Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): The worst actions of your government happen not in secrecy, but right out in the open under the narrative cover of mass media propaganda. The western empire doesn’t hide its worst deeds, it just manipulates the way people think about them.
I grew up in Los Angeles but have lived in Japan for 40 years. I remember watching a lot of cowboy programs on TV as a child and detective shows as a teenager. I began to notice that almost every form of entertainment focused on guns and killing people. What were the cowboy shows but promoting genocide of the native Americans? When I had a chance to live in Japan for a year, it was a complete revelation to live in a gunless society. I can walk alone at night without being afraid of being attacked or shot. Living outside one’s country is a great way to see it with new eyes.
Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, and genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, they feel no humiliation or shame. Their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them...
..Clues for these abnormalities are provided by their most recent responses as deteriorating conditions tighten the vise – on emotions, on prevailing policies, on domestic political worries, on ginger egos. Those responses fall under the category of panic behavior. Deep down, they are scared, fearful, and agitated. Biden et al in Washington, Macron, Schulz, Sunak, Stoltenberg, von der Leyen. They lack the courage of their stated convictions or the courage to face reality squarely. The blunt truth is that they have contrived to get themselves, and their countries, in a quandary from which there is no escape conforming to their current self-defined interests and emotional engagement...
..French President Emmanuel Macon’s proposed plan to station military personnel from NATO members within Ukraine to serve as a tripwire. Arrayed as a cordon around Kharkov, Odessa, and Kiev they are meant to deter advancing Russian forces from moving on those cities for fear of killing Western soldiers – thereby risking a direct confrontation with the Alliance...
..There already are thousands of Westerners bolstering the Ukrainian armed forces. Roughly 4 – 5,000 Americans have been performing critical operational functions from the outset. The presence of a majority predates by several years the onset of hostilities 2 years ago. That contingent was augmented by a supplementary group of 1,700 last summer which was a corps of logistic experts advertised as mandated to seek out and eradicate corruption in the black-marketing of pilfered supplies. The Pentagon people are sown through the Ukrainian military from headquarters planning units to advisers in the field, to technicians and Special Forces...
..The principal lesson to be drawn from this overview is that the positioning of European troops at key sites as human hostages is not wholly original. Their presence has not deterred Russia from attacking them in the field or, as in the French case, hunting them down in their residences...
..Insofar as the violent ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is concerned, it is fair to say that the Western government’s complicity via its arming and unqualified backing for Israel’s gruesome actions constitutes grotesque behavior. To single out individual elements among individual governments is superfluous. The entire episode is grotesque. So it is seen by nearly the entire world outside the countries of the collective West...
..There are actions that manifestly represent a clear and future danger of an expanding war in Europe...
..Taken together, the actions of Western leaders – supported by their nations’ political elites – are indicative of a behavior pattern that has parted ways with reality. They derive deductively from dogmas unsubstantiated by objective fact...
..Back to the ingredients of panic. We noted fear – of both the identifiable and the unknown, and sub-conscious feelings of insecurity... opening opportunities for willful persons or factions who harbor audacious objectives of remaking the world’s geo-political space according to American hegemonic specifications. To that end, our leaders manipulate and exploit conditions of emotional disorientation and political conformity. The outstanding example is the so-called ‘neo-cons’ in Washington (who number Joe Biden as a comrade-in-arms) who have crafted a network of like-minded true believers in London, Paris, Berlin, and at both ends of Brussels.
What of the puzzle we noted as to the near complete absence of feelings of guilt or shame – especially over Gaza, of being humiliated in the eyes of the world? In conditions of nihilism, matters of conscience are moot. The implicit rejection of norms, rules, and laws frees the individual self to do whatever impulses or ideas, or selfish interests impel it. With the superego dissolved, there is no felt obligation to judge oneself about any external or abstract standard. Narcissistic tendencies flourish. A similar psychology obviates the requirement for experiencing shame. That is something that can only exist if we subjectively are part of a social grouping wherein personal status, and sense of worth, depend on how others view us and whether they grant us respect. In the absence of such a communal identity, with its attendant sensitivity to its opinion, shame can exist only in the perverse form of regret that one has been unable to meet the demanding, all-consuming need for self-gratification. That applies to nations as well as their individual leaders.
