What to do with all of these people, most especially Americans, under the spell of US empire? How do you snap someone out of a mind-controlled trance? I don't have any easy answers for it except to keep speaking out about it. And to live with integrity and be that which I want to see in the world.
What you are doing should be the model for us all. Speaking truth to power gets all the attention and respect. And, indeed, that can be heroic. Who hasn’t seen and admired the video of that Chinese student stepping in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. But for those of us who don’t get the chance to step in front of a tank, we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of speaking truth to the powerless--which, these days, is most of us.
In a lot of ways, speaking truth to power is easier than speaking truth to friends, family and neighbors, because the best technique for speaking truth to power is to be jarring and in your face. But that simply will not work when speaking with “equals”, especially those who are caught up in mass hypnosis. Maybe the reason our friends dumped us is because we were loud and overbearing and because we didn’t want to listen to their side. Maybe we’ll need to relearn the art of conversation—of subtlety and patience and of presenting ideas in small doses.
Ironic in making your point on an essay about propaganda, that you deploy the Tiananmen Square episode, which is a glaring example of propaganda! The event did not go down the way the brief snippet of video portrayed in western media suggests.
Bill, I didn't even know about Tiananmen Square being a set-up, but I gotta say I am not surprised, which is sad. I feel like the US government will stop at nothing to maintain its empire. But it is a shock to the system when you realize how much propaganda and lies are heaped on us, and it takes psychological strength to withstand the onslaught. I went through a period of fear, grief, and anger when I first took the red pill. Heck, I still feel those emotions sometimes. How can we get to others without psychically breaking them? I am just radically true to myself and say what is on my mind no matter how uncomfortable it might make someone else. Beyond that, I pray a lot.
Bill, I concede that the video of the student stepping in front of the tank was used by the U.S. for propaganda purposes. But does that mean the incident was staged for propaganda purposes? Were both the student and tank crew merely playing their scripted roles? Or was that an actual event caught on video and then used for propaganda purposes? I don’t know for certain the answer to these questions, but I’m assuming—until I get evidence to the contrary—that it was video of an actual event later used for propaganda purposes. If you have evidence it was staged, which I’m open to considering, please point me in that direction.
With enough video clips of any mass event—Tiananmen Square, the Maidan protests, or January 6th—one or more of those clips will be useable for propaganda purposes. But that obviously does not mean that all the individuals involved were part of the scripted psyop. In each of those events, there were many individuals participating who believed they were on the side of truth and who were acting with courage.
BTW, regarding the student/tank video, it has always struck me that the real hero of that encounter was actually the tank driver whose humanity prevented him, at least in that ten seconds of the video, from driving over the student.
I've been looking through Cynthia Chung's archive to find her writings on Tiananmen Square. This is from the Rising Tide Foundation, which she founded with her husband Matt Ehret:
While other countries were busy letting Soros’ armadas of Open Society foundations infiltrate them at every level, China had the wits to see the agenda for what it was and when a color revolution was attempted at Tiananmen Square by those same agencies which were ushering in a destruction of the Soviet Union and dismantling of western representative democracy, China lost no time to remove Soros’ right hand man in China in 1989 who had managed to reach the apex of political power as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and heir apparent to the aging Deng Xiaoping. Soros’ man was named Zhao Ziyang and during the 1980s, western press had already become accustomed to calling him “China’s Gorbachev” ...
It was here that the CIA’s James Lilley (Ambassador to China), the National Endowment for Democracy, and George Soros deployed all of their resources to activate a full-blown color revolution on June 4, 1989 with student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square bursting into violence.
With the active participation of modern color revolutionary Gene Sharp who was on the ground in Beijing for nine days during the protests, and an abundance of CIA-driven propaganda pumped through Radio Free America in Asia, training, funding and even the arming of violent reactionaries among the student groups with Molotov cocktails and guns, a chaos operation was put into motion that was anything but a peaceful protest. Many of the assets coordinated and deployed by CIA front groups in China included vicious student anarchists whose efforts led to the murder of dozens of PLA soldiers whose charred carcasses can make anyone’s stomach turn 30 years later. When the coup failed, and the government-led massacre couldn’t be induced by provocateurs, all of the energy of global perception management were deployed to give the illusion that a massacre had transpired which has created a “holocaust”-like mythos to this very day.
When the bloodbath failed to be sparked, with only 200-300 deaths (many of which being PLA soldiers), the plan was aborted and the most radical provocateurs beholden to the Soros operation were carried off to safer grounds in the USA and Canada under an MI6/CIA operation titled “Operation Yellowbird”. With the vast assistance of Hong Kong triads, these anarchists were snuck out of China where many received luxurious rewards and scholarships at Ivy league universities in the USA forming what the Washington Post’s Gavin Hewitt described as “the nucleus of a democracy movement in exile”.
Much has been written on the truth of Tiananmen Square’s events in 1989, and for any honest person evaluating the evidence presented on the topic (such as here, or here, or here), the case should be considered closed.
Excellent contribution, it is essential to know the facts and that is the great problem of the majority of her compatriots... that they simply do not know her or, in the best of cases, ignore her.
A little further up this thread, the participant of this chat
Kandy W. told us ''What to do with all of these people, most especially Americans, under the spell of US empire?''.
Although it seems incredible, the recipe is simpler than it may seem...
In the morning, a good bowl of reality... but it must be of quality, that is, world reality, yes, the one that goes a little beyond their pretty houses, with that American flag on the door.
Then in the afternoon or evening... double bowl, but this time let it be "Plain Truth", yes "Plain Truth"... that THING that seems, that is completely and utterly out of the reach of your society.
There are so many, and so many lies... that your political leaders and other rabble have told you (While they are destroying the world, in all imaginable ways), that you have ended up building your lives/minds and country with those bricks.
Great moniker, fks! Somewhere there are a bunch of good jokes to be had in your Reality Breakfast (better than Reality Sandwich) and Big Bad Bowl o' Truth. You don't 'fess up where you're from but it would have to be a Dessert Island (couldn't resist) to be free from the reach of lies, lies and so many lies.
