Medhi Hasan is certainly a prime example of a red herring opposition figure. As the old song goes :"He says all the things, I wish I could say" but in the end he tells Americans to vote for Harris. He castigates the Israeli government and calls out their genocide, then in the next breath, condems the actions of the Resistance. To quote Eldridge Cleaver: "there is no 'middle ground'. You are either part of the problem or part of the solution'. True then, true now.
I can forgive (though slightly annoyed) people falling for Medhi Hasan seeming opposition; but, how on earth are these two billionaire schmucks "anti-establishment" in the first place? They are classic demagougues!
If Hasan and others want the MSM and other institutions to be trusted more, maybe they should try earning some trust, rather than act like they are entitled to trust by some sort of Divine Right.
But their IMpenetrable skulls are far too dedicated to their own careers, their lives set firmly within the narcissistic framework of who gets the gold in 'Merica. Down deep Mehdi et al. know full well that it ain't the truth-tellers.
I’ve been a compulsive consumer of news media since I was about eight years old. Radio, television, newspapers, magazines. And since 1994, via online sources. Well, since sometime in late 2022, for the first time in my adult life I have completely abandoned regular consumption of all western mainstream news. About the only exceptions are to occasionally check the cricket score or election results. Even the latter has become minimally relevant. The legacy media has made itself utterly irrelevant and untrustworthy. But thankfully, there are still many good sources of important news and analysis. They are all internet based and either independent or based in countries outside of imperial control. And I can support some of them directly. But the oligarchs are obsessed with narrative control, so we have to be aware that platforms will come and go. And we should never stop searching out the truth.
I have little respect for Mehdi Hassan except as a hypocrite. I remember him contributing to the anti-Corbyn narrative, only later adopting a faux anti-establishment stance after he was removed from his mainstream programme. A weathervane.
I totally agree with you about the media. 2 points you raised are most important.
First MSM both conventional and alternative is massively polluted by hacks. Most parrot the talking points and can be spotted immediately & dismissed. The most insidious & dangerous are the alt- newsies like Mehdi Hasan. They're only looking to make a name for themselves, make money and get payback for having to hustle outside MSM. Thanks to reading lists you've provided I've been able to see through them and cultivate authentic news.
Secondly, AOC & the sellout revolutionaries. Like Mehdi Hasan, they're just climbing up into the swamp castle trying to make themselves important in name only 😡 When trying to discern genuine activists, I've found myself relying on my grammar school test: would I have played with you as a kid? or would you be ostracized by all of us? Amazingly children have an natural sense about this stuff. I dumped AOC a long time ago when she knifed her fellow progressives.
We need to set our own passions aside when deciding what to consume for information. Time is precious and choosing honest reliable sources is work. I've found that getting out of my comfort zone has lead me to honest reporting. Also less popular reporters are usually telling the truth...step away from the herd.
fascism is end game capitalism. Capitalism started its decline in the70's, just about the time they introduced credit card debt to finish the job.
Only a fool votes in an oligarch, while only an idiot votes for and expects members of the oligarch to side with the plebes in what is an all out class war in process.
The US has 2 trillion in credit card debt and 1.5 trillion in student loans. Debt is the new slavery and declaring bankruptcy is expensive (!) and difficult and impossible for student debt. And guess who sponsored the bill tightening the noose around our necks? Joe Biden - everyone’s favorite dementia patient and HillaryClinton - everyone’s favorite shrew. By the time the banks have cashed us out we really will own nothing and they will be happy.
Spot on Caitlin. Just watched Alex Jones rile up the troops using all the right words to capture the imagination of the masses. We're being played hard. Like a giant Squid Game.
It just goes to show that politics and religion are one and the same. They both require that their followers throw out all common sense and logic and go forward on blind faith. There are doubtless many good people who belong to religious organizations or political parties. When any of them wake up they will shun religious organizations and political entities. Maybe one day this movement will change the world. This is why true independent critical thinkers like you are so important during these trying times. Your writing is fantastic even if I don't always agree. The world needs more journalists who stray from the beaten path. Keep up the excellent work.
