Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): Our society does not have an antisemitism crisis. It doesn’t have a crisis of far left radicalism, Islamist extremism, support for terrorism, or fomenting of dissent by foreign powers. Our society has a moral crisis. A cruelty crisis. An imperialism crisis. A militarism crisis. A propaganda crisis. An insincerity crisis. A stupidity crisis. An obedience crisis.
Hope you like your new living quarters. Moving is so disruptive. As I wrote that, I thought "how can you even say that, think about the people in Gaza". There are so many simple little things I do every day and every so often it pops into my mind how privileged I am just to be able to do them.
Same here. What am I complaining about because we have a hole in our roof? The majority of it is still there. We're not living in a tent in a refugee camp being bombed mercilessly. A lot to be grateful for.
The Revolution.... "A lot to be grateful for"... maybe you're right. We live in a castle, with a lake view to live for. If we don't pay our dues however, and don't play by the rules, we could be homeless, much like the hundreds of people who have just finished surviving another Canadian winter living in tents. Most of them can't observe what is happening in Gaza, nor do they care, simply because they have enough to look after their own selves and trying to prevent their body from becoming an ice cube. It's a hundred times worse in Gaza, but a few stupid decisions from a weary general armed with apocalyptic weapons could bring Gaza home to roost everywhere.
Wars are THE biggest contributor to the escalation of climate change. What is happening in Gaza and Ukraine and in other parts of the world will definitely come home to roost on all of us. Perhaps even before that happens, hate and revenge will take root in the hearts and minds of people everywhere for one reason or another.
The genocide in Gaza is showing that hatred and revenge have long ago taken root in the heart of humanity. One of the most hateful conditions that we can impose on all of us, and impose on the Earth, is to fight one another with our war machinery, and that war machinery starts to be built at home. in row after row of homeless encampments, in soup kitchens, in people being dispossessed of their homes for being sick.
Who are the world's soldiers, police, governments , the 99%, or the 1% Gandhi really had it right when he suggested that if you want to save the world and change humanity, "Be the change you want to see in the world". In municipal halls, who decides what to do with the homeless, or how the homeless are treated when they affect house values. Who decides which essential services will be cut for lack of payments.... i.e., water or electricity.... .. the 1%, or the 99%. If we end up with hell on Earth, it will be of OUR own making, not theirs. Isn't that what a democracy is all about... OUR choice?
Thanks RTC. My only solace is finally completing my portrait of my hero Rachel Corrie. When I took it to get framed, the young woman who did so was curious about who she was. I told her Rachel’s story. She asked if she could take a photo of the picture; I told her, Of course, and she said that she would tell of what happened to Rachel when she showed the photo to people.
I remember the famous line from 'Casablanca': "It doesn't take much to realise that the problems of two little people don't matter a hill of beans in this crazy world".
Who would've thought that over 80 years later, that line would still be so pertinent?
I feel for you, and feel for anyone who is obliged to rent property on this planet. I have seen our two sons evicted too many times, and seen their belongings laying on the road, once in the middle of winter at -20 degrees C. To be denied a place of your own and having to pay someone else for the basic need for shelter is one of the reasons for wars, perhaps ultimately nuclear war. Unless we find a solution to the way we think, I'm afraid homelessness may be in store for everyone.
As Julian Assange reminded us, echoed a few days ago by Scott Ritter: the first amendment exists to embarrass the US government. If we don't make use of it for that purpose, we fail as citizens.
I love it. I'm deeply attached to my right to freedom of speech and horrified by how many liberals don't understand the threat to it. We desperately need the ACLU of yesteryear, with its ability to apprehend this nuance: that by allowing Nazis to use their freedom of speech rights we fortify our own.
There's a video of Chomsky saying it directly to a student -- if you don't believe in freedom of speech for your worst enemy, you don't believe in freedom of speech.
The culture wars have greatly helped to destroy our capacity for critical thought, and that's true for both sides. What matters today is defending your beliefs against the barbarians on the other side, who are working people with the wrong views, not the billionaires or their paid servants in Congress. Anything feeling like even a tiny concession triggers us on all levels, even physiologically! Under such conditions, views that admit the rights or humanity of The Other feel personally threatening. It's a wildly irrational time, and the Establishment is thrilled since it's the only one benefitting. More than ever, we've been convinced to hate the wrong people, even as it's never been more important to hate the right ones.
