It's why Israel's claim to be destroying Gaza to "defeat Hamas terrorists" is so blatantly absurd and false. They've radicalised tens of thousands of young people who will grow up and take up arms against the oppressor.
There are no Hamas in the West Bank. And the Israelis for the last 6 months have been stepping up their murderous rampage there as well. So the whole: it's about Hamas is just another lie, although one of the Big Lies.
The other Big Lie is the rising "Anti-Semitism" in the US and if you oppose Zionism then you're an Anti-Semite and Holocaust supporter. These two big lies are key pieces of propaganda to provide cover for the ongoing sadistic genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. So far, both lies have been enough to brutally assault students in college campuses all over the world, and continue to have Genocide Joe supply Gaza with 2,000 pound bombs - to get the "Hamas", as opposed to wiping out all hospitals, universities and flattening most of Gaza to make it unliveable, and murdering 14,000+ children while doing it along with another 16,000+ unarmed civilians. The Big Lie is the Israeli claim that this is a legitimate act in warfare. No, it is a deliberate massacre and ethnic cleansing supported by the United States. These kinds of barbaric acts are considered human atrocities and crimes against humanity EVEN IN times of war.
Israel claims to be killing fewer noncombatants than any other army in history. This is because Israel helpfully classifies all of its victims as enemy combatants, men, women, old people, children, pets.
Zionists claim a massive upsurge in antisemitism, which somehow justifies genocide. This is because the Zionists helpfully classify even the most timid demurral of anything Israel does as antisemitism identical to Hitler and Himmler.
Demonstrating just how powerful a "lie" can be. And how people are so susceptible and victimized to a deliberate "lie". Why, what Caitlin is repeatedly writing here on her substack is so vitally important - the remarkable power of a "lie", and how important to expose a lie for what it is. And how much cruelty and human sadism can be hidden behind it.
Lol you need to get to know some Palestinian people and other Muslims. I've never known such loving people, and no, they don't hate jews for being jews. They hate Israel for committing horrible oppression against them for a century, and they have every reason to. Get to know some people different from you and learn the real history and you'll know the truth.
And Israel has been genociding Palestine decades before Hamas was elected. As has been said, Israel was attacking and blockading Gaza on October 6 and was allowing Israeli settlers to attack the Al Asia mosque and people in the West Bank before October 7. Only people ignorant of history believe that Hamas started the war.
An excellent summary on the subject. However, if we add some cunning, practised over 75 years, lots of political grafting money, then as an additional prize, you now own the USA and white / anglo governments everywhere......., but not the intelligent students planning for their future.
Remember when Dubya solemnly pronounced that "They hate us for our freedoms!" and people acted like he was Pericles or something?
Well, his own defense secretary Don Rumsfeld commissioned some opinion research in the Middle East. Seems that the Muslim world didn't hate us for our freedoms. If anything, they liked freedom.
If they hated us, it was for our hypocrisy, our outrageous double standards and blatant favoritism in support of Israel and their own homegrown tyrants.
Needless to say, that one got memory-holed with a doubleplus quickness.
“Someday there will be a large-scale violent attack on the US in retaliation for its genocide in Gaza, and the response from the US will with absolute certainty be more military expansionism in the middle east.”
It will also be the excuse for even more security-state expansion domestically.
I often wonder how long your average US worker and taxpayer - maybe having to do 2 jobs just to make ends meet - is going to take to work out how they are being screwed. It's not that their tax dollars are going abroad, but that they are funding the lifestyles of everyone in the arms industry - from the well paid workers with steady jobs with benefits, to the owners' sickening luxury. Will they ever understand that the taxes they pay for armaments are not about subjugating enemies abroad, but about subsidising one small section of US society.
Nobody will ask the average frustrated American. Truly, the quote below never grows old!