Absolutely! Arguably there is something beyond us. One thing I know is that on the religion end I am not qualified to either support are deny anyone else's beliefs. Whatever keeps order in the universe I only truly know it ain't me. Politically, I know a snow job when I see one.
I hope there is something beyond us, and like yourself, I am not qualified to completely excise someone else's metaphysical beliefs. Even the Science we have today has plenty of open questions.
Something Joseph Campbell wrote about religion in his book "Myth and Meaning" sticks with me:
"There are two attitudes toward religious and mythic images today. One is that they are references to facts, and the other is that they are lies. But they are neither facts nor lies; rather, they are metaphors. Mythology is a compendium of metaphors."
Most likely. Still I like to keep an open mind and I am not talking about the fairy tale stories that are organized religion. They are nothing more than methods used to coerce people into obedience in my opinion. Then again life started somewhere and probably multiple somewheres out in the universe. How nobody knows so I would never tell a person who is trying to live by his or her belief that they are mistaken. I don't know enough to say that.
"... and I am not talking about the fairy tale stories that are organized religion."
Would you allow for the stories to be, or attempted to be, an instrument to try to convey ideas? Like, can you imagine a better way to explain the concept of something being out there that is higher and more important than any individual on Earth, dead, alive, or to be?
The "Big Man In The Sky" is an infantile view that should be embarrassing for any adult to verbalize. It's just one of the attempts to convey the idea. Obviously, there's not a "man" up there. Just like there's no Santa Clause trip that is being yearly tracked by NASA or whatever the agency.
The idea is so abstract and complex, yet so necessary to try to make a human more than an animal, that it's incredibly difficult to try to explain universally. Most people would be fine if they took it literally and abode by it. What's the harm? Yet the smarties out there try to ridicule them exposing themselves as total dunces in the process.
Humility should be a must for every human being to be equipped with.
Not only humility but empathy and a charitable heart. With these three emotions at the fore front we achieve heights unimaginable. The problem is certain people in this world turn these emotions into a way to fleece people. About 30 years ago I went with some friends to a B.B. King concert. The only concert I ever attended. When we came out of the theatre it was quite late and there were people wrapped in blankets sleeping on the sidewalks. I had never seen this before. I looked at a young girl about 14 years old shivering in her blanket. She was just a child. Maybe I was wrong but I pulled the cash I had from my pocket and gave it to her. The people I was with began to mock me for being a sucker. "She wants to be there" they said. I refuse to believe any child would prefer to be sleeping on the street rather than in a warm bed secure from all the predators out there. At the time I'd never been more ashamed of my former friends. How could anyone be so callous? I realized that I could not continue to be friends with people like that and actually ceased associating with them. Over the years on occasion my wife and I have taken food and clothing out on the streets and distributed it to the homeless. Because of the rampant drug problem and the increasing number of charlatans that call themselves charities we never give money. I ask myself all the time as a society what have we come to? Christmas is coming. Next time you see a homeless child buy them a hamburger or take some clothing you no longer wear and give it to them.
It was only fairly recently in physics that the reality of non-locality has now been established:
"Any two objects that interact become entangled. After that, whatever happens to one instantaneously influence the other no matter how far apart they are. This has been extensively demonstrated with pairs of microscopic particles, and even with almost macroscopic devices." #QE
Furthermore, scientists today still remain baffled on how to come up with a precise definition of consciousness, or how consciousness itself can be produced from inanimate matter.
There may be no "Big Man In the Sky", but it is also likely that random inanimate particles in the universe were able to somehow just magically combined to form consciousness, and somehow managed to produce a complex emotional internal life - is also just about as bloody silly - "mate".
Maybe we will find that ground eventually but for now most of us want the common ground to be all ours. Most of us, myself included, appear to be cursed with a very narrow perspective. The trouble with organisations is that they all pretty much expect you to follow without question. This is the herd mentality that may very well be our downfall. Independent thinkers are exactly what it says, independent. Independence requires us to think and act individually which is not welcome in any society I can think of.