For 20 years since 9/11, I only watched independent news, Amy Goodman daily, and read or listened to another 15 hrs a week. I was a pariah among people who didn't want to hear about it. I searched out the most global radical news and analysis I could find. And now I'm finding I was once again misled--not in everything but definitely some.
We're dependent on others for our facts and tricking the magic algorithm by asking the question in a carefully worded way that will land a few facts in our bowls. Please, sir, may I have some more?
I guess I think we're all trying to be true to ourselves and true to other people. But they don't make that easy, wherever you are.
In the US, if a protester dod that to a cop car he'd be - at best - run over, beaten, arrested and feeling prosecuted as a domestic terrorist with mandatory minimum 5 year prison. Of course, he also might just be shot and immediately killed.
If a US protester ever did that to a US tank, immediate death.
That does not work either, in my experience. Sheep who will not listen to easily verifiable truths, but would rather slurp up the American death cult narrative by the mouthful, should be shamed and mocked once they have proven themselves incapable of learning anything that conflicts with their brainwashing... for these are the people enabling mass atrocity. Shaming and mocking will not change anything, but it is better than a punch in the face, and it can be cathartic... a venting. This is not to say I am not patient and gentle with people I talk to, but once they reveal themselves... fuck it. I am never the one who initiates the more aggressive speech, either. It is amazing how angry seemingly reasonable people will get when they hear a simple truth. For they are not reasonable at all. They cannot be reasoned with, so all that is left is to ignore them or mock them. I do both, but not necessarily in that order.
You're right. In 1965, I was a mindless college student who unthinkingly supported the Vietnam War: "We're in, let's win" was the sum of my brilliant ideas.
I was strongly debated in the student council by an anti-war supporter, and he pulled no punches. I didn't change my mind instantly, but he made me so mad that I went out to find other facts to debate his facts. (Note: "alternate facts" don't exist.)
Eventually I had to admit that he was right.
Maybe it is just me, and I have to be bludgeoned before my mind will change, but hitting people who are brainwashed with the facts does work. It's "tough love."
I completely agree with your second paragraph, Jack, but also with bill so let's use that as an example. All of my friends in Santa Cruz take Tiananmen Square as gospel truth proving the evil Chinese empire--up there with Russia in forcing conformity through violence. You and I have come to question many of these narratives. How do I speak truth to friends, including you, in a way that doesn't make you feel I'm "one of them"? I'm surrounded by people who take great pride in "speaking truth to power" aka virtue signaling. But I haven't figured out the trick of speaking truth to liberal or progressive friends without losing them.
"I haven't figured out the trick of speaking truth to ..." - I can see tons of queries like this one and none of proved working solutions from those queried. Apart from examples that could be counted on one hand and those I suspect involving people predisposed to listening anyway.
My response is there is no way. Until the situation around them changes such that it forces them to start crawling to the other side - and they'll be doing it so no one notices - there is absolutely nothing one can do to convince them.
Also, for people to ask such questions is to reveal themselves as victims of propaganda too - that which made them believe they live in a "free" society with a "free" exchange of ideas, able to do stuff "freely", etc. You do not, and have not been ever when it comes to stuff that matters.
Hmmm... so I will answer my own question. One of the most persuasive arguments, I find, comes from someone who's changed their own minds about a position with which they identified. So Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth, for instance, comes from a place of passionate conviction as a vegan/ vegetarian and tells the story of her personal humbling by reality, backed by facts and logic. Without her own story, the latter would just come off as superiority.
I think we need to model admitting that we've been wrong. In one of my episodes, I talk about trending #IwasWrong. Look for opportunities to change your mind or admit you don't know. Whenever you stop being wrong, you've stopped learning--guaranteeing that you'll stay wrong. And yes, of course we're victims of propaganda and thinking we know the truth is proof we don't.
Yes, those reformed do carry more weight as they can speak from their own experience thereby sounding much more convincing.
I must add to my previous reply as to pleading with the blind - I do not advocate being silent at all. When asked or provoked I respond with full force. But I never start the conversation myself. That's suicidal.
If I understand your first comment, just the question of how to speak truth to friends reveals us as victims of propaganda, who think we live in a free society. Is that a correct interpretation of your comment?
Where does your truth come from that's not subject to that? How do you know that what you think now, that you're willing to defend "with full force," isn't another layer of propaganda?
When did you last change your mind? Who enabled you to change it and how? Or, in the words of my episode, when did you stop being wrong?
Tereza, I think it is the emotional polarity between victim and attacker that plays out in propaganda. this is a dual system between compassion and hatred. I can never deal with the hatred-part, but try to support the compassionate thought. Poor Chinese and poor Russians...
But is our compassion being used to manipulate us? In one of my episodes, I talk about how we might envy the Russians, based on their economic policies:
Something that may be working is not addressing the issue directly, but its fallout effects. When I ask for peace in Ukraine I pose it not as a question of who is right or wrong, but frame it in the form of, "Tens of millions of people in the Third World are going to be starved to death in the coming years because 1/3 of the internationally traded grain and 1/4 of the fertilizers come from Russia and Ukraine." Keep asking for a justification of the deaths of tens of millions of innocents to everyone wants to keep pouring our tax dollars into Ukraine, no one has managed it yet.
I'm glad that's working for you, Brian. Fortunately, I don't think that's going to be the actual repercussions for the Third World, due to the economic policies of Russia and China and how they're offering Africa, the Middle East and Latin America a way out of their dollarized debts and back to actual trade. I think for those of us in the US and its NATO satellites, this is backfiring spectacularly. I keep referring to the research of Matt Ehret and Cynthia Chung here, but they're really the experts in this field, along with Michael Hudson and Scott Ritter. I'll post my episode on them, which contains links to their direct work:
Reading through that now. It's already interesting to note their research that every single one of the 138 "terrorist plots" caught between 2002 and 2012 involved FBI informants, which corresponds to my impression.