As you say, the barbarians are not alongside you or on the other side of some fabricated societal divide. They're in plain view -- flaunting their influential billions upon our inappropriately labeled "legislators" [snicker!], mostly spokespersons for the wielders of the enormous power that comes with such ridiculous amounts of wealth, which most of us find difficult to fathom.
A long ago forgotten thought. I recently read an article about how the LGBTQ+ community was a conspiracy to destroy civilization. The implication was that by taking away their right to freedom of expression; even of their right to existence, they, the straight community would somehow gain more freedom for themselves. Do we remember the narrative of black being white and vis-a-vis from a decade ago? The forever repeating cycle of killing intellectuals; Mao Zedong, and his Cultural Revolution was after all a Harvard/Mafia run operation; same as is planned for the U.S. population.
YES!!! We need more embarrassment of the US government and all Western governments who are funding and arming this genocide and others. The daring ladies of Code Pink are prime examples of how to do just that, too.
Absolutely Correct. Pacifism is voting, and hoping. ACTIVISM is getting seen, and heard it is how things get done. No need to riot like BLM. Just gather and make the powers that be know you mean business and expect results not speeches or empty promises. ACT LOCAL think Global. See 'Sands Of Sorrow'- on YouTube. Palestine 1938 to today . It's an eye opener. https://youtu.be/JY4SKsU2K1k?feature=shared
Non violent change would be the hoped for method. However the entire history of mankind has proven that those in power respect only violence as it is how they acquired and maintain power. It is a slippery slope. Freedom requires constant diligence.
Our society has a Zionist/AIPAC control problem. Just take one look at who the two leading presidential candidates are! One is a ZioDementia patient who jumps every time Nutty Yahoo calls and the other has close relatives who are already planning to build luxury condos on top of the bodies of mutilated children in Gaza!
Billionaire ZioTurds can order IDF-trained stormtroopers to attack anti-GENOCIDE student protesters with one phone call (HELLO Mental Midget Mayor Adams!!). IDF facial recognition cameras are installed on campuses. Any student who criticizes Israel can be expelled, lose career opportunities and have their faces plastered on the sides of trucks, with "ANTI-SEMITE" plastered above their faces!!
College presidents who don't prevent student protests or expel student protesters are dragged before congress, interrogated by AIPAC Puppet Thugs, accused of anti-semitism and fired. They are immediately replaced by rabid Zionists. WTF???? Joe McCarthy is laughing! "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Hamas Party?? ANSWER MY QUESTION YOU JEW HATER!!"
Pry the tentacles of Israeli control off of our society and many of our other problems will be easier to solve! It's not the only thing that's wrong with this country but it sure is the cause of many of our most serious problems!
You might be interested in this short film about J D Rockerfella (the worlds first billionaire). The evil-doers in the USA and the UK go back a long way.
Hear hear - searching for the court room, justice dept's, or parliamentary opening hear eeee hear eeee (an attempt at some sense of humor) Thanks for your contribution.
Henry David Thoreau was thrown in prison for refusal to pay his poll tax. His friend Ralph Emerson came to bail him out and asked him, "Henry, what are you doing in here?" Thoreau answered, "The real question, Ralph, is what are you doing out there?"
Thoreau also said: "What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch out of a meandering stream." He understood that "education" is one of the first straitjackets we're fitted for. Smart man, and deeply humane and brave.
Absolutely true. I worked for public schools for 16 years. This "education " is as much or more about socialization and conformity, as it is of actual learning. In large part, these big schools are run like daycare gulags.
Daycare gulags... I like that description. Very appropriate. We don't teach critical thinking skills (or even encourage them in kids who display them in spite of the indoctrination) because our "masters" can't have their "servants" get all uppity and think for themselves. To be civilly disobedient, we have to learn to think for ourselves and to think critically. No more of this conformity business!! Be yourself!!