This is right on, of course. Yet there is another twist to the pretzel, a dimension a lot of the Western anti-establishment crowd don't understand. The political forces opposing Western hegemonic madness are not benign humanists either. Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Hungary are pretty bad dictatorships in one way or another.
Some of our masters here in the East act more rationally at times, yes, especially when comparing them to the spectacular schizophrenia rampant in the US political class. But believe me, our psychos are just as ruthless. You wouldn't want to live under them.
It's a natural human tendency to hope that someone somewhere is good and your enemy's enemy is your friend. Plus there's the tribal instinct of rooting for someone. Reading the comments in Moonofalabama etc. however, we really shake our heads at the degree of naivité possible.
It's just us, really, that have to do the work. The normal people. No Messiahs in this age.
I honestly think you give them a little too much credit on how many moves ahead they are.
They did not want Bernie to win. They still try to stop him at every turn. He was stopped by all means necessary in 2020 and 2016.
I think it’s disingenuous to paint him as some faux movement.
He’s got plenty of flaws sure. He tried to play by their game sure. But that’s the reality of this system that he definitely posed a danger to and he was not some planted fake movement “allowed” to succeed as opposition.
Land's End is to Macy's what Sanders is to the Democrat Party. Just in the last week he hints about the need for a third party then skitters away from any serious call for a third party movement. While he expresses some great ideas and espouses some good values when it comes down to it, he'll tell you to shut up, fall in line and vote Democrat (again). Sanders is just a cold, calculating careerist.
He has a long, long history of betraying his supposed cause and his supporters. I was a big Sanders supporter, even got to shake his hand at a rally in Dubuque, Iowa and donated money to his campaigns. But he has repeatedly proven himself to be nothing more than a sheepdog to keep progressives obediently supporting the Democrats. I don't trust him and dismiss pretty much anything he says.
There is a large proportion of the population that doesn't vote. About a third of eligible voters. This is a huge ratio and we need to do something with it. Instead of fighting the existing bunch of knuckleheads, we ought to be putting our time and energy into creating parallel systems. We are only feeding the beast whenever we try fighting it because our energy and attention is still ON THE BEAST! The usual remedies - grow your own food, get to know neighbors, share crops with them and other things that you care to share, buy used rather than new when possible but the thing that will REALLY get us off their systems is to get our own system of exchange. Even barters should be recorded because that creates a system. If we don't record these parallel transactions, then it cannot develop and we'll always be left holding nothing. One overarching principle of life is this - we grow whatever our attention is pointed to. So even thinking about fighting those loons in Washington, we ought to forget them and think about how we progress our own selves. People think that ignoring them will make them worse but no - they will be eating out of our hands if they don't get their supply of attention. And then fade away and wither.
Excellent point about fake opposition. This article would have carried more weight if y'all had given some examples of how Trump and AOC have supported the policies of the American empire that increase inequality in the USA and terrorize the global south. Keep up the great work!
The successful revolution is always the one that the established regime doesn't see coming. Even the revolutionaries themselves won't see it coming. That's why they're successful. America will be no different.
Medhi Hasan is certainly a prime example of a red herring opposition figure. As the old song goes :"He says all the things, I wish I could say" but in the end he tells Americans to vote for Harris. He castigates the Israeli government and calls out their genocide, then in the next breath, condems the actions of the Resistance. To quote Eldridge Cleaver: "there is no 'middle ground'. You are either part of the problem or part of the solution'. True then, true now.
I can forgive (though slightly annoyed) people falling for Medhi Hasan seeming opposition; but, how on earth are these two billionaire schmucks "anti-establishment" in the first place? They are classic demagougues!
to paraphrase Gil Scott- Heron,
‘The Resolution Will Be Televised”
( and the heron’s got the gills by the horns..)
If Hasan and others want the MSM and other institutions to be trusted more, maybe they should try earning some trust, rather than act like they are entitled to trust by some sort of Divine Right.
But their IMpenetrable skulls are far too dedicated to their own careers, their lives set firmly within the narcissistic framework of who gets the gold in 'Merica. Down deep Mehdi et al. know full well that it ain't the truth-tellers.