Jack, I also pray a lot. I also read a ton, and I just finished reading three books I would recommend to anyone: Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World, and The Quantum Revelation all by Paul Levy. I am re-reading them again they were so good.
Jack, I pray a lot too...I have also just finished reading three books that really helped me-Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus that Plagues Our World, and The Quantum Revelation all by Paul Levy.
As a former participant in the world of academia, I'd be loath to expect most academics to take any positions that fly in the face of conventional narratives. It's just not conducive to sustaining the motion of their gravy train toward tenure. Back in the 80's and 90's, it was only the most radical who were willing to speak out about climate and biosphere disaster. Past three years, most biomedical academics tucked tail when it was suggested to them that an experimental vaccine, with trials run by the profit-driven manufacturer and unaccompanied by raw data release, might be a questionable idea, unlikely to reveal systemic issues that wouldn't be exposed by reductionist analysis (e.g., "induces antibodies"). And while so-called "academic freedom" might provide a classroom forum for discussion of alternative views, most of my colleagues wouldn't take the career risk of articulating such alternative views outside the protection of the lecture hall. Oi, the dirty looks I got for "stirring up trouble" and "scaring my students." Now that most institutions have become corporate structures, it's perhaps easier to see that they're merely part of that cadre of "exponentially greater influence that western institutions have over our minds".
Sure, but let’s stick with your climate point for a moment: that has now become its own narrative, full of contradictions and fantasies. “Nuclear power is evil.” “We can power the world with giant windmills and solar.” “Everyone is going to die within a few decades (they said a few decades ago”. Academics are as good or maybe even better than most at being led down a path.
Your points are valid, of course. But your issue has more to do with what I'd call fearful technology mind. There are/were some of us in the life science community that took the complex biosystem view. That view is fundamental to the sciences of complex-adaptive dynamical systems, to thermodynamics etc., hard sciences which describe the evolution of the what-is, without reference to that "narrative full of contradictions and fantasies, you so aptly name. The fact that we are already the agents of mass extinction should bother you regardless of that narrative. To use a cliche´, let's be careful to not throw out the baby with the bath water.
Your points are well taken. That said, as flawed as we are, we are still ingenious, and will continue to develop technologies to increase are material security and safety (psychological is another story...) - that is if we don't destroy everything with a nuclear war.
Thanks. Nice to know I'm in good company. For me, one of the positive things about getting old is ultimately the falling away of that flamboyant consumption ethic. I no longer give a shite.
Pertinent observation! I'd guess that it depends on the institution, but that the drive for research/endowment $$ is more prevalent since the corporatization of universities --- with presidents and boards driven by increase, similarly to the CEOs of other corporate entities. You make deals for dollars, you probably have to agree to at least some muzzling.The other factor is the decrease in NIH & NSF funding, so individual faculty must go to (often foreign) corporations for research $$.
If it wasn’t abundantly clear how well the mind control works here in the USA prior to the 2016 election, then it certainly has become very clear since then. It still astonishes me how many “educated” people fully embraced and believed the Russiagate narrative. I think many of them still do. But what makes the mind control so effective is how dumbed down we are as a society. There are so very few critical thinkers these days. And even many folks who seem to think critically in certain areas, have massive blind spots.
Yes, but you do us all a disservice by not mentioning the FBI and other entrenched bureaucracy, as well as the media and the big tech cartel. They were all in on it, that's well documented at this point.
Yes, they are all in on it, but they would never have had the "courage" to engage in so corrupt and blatant an abuse (they are not risk takers domestically) if they hadn't gotten the green light from the corporate Dems.
Disservice? In a short comment? That's way too harsh.
There would be many, many, tens of millions who do not believe. Silence is not consent. The "educated" are conformists and their social standing depends on saying the right thing. Most people know that the MSM are full of it.
"Educated" nowadays just means credentialled and credentials are available for cash plus attendance with a few multiple choice exams thrown in along the way. The "educated" typically do not spend their evenings reading novels in French or playing the harp. IMHO there is no need to go along with the pretence and humbug used to market higher education.
I realized what you say about "higher education" when I was in college. It means that I sat in a seat and did well on exams, not that my mind was expanded.
Frank Zappa said, "If you want to get an education, drop out of school, go to the library, and read."
Fortunately, I went to Zappa U. as well as the conventional one.
With you 100%. I have very mixed feelings about my education...plenty of time wasted and misdirected, but I did get exposed (eventually) to books that opened my mind. There is no need to take the system at face value and the political/ideological deference that is now demanded by the "educated" is as preposterous as it is outrageous. It makes a travesty of ideas and knowledge.
Luckily, I am an old San Francisco hippy and dropped out of college in the early 60s to work. When I did return in the 80s, I was an adult and had my character and mind more or less set (always open to persuasion).
I remember the campus upheavals of the 60s and 70s when students were trying to get universities to be more applicable to contemporary life.
Thank you so much - from an Australian woman and a former academic. I was born in Czechoslovakia and we knew that we are reading propaganda in the state socialism. Somehow, this was never the case here. Yes, I know, we live in freedom........ It is so sad to see this nearly total propaganda.
Stopped this morning at a local coffee shop in an upscale liberal Puget Sound touristy town (100 miles north of Seattle). There was a poster on the door of a religious icon - I don't have the correct terms, but it looked like a nun in full regalia (Ukraine colors, not black) with a shoulder launched missile on her shoulder!
I tried to engage conversation with the young digital hipsters about it, but they just couldn't understand or see any problem with that.
I left with a snarky comment (also went over their heads): "Good thing we didn't have Russian propaganda in the 60's, or we'd still be in Vietnam!"
Question origins of pandemic, mask efficacy, jab risks, efficacy and necessity, quarantine: Dangerous mis/disinformation of selfish MAGA.