You can't understand our failed schools without understanding adult privilege and the enormous market that children and education represent. Yes, our schools benefit the ruling class by training children in obedience, but ordinary adults also benefit. The most humble adult has much more control over his or her life than any child does, which is why adults have the right to quit but kids don't. Beyond this, of course, the system is a dependable promoter of consumerism, predatory capitalism, and conformity, but if you leave out the adult privilege part you're missing the whole picture. Every single practice of our one-size-fits-all school system must be viewed through the lens of one class (adults) keeping another class (young people) in their place and exploiting them to its benefit. Corporal punishment was used in the past to keep students in line; now we have drugs for that purpose. (Zombify them young and they're likely to be pliant and estranged from self for the rest of their lives.) In the short-term, all adults reap the rewards; in the long-term, our imperial masters and their political tools make out like bandits, but the main takeaway for the education analyst is that an untrusting, industrial, and labor-intensive school system is utterly alien to how children actually learn and therefore highly ineffective and demoralizing. If only this mattered to anyone with any say over the whole ugly thing.
How do you think this (socialization conformity happened? Educational policies by the government or the teachers themselves? Schools here in Hawaii are run more like prison than schools. The "teachers" I've known here are only concerned with their retirement benefits. I'd like your opinion on it.
Toma....... "The "teachers" I've known here are only concerned with their retirement benefits." MMMmmmmm ??? I was a public school teacher for 15 years... My retirement benefits are $700/month... just enough to pay my electric bill.
Don't know how much they make here. 40k I think for some. The politics are absurd in school. I tutored college math and high school and tried to offer free tutoring and got nixed by the Waldorf school and the public library system. Have a 28 year old here who couldn't add 5 to 16 (construction worker oh la). It's deplorable.
Megan.... Wasn't it Carlos Castaneda who quoted Don Juan as saying that one of the hardest things in life is to shed the garbage that is stuffed down children's throats from Day One.
Society also has a massive great climate crisis exacerbated by weapons production (and deployment) by the US, Russia, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen and China- all because of US Imperialism.
It's good to have you back Caitlin. We covered for you during your move. We've been raising hell wherever we can.
Personally, I'm isolated in the middle of nowhere but I'm transmitting from my phone. I'm used my phone to resubscribe to you, donate to Julian's Freedom Fund, defend the anti-Zionists, attack the Neocons and Zionists and encourage the student protesters.
Everyone! This must we do! First of all, UNITE! We must keep it up, ramp it up, get louder and never give up. If we're met with resistance, we increase our resistance. We must increase our efforts exponentially!
Their narrative is penetrated as you wrote, Caitlin. The Rulers are in a panic. Their fraud is becoming apparent so they're resorting to force. Orwell was right. The Neocons and Zionists are lying like hell and force is being used.
I agree with all of the above but an equally important issue is our "societal consciousness" which is sadly lacking. John Ralston Saul wrote, for me, one of the most important books of our time: The Unconscious Civilization, and this is just what the West has become. We are the blind led by the blind.
We don't don't know our own history, we don't know the issues, our world view is immature and corrupted by the presence of the empire and its endless propaganda and brainwashing. We have been zombified by the political zombies who have betrayed us.
Two of my readers, very recently commented that cell phones are part of the the problem as odious weapons of mass distraction, and I totally agree with them. Our societies are fully loaded with weapons of mass distraction to keep our eyes off the ball and what really matters.
As Neil Postman pointed out we are "amusing ourselves to death" as we become a society of couch potatoes demanding more entertainment and less reality.
When future historians assess the decline and fall of the West television and cell phones will be at the top of the list along with a whole bunch of junk technologies that rob us of our humanism.
What is most discouraging of all is that our local school board is allowing students to use AI to write their essays as long as they are foot noted accordingly! Writing original work, is of course, an essential life skill teaching us how to think and express ourselves.
We really are determined to be androidian societies.
In general, your narrative resonates.... except for one thing about "future historians"... if they ever get to be around... .. right? With the existential threats lying at our feet, optimism for future writers might be a problem... ?
Quite right - too many people agree with the establishment’s policy of banal evil doing.
But for many it’s quite frankly un-civil obedience. Police slamming peaceful teenagers and 65 year old professors to the ground, or media gaslighting people by calling bigots or racist for protesting genocide, that’s downright uncivil.
These are zealots. It’s not just a matter of putting heads down and obeying. There is a mass culture of hatred and oppression of the “other” that has infected so called western societies.
Just as moving the conversation from lack of accountability for murderous cops to anti-racist rhetoric , they are using antisemitism as a distraction from a genocide that the US is funding.
