Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): At this point in history the most effective way for westerners to fight the empire and build support for revolutionary change is to undermine public support for western status quo systems and institutions. One does this by using every means at their disposal to help people see that the power structures which rule over us don’t serve our interests, and that they are in fact profoundly evil and destructive.
When the mainstream media and the ruling class decide to pick on a critical issue, it is usually for two reasons: first, the issue is serious enough and is affecting their interests, and therefore the narrative must be controlled to ensure that the results are in their favor. Second, in doing the former, the ruling class gets to strictly filter and manage the narrative on what needs to be said about any given topic; which ‘experts’ are given the stage to speak; and whose voices are excluded from debates, or even defamed and slandered, if necessary.
This Orwell 1984 T is perfect for these times: t.co/EKkMWeTAPG
What anyone decides to do probably depends on what they are trying to accomplish. I want to help get people to have a better awareness, so I try to figure out, often unsuccessfully, just how to do that. Consider this response such an attempt.
If someone votes for a president who arms a terrorist organization *Israeli’s IDF* who has snipers killing children by shooting them in the head and keeping score: those people should be (I Don’t Do It) hit with a baseball bat!
I would suggest that judging those still unaware of their conditioning and the propaganda as brainwashed idiots is not helpful to persuading anyone of anything.
Yes i was suspended from Twitter for 8 months and shadow banned for talking about viruses and vaccines.
I take Caitlin's meaning to be do what we can with compassion. We are all still waking up and how we feel about others is often projection!
There’s only one word for anyone who walks into a voting booth & votes to give George W. Bush, Donald Trump, Joe Biden the nuclear launch codes! Idiots
Not to mention that they think voting actually matters!
Twitter deleted my account with no communication. I interpreted that to mean that my well researched comments and memes are too dangerous to be seen and I am too poor to be given any respect.
I just saw a great comment at Moon of Alabama which is directly relevant. I'll repost here but preserve the semi-anonymity of the person because I did not ask their permission.
"Here's some advice I was given years ago: "Don’t bother arguing with words. Leave them with just a single picture one at a time showing what the Palestinians are experiencing. The more they defend and argue the more pictures you post.
I know it sounds crazy for a Marxist to quote Ronald Regan but in regard to debating with people you disagree with “if you are explaining you are losing”. MAKE THEM DO ALL OF THE EXPLAINING. With people who unconditionally support Israel in any monstrosity you’ll never change their minds, but you can bait them with minimal effort using photos (with just a few words to caption the photo for what it’s of) of that inhumanity into hysterical defensiveness and when they start reacting with more and more openly cringe statements to justify what is in the photo. If you are persistent with just minimal energy posting photo after photo as a reaction to their arguing they will forget about optics of how they are phrasing things and make a statement so damaging to their cause in an overly emotional attempt to defend their cause you merely have to screenshot their worst statement and pair it with the original photo in a meme and there you have it... the most damaging PR disaster statement of an Israel supporter paired with the most heartbreaking photo of suffering Palestinians in a newly viral meme you have created."
Here is some excellent news re anti-Zionist views in the UK.
There was a milestone judicial ruling: anti-Zionist views as set out by David Miller in court filings are protected as a philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010. He had therefore been had been wrongfully dismissed from his position as Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol.
BTW: a small comment about the MoA commenter you quote: "Pals" is a derogatory term used by ZioNazis for the Palestinians. I find it ironic that the person who made that otherwise interesting comment is not aware that the term can be compared with Yid or Kike for Jews.
Thanks for link. As they say a picture says a thousand words, and Aljazeera knows it, not to mention words often lie. I still think a regional war is inevitable and we can only hope it doesn't go beyond that.
I love hearing this because I finally came to the same conclusion. Plus using memes I don't get pulled emotionally into the argument. Also, you know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words. Great minds.... Love being on the edge of bringing in a new era. Hope I live long enough to witness it's blossom.
Speaking of undermining support for Western status quo systems, have you seen comedian Tim Dillon’s latest bit from today on the love fest for Alexei Navalny?
Warning: this is very funny (time stamped for Navalny bit).
While Western media has a love fest for Navalny (whose campaign manager was caught asking for 20 million to run a revolution in a meeting with a British MI6 agent), Assange is rotting in prison for telling the truth. Truly grotesque demons.
I just saw that the US has targeted Russia with 500 more sanctions because the first lot backfired so spectacularly in causing a recession in Europe and changing the world order in Russia and the Global Majority's favour.
Love it. Glad he understood what neonazi Bari Weiss was able to explain to him.
Mudslides are pretty too!
The communist party are the only opposition in Russia, Navalny was CiA asset, involved in the failed coup in 2007 and he was killed by the CIA most likely, (indeed why on earth would Putin make a martyr of him?), according to these dudes on Danny Haiphong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9MxNJzl-1o
Yes I think comedy is a brilliant tool. It enables truth to come in under the radar without being threatening or patronising.
Thanks for the video link georgie&donny! I very much like Scott Ritter's analysis (but do on occasion disagree with some views and his tendency to at times exaggerate).
Yes, it is incredible how the US Empire is spinning Navalny into some kind of "hero". It is even more ridiculous that they are using this event (which has a high probability of being one of their own making) to sanction Russia.
If the world were to sanction the US for all its crimes, I don't think theres a mathematical number large enough to tally all the sanctions that the US deserves!
If the Americans sanctioned themselves and killed their own civilians for the crimes they say other countries committed but in fact committed themselves for spin- they'd have been wiped out long ago!