Fluffers to power, Renaissance courtiers, but without the colorful getups.
Exactly. 21st-century courtiers.
If it ain’t broke- why fix it, Jim...?
I’ve been a compulsive consumer of news media since I was about eight years old. Radio, television, newspapers, magazines. And since 1994, via online sources. Well, since sometime in late 2022, for the first time in my adult life I have completely abandoned regular consumption of all western mainstream news. About the only exceptions are to occasionally check the cricket score or election results. Even the latter has become minimally relevant. The legacy media has made itself utterly irrelevant and untrustworthy. But thankfully, there are still many good sources of important news and analysis. They are all internet based and either independent or based in countries outside of imperial control. And I can support some of them directly. But the oligarchs are obsessed with narrative control, so we have to be aware that platforms will come and go. And we should never stop searching out the truth.
I have little respect for Mehdi Hassan except as a hypocrite. I remember him contributing to the anti-Corbyn narrative, only later adopting a faux anti-establishment stance after he was removed from his mainstream programme. A weathervane.
I totally agree with you about the media. 2 points you raised are most important.
First MSM both conventional and alternative is massively polluted by hacks. Most parrot the talking points and can be spotted immediately & dismissed. The most insidious & dangerous are the alt- newsies like Mehdi Hasan. They're only looking to make a name for themselves, make money and get payback for having to hustle outside MSM. Thanks to reading lists you've provided I've been able to see through them and cultivate authentic news.
Secondly, AOC & the sellout revolutionaries. Like Mehdi Hasan, they're just climbing up into the swamp castle trying to make themselves important in name only 😡 When trying to discern genuine activists, I've found myself relying on my grammar school test: would I have played with you as a kid? or would you be ostracized by all of us? Amazingly children have an natural sense about this stuff. I dumped AOC a long time ago when she knifed her fellow progressives.
We need to set our own passions aside when deciding what to consume for information. Time is precious and choosing honest reliable sources is work. I've found that getting out of my comfort zone has lead me to honest reporting. Also less popular reporters are usually telling the truth...step away from the herd.
“They don’t just control the opposition, they control the opposition to the controlled opposition.”
A Caitlin classic. Maybe you could star in an episode of The Grayzone Live, and that could be the title?
I write again and again.
Protest outside Mainstream Media offices. Make these liars names be known and their lives uncomfortable.
fascism is end game capitalism. Capitalism started its decline in the70's, just about the time they introduced credit card debt to finish the job.
Only a fool votes in an oligarch, while only an idiot votes for and expects members of the oligarch to side with the plebes in what is an all out class war in process.
The US has 2 trillion in credit card debt and 1.5 trillion in student loans. Debt is the new slavery and declaring bankruptcy is expensive (!) and difficult and impossible for student debt. And guess who sponsored the bill tightening the noose around our necks? Joe Biden - everyone’s favorite dementia patient and HillaryClinton - everyone’s favorite shrew. By the time the banks have cashed us out we really will own nothing and they will be happy.
Seriously????
Debt slavery has been around for a VERY long time! Usury is EVIL, and it should be eliminated.
Temporary lay-offs! Good times!! Easy credit rip offs! Good Times!! Ain't we lucky we got 'em. Goood Tiiiyyyaiimmes!!!!!
Spot on Caitlin. Just watched Alex Jones rile up the troops using all the right words to capture the imagination of the masses. We're being played hard. Like a giant Squid Game.
It just goes to show that politics and religion are one and the same. They both require that their followers throw out all common sense and logic and go forward on blind faith. There are doubtless many good people who belong to religious organizations or political parties. When any of them wake up they will shun religious organizations and political entities. Maybe one day this movement will change the world. This is why true independent critical thinkers like you are so important during these trying times. Your writing is fantastic even if I don't always agree. The world needs more journalists who stray from the beaten path. Keep up the excellent work.
Neo-Atheism and today's Neo Atheists belong to just another type of religion/cult.
Absolutely! Arguably there is something beyond us. One thing I know is that on the religion end I am not qualified to either support are deny anyone else's beliefs. Whatever keeps order in the universe I only truly know it ain't me. Politically, I know a snow job when I see one.
