How many proles in the USA realize the following?: that at least 1,182 people were killed by police in the United States in 2025, an average of at least three people every day. There were only seven days in 2025 during which there were no documented instances of police killing anyone.”
Uh hello, wake up call. America is a police state, ICE notwithstanding; just more of the same.
Some interesting data. It is particularly important that police killings are decreasing in Blue States while increasing in Red States. My take is that there is more aggressive organizing in Blue States against police brutality putting this issue front and center for civil rights. I know in my small town area we have had very strong organizing against such abuses. One case of police brutality in particular became center of this issue with lots of publicity and pressure on police to be scrutinized. While far from perfect we seem to have fewer such extreme cases. Not dealing with the 'street' any more, I cannot say Stop and Frisk has really decreased but on the couple of occasions I was stopped by cops there attitude was very low key and controlled with them introducing themselves to me while handing me their id cards. I think our county seat, the largest city in our county still has a number of cases of kangaroo type court cases.
It really took a very long time to get the issue on the table. We also had a unique situation some years ago after the George Floyd murder. Pressure on the Governor resulted in an exec order mandating every locality with a law enforcement agency to set up a community based committee to look at the racism and make recommendations. Most towns did nothing other than some perfunctory paper work but my area ran with the mandate and forced a public issue. Everything worked against serious work but it made the issue public and put the police on notice they were being observed and people were ready to take them on. The power structure was not threatened which was had to have happened but it did create some attention with some cautionary behavior by the police. Lots more work to be done. It takes constant vigilance and the public gets tired or disappears (ages out or moves) The goal must be stable restructoring of power which is the hardest.
Any community action such as you describe is hard as hell to get organized, so you all are to be highly commended for your efforts. Police need to feel the heat of constant and ongoing public scrutiny.
great point Mr. LoPresti, it is increasingly becoming a police state and authoritarian, civil liberties are being taken away at an alarming rate and dissent being harshly silenced. Dark times
And the crap they're churning out about Iran is just over the top. Mossad infested attempted colour revolution made to look like an insurrection. I wish people in the west weren't so damn gullible.
"Israel’s Channel 14 is reporting that Israel has been arming the rioters who have been carrying shotguns and pistols and throwing firebombs. Channel 14’s coverage is pro-Netanyahu so this story is likely to have come directly from government sources.
If there was any doubt about the veracity of this story, Mossad has been using its Farsi Twitter account to encourage Iranians to get out onto the streets. And it is bragging about having agents alongside the rioters in the field. Mossad operatives have been shooting Iranian police officers to provoke a violent response against Iranians, and here was you thinking they cared about their liberation…
This admission ties in with Iranian claims that they found American and Israeli weapons and 200kg of explosives onside seven Mossad safe houses, and obtained recordings of Americans and Israelis giving instructions to Iranians. These claims are corroborated by information obtained by Iranian hacking group Handala which explained exactly how Mossad was recruiting Iranians.
Israel’s infiltration was halted when Iranian intelligence took away Mossad’s ability to communicate by cutting telecommunications. It disrupted Starlink, located Starlink devices in operation, and intercepted a large shipment of Starlink devices and other spying equipment.
Iranian hackers gained access to Mossad’s phones and the riots fizzled out because Israel could no longer coordinate them. Strange that organic riots needed the coordination of a foreign power, isn’t it?"
Yes, Mahmood Marandi, professor and political analyst in Iran has spoken in great detail about the State shutting down the internet to confound the CIA/Mossad program of infiltration and extreme violence. This cut the coordinating communication and shut down the violence asap! Further, the State executions were of these infiltrating, traitorous thugs which is the State's right to protect itself. The western media propaganda completely ignores this while only promoting the violence and deaths by the State. It also ignores the fact that millions are out on the street in Iran supporting the government. They may not like all of the State but they do support the cohesiveness of the State and the need to preserve it.
Yes. I am here in France which could well be the most propagandized country in the World. I mention some good people to watch on You-Tube and of course substack. They do not take the time to even look and they tell ME what a terrible country Iran is. At this point in time I feel thumping people when they give me the usual French shrug.
In “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Arendt wrote that “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Daniel Kahneman’s “Dual Process Theory” identifies two cognitive systems of the human mind: System 1 is fast, automatic, and emotional, where as System 2 is slow, deliberate, and logical. You can experience this right now: perform a true/false test and you’ll activate your System 1, perform a multiple-choice test and you’ll activate your System 2.
When the human mind is confronted with binary choices, System 1 handles the decision processing with its automatic emotional response, and it never gets any further analysis.
