foley.