Again, if they were going to do it, why would they wait? This Ramadan date is just an insult.
After ceasefire negotiations have faltered, Israel has given Hamas a new ultimatum, with top Israeli war cabinet official Benny Gantz saying that Israel will launch a full assault on the southern city of Rafah if all remaining hostages aren't released by Ramadan. The Muslim holiday begins on March 10 this year, which is a few weeks away.
"The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know — if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue to the Rafah area," Gantz told a conference of Jewish American organizations in Jerusalem on Sunday.
George Soros could destroy the Israeli government bond market, I know he could... Genocide is a bad investment.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is targeting divestment from Israel Bonds as part of a larger strategy to build economic and political pressure as a meaningful contribution to the Palestinian struggle to dismantle Israel’s apartheid regime... Israel Bonds are money lent directly to Israel’s treasury...
..One of the largest pension funds in the world has divested entirely from Israel Bonds.
In November, the Norwegian Pension Fund announced that it had withdrawn all of its nearly half a billion dollars worth of investments in Israel Bonds, citing “uncertainty in the market.” It pulled what remained of its investments at the start of the Israeli government’s genocidal war in Gaza.
Israel’s economy is in trouble. That tells us we need to double down on demands to divest from Israel Bonds.
"Any effort you make to shove human consciousness toward the light of truth in even the tiniest way has a beneficial effect on our species."
I sure hope our efforts do make a difference to "shove others toward the light of truth". It's been almost 9 years of writing The Revolution Continues for me, as well as tweeting, posting on FB and other platforms and recently doing a lot of standing on corners with signs and badges. All this effort, and we still have idiots who think Julian Assange committed a crime called "journalism" and a neo-Nazi like Navalny who called Muslims "cockroaches" did not. That establishment "mind control machine" is a tough ol' thing to get through, but we'll keep trying. We've got to keep trying. Our planet and the future of our children depends upon it.
Thanks for this, Caitlin. It feels a bit like a pep talk, but I liked it. I have been trying for a long time to get people I know to see the problems with capitalism, with billionaires etc. And since October 7th, I have been sending articles, talking, going to demos etc. I can't say that I have converted many people that I am aware of. Some of the people I know are very well educated and smart academically, but when it comes to all the lies and half truths we are being told, it has been difficult to convince them. One person that I have always thought intelligent read an article by John Pilger about what is happening to Julian Assange, questioning the Australian government's lack of help at that time. Her response was that she didn't like the tone of Pilger's article and besides that, Assange is a hacker and she wouldn't like to be hacked herself. Hard to know what to say to someone like that. Anyway, thanks again.
It doesn't sound like pep talk to me, it sounds more like I'm reading a trained psychologist. The paragraph about 'everyone’s mind is unique and ever-changing, and what knocks things home for one student one day will just be useless noise to another student who will later pop open at something completely different. The receptivity to insight varies from person to person'
A powerful insight which I originally learned through my own studies and which has been further reinforced since Bushs' Shock and Awe which is when the Emperors' clothes fell off for me.
People who cling to irrational beliefs will go to almost any length to rationalise them.
Powerful insight and a pep talk are not mutually exclusive, in my opinion. It is obvious that Caitlin reads a lot and her reading has led her to a wide understanding of how people work. Anyway, what sounds like a pep talk to me may sound like psychological wisdom to someone else (and to me too sometimes).
"what sounds like a pep talk to me may sound like psychological wisdom to someone else", exactly the point Cailtlin was making.
I apologise if I sounded a bit condescending, that was not my intent, bit 'pep talk' evokes images of a football coach geeing ( if that's a word ) up the team. I don't know if they're a source of powerful insights.
It can be difficult to discuss these things sometimes. Anyway, for me, pep talk just means encouragement and support. Which is really what a football coach is doing too.
Although Rugby League coaches do tend to sound a bit more.. um..passionate, especially in the lead up to the finals. Mind you Russell Crowe introduced the South Sydney team to mindfulness and they won their first Grand Final flag in years.
Yeah, I think I was lucky to get a heads up from my dad who was something of a rebel. He was also a big fan of Spike Milligan and The Goons, who definitely coloured my world view by making the ridiculousness of the world around me glaringly obvious.
Many thanks dave.jumanji , greatly appreciate your sharing Roger Waters interview with us. He is awe inspiring, a really great human being. He gives expression to what we really feel. Like he quoted "... we are the many; they are the few ". We forget it at our peril. Viva Palestine.
Roger Waters is having to face some difficult times within the music industry and without. I can only wish him the very best, and recall it was almost to the day, one year ago, that I saw him perform at Altice Arena at the start of his world tour. I can't imagine that could happed this year. People! What is happening to our world? (Rhetorical question. jic)
You can't undo 77 years of propaganda from the National Security State overnite, but every little bit helps to expose the edifice of lies, mind control and surveillance.
You always say exactly what I'm thinking. Your analyses are the same, and I know we are not wrong. Love the word "marinading"- it describes exactly what western minds have been subjected to. Critical thinking is not taught for a reason, and in UK where I spent most of my life (I live in France now) it is particularly pernicious. There is no democracy and the MSM repeats toxic headlines without substantive evidence, relying on people's gut reactions and reinforcing previous indoctrination. Telling people that other systems can work produces blank looks or positive antagonism. The powers that be have done their work well.
My (US) 6ht grade social studies class had a focus on critical thinking skills - we would spend the full hour at least 1 -2 days a week discussing news clippings students were required to bring to class. This was during the Vietnam War, so there was low hanging fruit everywhere.