Glad to have you back, Caitlin! Do hope you are happy with the move.
While you were away the ICC plucked up enough courage to charge the Israel leadership with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Netanyahu at once called it an act of antisemitism. No surprises there. And as if to appease the US/West the ICC also charged Hamas with war crimes. There is no moral equivalence here (and I am not about the moral equivalence that Biden was talking about).
There is no moral equivalence between an oppressor and the oppressed; no moral equivalence between the occupier and the occupied; no moral equivalence between a genocidal state and a resistance movement; no moral equivalence between the settler colonialist and the colonised.
Julian Assange is thought to have been given a reprieve to appeal again but left back in Belmarsh prison. Arn't they just prolonging his persecution.
I of course totally agree Caitlin. We have been conned to believe that we live in a free and fair society with an accurate 24hour news cycle. The truth behind that illusion is that we live in parallel world which more deeply resembles George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four
Beautifully written as usual, Caitlin. Welcome back. We missed you. Hope the move went well.
Thanks. I'm sore as hell from lifting stuff and barely even unpacked, but we made it.
Hope you like your new living quarters. Moving is so disruptive. As I wrote that, I thought "how can you even say that, think about the people in Gaza". There are so many simple little things I do every day and every so often it pops into my mind how privileged I am just to be able to do them.
Same here. What am I complaining about because we have a hole in our roof? The majority of it is still there. We're not living in a tent in a refugee camp being bombed mercilessly. A lot to be grateful for.
The Revolution.... "A lot to be grateful for"... maybe you're right. We live in a castle, with a lake view to live for. If we don't pay our dues however, and don't play by the rules, we could be homeless, much like the hundreds of people who have just finished surviving another Canadian winter living in tents. Most of them can't observe what is happening in Gaza, nor do they care, simply because they have enough to look after their own selves and trying to prevent their body from becoming an ice cube. It's a hundred times worse in Gaza, but a few stupid decisions from a weary general armed with apocalyptic weapons could bring Gaza home to roost everywhere.
Wars are THE biggest contributor to the escalation of climate change. What is happening in Gaza and Ukraine and in other parts of the world will definitely come home to roost on all of us. Perhaps even before that happens, hate and revenge will take root in the hearts and minds of people everywhere for one reason or another.
The genocide in Gaza is showing that hatred and revenge have long ago taken root in the heart of humanity. One of the most hateful conditions that we can impose on all of us, and impose on the Earth, is to fight one another with our war machinery, and that war machinery starts to be built at home. in row after row of homeless encampments, in soup kitchens, in people being dispossessed of their homes for being sick.
Who are the world's soldiers, police, governments , the 99%, or the 1% Gandhi really had it right when he suggested that if you want to save the world and change humanity, "Be the change you want to see in the world". In municipal halls, who decides what to do with the homeless, or how the homeless are treated when they affect house values. Who decides which essential services will be cut for lack of payments.... i.e., water or electricity.... .. the 1%, or the 99%. If we end up with hell on Earth, it will be of OUR own making, not theirs. Isn't that what a democracy is all about... OUR choice?
TRC;
I feel guilty going to the grocery store, and crawling into an actual bed at night. 😔
You gotta keep your strength up to keep the fight going , so don't feel too bad.
Thanks RTC. My only solace is finally completing my portrait of my hero Rachel Corrie. When I took it to get framed, the young woman who did so was curious about who she was. I told her Rachel’s story. She asked if she could take a photo of the picture; I told her, Of course, and she said that she would tell of what happened to Rachel when she showed the photo to people.
I remember the famous line from 'Casablanca': "It doesn't take much to realise that the problems of two little people don't matter a hill of beans in this crazy world".
Who would've thought that over 80 years later, that line would still be so pertinent?
I feel for you, and feel for anyone who is obliged to rent property on this planet. I have seen our two sons evicted too many times, and seen their belongings laying on the road, once in the middle of winter at -20 degrees C. To be denied a place of your own and having to pay someone else for the basic need for shelter is one of the reasons for wars, perhaps ultimately nuclear war. Unless we find a solution to the way we think, I'm afraid homelessness may be in store for everyone.
Glad to hear you are moved. I know still lots to do to make the place home.