It's time for people to focus on individual and cooperative community action to help alleviate existential deprivations and endure far worse the dynamic unimpeded clearly shows are coming. Far more urgently than trying to open eyes at this point. Find allies by addressing real problems people are experiencing regardless of their level of perception as long as you can agree on specific solutions for those items. That will convert more people and open them up to others than all the facts and debates ever will. If the goal is more people wokring together for their interests, not the oligarchs and reducing suffering, practical solutions are far more effective. And they actually make something better. All the influencers can keep promoting intellectual awareness, as genocide and ecocide continue, or shift to real action alignments to promote better surviving a collapse wirh less suffering and perhaps, less rancor.
"Until we find a way to snap a critical mass of people out ..." - the problem is even when made aware most people won't want to snap out of anything. Only real suffering will make them do that. Their own suffering, not anybody else's.
If you had a third party that was actually viable and it framed things differently, that would actually make a difference. It's happening in Germany right now with AfD.
This all goes back to what Naomi Klein described in the Shock Doctrine: if you can keep the worlds population in a near constant state if shock with an endless stream of threat, terror, and economic instability you can get away with nearly anything. (It’s a shame what has happened to her since Klein wrote this book. )
The worst threat to the state would be a healthy, secure, well educated population, capable of acting or dissenting.
"Power is controlling what happens, but real power is controlling what people think about what happens".
I like to think that most of us who appreciate the chance to comment on Caitlin's pages share her enlightened world view. But sadly we are the few, not the many. Here's hoping that she will be able to influence a lot more.
The USA has so fine-tuned propaganda that it has conditioned and moulded and infested the mindset of the polity. In that interview that Tucker Carlson did with Vladimir Putin it was as if one could feel the hopelessness that Putin felt - when asked about the Nordstream sabotage and why he didn't counter the version in the Western media - he said what was the point when the media is so controlled - or words to that effect. And lo and behold Nordstream has gone down without a ripple. This maybe an insignificant example as bigger and more horrifying things have happened (right from the start of the US empire ) and are happening right now. What twists and turns and distortions are we in for with the terrorist attack in Moscow. How different the world would have been if the Soviet Union was allowed to experiment and exist with an alternative form of governing in a multi-polar world. But Communism had to be eradicated with mass slaughter in the "third world". The propaganda tool went on incessantly.
All this is inextricably linked with the tragedy of Gaza. And the fires burning in parts of Africa.
The Global South emerging from decolonisation got the full blast of neocolonialism.
I have worked for years now trying to show exactly what Caitlin describes in this article, namely by describing the facts behind U.S. use of biological warfare during the Korean War. I have had spotty success. But I have not broken through to the public in a more general way, possibly because my research involves U.S. crimes against China and North Korea. Both are vilified by U.S. propaganda assets, and overlooking what the U.S. does to those countries is precisely the aim of U.S. media and academia. The crimes took place long ago... but the COVER-UP of these crimes still operates today! And the cover-up of a crime is a crime itself. The story is current and ongoing.
The saying, "those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it," may be hoary and cliched, but remains as true today as ever. The cover-up of U.S. use of WMD and mass murder in the Korean War was the laboratory for the development of psychological warfare that Caitlin and others describe happening today. I think Caitlin's readers would be very interested in knowing the truth about U.S. dropping fleas infected with plague, beetles dusted with anthrax spores, spraying plant diseases to destroy crops, and more. The truth turned out to be out there, if one were only motivated enough to look.
We can do much, much better in opposing the crimes of U.S. imperialism. But if I may disagree with Caitlin a little: we do need to know more about these crimes. We do need this vital new information. One way to oppose imperialism and win new recruits against their crimes is by educating people exactly about what it does and how it does it. That is impossible if one hides crimes or remains in ignorance. Let the full extent of U.S.'s war crimes be known!
The old sales adage is "the first number you tell someone is the one they remember."
Same with news - you just tell a lie and keep repeating it, regardless of what follows.
Most people simply believe it and will never question it.
Our government doesn't care about the people who know differently. They just keep lying for the people who don't which is enough to continue the status quo.
I grew up in Los Angeles but have lived in Japan for 40 years. I remember watching a lot of cowboy programs on TV as a child and detective shows as a teenager. I began to notice that almost every form of entertainment focused on guns and killing people. What were the cowboy shows but promoting genocide of the native Americans? When I had a chance to live in Japan for a year, it was a complete revelation to live in a gunless society. I can walk alone at night without being afraid of being attacked or shot. Living outside one’s country is a great way to see it with new eyes.