Question election integrity of mail ballots, dropboxes, remote machine programming, six swing states simultaneously stoping counting and observers with magically adjusted flipped results when they restart, outsourced election process to partisan groups: Dangerous mis/disinformation of fascist MAGA, even insurrectionist.
Question grooming sexualization of children by drag queens performing lewd acts in elementary schools and children's libraries: Dangerous mis/disinformation of homo/transphobe fascist MAGA.
Question racial division and policing minority crime, and schools teaching CRT: Dangerous mis/disinformation of racist white nationalist fascist domestic terrorist MAGA.
Just like questioning Ukraine/Russia policy, the US regime has taken off its mask for all to see, it is built upon and sustains itself with propaganda and lies, all who question it targeted for attack and destruction. It is a criminal regime. The bell is tolling for it. Deservedly.
Amnesty is receiving flak from groups who are quite naturally astonished at the sudden turnaround prompted by a desperate need to save face and cover its other end, or what it can of it at this late date. Because, in spite of all the hopes and intrigues of the regressive movement - neoliberalism and adherents, and the immense power and riches of Western fantasists, history says different, and history will have its way. Injustice has always been a feature of empires, but they controlled populaces with the proverbial carrot and stick: a kind of balance has been the rule. Neoliberalism has struck a terrible blow to that balance, and this concerted move against Russia and its legitimate, existential concerns has revealed its true face. The supporting narrative became crazier and crazier, billions in arms shipments at the expense of social programs, wild sanctioning of Russia and Russians and wild claims of human rights abuses, actually perpetrated, as in Bucha, by Ukraine, or so the available evidence would imply: the fact conclusive evidence via an open investigation has been blocked by the West and Ukraine doesn't enhance their credibility. And Pelosi's graceless intrusion in Taiwan was the death blow: rats deserting the sinking ship of state should be a common feature of the landscape from here on in.
People should realize - the second Nuremberg is coming and what's going to be revealed and presented will rival that which was done by Nazi Germany. I venture to say the only thing where Ukraine will come up short is built and working concentration camps.
In standing trial Ukraine will be joined by the West.
Concentration camps are too obvious and now unnecessary. The recent neoliberal program just formulated in Lugano, Switzerland this past July called euphemistically, The Ukraine Recovery Program (source, Multipolista, published by Jake Kallio and Benjamin Norton) is all a bout Western plunder of Ukraine with "reforms" like: "open markets", deregulation, abrogation of labour laws, sale of state enterprises to private interests, etc., where every Ukrainian , except the very rich and oligarchs, are virtually enslaved.
They celebrate and brag about all the wrong things: a column about western "freedom" especially concerning women, when women in US. no longer have dominion over their own bodies- all because of a few, right-wing , regressive Catholic Supreme Court judges! That makes me gag. In Quebec Canada, some pharmacies can withhold the sale of contraceptives!!That constitutes rights for the pre-conceived over women!!!
The amount of outrage generated by these few mild criticisms of Ukraine--and even these muffled by the requisite boiler-plate denouncements of Russia--clues us into the fact that the Ukrainians are doing what the few dissident voices that pierce the Western narrative say they are, and possibly worse.
The small Ukrainian forces and their ragtag foreign mercenaries are entrenching themselves not in open countryside where they would be wiped out quite quickly. Instead they are using their own population as ‘human shields’. A well known term that is synonymous with terrorist groups. When will people wake up and smell the coffee/napalm or the stench of American imperialism, sadly backed by so many western governments that should really know better. But most governments are just puppets of the elite and global corporations paving the way for the NWO. What happened to Independent Journalism? The media is just a propaganda tool and wouldn’t post the truth if delivered with ten credible sources let alone two. Here in the U.K. further legislation is being pushed through to prevent any independent journalism from publishing anything that might ‘embarrass’ the government! Seriously? Can that coverall word of ‘embarrass’ even have a legal interpretation let alone a definition.
Thank you, Caitlin Johnstone, for all your work! I have been labeled as Russian, Chinese agent, supporter, troll etc. My simple goal was to show other independent news/journalist findings. As well as provide clips of the MSM reports that occasionally exposes Western lies and/or lazy journalism.
Now this is what I find on my Twitter account:
"Your account is permanently suspended
After careful review, we determined your account broke the Twitter Rules. Your account is permanently in read-only mode, which means you can’t Tweet, Retweet, or Like content. You won’t be able to create new accounts. If you think we got this wrong, you can submit an appeal."
If "Russian propaganda" just means disobedience, I reckon that "Russian disinformation" means something that is factually true, but embarrassing to the ruling elite.
It also seems to me that one of the key differences between "Russian propaganda" and "Russian disinformation" is that while "Russian propaganda" usually emanates from Russia, "Russian disinformation" tends to arise from sources that have no connection to Russia at all.
What to do with all of these people, most especially Americans, under the spell of US empire? How do you snap someone out of a mind-controlled trance? I don't have any easy answers for it except to keep speaking out about it. And to live with integrity and be that which I want to see in the world.
What you are doing should be the model for us all. Speaking truth to power gets all the attention and respect. And, indeed, that can be heroic. Who hasn’t seen and admired the video of that Chinese student stepping in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. But for those of us who don’t get the chance to step in front of a tank, we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of speaking truth to the powerless--which, these days, is most of us.
In a lot of ways, speaking truth to power is easier than speaking truth to friends, family and neighbors, because the best technique for speaking truth to power is to be jarring and in your face. But that simply will not work when speaking with “equals”, especially those who are caught up in mass hypnosis. Maybe the reason our friends dumped us is because we were loud and overbearing and because we didn’t want to listen to their side. Maybe we’ll need to relearn the art of conversation—of subtlety and patience and of presenting ideas in small doses.
Ironic in making your point on an essay about propaganda, that you deploy the Tiananmen Square episode, which is a glaring example of propaganda! The event did not go down the way the brief snippet of video portrayed in western media suggests.