It’s not civil disobedience… it’s CIVIL OBEDIENCE! Wow, that is amazing!
We need to stop obeying tyrants because if we obey and support them, WE are guilty as well: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/how-to-defeat-the-bad-guys-part-one
As Julian Assange reminded us, echoed a few days ago by Scott Ritter: the first amendment exists to embarrass the US government. If we don't make use of it for that purpose, we fail as citizens.
I love it. I'm deeply attached to my right to freedom of speech and horrified by how many liberals don't understand the threat to it. We desperately need the ACLU of yesteryear, with its ability to apprehend this nuance: that by allowing Nazis to use their freedom of speech rights we fortify our own.
There's a video of Chomsky saying it directly to a student -- if you don't believe in freedom of speech for your worst enemy, you don't believe in freedom of speech.
The culture wars have greatly helped to destroy our capacity for critical thought, and that's true for both sides. What matters today is defending your beliefs against the barbarians on the other side, who are working people with the wrong views, not the billionaires or their paid servants in Congress. Anything feeling like even a tiny concession triggers us on all levels, even physiologically! Under such conditions, views that admit the rights or humanity of The Other feel personally threatening. It's a wildly irrational time, and the Establishment is thrilled since it's the only one benefitting. More than ever, we've been convinced to hate the wrong people, even as it's never been more important to hate the right ones.
As you say, the barbarians are not alongside you or on the other side of some fabricated societal divide. They're in plain view -- flaunting their influential billions upon our inappropriately labeled "legislators" [snicker!], mostly spokespersons for the wielders of the enormous power that comes with such ridiculous amounts of wealth, which most of us find difficult to fathom.
Vin... Chomsky also said the most important 3 things in the world are MONEY, then MONEY, and said he forgot what the third one was.
A long ago forgotten thought. I recently read an article about how the LGBTQ+ community was a conspiracy to destroy civilization. The implication was that by taking away their right to freedom of expression; even of their right to existence, they, the straight community would somehow gain more freedom for themselves. Do we remember the narrative of black being white and vis-a-vis from a decade ago? The forever repeating cycle of killing intellectuals; Mao Zedong, and his Cultural Revolution was after all a Harvard/Mafia run operation; same as is planned for the U.S. population.
YES!!! We need more embarrassment of the US government and all Western governments who are funding and arming this genocide and others. The daring ladies of Code Pink are prime examples of how to do just that, too.
Yes, this makes us complicit when we listen to these monsters.😢
Absolutely Correct. Pacifism is voting, and hoping. ACTIVISM is getting seen, and heard it is how things get done. No need to riot like BLM. Just gather and make the powers that be know you mean business and expect results not speeches or empty promises. ACT LOCAL think Global. See 'Sands Of Sorrow'- on YouTube. Palestine 1938 to today . It's an eye opener. https://youtu.be/JY4SKsU2K1k?feature=shared
I've watched a lot of documentaries about the ME over the last 35 years but never saw Sands of Sorrow (1950). Thank you for sharing. :-(
I found it through, https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/05/fr-emmanuel-mccarthy/the-palestinian-people-two-years-after-the-beginning-of-the-state-of-israel-today/
Another new find of mine on you tube is "How nonviolence protects the State" by Peter Gelderloos. It is read one chapter at a time on youtube.
Non violent change would be the hoped for method. However the entire history of mankind has proven that those in power respect only violence as it is how they acquired and maintain power. It is a slippery slope. Freedom requires constant diligence.
Our society has a Zionist/AIPAC control problem. Just take one look at who the two leading presidential candidates are! One is a ZioDementia patient who jumps every time Nutty Yahoo calls and the other has close relatives who are already planning to build luxury condos on top of the bodies of mutilated children in Gaza!
Billionaire ZioTurds can order IDF-trained stormtroopers to attack anti-GENOCIDE student protesters with one phone call (HELLO Mental Midget Mayor Adams!!). IDF facial recognition cameras are installed on campuses. Any student who criticizes Israel can be expelled, lose career opportunities and have their faces plastered on the sides of trucks, with "ANTI-SEMITE" plastered above their faces!!