Biden does not want to lose AIPAC money.
The West's Reckoning? Dr. Michael Brenner
Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, and genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, they feel no humiliation or shame. Their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them...
..Clues for these abnormalities are provided by their most recent responses as deteriorating conditions tighten the vise – on emotions, on prevailing policies, on domestic political worries, on ginger egos. Those responses fall under the category of panic behavior. Deep down, they are scared, fearful, and agitated. Biden et al in Washington, Macron, Schulz, Sunak, Stoltenberg, von der Leyen. They lack the courage of their stated convictions or the courage to face reality squarely. The blunt truth is that they have contrived to get themselves, and their countries, in a quandary from which there is no escape conforming to their current self-defined interests and emotional engagement...
..French President Emmanuel Macon’s proposed plan to station military personnel from NATO members within Ukraine to serve as a tripwire. Arrayed as a cordon around Kharkov, Odessa, and Kiev they are meant to deter advancing Russian forces from moving on those cities for fear of killing Western soldiers – thereby risking a direct confrontation with the Alliance...
..There already are thousands of Westerners bolstering the Ukrainian armed forces. Roughly 4 – 5,000 Americans have been performing critical operational functions from the outset. The presence of a majority predates by several years the onset of hostilities 2 years ago. That contingent was augmented by a supplementary group of 1,700 last summer which was a corps of logistic experts advertised as mandated to seek out and eradicate corruption in the black-marketing of pilfered supplies. The Pentagon people are sown through the Ukrainian military from headquarters planning units to advisers in the field, to technicians and Special Forces...
..The principal lesson to be drawn from this overview is that the positioning of European troops at key sites as human hostages is not wholly original. Their presence has not deterred Russia from attacking them in the field or, as in the French case, hunting them down in their residences...
..Insofar as the violent ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is concerned, it is fair to say that the Western government’s complicity via its arming and unqualified backing for Israel’s gruesome actions constitutes grotesque behavior. To single out individual elements among individual governments is superfluous. The entire episode is grotesque. So it is seen by nearly the entire world outside the countries of the collective West...
..There are actions that manifestly represent a clear and future danger of an expanding war in Europe...
..Taken together, the actions of Western leaders – supported by their nations’ political elites – are indicative of a behavior pattern that has parted ways with reality. They derive deductively from dogmas unsubstantiated by objective fact...
..Back to the ingredients of panic. We noted fear – of both the identifiable and the unknown, and sub-conscious feelings of insecurity... opening opportunities for willful persons or factions who harbor audacious objectives of remaking the world’s geo-political space according to American hegemonic specifications. To that end, our leaders manipulate and exploit conditions of emotional disorientation and political conformity. The outstanding example is the so-called ‘neo-cons’ in Washington (who number Joe Biden as a comrade-in-arms) who have crafted a network of like-minded true believers in London, Paris, Berlin, and at both ends of Brussels.
What of the puzzle we noted as to the near complete absence of feelings of guilt or shame – especially over Gaza, of being humiliated in the eyes of the world? In conditions of nihilism, matters of conscience are moot. The implicit rejection of norms, rules, and laws frees the individual self to do whatever impulses or ideas, or selfish interests impel it. With the superego dissolved, there is no felt obligation to judge oneself about any external or abstract standard. Narcissistic tendencies flourish. A similar psychology obviates the requirement for experiencing shame. That is something that can only exist if we subjectively are part of a social grouping wherein personal status, and sense of worth, depend on how others view us and whether they grant us respect. In the absence of such a communal identity, with its attendant sensitivity to its opinion, shame can exist only in the perverse form of regret that one has been unable to meet the demanding, all-consuming need for self-gratification. That applies to nations as well as their individual leaders.
https://neutralitystudies.com/2024/03/the-wests-reckoning/
"Power is controlling what happens, but real power is controlling what people think about what happens.."
Napoleon was onto this: "the truth is not nearly as important as what people think to be true." (I'm quoting from memory.)
It's time for people to focus on individual and cooperative community action to help alleviate existential deprivations and endure far worse the dynamic unimpeded clearly shows are coming. Far more urgently than trying to open eyes at this point. Find allies by addressing real problems people are experiencing regardless of their level of perception as long as you can agree on specific solutions for those items. That will convert more people and open them up to others than all the facts and debates ever will. If the goal is more people wokring together for their interests, not the oligarchs and reducing suffering, practical solutions are far more effective. And they actually make something better. All the influencers can keep promoting intellectual awareness, as genocide and ecocide continue, or shift to real action alignments to promote better surviving a collapse wirh less suffering and perhaps, less rancor.