Bill, I didn't even know about Tiananmen Square being a set-up, but I gotta say I am not surprised, which is sad. I feel like the US government will stop at nothing to maintain its empire. But it is a shock to the system when you realize how much propaganda and lies are heaped on us, and it takes psychological strength to withstand the onslaught. I went through a period of fear, grief, and anger when I first took the red pill. Heck, I still feel those emotions sometimes. How can we get to others without psychically breaking them? I am just radically true to myself and say what is on my mind no matter how uncomfortable it might make someone else. Beyond that, I pray a lot.
Bill, I concede that the video of the student stepping in front of the tank was used by the U.S. for propaganda purposes. But does that mean the incident was staged for propaganda purposes? Were both the student and tank crew merely playing their scripted roles? Or was that an actual event caught on video and then used for propaganda purposes? I don’t know for certain the answer to these questions, but I’m assuming—until I get evidence to the contrary—that it was video of an actual event later used for propaganda purposes. If you have evidence it was staged, which I’m open to considering, please point me in that direction.
With enough video clips of any mass event—Tiananmen Square, the Maidan protests, or January 6th—one or more of those clips will be useable for propaganda purposes. But that obviously does not mean that all the individuals involved were part of the scripted psyop. In each of those events, there were many individuals participating who believed they were on the side of truth and who were acting with courage.
BTW, regarding the student/tank video, it has always struck me that the real hero of that encounter was actually the tank driver whose humanity prevented him, at least in that ten seconds of the video, from driving over the student.
I've been looking through Cynthia Chung's archive to find her writings on Tiananmen Square. This is from the Rising Tide Foundation, which she founded with her husband Matt Ehret:
While other countries were busy letting Soros’ armadas of Open Society foundations infiltrate them at every level, China had the wits to see the agenda for what it was and when a color revolution was attempted at Tiananmen Square by those same agencies which were ushering in a destruction of the Soviet Union and dismantling of western representative democracy, China lost no time to remove Soros’ right hand man in China in 1989 who had managed to reach the apex of political power as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and heir apparent to the aging Deng Xiaoping. Soros’ man was named Zhao Ziyang and during the 1980s, western press had already become accustomed to calling him “China’s Gorbachev” ...
It was here that the CIA’s James Lilley (Ambassador to China), the National Endowment for Democracy, and George Soros deployed all of their resources to activate a full-blown color revolution on June 4, 1989 with student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square bursting into violence.
With the active participation of modern color revolutionary Gene Sharp who was on the ground in Beijing for nine days during the protests, and an abundance of CIA-driven propaganda pumped through Radio Free America in Asia, training, funding and even the arming of violent reactionaries among the student groups with Molotov cocktails and guns, a chaos operation was put into motion that was anything but a peaceful protest. Many of the assets coordinated and deployed by CIA front groups in China included vicious student anarchists whose efforts led to the murder of dozens of PLA soldiers whose charred carcasses can make anyone’s stomach turn 30 years later. When the coup failed, and the government-led massacre couldn’t be induced by provocateurs, all of the energy of global perception management were deployed to give the illusion that a massacre had transpired which has created a “holocaust”-like mythos to this very day.
When the bloodbath failed to be sparked, with only 200-300 deaths (many of which being PLA soldiers), the plan was aborted and the most radical provocateurs beholden to the Soros operation were carried off to safer grounds in the USA and Canada under an MI6/CIA operation titled “Operation Yellowbird”. With the vast assistance of Hong Kong triads, these anarchists were snuck out of China where many received luxurious rewards and scholarships at Ivy league universities in the USA forming what the Washington Post’s Gavin Hewitt described as “the nucleus of a democracy movement in exile”.
Much has been written on the truth of Tiananmen Square’s events in 1989, and for any honest person evaluating the evidence presented on the topic (such as here, or here, or here), the case should be considered closed.
https://risingtidefoundation.net/2021/08/21/how-chinas-gorbachev-was-flushed-in-1989/
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/the-truth-behind-the-myth-of-the-tiananmen-square-massacre-opinion-piece-by-dr-dennis-etler
https://www.criticalsocialworkpublishinghouse.com/post/1989-tiananmen-square-student-massacre-was-a-hoax
Hi Teresa,
Excellent contribution, it is essential to know the facts and that is the great problem of the majority of her compatriots... that they simply do not know her or, in the best of cases, ignore her.
A little further up this thread, the participant of this chat
Kandy W. told us ''What to do with all of these people, most especially Americans, under the spell of US empire?''.
Although it seems incredible, the recipe is simpler than it may seem...
In the morning, a good bowl of reality... but it must be of quality, that is, world reality, yes, the one that goes a little beyond their pretty houses, with that American flag on the door.
Then in the afternoon or evening... double bowl, but this time let it be "Plain Truth", yes "Plain Truth"... that THING that seems, that is completely and utterly out of the reach of your society.
There are so many, and so many lies... that your political leaders and other rabble have told you (While they are destroying the world, in all imaginable ways), that you have ended up building your lives/minds and country with those bricks.
My best wishes to you and family!
Great moniker, fks! Somewhere there are a bunch of good jokes to be had in your Reality Breakfast (better than Reality Sandwich) and Big Bad Bowl o' Truth. You don't 'fess up where you're from but it would have to be a Dessert Island (couldn't resist) to be free from the reach of lies, lies and so many lies.
For 20 years since 9/11, I only watched independent news, Amy Goodman daily, and read or listened to another 15 hrs a week. I was a pariah among people who didn't want to hear about it. I searched out the most global radical news and analysis I could find. And now I'm finding I was once again misled--not in everything but definitely some.
We're dependent on others for our facts and tricking the magic algorithm by asking the question in a carefully worded way that will land a few facts in our bowls. Please, sir, may I have some more?
I guess I think we're all trying to be true to ourselves and true to other people. But they don't make that easy, wherever you are.
thanks for that. Exactly what I was driving at.