Critical thinking skills were integrated in the math curriculum as well, e.g. data collection, formatting, interpretation; statistics; reasoning etc. We also got that reinforced in science class.
Twenty five years later, I served on a local school board (during the first Iraq Clinton war) and any mention of critical thinking skills was not only taboo, but rejected with hostility. It was all about authority and discipline. When my kids hit school age, we moved from that District!
Yes, a similar change in curriculum happened in UK , gradually from the 80s, where answers required in some fields were reduced to multi-choice tick-boxes! I wonder why.
You are fortunate enough to have encountered "critical thinking skills" in your education.
From my experience in talking with Gen X onwards, very few people have had the opportunity or access to such subjects in their educational curriculums. Even at the university level, such courses were optional and often deemed not important enough to enroll in by most students (especially those in STEM degrees)
Good thoughts Caitlin, but these things are easier said than done. In spite of several global mini outlets screaming the realities, the masses don’t bother to pay any attention, because the massive main stream, lobby-controlled media outlets slyly hide the realities & don’t report the facts. People have to dig deeper, have an open mind, be inquisitive, search around for differing opinions etc to seek out the facts, & most people don’t do these things. Plus, if realities start making any real impact, the lobby will surely take steps to kill the damage quickly. If they can so easily force & control the decisions taken by the most powerful nations on earth to continue on the most heinous & ridiculous paths, they can easily kill any semblance of opposition that damages their motives. Not sure what can effectively & consequentially change this. Good needs to win and evil needs to lose. But the reality of what’s happening now, & also the realities of what has happened in past historic events like these, clearly suggest that the powerful always win and the weak always lose. If we desire to win, we need to be powerful. That’s the reality of life.
Ogles, a Congressman in Tennessee when confronted by a pro-Palestinian activist blurted out "Let's be clear, Hamas raped and murdered babies," to which the activist responded "They did not. That's fake news." He was called to account since quite a few people challenged him on his ugly position. I also e-mailed his office and I guess a lot did, because he walked back his statements which came across as kill all the Palestinians.
The American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) released a remark in response to the video of Ogles which read in part:
"The American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) unequivocally denounces Rep. Ogles’ recent statement advocating for the extermination of the Palestinian people. Such rhetoric is not only abhorrent but also antithetical to our values as a state. It is such rhetoric that has continued to foster a political climate where extremist ideologies flourish, empowering neo-Nazis to openly parade through our streets and allowing genocidal sentiments to go unchallenged. This cannot be tolerated any longer. As citizens of Tennessee, we deserve better representation from those elected to office."
Could be…. I’m not so sure…. Look at what’s happening now…… The merciless killing is continuing, with absolutely no end in sight…. the politicians are knowingly supporting the genocide, for lobby money. No one consequential gives a shit. Some entity annihilatingly powerful, needs to intervene, to stop this. Power can only be defeated by a bigger power!
I know, but as they say every little bit helps. I was very active against our Middle Eastern wars. I belonged to this group and we did as much as could be expected. Did it help? I don't think so, but I know I tried, and that's the only thing I can do. Except for many years s now I contributed to Anera and continue to do so. Well, I guess as they say better then nothing. I've just come to accept that.
"Good thoughts Caitlin, but these things are easier said than done"
Supporting the LIBERAL civil liberty of Freedom of Association as the basis for social organization as opposed to supporting The State / The Empire asm the basis would go a long way..
But that is probably easier said than done too
Both the Left and the RIght have showed their desire for the state support to push their political views on society implicitly appointing it as the basis for social organization.
Now The State of Israel is carrying out its version of correct association in Gaza.
"It takes a flash of insight for a westerner to be able to really see the perniciousness of the US-centralized empire in all its blood-soaked glory. This is because westerners spend their entire lives marinating in empire propaganda from childhood, which has normalized and manufactured their consent for the murderous, exploitative and oppressive power structure we live under. The current status quo is all they’ve ever known, and the idea that something better might be possible is alien to them."
The problem is that most humans are herd animals, and going against the status quo can lead to nasty consequences.
This is the real lesson of people like Assange or Snowden - speak out and this will happen to you.
The Dems are in an absolutely panic over our primary here in Michigan next week. There is a well- coordinated effort (spearheaded by our Palestinian congresswoman and our Jewish former congressman) to get as many voters as possible to vote “uncommitted” on the Democratic ballot. I hope with all my heart that the effort is successful and spreads to other states.
I’ll be doing my part. Sorry, Genocide Joe: YOU CAN’T HAVE my state, and you can’t win without it!
This is fine as far as it goes, but that isn't far enough. It's one-dimensional, focused on the present. If we don't want our horrible, destructive, ecocidal, genocidal system to be replaced by another just as bad but different, we need to also look at the future and the past. We can't just assume that if we succeed in opening enough eyes that the empire is seen as naked by everyone, and lacking credibility, no one obeys anymore--that everyone then smoothly and sweetly works in harmony to just naturally bring about a better world--we need to THINK and TALK about what the better world might look like and how to get there from here. And critically, we must ask--why is it that revolutionaries who topple one odious system invariably replace it with--or are superseded by--another odious system? Was it Thoreau who said that there are a thousand men hacking at the branches of an evil system for each one who goes for the roots?