So true. How do we snap people out of the media and movie induced trance that allows them to justify atrocities?
"Until we find a way to snap a critical mass of people out ..." - the problem is even when made aware most people won't want to snap out of anything. Only real suffering will make them do that. Their own suffering, not anybody else's.
US body count from wars, interventions, coups, and proxy wars since 1945 is well over 20 million.
If you had a third party that was actually viable and it framed things differently, that would actually make a difference. It's happening in Germany right now with AfD.
rangevoting.org
This all goes back to what Naomi Klein described in the Shock Doctrine: if you can keep the worlds population in a near constant state if shock with an endless stream of threat, terror, and economic instability you can get away with nearly anything. (It’s a shame what has happened to her since Klein wrote this book. )
The worst threat to the state would be a healthy, secure, well educated population, capable of acting or dissenting.
Thank you Caitlin🙏
the genocide sponsored by exxon-mobil and associates
Than you 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
"Power is controlling what happens, but real power is controlling what people think about what happens".
I like to think that most of us who appreciate the chance to comment on Caitlin's pages share her enlightened world view. But sadly we are the few, not the many. Here's hoping that she will be able to influence a lot more.
The USA has so fine-tuned propaganda that it has conditioned and moulded and infested the mindset of the polity. In that interview that Tucker Carlson did with Vladimir Putin it was as if one could feel the hopelessness that Putin felt - when asked about the Nordstream sabotage and why he didn't counter the version in the Western media - he said what was the point when the media is so controlled - or words to that effect. And lo and behold Nordstream has gone down without a ripple. This maybe an insignificant example as bigger and more horrifying things have happened (right from the start of the US empire ) and are happening right now. What twists and turns and distortions are we in for with the terrorist attack in Moscow. How different the world would have been if the Soviet Union was allowed to experiment and exist with an alternative form of governing in a multi-polar world. But Communism had to be eradicated with mass slaughter in the "third world". The propaganda tool went on incessantly.
All this is inextricably linked with the tragedy of Gaza. And the fires burning in parts of Africa.
The Global South emerging from decolonisation got the full blast of neocolonialism.
I have worked for years now trying to show exactly what Caitlin describes in this article, namely by describing the facts behind U.S. use of biological warfare during the Korean War. I have had spotty success. But I have not broken through to the public in a more general way, possibly because my research involves U.S. crimes against China and North Korea. Both are vilified by U.S. propaganda assets, and overlooking what the U.S. does to those countries is precisely the aim of U.S. media and academia. The crimes took place long ago... but the COVER-UP of these crimes still operates today! And the cover-up of a crime is a crime itself. The story is current and ongoing.
The saying, "those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it," may be hoary and cliched, but remains as true today as ever. The cover-up of U.S. use of WMD and mass murder in the Korean War was the laboratory for the development of psychological warfare that Caitlin and others describe happening today. I think Caitlin's readers would be very interested in knowing the truth about U.S. dropping fleas infected with plague, beetles dusted with anthrax spores, spraying plant diseases to destroy crops, and more. The truth turned out to be out there, if one were only motivated enough to look.
I encourage readers to peruse my Substack and other writings on the subject at Medium.com. A good place to start is with these two Substack articles: https://open.substack.com/pub/kayej/p/fbi-smoking-gun-on-us-use-of-biological?r=2t45z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true and https://open.substack.com/pub/kayej/p/the-lights-were-blinking-red?r=2t45z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web.
We can do much, much better in opposing the crimes of U.S. imperialism. But if I may disagree with Caitlin a little: we do need to know more about these crimes. We do need this vital new information. One way to oppose imperialism and win new recruits against their crimes is by educating people exactly about what it does and how it does it. That is impossible if one hides crimes or remains in ignorance. Let the full extent of U.S.'s war crimes be known!
The old sales adage is "the first number you tell someone is the one they remember."
Same with news - you just tell a lie and keep repeating it, regardless of what follows.
Most people simply believe it and will never question it.
Our government doesn't care about the people who know differently. They just keep lying for the people who don't which is enough to continue the status quo.