In the US, if a protester dod that to a cop car he'd be - at best - run over, beaten, arrested and feeling prosecuted as a domestic terrorist with mandatory minimum 5 year prison. Of course, he also might just be shot and immediately killed.
If a US protester ever did that to a US tank, immediate death.
We have one who tried that on Jan 6 at the Capitol.
Here's a relevant thread from Danny Haiphong:
https://twitter.com/SpiritofHo/status/1533086328774184960
That does not work either, in my experience. Sheep who will not listen to easily verifiable truths, but would rather slurp up the American death cult narrative by the mouthful, should be shamed and mocked once they have proven themselves incapable of learning anything that conflicts with their brainwashing... for these are the people enabling mass atrocity. Shaming and mocking will not change anything, but it is better than a punch in the face, and it can be cathartic... a venting. This is not to say I am not patient and gentle with people I talk to, but once they reveal themselves... fuck it. I am never the one who initiates the more aggressive speech, either. It is amazing how angry seemingly reasonable people will get when they hear a simple truth. For they are not reasonable at all. They cannot be reasoned with, so all that is left is to ignore them or mock them. I do both, but not necessarily in that order.
You're right. In 1965, I was a mindless college student who unthinkingly supported the Vietnam War: "We're in, let's win" was the sum of my brilliant ideas.
I was strongly debated in the student council by an anti-war supporter, and he pulled no punches. I didn't change my mind instantly, but he made me so mad that I went out to find other facts to debate his facts. (Note: "alternate facts" don't exist.)
Eventually I had to admit that he was right.
Maybe it is just me, and I have to be bludgeoned before my mind will change, but hitting people who are brainwashed with the facts does work. It's "tough love."
I completely agree with your second paragraph, Jack, but also with bill so let's use that as an example. All of my friends in Santa Cruz take Tiananmen Square as gospel truth proving the evil Chinese empire--up there with Russia in forcing conformity through violence. You and I have come to question many of these narratives. How do I speak truth to friends, including you, in a way that doesn't make you feel I'm "one of them"? I'm surrounded by people who take great pride in "speaking truth to power" aka virtue signaling. But I haven't figured out the trick of speaking truth to liberal or progressive friends without losing them.
"I haven't figured out the trick of speaking truth to ..." - I can see tons of queries like this one and none of proved working solutions from those queried. Apart from examples that could be counted on one hand and those I suspect involving people predisposed to listening anyway.
My response is there is no way. Until the situation around them changes such that it forces them to start crawling to the other side - and they'll be doing it so no one notices - there is absolutely nothing one can do to convince them.
Also, for people to ask such questions is to reveal themselves as victims of propaganda too - that which made them believe they live in a "free" society with a "free" exchange of ideas, able to do stuff "freely", etc. You do not, and have not been ever when it comes to stuff that matters.
Hmmm... so I will answer my own question. One of the most persuasive arguments, I find, comes from someone who's changed their own minds about a position with which they identified. So Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth, for instance, comes from a place of passionate conviction as a vegan/ vegetarian and tells the story of her personal humbling by reality, backed by facts and logic. Without her own story, the latter would just come off as superiority.
I think we need to model admitting that we've been wrong. In one of my episodes, I talk about trending #IwasWrong. Look for opportunities to change your mind or admit you don't know. Whenever you stop being wrong, you've stopped learning--guaranteeing that you'll stay wrong. And yes, of course we're victims of propaganda and thinking we know the truth is proof we don't.
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/when-did-you-stop-being-wrong
Yes, those reformed do carry more weight as they can speak from their own experience thereby sounding much more convincing.
I must add to my previous reply as to pleading with the blind - I do not advocate being silent at all. When asked or provoked I respond with full force. But I never start the conversation myself. That's suicidal.
If I understand your first comment, just the question of how to speak truth to friends reveals us as victims of propaganda, who think we live in a free society. Is that a correct interpretation of your comment?
Where does your truth come from that's not subject to that? How do you know that what you think now, that you're willing to defend "with full force," isn't another layer of propaganda?
When did you last change your mind? Who enabled you to change it and how? Or, in the words of my episode, when did you stop being wrong?
Tereza, I think it is the emotional polarity between victim and attacker that plays out in propaganda. this is a dual system between compassion and hatred. I can never deal with the hatred-part, but try to support the compassionate thought. Poor Chinese and poor Russians...
But is our compassion being used to manipulate us? In one of my episodes, I talk about how we might envy the Russians, based on their economic policies:
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/russia-a-wrench-in-the-reset-gears
Something that may be working is not addressing the issue directly, but its fallout effects. When I ask for peace in Ukraine I pose it not as a question of who is right or wrong, but frame it in the form of, "Tens of millions of people in the Third World are going to be starved to death in the coming years because 1/3 of the internationally traded grain and 1/4 of the fertilizers come from Russia and Ukraine." Keep asking for a justification of the deaths of tens of millions of innocents to everyone wants to keep pouring our tax dollars into Ukraine, no one has managed it yet.
I'm glad that's working for you, Brian. Fortunately, I don't think that's going to be the actual repercussions for the Third World, due to the economic policies of Russia and China and how they're offering Africa, the Middle East and Latin America a way out of their dollarized debts and back to actual trade. I think for those of us in the US and its NATO satellites, this is backfiring spectacularly. I keep referring to the research of Matt Ehret and Cynthia Chung here, but they're really the experts in this field, along with Michael Hudson and Scott Ritter. I'll post my episode on them, which contains links to their direct work:
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/matt-ehret-and-cynthia-chung-geopuzzle
Reading through that now. It's already interesting to note their research that every single one of the 138 "terrorist plots" caught between 2002 and 2012 involved FBI informants, which corresponds to my impression.
Yes! Isn't that fascinating? I feel like every time I read them, I'm jettisoning old knowledge and making room for the new.
Well said. And at times, "Mea culpa".
Jack, I also pray a lot. I also read a ton, and I just finished reading three books I would recommend to anyone: Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World, and The Quantum Revelation all by Paul Levy. I am re-reading them again they were so good.