System 1 goes back to our most basic survival instincts, and it is good for processing binary choices such as fight/flight, edible/toxic, alive/dead, but it is not suitable for processing complex issues. This is what System 2 is for. And it is well known in today’s study of psychology that when the human mind is presented with only two options, the work automatically goes to System 1, and critical thinking is avoided.
The purpose for having these two cognitive systems, is efficiency. Once the brain recognizes a binary choice, it reduces cognitive load to a minimum by sending it to System 1. And when cognitive load is at a minimum, people are even more susceptible to external persuasion and group mind.
The key to successfully controlling people is to keep them in this binary world so that their critical thinking is rarely, if ever, engaged. And this is best done by keeping them emotional. Both anger and fear will do the job. “With us or against us?” - “Patriot or traitor?” - “Support this policy or you want people to die!” are all binary choices used over and over again to keep people anchored in binary thinking, and render them blind.
Published experiments will tell you that when humans are reminded of their mortality, or of any existential threat, they will cling more tightly to their beliefs and their worldview, and become more hostile to those who challenge it. This is why political discourse uses apocalyptic language.
It is understood in psychology that people’s beliefs will strengthen when they are attacked, this is called “attitude entrenchment.”
The human mind is predisposed to categorize people into in-groups and out-groups, to favor in-group members and belittle out-group members in order to elevate their own in-group status. And it is known that it takes very little to activate this tribalism. Some experiments, have used a simple coin flip to steer people towards in-group acceptance. This innate human tribalism has been weaponized through politically constructed binaries that were designed to both divide people, and to make them see the world however the designers want them to.
In “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes,” Ellul wrote that propaganda works best when it simplifies complex realities into binary choices, because humans crave the cognitive relief of simple answers. And that the most effective propaganda isn’t spreading lies, it is spreading binary frameworks that make certain conclusions appear inevitable.
This binary brainwashing has been going on for generations and for many people, political positions have become their identity. Their social belonging, self-identity, and status are built upon it. And for many, the discomfort of challenging one’s own beliefs and admitting error is too much to handle. It is far more convenient to go with simple binary choices and move with the herd. But if you have any desire for the truth, then you will have to learn to apply critical thinking to everything, and most importantly, learn how your mind is being manipulated.
Roslyn, your comment is completely accurate and represents the frightening reality that we are are confronting daily. The binary fight/flight instinct is hard-wired into all of us, from the time when we all lived in caves and courtship was done with stone clubs and rocks. - Perhaps we haven’t moved on so far from our prehistoric ancestors! Seriously though, our natural survival instincts have always been exploited by bad actors who want to maintain the status quo because it benefits them. By a few million miles, the worst of these bad actors is ‘israel’, but the enablers and apologists for the zionist entity come a pretty close second.
We are all frogs in the gradually boiling cooking pot: the sooner we realise this, the better.
The most shameless aspect of this latest war push is that Trump is considering intervention out of a benevolent concern for the citizens of Iran. Who in the hell actually believes this nonsense?
Well said! For more on this massive psyops, see Max Blumenthal and Wyatt Reed expose the propaganda machine on Consortium News, Jan. 14, Western Media Whitewashes Deadly Riots in Iran. Do not be fooled.
It hurts, to wake up to this. Many people will know it, in their heart of hearts, but will resist acknowledging it because of the pain it causes. One is forced to question everything one has believed one's entire life, and end up feeling like a fool.
I became fully awake on the 8th October 2023. I knew, on that day, that we would witness a genocide on a monstrous scale and be powerless to stop it. The good news is that once you're aware of it, you can't ever unsee it. One day, the whole world will say Enough!
"...Westerners are so propagandized they don’t even KNOW they’re propagandized."
Whenever I meet people from other countries who want to know what do Americans have in common--since we come from such a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, etc.--I usually tell them it's our "Natural sense of optimism." Perhaps I need to rephrase that and say, "Our universal propgandized sense of reality." It's closer to the truth.
I hate to break it to you, but Americans (at least) are not buying the propaganda bullshit, as all polls show majorities opposed to Israel, war in Venezuela, attacks on Iran, and Ice thuggery in the US. The propaganda is not working..so that is not the problem. The problem is oligarchy, rule by the wealthy minority, contempt for democracy. The problem is not that Americans don't see thru the media bullshit but that they lack the power to do anything about it...except to march and protest, and then vote for progressives who will work to dismantle the plutocracy. The problem is not a brainwashed public but a public deprived of power by the oligarchy. So what is needed is not for Americans to wake up to the lies but to join the movement to create an actual democracy where the will of the people prevails.