I hope there is something beyond us, and like yourself, I am not qualified to completely excise someone else's metaphysical beliefs. Even the Science we have today has plenty of open questions.
Something Joseph Campbell wrote about religion in his book "Myth and Meaning" sticks with me:
"There are two attitudes toward religious and mythic images today. One is that they are references to facts, and the other is that they are lies. But they are neither facts nor lies; rather, they are metaphors. Mythology is a compendium of metaphors."
This, I agree with, for the time being.
What keeps order in the universe, mate, is Physics. Ain't no Big Man In The Sky.
Most likely. Still I like to keep an open mind and I am not talking about the fairy tale stories that are organized religion. They are nothing more than methods used to coerce people into obedience in my opinion. Then again life started somewhere and probably multiple somewheres out in the universe. How nobody knows so I would never tell a person who is trying to live by his or her belief that they are mistaken. I don't know enough to say that.
"... and I am not talking about the fairy tale stories that are organized religion."
Would you allow for the stories to be, or attempted to be, an instrument to try to convey ideas? Like, can you imagine a better way to explain the concept of something being out there that is higher and more important than any individual on Earth, dead, alive, or to be?
The "Big Man In The Sky" is an infantile view that should be embarrassing for any adult to verbalize. It's just one of the attempts to convey the idea. Obviously, there's not a "man" up there. Just like there's no Santa Clause trip that is being yearly tracked by NASA or whatever the agency.
The idea is so abstract and complex, yet so necessary to try to make a human more than an animal, that it's incredibly difficult to try to explain universally. Most people would be fine if they took it literally and abode by it. What's the harm? Yet the smarties out there try to ridicule them exposing themselves as total dunces in the process.
Humility should be a must for every human being to be equipped with.
Not only humility but empathy and a charitable heart. With these three emotions at the fore front we achieve heights unimaginable. The problem is certain people in this world turn these emotions into a way to fleece people. About 30 years ago I went with some friends to a B.B. King concert. The only concert I ever attended. When we came out of the theatre it was quite late and there were people wrapped in blankets sleeping on the sidewalks. I had never seen this before. I looked at a young girl about 14 years old shivering in her blanket. She was just a child. Maybe I was wrong but I pulled the cash I had from my pocket and gave it to her. The people I was with began to mock me for being a sucker. "She wants to be there" they said. I refuse to believe any child would prefer to be sleeping on the street rather than in a warm bed secure from all the predators out there. At the time I'd never been more ashamed of my former friends. How could anyone be so callous? I realized that I could not continue to be friends with people like that and actually ceased associating with them. Over the years on occasion my wife and I have taken food and clothing out on the streets and distributed it to the homeless. Because of the rampant drug problem and the increasing number of charlatans that call themselves charities we never give money. I ask myself all the time as a society what have we come to? Christmas is coming. Next time you see a homeless child buy them a hamburger or take some clothing you no longer wear and give it to them.
Peace to you.
The harm start when almost all organized religions and churches impose upon others their undeniable truths, which can’t be discussed
It was only fairly recently in physics that the reality of non-locality has now been established:
"Any two objects that interact become entangled. After that, whatever happens to one instantaneously influence the other no matter how far apart they are. This has been extensively demonstrated with pairs of microscopic particles, and even with almost macroscopic devices." #QE
Furthermore, scientists today still remain baffled on how to come up with a precise definition of consciousness, or how consciousness itself can be produced from inanimate matter.
There may be no "Big Man In the Sky", but it is also likely that random inanimate particles in the universe were able to somehow just magically combined to form consciousness, and somehow managed to produce a complex emotional internal life - is also just about as bloody silly - "mate".
Neo-atheist? Haven't heard that one before, what does it mean?
It means intellectual mediocrity remains common as ever.
there has to be some common ground between the independent thinkers to get to a movement (some sort of organisation), though.