Jack, I pray a lot too...I have also just finished reading three books that really helped me-Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus that Plagues Our World, and The Quantum Revelation all by Paul Levy.
It's all you, or me, or even Caitlin can do.
"How do you snap someone out of a mind-controlled trance?"
Face to face, patiently, honestly, carefully, and - unfortunately - it probably has to be one at a time.
As a former participant in the world of academia, I'd be loath to expect most academics to take any positions that fly in the face of conventional narratives. It's just not conducive to sustaining the motion of their gravy train toward tenure. Back in the 80's and 90's, it was only the most radical who were willing to speak out about climate and biosphere disaster. Past three years, most biomedical academics tucked tail when it was suggested to them that an experimental vaccine, with trials run by the profit-driven manufacturer and unaccompanied by raw data release, might be a questionable idea, unlikely to reveal systemic issues that wouldn't be exposed by reductionist analysis (e.g., "induces antibodies"). And while so-called "academic freedom" might provide a classroom forum for discussion of alternative views, most of my colleagues wouldn't take the career risk of articulating such alternative views outside the protection of the lecture hall. Oi, the dirty looks I got for "stirring up trouble" and "scaring my students." Now that most institutions have become corporate structures, it's perhaps easier to see that they're merely part of that cadre of "exponentially greater influence that western institutions have over our minds".
Sure, but let’s stick with your climate point for a moment: that has now become its own narrative, full of contradictions and fantasies. “Nuclear power is evil.” “We can power the world with giant windmills and solar.” “Everyone is going to die within a few decades (they said a few decades ago”. Academics are as good or maybe even better than most at being led down a path.
Your points are valid, of course. But your issue has more to do with what I'd call fearful technology mind. There are/were some of us in the life science community that took the complex biosystem view. That view is fundamental to the sciences of complex-adaptive dynamical systems, to thermodynamics etc., hard sciences which describe the evolution of the what-is, without reference to that "narrative full of contradictions and fantasies, you so aptly name. The fact that we are already the agents of mass extinction should bother you regardless of that narrative. To use a cliche´, let's be careful to not throw out the baby with the bath water.
Your points are well taken. That said, as flawed as we are, we are still ingenious, and will continue to develop technologies to increase are material security and safety (psychological is another story...) - that is if we don't destroy everything with a nuclear war.
The chronic confusion of dimwits in academia tells us nothing about the state of play in the real world.
Thorstein Veblen agrees with you.
Thanks. Nice to know I'm in good company. For me, one of the positive things about getting old is ultimately the falling away of that flamboyant consumption ethic. I no longer give a shite.
Pertinent observation! I'd guess that it depends on the institution, but that the drive for research/endowment $$ is more prevalent since the corporatization of universities --- with presidents and boards driven by increase, similarly to the CEOs of other corporate entities. You make deals for dollars, you probably have to agree to at least some muzzling.The other factor is the decrease in NIH & NSF funding, so individual faculty must go to (often foreign) corporations for research $$.
Gratefully, I got out just in time.
Dear NATO.
Shove your fake outrage, your lies, and your murderous expansion UP YOUR FUCKING IMPERIALIST ARSE.
If it wasn’t abundantly clear how well the mind control works here in the USA prior to the 2016 election, then it certainly has become very clear since then. It still astonishes me how many “educated” people fully embraced and believed the Russiagate narrative. I think many of them still do. But what makes the mind control so effective is how dumbed down we are as a society. There are so very few critical thinkers these days. And even many folks who seem to think critically in certain areas, have massive blind spots.
Yes, agree that a major origin is is Russiagate - I blame Clinton and Corporate Dems who manufactured that massive propaganda campaign.
Yes, but you do us all a disservice by not mentioning the FBI and other entrenched bureaucracy, as well as the media and the big tech cartel. They were all in on it, that's well documented at this point.
Yes, they are all in on it, but they would never have had the "courage" to engage in so corrupt and blatant an abuse (they are not risk takers domestically) if they hadn't gotten the green light from the corporate Dems.
Disservice? In a short comment? That's way too harsh.
My friend, sorry if the word "disservice" offended you. Glad you took my point, however inartfully presented.
I thought it was fine.
There would be many, many, tens of millions who do not believe. Silence is not consent. The "educated" are conformists and their social standing depends on saying the right thing. Most people know that the MSM are full of it.
It is possible to be "educated" and not very bright at the same time.
"Educated" nowadays just means credentialled and credentials are available for cash plus attendance with a few multiple choice exams thrown in along the way. The "educated" typically do not spend their evenings reading novels in French or playing the harp. IMHO there is no need to go along with the pretence and humbug used to market higher education.
I realized what you say about "higher education" when I was in college. It means that I sat in a seat and did well on exams, not that my mind was expanded.
Frank Zappa said, "If you want to get an education, drop out of school, go to the library, and read."
Fortunately, I went to Zappa U. as well as the conventional one.
With you 100%. I have very mixed feelings about my education...plenty of time wasted and misdirected, but I did get exposed (eventually) to books that opened my mind. There is no need to take the system at face value and the political/ideological deference that is now demanded by the "educated" is as preposterous as it is outrageous. It makes a travesty of ideas and knowledge.
Luckily, I am an old San Francisco hippy and dropped out of college in the early 60s to work. When I did return in the 80s, I was an adult and had my character and mind more or less set (always open to persuasion).
I remember the campus upheavals of the 60s and 70s when students were trying to get universities to be more applicable to contemporary life.
Thank you, Caitlin. You’ve done it again. You are greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much - from an Australian woman and a former academic. I was born in Czechoslovakia and we knew that we are reading propaganda in the state socialism. Somehow, this was never the case here. Yes, I know, we live in freedom........ It is so sad to see this nearly total propaganda.