You are right, the tide is turning. The momentum is the result of Kind,Caring, and Truthful people like Caitlin speaking out to greater and greater audiences.
Well, I would say that where the change has to take place, which is in the centers of power, primarily the US, Caitlin is not the reason but rather the bitter experience of inheriting, thru establishment Democratic senility, the harsh lessons of Trump, and now the pendulum is swinging hard back in the opposite direction, less due to pundits than the experience of chaos and the prickly rash of fascism. The tide is turning not so much due to the kind and caring (and in the US that would be people like Sanders and AOC< whom Caitlin calls ghoulish zombies) but do the the ugliness of the Trump backlash to the Democratic party's abandonment of the working class. So the pushback is instinctive, the formulation of the remedy in the hands of democratic socialists and radical progressives, whom Caitlin has done all in her power to belittle as no different from the neo-cons and imperialist. So I would say she has retarded the changin of the times in that sense.
One thing you can count on is that most every image that crosses your path has been put there for a reason. Nothing happens by accident. What you need to ask yourself isn’t so much "Is it true?", but "Who wants me to believe it—and why?"
Another angle to this is that what we are witnessing now in Iran is right out of the CIA playbook from 1953 when the U.S. and UK toppled Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mosaddegh using paid rioters and other assorted dirty tricks. We're even back to the future of placing another Pahlavi on the throne. It is pathetic.
How many proles in the USA realize the following?: that at least 1,182 people were killed by police in the United States in 2025, an average of at least three people every day. There were only seven days in 2025 during which there were no documented instances of police killing anyone.”
Uh hello, wake up call. America is a police state, ICE notwithstanding; just more of the same.
Did you know the IDF are the one who trained most of US Police Force !?!?!?!!?
I sure did. It’s disgusting.
Must be so annoying to listen to instructors who speak like Bill Gates
That's terrible but doesn't surprise me, thanks for that Marten
This is the typical number annually for deaths of People of Color! It also ignores those killed in custody, in prisons.
Might be all races, Here's the link. where there's other stats such as People of Color killed at 3 times the rate of Whites.
https://mappingpoliceviolence.us/
Some interesting data. It is particularly important that police killings are decreasing in Blue States while increasing in Red States. My take is that there is more aggressive organizing in Blue States against police brutality putting this issue front and center for civil rights. I know in my small town area we have had very strong organizing against such abuses. One case of police brutality in particular became center of this issue with lots of publicity and pressure on police to be scrutinized. While far from perfect we seem to have fewer such extreme cases. Not dealing with the 'street' any more, I cannot say Stop and Frisk has really decreased but on the couple of occasions I was stopped by cops there attitude was very low key and controlled with them introducing themselves to me while handing me their id cards. I think our county seat, the largest city in our county still has a number of cases of kangaroo type court cases.
You’re relatively fortunate from my perspective. I live in a fairly large city with a gun happy police force.
It really took a very long time to get the issue on the table. We also had a unique situation some years ago after the George Floyd murder. Pressure on the Governor resulted in an exec order mandating every locality with a law enforcement agency to set up a community based committee to look at the racism and make recommendations. Most towns did nothing other than some perfunctory paper work but my area ran with the mandate and forced a public issue. Everything worked against serious work but it made the issue public and put the police on notice they were being observed and people were ready to take them on. The power structure was not threatened which was had to have happened but it did create some attention with some cautionary behavior by the police. Lots more work to be done. It takes constant vigilance and the public gets tired or disappears (ages out or moves) The goal must be stable restructoring of power which is the hardest.
Any community action such as you describe is hard as hell to get organized, so you all are to be highly commended for your efforts. Police need to feel the heat of constant and ongoing public scrutiny.
great point Mr. LoPresti, it is increasingly becoming a police state and authoritarian, civil liberties are being taken away at an alarming rate and dissent being harshly silenced. Dark times
Sadly there will be more. The Brownshirts have arrived.
Moreover, the Zionists will continue to be sought out as trainers, "respected" for their effective (inhumane, gestapo-like) tactics
And the crap they're churning out about Iran is just over the top. Mossad infested attempted colour revolution made to look like an insurrection. I wish people in the west weren't so damn gullible.
"Israel’s Channel 14 is reporting that Israel has been arming the rioters who have been carrying shotguns and pistols and throwing firebombs. Channel 14’s coverage is pro-Netanyahu so this story is likely to have come directly from government sources.