College presidents who don't prevent student protests or expel student protesters are dragged before congress, interrogated by AIPAC Puppet Thugs, accused of anti-semitism and fired. They are immediately replaced by rabid Zionists. WTF???? Joe McCarthy is laughing! "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Hamas Party?? ANSWER MY QUESTION YOU JEW HATER!!"
Pry the tentacles of Israeli control off of our society and many of our other problems will be easier to solve! It's not the only thing that's wrong with this country but it sure is the cause of many of our most serious problems!
Protestors learned the lesson of The Holocaust - Genocide is wrong.
Those attacking the protestors with The Slur ("antisemitism") have learned the lessons of
Power Politics.
No one has the right to call Genocide 'defense'.
You might be interested in this short film about J D Rockerfella (the worlds first billionaire). The evil-doers in the USA and the UK go back a long way.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/2B4aPxGWpmvePpAk/?mibextid=YlDasU
Thanks! I've skimmed books like Jekyll Island and Oliver Stone covered those thieves in his Untold American History. I'll check the link out!
Hear hear - searching for the court room, justice dept's, or parliamentary opening hear eeee hear eeee (an attempt at some sense of humor) Thanks for your contribution.
Henry David Thoreau was thrown in prison for refusal to pay his poll tax. His friend Ralph Emerson came to bail him out and asked him, "Henry, what are you doing in here?" Thoreau answered, "The real question, Ralph, is what are you doing out there?"
Thoreau also said: "What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch out of a meandering stream." He understood that "education" is one of the first straitjackets we're fitted for. Smart man, and deeply humane and brave.
Absolutely true. I worked for public schools for 16 years. This "education " is as much or more about socialization and conformity, as it is of actual learning. In large part, these big schools are run like daycare gulags.
Daycare gulags... I like that description. Very appropriate. We don't teach critical thinking skills (or even encourage them in kids who display them in spite of the indoctrination) because our "masters" can't have their "servants" get all uppity and think for themselves. To be civilly disobedient, we have to learn to think for ourselves and to think critically. No more of this conformity business!! Be yourself!!
You can't understand our failed schools without understanding adult privilege and the enormous market that children and education represent. Yes, our schools benefit the ruling class by training children in obedience, but ordinary adults also benefit. The most humble adult has much more control over his or her life than any child does, which is why adults have the right to quit but kids don't. Beyond this, of course, the system is a dependable promoter of consumerism, predatory capitalism, and conformity, but if you leave out the adult privilege part you're missing the whole picture. Every single practice of our one-size-fits-all school system must be viewed through the lens of one class (adults) keeping another class (young people) in their place and exploiting them to its benefit. Corporal punishment was used in the past to keep students in line; now we have drugs for that purpose. (Zombify them young and they're likely to be pliant and estranged from self for the rest of their lives.) In the short-term, all adults reap the rewards; in the long-term, our imperial masters and their political tools make out like bandits, but the main takeaway for the education analyst is that an untrusting, industrial, and labor-intensive school system is utterly alien to how children actually learn and therefore highly ineffective and demoralizing. If only this mattered to anyone with any say over the whole ugly thing.
Right on every point. However, do not forget that the number one symptom of mental illness is truly believing that you can truly make a difference.
G Z
How do you think this (socialization conformity happened? Educational policies by the government or the teachers themselves? Schools here in Hawaii are run more like prison than schools. The "teachers" I've known here are only concerned with their retirement benefits. I'd like your opinion on it.
Toma....... "The "teachers" I've known here are only concerned with their retirement benefits." MMMmmmmm ??? I was a public school teacher for 15 years... My retirement benefits are $700/month... just enough to pay my electric bill.
Don't know how much they make here. 40k I think for some. The politics are absurd in school. I tutored college math and high school and tried to offer free tutoring and got nixed by the Waldorf school and the public library system. Have a 28 year old here who couldn't add 5 to 16 (construction worker oh la). It's deplorable.
Megan.... Wasn't it Carlos Castaneda who quoted Don Juan as saying that one of the hardest things in life is to shed the garbage that is stuffed down children's throats from Day One.
That garbage is Capitalist values, like greed, individualism, competition, materialism/consumerism.
It sounds right to me! I've never read him but my husband devoured his books years ago and loves them.
G..... Nice story... Didn't know Thoreau was thrown in jail for unpaid taxes.