I recommend Nate Hagens' podcast series, the Great Simplification. He has an Animated Series, which is a good place to start, does an occasional Frankly, which is his own thoughts, usually 15 to 20 minutes, and has done over 100 hour-plus interviews with experts and thinkers on a variety of relevant issues and aspects. But I think he has a blind spot--he thinks the root cause is human nature, that we are programmed to seek "dopamine hits" and that fossil fuels have allowed a bonanza of consumption that will be coming to an end soon. I don't buy the Human Nature story. I think human nature is quite plastic and there's little you can say definitively about us--we're creatures of our cultures and HERE is the root. I object to the "we just can't help seeking more" thesis because plenty of indigenous cultures have been wiser than that, enforcing egalitarian and responsible behavior, reverencing the natural world and understanding our place IN it, not lording it OVER and owning it.
Here is the key: agriculture enabled groups' settling in one place, building up storage, expanding their populations, getting into division of labor and hierarchy, whereupon often religions that involved autocratic male gods developed, women began to be suppressed, and the growing population, dependent up on grains grown on depleting lands, needed to expand. So it took over its neighbors' land, with cultural and religious justifications for this evolving to patch the moral hole created by such behavior. The city-states in this pattern became warlike, and took to conquering whole realms. Their neighbors could not win, battling to defend their lands, unless they upped their own birthrate, focused on creating better weapons and trained in war--in other words, unless they became the enemy. Many just fled, seeking lands where they could live without being molested, lands which, if inhabited by humans, would accept newcomers. Note that whether the peaceful tribe stayed and fought and lost, occasionally won by becoming aggressive people themselves, or fled, their former land is now inhabited by aggressive, expansionary people. So the city-state grows--AND NO ONE HAS EVER FOUND A SOLUTION. Which is why now, thousands of years later, the aggressive culture, now speaking many languages and espousing many religions--though it happens to be dominated by "white" people speaking English--has taken over virtually the whole world. This culture treats the natural world with contempt, treats all humans who are not of it with contempt, and sings its own praises while destroying everything. It used to treat its own women with contempt, but that has largely ceased because the women stopped putting up with it. Still, it is a culture based on domination.
So where are we now? We're in the end game--this empire has gotten as toxic and vicious as it has, and as absurd, because that's what you see with empires in their last days. But THIS empire has taken over the world, and is destroying the natural world we all depend on. We are, likely, at the most critical juncture in all of human history. We don't just need to stop the war on Gaza, the war in Ukraine, the potential war on China. We need to undo the wrong turn of 5000 years ago We need to at last find a way to prevent aggressive, schizophrenic, greedy, censorious, violent cultures from gaining ascendance. How? I think it might be possible. There is evidence that when humans first came to the Americas and Australia and New Zealand, they wiped out the megafauna. These were the ancestors of the indigenous peoples of these lands, some of the wisest cultures on Earth. Could it be that when they realized they'd killed the last of the big beasts, they realized their folly, and created religions and cultural precepts to ensure they'd never do it again--and it worked? Worked for thousands of years, until the tall ships from Europe arrived. Which suggests it's possible. And it may be that the horrible realization, the "What have we done?" moment, is a necessary spur to the creation of a new, durable culture.
Yes. Echart Tolle suggests if working in eg animal rights- to bring information about the reality of animal ag to light but to not be invested in the response we get, to let go of judgement. The job is to shine the light not say how people should react, to not try to control it.
This I can get behind as regards the pervasive propaganda of the Empire and the patriarchy and all the different ways we may suddenly wake up to it. How we're all part of that awakening.
I had a good idea. Not Christmas, but I gifted everyone I know the link to al-jazeera english news. Pictures do say a thousand words and have more impact then any words can.
The concept that society tends to evolve in a progressive direction is a theory that is currently unsubstantiated. On the other hand our current manifestation of civilization is profoundly stupid, brutal, and ugly. If there’s ever been a time to engage in empathy, compassion, and a confident sense of moral outrage, then this is it.
Been doing that so much I’m In Facebook Jail till March 3rd!
Also shadow banned on Twitter!
Not easy convincing brainwashed idiots that they are brainwashed idiots
When the mainstream media and the ruling class decide to pick on a critical issue, it is usually for two reasons: first, the issue is serious enough and is affecting their interests, and therefore the narrative must be controlled to ensure that the results are in their favor. Second, in doing the former, the ruling class gets to strictly filter and manage the narrative on what needs to be said about any given topic; which ‘experts’ are given the stage to speak; and whose voices are excluded from debates, or even defamed and slandered, if necessary.
This Orwell 1984 T is perfect for these times: t.co/EKkMWeTAPG
Snakes do it faster, better: How a group of scaly, legless lizards hit the evolutionary jackpot
Perhaps focus more on the brainwashed part and less on the “idiots” part? Good luck!
I tend to tell it like it is!
Where?
Thor. I am with you on this but we do need to have some sort of intelligence to back up what we say.
People don't realize how hard it is to speak the truth, to a world full of people that don't realize they're living a lie
-Edward Snowden
Who said it is easy to convince people to be fooled but much harder to convince them that they have been fooled?
Mark Twain.
Go gently and converse.
Nah! People who support genocide & The Warmongering U.S. Empire don’t deserve gentle
It depends on whether you want to change their position, or help them further solidify their defenses.
There's simply no polite way to tell people they've dedicated their lives to an illusion. -Daniel Dennett
Stop trying to please people who already don't like you and embrace the joy of being the most annoying person they've ever met!
-@SketchesbyBoze
What anyone decides to do probably depends on what they are trying to accomplish. I want to help get people to have a better awareness, so I try to figure out, often unsuccessfully, just how to do that. Consider this response such an attempt.