If there was any doubt about the veracity of this story, Mossad has been using its Farsi Twitter account to encourage Iranians to get out onto the streets. And it is bragging about having agents alongside the rioters in the field. Mossad operatives have been shooting Iranian police officers to provoke a violent response against Iranians, and here was you thinking they cared about their liberation…
This admission ties in with Iranian claims that they found American and Israeli weapons and 200kg of explosives onside seven Mossad safe houses, and obtained recordings of Americans and Israelis giving instructions to Iranians. These claims are corroborated by information obtained by Iranian hacking group Handala which explained exactly how Mossad was recruiting Iranians.
Israel’s infiltration was halted when Iranian intelligence took away Mossad’s ability to communicate by cutting telecommunications. It disrupted Starlink, located Starlink devices in operation, and intercepted a large shipment of Starlink devices and other spying equipment.
Iranian hackers gained access to Mossad’s phones and the riots fizzled out because Israel could no longer coordinate them. Strange that organic riots needed the coordination of a foreign power, isn’t it?"
Yup, that's what I've heard too, Roslyn. It's NOT what western media is telling people. Sickening.
Yes, Mahmood Marandi, professor and political analyst in Iran has spoken in great detail about the State shutting down the internet to confound the CIA/Mossad program of infiltration and extreme violence. This cut the coordinating communication and shut down the violence asap! Further, the State executions were of these infiltrating, traitorous thugs which is the State's right to protect itself. The western media propaganda completely ignores this while only promoting the violence and deaths by the State. It also ignores the fact that millions are out on the street in Iran supporting the government. They may not like all of the State but they do support the cohesiveness of the State and the need to preserve it.
I wish the west wasn't so murderously evil.
Me too.
Me too - and we all speak for thousands of others.
Yes. I am here in France which could well be the most propagandized country in the World. I mention some good people to watch on You-Tube and of course substack. They do not take the time to even look and they tell ME what a terrible country Iran is. At this point in time I feel thumping people when they give me the usual French shrug.
Same Spunty, nor their imperialist proxies/allies
Me too.
The most important political lesson I’ve learned in the last 20 years is that almost everyone massively underestimates the power of propaganda.
Binary Thinking and its Blind Spots
Greg Reese
Jan 13
In “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Arendt wrote that “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Daniel Kahneman’s “Dual Process Theory” identifies two cognitive systems of the human mind: System 1 is fast, automatic, and emotional, where as System 2 is slow, deliberate, and logical. You can experience this right now: perform a true/false test and you’ll activate your System 1, perform a multiple-choice test and you’ll activate your System 2.
When the human mind is confronted with binary choices, System 1 handles the decision processing with its automatic emotional response, and it never gets any further analysis.
System 1 goes back to our most basic survival instincts, and it is good for processing binary choices such as fight/flight, edible/toxic, alive/dead, but it is not suitable for processing complex issues. This is what System 2 is for. And it is well known in today’s study of psychology that when the human mind is presented with only two options, the work automatically goes to System 1, and critical thinking is avoided.
The purpose for having these two cognitive systems, is efficiency. Once the brain recognizes a binary choice, it reduces cognitive load to a minimum by sending it to System 1. And when cognitive load is at a minimum, people are even more susceptible to external persuasion and group mind.
The key to successfully controlling people is to keep them in this binary world so that their critical thinking is rarely, if ever, engaged. And this is best done by keeping them emotional. Both anger and fear will do the job. “With us or against us?” - “Patriot or traitor?” - “Support this policy or you want people to die!” are all binary choices used over and over again to keep people anchored in binary thinking, and render them blind.
Published experiments will tell you that when humans are reminded of their mortality, or of any existential threat, they will cling more tightly to their beliefs and their worldview, and become more hostile to those who challenge it. This is why political discourse uses apocalyptic language.
It is understood in psychology that people’s beliefs will strengthen when they are attacked, this is called “attitude entrenchment.”
The human mind is predisposed to categorize people into in-groups and out-groups, to favor in-group members and belittle out-group members in order to elevate their own in-group status. And it is known that it takes very little to activate this tribalism. Some experiments, have used a simple coin flip to steer people towards in-group acceptance. This innate human tribalism has been weaponized through politically constructed binaries that were designed to both divide people, and to make them see the world however the designers want them to.
In “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes,” Ellul wrote that propaganda works best when it simplifies complex realities into binary choices, because humans crave the cognitive relief of simple answers. And that the most effective propaganda isn’t spreading lies, it is spreading binary frameworks that make certain conclusions appear inevitable.
This binary brainwashing has been going on for generations and for many people, political positions have become their identity. Their social belonging, self-identity, and status are built upon it. And for many, the discomfort of challenging one’s own beliefs and admitting error is too much to handle. It is far more convenient to go with simple binary choices and move with the herd. But if you have any desire for the truth, then you will have to learn to apply critical thinking to everything, and most importantly, learn how your mind is being manipulated.