Stopped this morning at a local coffee shop in an upscale liberal Puget Sound touristy town (100 miles north of Seattle). There was a poster on the door of a religious icon - I don't have the correct terms, but it looked like a nun in full regalia (Ukraine colors, not black) with a shoulder launched missile on her shoulder!
I tried to engage conversation with the young digital hipsters about it, but they just couldn't understand or see any problem with that.
I left with a snarky comment (also went over their heads): "Good thing we didn't have Russian propaganda in the 60's, or we'd still be in Vietnam!"
They call it "St. Javelin". Tons of info if you do a search.
thanks for that. Unreal. I'll try a Google (do they apply the algorithm to that search?)
You shouldn't have trouble finding it everywhere. It's a Good Thing(TM) as far as the West is concerned.
Such creative penmanship reminding others about their "critical thinking cap" that might still be on the hat rack
Question origins of pandemic, mask efficacy, jab risks, efficacy and necessity, quarantine: Dangerous mis/disinformation of selfish MAGA.
Question election integrity of mail ballots, dropboxes, remote machine programming, six swing states simultaneously stoping counting and observers with magically adjusted flipped results when they restart, outsourced election process to partisan groups: Dangerous mis/disinformation of fascist MAGA, even insurrectionist.
Question grooming sexualization of children by drag queens performing lewd acts in elementary schools and children's libraries: Dangerous mis/disinformation of homo/transphobe fascist MAGA.
Question racial division and policing minority crime, and schools teaching CRT: Dangerous mis/disinformation of racist white nationalist fascist domestic terrorist MAGA.
Just like questioning Ukraine/Russia policy, the US regime has taken off its mask for all to see, it is built upon and sustains itself with propaganda and lies, all who question it targeted for attack and destruction. It is a criminal regime. The bell is tolling for it. Deservedly.
Amnesty is receiving flak from groups who are quite naturally astonished at the sudden turnaround prompted by a desperate need to save face and cover its other end, or what it can of it at this late date. Because, in spite of all the hopes and intrigues of the regressive movement - neoliberalism and adherents, and the immense power and riches of Western fantasists, history says different, and history will have its way. Injustice has always been a feature of empires, but they controlled populaces with the proverbial carrot and stick: a kind of balance has been the rule. Neoliberalism has struck a terrible blow to that balance, and this concerted move against Russia and its legitimate, existential concerns has revealed its true face. The supporting narrative became crazier and crazier, billions in arms shipments at the expense of social programs, wild sanctioning of Russia and Russians and wild claims of human rights abuses, actually perpetrated, as in Bucha, by Ukraine, or so the available evidence would imply: the fact conclusive evidence via an open investigation has been blocked by the West and Ukraine doesn't enhance their credibility. And Pelosi's graceless intrusion in Taiwan was the death blow: rats deserting the sinking ship of state should be a common feature of the landscape from here on in.
People should realize - the second Nuremberg is coming and what's going to be revealed and presented will rival that which was done by Nazi Germany. I venture to say the only thing where Ukraine will come up short is built and working concentration camps.
In standing trial Ukraine will be joined by the West.
Concentration camps are too obvious and now unnecessary. The recent neoliberal program just formulated in Lugano, Switzerland this past July called euphemistically, The Ukraine Recovery Program (source, Multipolista, published by Jake Kallio and Benjamin Norton) is all a bout Western plunder of Ukraine with "reforms" like: "open markets", deregulation, abrogation of labour laws, sale of state enterprises to private interests, etc., where every Ukrainian , except the very rich and oligarchs, are virtually enslaved.
As though their lives weren't already bad enough in the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe.
They celebrate and brag about all the wrong things: a column about western "freedom" especially concerning women, when women in US. no longer have dominion over their own bodies- all because of a few, right-wing , regressive Catholic Supreme Court judges! That makes me gag. In Quebec Canada, some pharmacies can withhold the sale of contraceptives!!That constitutes rights for the pre-conceived over women!!!
The amount of outrage generated by these few mild criticisms of Ukraine--and even these muffled by the requisite boiler-plate denouncements of Russia--clues us into the fact that the Ukrainians are doing what the few dissident voices that pierce the Western narrative say they are, and possibly worse.
The small Ukrainian forces and their ragtag foreign mercenaries are entrenching themselves not in open countryside where they would be wiped out quite quickly. Instead they are using their own population as ‘human shields’. A well known term that is synonymous with terrorist groups. When will people wake up and smell the coffee/napalm or the stench of American imperialism, sadly backed by so many western governments that should really know better. But most governments are just puppets of the elite and global corporations paving the way for the NWO. What happened to Independent Journalism? The media is just a propaganda tool and wouldn’t post the truth if delivered with ten credible sources let alone two. Here in the U.K. further legislation is being pushed through to prevent any independent journalism from publishing anything that might ‘embarrass’ the government! Seriously? Can that coverall word of ‘embarrass’ even have a legal interpretation let alone a definition.
Thank you, Caitlin Johnstone, for all your work! I have been labeled as Russian, Chinese agent, supporter, troll etc. My simple goal was to show other independent news/journalist findings. As well as provide clips of the MSM reports that occasionally exposes Western lies and/or lazy journalism.
Now this is what I find on my Twitter account:
"Your account is permanently suspended
After careful review, we determined your account broke the Twitter Rules. Your account is permanently in read-only mode, which means you can’t Tweet, Retweet, or Like content. You won’t be able to create new accounts. If you think we got this wrong, you can submit an appeal."
Badge of honour.
Thank you.
If "Russian propaganda" just means disobedience, I reckon that "Russian disinformation" means something that is factually true, but embarrassing to the ruling elite.
It also seems to me that one of the key differences between "Russian propaganda" and "Russian disinformation" is that while "Russian propaganda" usually emanates from Russia, "Russian disinformation" tends to arise from sources that have no connection to Russia at all.
I'll always remember a Soviet general that writer Farley Mowat quoted in 'The Siberians'.
"The difference between Soviet propaganda and American propaganda is that no one believes ours."
Great quote.