If someone votes for a president who arms a terrorist organization *Israeli’s IDF* who has snipers killing children by shooting them in the head and keeping score: those people should be (I Don’t Do It) hit with a baseball bat!
They require the guillotine, Thor.
I would suggest that judging those still unaware of their conditioning and the propaganda as brainwashed idiots is not helpful to persuading anyone of anything.
Yes i was suspended from Twitter for 8 months and shadow banned for talking about viruses and vaccines.
I take Caitlin's meaning to be do what we can with compassion. We are all still waking up and how we feel about others is often projection!
There’s only one word for anyone who walks into a voting booth & votes to give George W. Bush, Donald Trump, Joe Biden the nuclear launch codes! Idiots
Not to mention that they think voting actually matters!
In the U.S. whomever you vote in the Presidency, you end up with "John McCain" I.E. endless wars and oppression across the world.
Twitter deleted my account with no communication. I interpreted that to mean that my well researched comments and memes are too dangerous to be seen and I am too poor to be given any respect.
You got shadow banned on Twitter? You can be proud of that.
I just saw a great comment at Moon of Alabama which is directly relevant. I'll repost here but preserve the semi-anonymity of the person because I did not ask their permission.
"Here's some advice I was given years ago: "Don’t bother arguing with words. Leave them with just a single picture one at a time showing what the Palestinians are experiencing. The more they defend and argue the more pictures you post.
I know it sounds crazy for a Marxist to quote Ronald Regan but in regard to debating with people you disagree with “if you are explaining you are losing”. MAKE THEM DO ALL OF THE EXPLAINING. With people who unconditionally support Israel in any monstrosity you’ll never change their minds, but you can bait them with minimal effort using photos (with just a few words to caption the photo for what it’s of) of that inhumanity into hysterical defensiveness and when they start reacting with more and more openly cringe statements to justify what is in the photo. If you are persistent with just minimal energy posting photo after photo as a reaction to their arguing they will forget about optics of how they are phrasing things and make a statement so damaging to their cause in an overly emotional attempt to defend their cause you merely have to screenshot their worst statement and pair it with the original photo in a meme and there you have it... the most damaging PR disaster statement of an Israel supporter paired with the most heartbreaking photo of suffering Palestinians in a newly viral meme you have created."
That said, have you ever been to a site called https://ifamericansknew.org/
Lots of help there including with historical massacres of Pals by Jews."
Good comment 👍
Here is some excellent news re anti-Zionist views in the UK.
There was a milestone judicial ruling: anti-Zionist views as set out by David Miller in court filings are protected as a philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010. He had therefore been had been wrongfully dismissed from his position as Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol.
https://www.europereloaded.com/how-i-established-anti-zionist-views-should-be-protected-under-uk-law/
BTW: a small comment about the MoA commenter you quote: "Pals" is a derogatory term used by ZioNazis for the Palestinians. I find it ironic that the person who made that otherwise interesting comment is not aware that the term can be compared with Yid or Kike for Jews.
Thanks for link. As they say a picture says a thousand words, and Aljazeera knows it, not to mention words often lie. I still think a regional war is inevitable and we can only hope it doesn't go beyond that.
That's just brilliant! This is one of the best ideas I've heard yet.
I love hearing this because I finally came to the same conclusion. Plus using memes I don't get pulled emotionally into the argument. Also, you know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words. Great minds.... Love being on the edge of bringing in a new era. Hope I live long enough to witness it's blossom.
Speaking of undermining support for Western status quo systems, have you seen comedian Tim Dillon’s latest bit from today on the love fest for Alexei Navalny?
Warning: this is very funny (time stamped for Navalny bit).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=rBhaR5zTEFjmguXX&t=255&v=_ea8bwU45hU&feature=youtu.be
While Western media has a love fest for Navalny (whose campaign manager was caught asking for 20 million to run a revolution in a meeting with a British MI6 agent), Assange is rotting in prison for telling the truth. Truly grotesque demons.
Comedy is truly a weapon in this fight.
Tim Dillon is exhibit A.
I just saw that the US has targeted Russia with 500 more sanctions because the first lot backfired so spectacularly in causing a recession in Europe and changing the world order in Russia and the Global Majority's favour.
That's funny.
Love it. Glad he understood what neonazi Bari Weiss was able to explain to him.
Mudslides are pretty too!
The communist party are the only opposition in Russia, Navalny was CiA asset, involved in the failed coup in 2007 and he was killed by the CIA most likely, (indeed why on earth would Putin make a martyr of him?), according to these dudes on Danny Haiphong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9MxNJzl-1o
Yes I think comedy is a brilliant tool. It enables truth to come in under the radar without being threatening or patronising.
Have you all come across Laura K on substack?
Power to the funnies
Thanks for the video link georgie&donny! I very much like Scott Ritter's analysis (but do on occasion disagree with some views and his tendency to at times exaggerate).
Yes, it is incredible how the US Empire is spinning Navalny into some kind of "hero". It is even more ridiculous that they are using this event (which has a high probability of being one of their own making) to sanction Russia.
If the world were to sanction the US for all its crimes, I don't think theres a mathematical number large enough to tally all the sanctions that the US deserves!
More on the deliberate spin of Navalny and his murder and the introduction to the narrative of his widow from this Joe dude if you hadn't already read https://joebrunoli.substack.com/p/navalny-did-not-die-in-vain
If the Americans sanctioned themselves and killed their own civilians for the crimes they say other countries committed but in fact committed themselves for spin- they'd have been wiped out long ago!