Roslyn, your comment is completely accurate and represents the frightening reality that we are are confronting daily. The binary fight/flight instinct is hard-wired into all of us, from the time when we all lived in caves and courtship was done with stone clubs and rocks. - Perhaps we haven’t moved on so far from our prehistoric ancestors! Seriously though, our natural survival instincts have always been exploited by bad actors who want to maintain the status quo because it benefits them. By a few million miles, the worst of these bad actors is ‘israel’, but the enablers and apologists for the zionist entity come a pretty close second.
We are all frogs in the gradually boiling cooking pot: the sooner we realise this, the better.
Yes and the internet and social media and the total corruption of mainstream media makes it all much worse.
The most shameless aspect of this latest war push is that Trump is considering intervention out of a benevolent concern for the citizens of Iran. Who in the hell actually believes this nonsense?
Trump doesn't care about his own people... Why would he give a sh*t about Iranians? He doesn't care about a genocide of Palestinians, so...?
Most of the people in Europe.
Well said! For more on this massive psyops, see Max Blumenthal and Wyatt Reed expose the propaganda machine on Consortium News, Jan. 14, Western Media Whitewashes Deadly Riots in Iran. Do not be fooled.
This:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thegrayzone/p/western-media-whitewashes-deadly
It hurts, to wake up to this. Many people will know it, in their heart of hearts, but will resist acknowledging it because of the pain it causes. One is forced to question everything one has believed one's entire life, and end up feeling like a fool.
I became fully awake on the 8th October 2023. I knew, on that day, that we would witness a genocide on a monstrous scale and be powerless to stop it. The good news is that once you're aware of it, you can't ever unsee it. One day, the whole world will say Enough!
No! Free Palestine! Rump and Satanyahoo are simply murders and thieves in suits!
"...Westerners are so propagandized they don’t even KNOW they’re propagandized."
Whenever I meet people from other countries who want to know what do Americans have in common--since we come from such a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, etc.--I usually tell them it's our "Natural sense of optimism." Perhaps I need to rephrase that and say, "Our universal propgandized sense of reality." It's closer to the truth.
that's actually a great idea and at least here in the imperial core it seems true that americans are the most propagandized population on earth
North Korea gets my vote.
I hate to break it to you, but Americans (at least) are not buying the propaganda bullshit, as all polls show majorities opposed to Israel, war in Venezuela, attacks on Iran, and Ice thuggery in the US. The propaganda is not working..so that is not the problem. The problem is oligarchy, rule by the wealthy minority, contempt for democracy. The problem is not that Americans don't see thru the media bullshit but that they lack the power to do anything about it...except to march and protest, and then vote for progressives who will work to dismantle the plutocracy. The problem is not a brainwashed public but a public deprived of power by the oligarchy. So what is needed is not for Americans to wake up to the lies but to join the movement to create an actual democracy where the will of the people prevails.
You are right, the tide is turning. The momentum is the result of Kind,Caring, and Truthful people like Caitlin speaking out to greater and greater audiences.
Well, I would say that where the change has to take place, which is in the centers of power, primarily the US, Caitlin is not the reason but rather the bitter experience of inheriting, thru establishment Democratic senility, the harsh lessons of Trump, and now the pendulum is swinging hard back in the opposite direction, less due to pundits than the experience of chaos and the prickly rash of fascism. The tide is turning not so much due to the kind and caring (and in the US that would be people like Sanders and AOC< whom Caitlin calls ghoulish zombies) but do the the ugliness of the Trump backlash to the Democratic party's abandonment of the working class. So the pushback is instinctive, the formulation of the remedy in the hands of democratic socialists and radical progressives, whom Caitlin has done all in her power to belittle as no different from the neo-cons and imperialist. So I would say she has retarded the changin of the times in that sense.
Most humans are herd animals, happy to follow the group or the leader they see as stronger.
No matter the politics, or perceived injustices, bombing the shit out of countries has never helped the cause of justice and humanity.
Whoever controls money controls information, and whoever controls information controls minds.
The US is an illusion, and the only way to maintain an illusion is to keep illusionating…
One thing you can count on is that most every image that crosses your path has been put there for a reason. Nothing happens by accident. What you need to ask yourself isn’t so much "Is it true?", but "Who wants me to believe it—and why?"
Another angle to this is that what we are witnessing now in Iran is right out of the CIA playbook from 1953 when the U.S. and UK toppled Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mosaddegh using paid rioters and other assorted dirty tricks. We're even back to the future of placing another Pahlavi on the throne. It is pathetic.