Society also has a massive great climate crisis exacerbated by weapons production (and deployment) by the US, Russia, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen and China- all because of US Imperialism.
A hot war, a hot world and a hot summer coming.
Jo.... All of the Sciences of humanity, the Arts, the beauty of nature, modernity et al, can be gone in the next 60 minutes.... yet, silence reigns.
It's good to have you back Caitlin. We covered for you during your move. We've been raising hell wherever we can.
Personally, I'm isolated in the middle of nowhere but I'm transmitting from my phone. I'm used my phone to resubscribe to you, donate to Julian's Freedom Fund, defend the anti-Zionists, attack the Neocons and Zionists and encourage the student protesters.
Everyone! This must we do! First of all, UNITE! We must keep it up, ramp it up, get louder and never give up. If we're met with resistance, we increase our resistance. We must increase our efforts exponentially!
Their narrative is penetrated as you wrote, Caitlin. The Rulers are in a panic. Their fraud is becoming apparent so they're resorting to force. Orwell was right. The Neocons and Zionists are lying like hell and force is being used.
FREE PALESTINE!🇵🇸
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE!!!!!🕊️
The great only appear so because we are on our knees. Let's rise!
A quote from James Larkin. I should have mentioned.
And yet even this level of slavishness is not enough for The Empire. "Picture a boot stamping on a human face, forever...."
Glad to see you back.
I agree with all of the above but an equally important issue is our "societal consciousness" which is sadly lacking. John Ralston Saul wrote, for me, one of the most important books of our time: The Unconscious Civilization, and this is just what the West has become. We are the blind led by the blind.
We don't don't know our own history, we don't know the issues, our world view is immature and corrupted by the presence of the empire and its endless propaganda and brainwashing. We have been zombified by the political zombies who have betrayed us.
Two of my readers, very recently commented that cell phones are part of the the problem as odious weapons of mass distraction, and I totally agree with them. Our societies are fully loaded with weapons of mass distraction to keep our eyes off the ball and what really matters.
As Neil Postman pointed out we are "amusing ourselves to death" as we become a society of couch potatoes demanding more entertainment and less reality.
When future historians assess the decline and fall of the West television and cell phones will be at the top of the list along with a whole bunch of junk technologies that rob us of our humanism.
What is most discouraging of all is that our local school board is allowing students to use AI to write their essays as long as they are foot noted accordingly! Writing original work, is of course, an essential life skill teaching us how to think and express ourselves.
We really are determined to be androidian societies.
In general, your narrative resonates.... except for one thing about "future historians"... if they ever get to be around... .. right? With the existential threats lying at our feet, optimism for future writers might be a problem... ?
Quite right - too many people agree with the establishment’s policy of banal evil doing.
But for many it’s quite frankly un-civil obedience. Police slamming peaceful teenagers and 65 year old professors to the ground, or media gaslighting people by calling bigots or racist for protesting genocide, that’s downright uncivil.
These are zealots. It’s not just a matter of putting heads down and obeying. There is a mass culture of hatred and oppression of the “other” that has infected so called western societies.
Just as moving the conversation from lack of accountability for murderous cops to anti-racist rhetoric , they are using antisemitism as a distraction from a genocide that the US is funding.
Perhaps put another way.
We are seeing the NORMALIZATION of acts of genocide by the state.
Glad to have you back, Caitlin! Do hope you are happy with the move.
While you were away the ICC plucked up enough courage to charge the Israel leadership with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Netanyahu at once called it an act of antisemitism. No surprises there. And as if to appease the US/West the ICC also charged Hamas with war crimes. There is no moral equivalence here (and I am not about the moral equivalence that Biden was talking about).
There is no moral equivalence between an oppressor and the oppressed; no moral equivalence between the occupier and the occupied; no moral equivalence between a genocidal state and a resistance movement; no moral equivalence between the settler colonialist and the colonised.
Julian Assange is thought to have been given a reprieve to appeal again but left back in Belmarsh prison. Arn't they just prolonging his persecution.
They are hoping he will die before they dare go against the US.
What a great Howard Zinn quote. Hitting the nail on the head!
I of course totally agree Caitlin. We have been conned to believe that we live in a free and fair society with an accurate 24hour news cycle. The truth behind that illusion is that we live in parallel world which more deeply resembles George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four