Jo
Interesting... Thanks!
🙏🏽
"So, I'm just happy to live in a country where there's moral clarity!" - indeed!
https://youtu.be/_ea8bwU45hU?t=966
Again, if they were going to do it, why would they wait? This Ramadan date is just an insult.
After ceasefire negotiations have faltered, Israel has given Hamas a new ultimatum, with top Israeli war cabinet official Benny Gantz saying that Israel will launch a full assault on the southern city of Rafah if all remaining hostages aren't released by Ramadan. The Muslim holiday begins on March 10 this year, which is a few weeks away.
"The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know — if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue to the Rafah area," Gantz told a conference of Jewish American organizations in Jerusalem on Sunday.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/israel-sets-timeline-start-rafah-offensive-issues-ultimatum
George Soros could destroy the Israeli government bond market, I know he could... Genocide is a bad investment.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is targeting divestment from Israel Bonds as part of a larger strategy to build economic and political pressure as a meaningful contribution to the Palestinian struggle to dismantle Israel’s apartheid regime... Israel Bonds are money lent directly to Israel’s treasury...
..One of the largest pension funds in the world has divested entirely from Israel Bonds.
In November, the Norwegian Pension Fund announced that it had withdrawn all of its nearly half a billion dollars worth of investments in Israel Bonds, citing “uncertainty in the market.” It pulled what remained of its investments at the start of the Israeli government’s genocidal war in Gaza.
Israel’s economy is in trouble. That tells us we need to double down on demands to divest from Israel Bonds.
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2024/02/22/genocide-is-a-bad-investment/
"Any effort you make to shove human consciousness toward the light of truth in even the tiniest way has a beneficial effect on our species."
I sure hope our efforts do make a difference to "shove others toward the light of truth". It's been almost 9 years of writing The Revolution Continues for me, as well as tweeting, posting on FB and other platforms and recently doing a lot of standing on corners with signs and badges. All this effort, and we still have idiots who think Julian Assange committed a crime called "journalism" and a neo-Nazi like Navalny who called Muslims "cockroaches" did not. That establishment "mind control machine" is a tough ol' thing to get through, but we'll keep trying. We've got to keep trying. Our planet and the future of our children depends upon it.
Thanks for this, Caitlin. It feels a bit like a pep talk, but I liked it. I have been trying for a long time to get people I know to see the problems with capitalism, with billionaires etc. And since October 7th, I have been sending articles, talking, going to demos etc. I can't say that I have converted many people that I am aware of. Some of the people I know are very well educated and smart academically, but when it comes to all the lies and half truths we are being told, it has been difficult to convince them. One person that I have always thought intelligent read an article by John Pilger about what is happening to Julian Assange, questioning the Australian government's lack of help at that time. Her response was that she didn't like the tone of Pilger's article and besides that, Assange is a hacker and she wouldn't like to be hacked herself. Hard to know what to say to someone like that. Anyway, thanks again.
It doesn't sound like pep talk to me, it sounds more like I'm reading a trained psychologist. The paragraph about 'everyone’s mind is unique and ever-changing, and what knocks things home for one student one day will just be useless noise to another student who will later pop open at something completely different. The receptivity to insight varies from person to person'
A powerful insight which I originally learned through my own studies and which has been further reinforced since Bushs' Shock and Awe which is when the Emperors' clothes fell off for me.
People who cling to irrational beliefs will go to almost any length to rationalise them.
We have now gone from seeing the Emperor's New clothes 'fall off,' to having people stampede to buy them.
Powerful insight and a pep talk are not mutually exclusive, in my opinion. It is obvious that Caitlin reads a lot and her reading has led her to a wide understanding of how people work. Anyway, what sounds like a pep talk to me may sound like psychological wisdom to someone else (and to me too sometimes).
"what sounds like a pep talk to me may sound like psychological wisdom to someone else", exactly the point Cailtlin was making.
I apologise if I sounded a bit condescending, that was not my intent, bit 'pep talk' evokes images of a football coach geeing ( if that's a word ) up the team. I don't know if they're a source of powerful insights.
The last sentence was fully intended.
It can be difficult to discuss these things sometimes. Anyway, for me, pep talk just means encouragement and support. Which is really what a football coach is doing too.
Cheers, thanks.
Although Rugby League coaches do tend to sound a bit more.. um..passionate, especially in the lead up to the finals. Mind you Russell Crowe introduced the South Sydney team to mindfulness and they won their first Grand Final flag in years.
the term you're looking for is "psyching up" the team ("to prepare mentally or emotionally")
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/psyching%20%28up%29
We've all had our Emperor's clothes falling off moment, and hopefully everyday we see more of our conditioning.
I think it's important to remember that before this we were asleep 'people' too, clinging to our irrrational beliefs.
Yeah, I think I was lucky to get a heads up from my dad who was something of a rebel. He was also a big fan of Spike Milligan and The Goons, who definitely coloured my world view by making the ridiculousness of the world around me glaringly obvious.
Love it.
Your poor friend doesn't realize her morality has been hacked by the government and corporate media.
Speaking of raising awareness, I came across this AlJazeera video this morning:
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/roger-waters-on-gaza-resistance-and-doing-the-right-thing/video/36c6fadd5ee518d0ed8b51b812602d41
Roger Waters has been one of my heroes for years and I'd say that even if I hadn't been listening to Pink Floyd since Umma Gumma was released.