Maybe we will find that ground eventually but for now most of us want the common ground to be all ours. Most of us, myself included, appear to be cursed with a very narrow perspective. The trouble with organisations is that they all pretty much expect you to follow without question. This is the herd mentality that may very well be our downfall. Independent thinkers are exactly what it says, independent. Independence requires us to think and act individually which is not welcome in any society I can think of.
This is right on, of course. Yet there is another twist to the pretzel, a dimension a lot of the Western anti-establishment crowd don't understand. The political forces opposing Western hegemonic madness are not benign humanists either. Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Hungary are pretty bad dictatorships in one way or another.
Some of our masters here in the East act more rationally at times, yes, especially when comparing them to the spectacular schizophrenia rampant in the US political class. But believe me, our psychos are just as ruthless. You wouldn't want to live under them.
It's a natural human tendency to hope that someone somewhere is good and your enemy's enemy is your friend. Plus there's the tribal instinct of rooting for someone. Reading the comments in Moonofalabama etc. however, we really shake our heads at the degree of naivité possible.
It's just us, really, that have to do the work. The normal people. No Messiahs in this age.
do you live in one of those 5 countries or are those just the most popular ones on moon of alabama?
Hungary. The only thing our King has been kinda right about in his million years in office is the war in Ukraine.
A psychopath who is known as such is far less dangerous than a psychopath everyone thinks is their friend.
Indeed...
I honestly think you give them a little too much credit on how many moves ahead they are.
They did not want Bernie to win. They still try to stop him at every turn. He was stopped by all means necessary in 2020 and 2016.
I think it’s disingenuous to paint him as some faux movement.
He’s got plenty of flaws sure. He tried to play by their game sure. But that’s the reality of this system that he definitely posed a danger to and he was not some planted fake movement “allowed” to succeed as opposition.
Land's End is to Macy's what Sanders is to the Democrat Party. Just in the last week he hints about the need for a third party then skitters away from any serious call for a third party movement. While he expresses some great ideas and espouses some good values when it comes down to it, he'll tell you to shut up, fall in line and vote Democrat (again). Sanders is just a cold, calculating careerist.
Hi Mark
Bernie supported conditioning aid to IsraHell. That was his “downfall”.
He has a long, long history of betraying his supposed cause and his supporters. I was a big Sanders supporter, even got to shake his hand at a rally in Dubuque, Iowa and donated money to his campaigns. But he has repeatedly proven himself to be nothing more than a sheepdog to keep progressives obediently supporting the Democrats. I don't trust him and dismiss pretty much anything he says.
There is a large proportion of the population that doesn't vote. About a third of eligible voters. This is a huge ratio and we need to do something with it. Instead of fighting the existing bunch of knuckleheads, we ought to be putting our time and energy into creating parallel systems. We are only feeding the beast whenever we try fighting it because our energy and attention is still ON THE BEAST! The usual remedies - grow your own food, get to know neighbors, share crops with them and other things that you care to share, buy used rather than new when possible but the thing that will REALLY get us off their systems is to get our own system of exchange. Even barters should be recorded because that creates a system. If we don't record these parallel transactions, then it cannot develop and we'll always be left holding nothing. One overarching principle of life is this - we grow whatever our attention is pointed to. So even thinking about fighting those loons in Washington, we ought to forget them and think about how we progress our own selves. People think that ignoring them will make them worse but no - they will be eating out of our hands if they don't get their supply of attention. And then fade away and wither.
Excellent point about fake opposition. This article would have carried more weight if y'all had given some examples of how Trump and AOC have supported the policies of the American empire that increase inequality in the USA and terrorize the global south. Keep up the great work!
they both support the COERCIVE COERCIVE COERCIVE monopoly State as most people here do
The successful revolution is always the one that the established regime doesn't see coming. Even the revolutionaries themselves won't see it coming. That's why they're successful. America will be no different.
The problem is the US has near-total surveillance. It's hard for them to not at least get wind of something coming.
And again, what is YOUR solution—except to gripe about everyone being villainous?
Chairman Mao:
Change can only come through the barrel of a gun.
This is mine😈
_______
|| . ' |
|| ,` |
| |
|_____|
_|_( )_|_
I might just like it, if I understood it.
It's a guillotine 😁