Of course Caitlin is also one of my heroes
Many thanks dave.jumanji , greatly appreciate your sharing Roger Waters interview with us. He is awe inspiring, a really great human being. He gives expression to what we really feel. Like he quoted "... we are the many; they are the few ". We forget it at our peril. Viva Palestine.
Roger Waters is having to face some difficult times within the music industry and without. I can only wish him the very best, and recall it was almost to the day, one year ago, that I saw him perform at Altice Arena at the start of his world tour. I can't imagine that could happed this year. People! What is happening to our world? (Rhetorical question. jic)
You can't undo 77 years of propaganda from the National Security State overnite, but every little bit helps to expose the edifice of lies, mind control and surveillance.
You always say exactly what I'm thinking. Your analyses are the same, and I know we are not wrong. Love the word "marinading"- it describes exactly what western minds have been subjected to. Critical thinking is not taught for a reason, and in UK where I spent most of my life (I live in France now) it is particularly pernicious. There is no democracy and the MSM repeats toxic headlines without substantive evidence, relying on people's gut reactions and reinforcing previous indoctrination. Telling people that other systems can work produces blank looks or positive antagonism. The powers that be have done their work well.
My (US) 6ht grade social studies class had a focus on critical thinking skills - we would spend the full hour at least 1 -2 days a week discussing news clippings students were required to bring to class. This was during the Vietnam War, so there was low hanging fruit everywhere.
Critical thinking skills were integrated in the math curriculum as well, e.g. data collection, formatting, interpretation; statistics; reasoning etc. We also got that reinforced in science class.
Twenty five years later, I served on a local school board (during the first Iraq Clinton war) and any mention of critical thinking skills was not only taboo, but rejected with hostility. It was all about authority and discipline. When my kids hit school age, we moved from that District!
Teaching children how to think for themselves is far too dangerous for a government and society built on a garbage barge of lies.
Yes, a similar change in curriculum happened in UK , gradually from the 80s, where answers required in some fields were reduced to multi-choice tick-boxes! I wonder why.
You are fortunate enough to have encountered "critical thinking skills" in your education.
From my experience in talking with Gen X onwards, very few people have had the opportunity or access to such subjects in their educational curriculums. Even at the university level, such courses were optional and often deemed not important enough to enroll in by most students (especially those in STEM degrees)
Good thoughts Caitlin, but these things are easier said than done. In spite of several global mini outlets screaming the realities, the masses don’t bother to pay any attention, because the massive main stream, lobby-controlled media outlets slyly hide the realities & don’t report the facts. People have to dig deeper, have an open mind, be inquisitive, search around for differing opinions etc to seek out the facts, & most people don’t do these things. Plus, if realities start making any real impact, the lobby will surely take steps to kill the damage quickly. If they can so easily force & control the decisions taken by the most powerful nations on earth to continue on the most heinous & ridiculous paths, they can easily kill any semblance of opposition that damages their motives. Not sure what can effectively & consequentially change this. Good needs to win and evil needs to lose. But the reality of what’s happening now, & also the realities of what has happened in past historic events like these, clearly suggest that the powerful always win and the weak always lose. If we desire to win, we need to be powerful. That’s the reality of life.
Ogles, a Congressman in Tennessee when confronted by a pro-Palestinian activist blurted out "Let's be clear, Hamas raped and murdered babies," to which the activist responded "They did not. That's fake news." He was called to account since quite a few people challenged him on his ugly position. I also e-mailed his office and I guess a lot did, because he walked back his statements which came across as kill all the Palestinians.
The American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) released a remark in response to the video of Ogles which read in part:
"The American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) unequivocally denounces Rep. Ogles’ recent statement advocating for the extermination of the Palestinian people. Such rhetoric is not only abhorrent but also antithetical to our values as a state. It is such rhetoric that has continued to foster a political climate where extremist ideologies flourish, empowering neo-Nazis to openly parade through our streets and allowing genocidal sentiments to go unchallenged. This cannot be tolerated any longer. As citizens of Tennessee, we deserve better representation from those elected to office."
So sometimes it works.
There was a campaign to get him expelled for that comment. His apology is not accepted (at least by me).
Could be…. I’m not so sure…. Look at what’s happening now…… The merciless killing is continuing, with absolutely no end in sight…. the politicians are knowingly supporting the genocide, for lobby money. No one consequential gives a shit. Some entity annihilatingly powerful, needs to intervene, to stop this. Power can only be defeated by a bigger power!
I know, but as they say every little bit helps. I was very active against our Middle Eastern wars. I belonged to this group and we did as much as could be expected. Did it help? I don't think so, but I know I tried, and that's the only thing I can do. Except for many years s now I contributed to Anera and continue to do so. Well, I guess as they say better then nothing. I've just come to accept that.
"Good thoughts Caitlin, but these things are easier said than done"
Supporting the LIBERAL civil liberty of Freedom of Association as the basis for social organization as opposed to supporting The State / The Empire asm the basis would go a long way..
But that is probably easier said than done too
Both the Left and the RIght have showed their desire for the state support to push their political views on society implicitly appointing it as the basis for social organization.
Now The State of Israel is carrying out its version of correct association in Gaza.
D's and R's will do the same in the U.S.
"It takes a flash of insight for a westerner to be able to really see the perniciousness of the US-centralized empire in all its blood-soaked glory. This is because westerners spend their entire lives marinating in empire propaganda from childhood, which has normalized and manufactured their consent for the murderous, exploitative and oppressive power structure we live under. The current status quo is all they’ve ever known, and the idea that something better might be possible is alien to them."
The problem is that most humans are herd animals, and going against the status quo can lead to nasty consequences.
This is the real lesson of people like Assange or Snowden - speak out and this will happen to you.
Hi Caitlin
The Dems are in an absolutely panic over our primary here in Michigan next week. There is a well- coordinated effort (spearheaded by our Palestinian congresswoman and our Jewish former congressman) to get as many voters as possible to vote “uncommitted” on the Democratic ballot. I hope with all my heart that the effort is successful and spreads to other states.
I’ll be doing my part. Sorry, Genocide Joe: YOU CAN’T HAVE my state, and you can’t win without it!
This is fine as far as it goes, but that isn't far enough. It's one-dimensional, focused on the present. If we don't want our horrible, destructive, ecocidal, genocidal system to be replaced by another just as bad but different, we need to also look at the future and the past. We can't just assume that if we succeed in opening enough eyes that the empire is seen as naked by everyone, and lacking credibility, no one obeys anymore--that everyone then smoothly and sweetly works in harmony to just naturally bring about a better world--we need to THINK and TALK about what the better world might look like and how to get there from here. And critically, we must ask--why is it that revolutionaries who topple one odious system invariably replace it with--or are superseded by--another odious system? Was it Thoreau who said that there are a thousand men hacking at the branches of an evil system for each one who goes for the roots?
I recommend Nate Hagens' podcast series, the Great Simplification. He has an Animated Series, which is a good place to start, does an occasional Frankly, which is his own thoughts, usually 15 to 20 minutes, and has done over 100 hour-plus interviews with experts and thinkers on a variety of relevant issues and aspects. But I think he has a blind spot--he thinks the root cause is human nature, that we are programmed to seek "dopamine hits" and that fossil fuels have allowed a bonanza of consumption that will be coming to an end soon. I don't buy the Human Nature story. I think human nature is quite plastic and there's little you can say definitively about us--we're creatures of our cultures and HERE is the root. I object to the "we just can't help seeking more" thesis because plenty of indigenous cultures have been wiser than that, enforcing egalitarian and responsible behavior, reverencing the natural world and understanding our place IN it, not lording it OVER and owning it.
Here is the key: agriculture enabled groups' settling in one place, building up storage, expanding their populations, getting into division of labor and hierarchy, whereupon often religions that involved autocratic male gods developed, women began to be suppressed, and the growing population, dependent up on grains grown on depleting lands, needed to expand. So it took over its neighbors' land, with cultural and religious justifications for this evolving to patch the moral hole created by such behavior. The city-states in this pattern became warlike, and took to conquering whole realms. Their neighbors could not win, battling to defend their lands, unless they upped their own birthrate, focused on creating better weapons and trained in war--in other words, unless they became the enemy. Many just fled, seeking lands where they could live without being molested, lands which, if inhabited by humans, would accept newcomers. Note that whether the peaceful tribe stayed and fought and lost, occasionally won by becoming aggressive people themselves, or fled, their former land is now inhabited by aggressive, expansionary people. So the city-state grows--AND NO ONE HAS EVER FOUND A SOLUTION. Which is why now, thousands of years later, the aggressive culture, now speaking many languages and espousing many religions--though it happens to be dominated by "white" people speaking English--has taken over virtually the whole world. This culture treats the natural world with contempt, treats all humans who are not of it with contempt, and sings its own praises while destroying everything. It used to treat its own women with contempt, but that has largely ceased because the women stopped putting up with it. Still, it is a culture based on domination.
So where are we now? We're in the end game--this empire has gotten as toxic and vicious as it has, and as absurd, because that's what you see with empires in their last days. But THIS empire has taken over the world, and is destroying the natural world we all depend on. We are, likely, at the most critical juncture in all of human history. We don't just need to stop the war on Gaza, the war in Ukraine, the potential war on China. We need to undo the wrong turn of 5000 years ago We need to at last find a way to prevent aggressive, schizophrenic, greedy, censorious, violent cultures from gaining ascendance. How? I think it might be possible. There is evidence that when humans first came to the Americas and Australia and New Zealand, they wiped out the megafauna. These were the ancestors of the indigenous peoples of these lands, some of the wisest cultures on Earth. Could it be that when they realized they'd killed the last of the big beasts, they realized their folly, and created religions and cultural precepts to ensure they'd never do it again--and it worked? Worked for thousands of years, until the tall ships from Europe arrived. Which suggests it's possible. And it may be that the horrible realization, the "What have we done?" moment, is a necessary spur to the creation of a new, durable culture.
Insightful. Thank you!
Shades of Daniel Quinn!
Yes. Echart Tolle suggests if working in eg animal rights- to bring information about the reality of animal ag to light but to not be invested in the response we get, to let go of judgement. The job is to shine the light not say how people should react, to not try to control it.
This I can get behind as regards the pervasive propaganda of the Empire and the patriarchy and all the different ways we may suddenly wake up to it. How we're all part of that awakening.
Thanks Caitlin. A tour de force.
I had a good idea. Not Christmas, but I gifted everyone I know the link to al-jazeera english news. Pictures do say a thousand words and have more impact then any words can.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/
https://www.aljazeera.com/tag/israel-war-on-gaza/
The concept that society tends to evolve in a progressive direction is a theory that is currently unsubstantiated. On the other hand our current manifestation of civilization is profoundly stupid, brutal, and ugly. If there’s ever been a time to engage in empathy, compassion, and a confident sense of moral outrage, then this is it.