Later in the conversation, Gilbert recorded Goering's observations that the common people can always be manipulated into supporting and fighting wars by their political leaders:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
I guess you represent an 'average US worker and taxpayer' - in your case one of those who has not worked it out, and likely never will. Your government doesn't care if the people you are paying them to subjugate are followers of Allah or not - they are just an enemy that is convenient right now because it's easy to persuade people such as yourself to keep sending them money to keep the whole war machine running, especially as the war with Russia is fizzling out, and the new war with China hasn't got going yet.
The Zionists and the MIC/security state staged a spectacularly televisual murder of 3,000 people as a pretext for never ending war against people in West Asia and North Africa, and to incite hatred and fear of Muslims.
You bet! The CIA and Mossad also assassinated JFK, most likely because he didn’t want Israel to have nuclear proliferation. He was in the way of the Zionist plan. How many Israeli spies have been found out?
There are two more pieces to this arrangement: the propaganda that keeps American enthusiastic about the military; and the careful arrangement that has put at least one MIC plant in every Congressional district, so there will be a constituency yammering about their jobs if there is any threat of cutting anything.
But John Michael Greer posited that a likely way this empire end will be by military defeat, which may seem counterintuitive, but he points out that other nations don't use their military spending the way the US does, with decision dictated not by assessments of need by the military dogs, but by MIC lobbyists, and by enormous levels of acceptable fraud--from ordinary items charged at twenty times the normal price, to shrink wrapped pallets of $100 bills getting "lost" enroute to Iraq to the F35 plane that doesn't work well if it rains but still gets billions thrown at it.
Wait long enough and someone will say exactly what I was thinking. If I may however, I would like to expand on Mary's idea:
Caitlins piece implies that there is someone in charge, doing these things when in fact, the Oligarchy is simply moving in the direction of increasing stockholder wealth. The cycle of outrage followed by "terrorist" strikes increases stockholder wealth that is why it is happening (not because of some mythical "leadership"), and that is why it will continue for as long as the US exists in its current form.
While I more or less agree with your conclusion, I think you are seriously mis-characterising Caitlin’s argument by saying that she is implying that “there is someone in charge”. She discusses “empire managers”, which implies that there are various competing plutocratic interests at play.
Including Bernie Sanders the senator for Northrup Grumman. A co lifetime in public office as a “ liberal” and in all that time he could not manage to establish a more useful set of job than making tools for murder.
We must recognize that hate and racism are the essential instruments of imperialism for the last 400 years. America is a violent and racist society in large part because it has been infused with the imperialist warlords using these to justify their global wars and genocides. It is a paranoid view of the world that everybody is a potential enemy and must be slain economically or militarily. The American empire was mentored by the British empire which killed millions in its time.
Senator Lindsay Graham is a deranged infantilized victim of what happens to those who embrace the lies and dogma of the empire.
The decline of empire is why western politics has gone berserk... the political zombies know the party is over and they refuse to face this reality.
Apparently on all of us, including you. Who is safe in a security state that can do whatever the fuck it wants? Nobody is. That's what the US Constitution is suppose to be about, protecting the rights of ordinary Americans. When you got a spy agency doing whatever the fuck it wants to anybody it wants, that's a lawless, security state - and you can't call that freedom son.
It's not just a resource and land grab, it's the Greater Israel Project aka the Ided Yonen Plan from 1982 that's unfolding. Rothschild central bankers fund Zionism and want to increase the size of their fiefdom if it takes a hundred more years and they can print as much money as they need to fund it by buying off politicians, police, University Administrators, mainstream media stooges, ad nauseum. The brutal treatment of students by the Zionist Storm troopers shows how "over target" the students are by saying no to these fascists and their racist, apartheid state.
Very similar piece could be written about the history of Israeli “self-defense” - use whatever provocation necessary to get a violent response from a neighboring Arab state or Palestinians in the occupied territories, and use that response to justify a much larger military operation. Over the years, this has led to not only to expansion of land under Israeli control, but also to further enriching the US MIC through the continuing purchase of billions of dollars worth of arms to “protect” Israel from the potential attacks of those it continues to oppress and provoke.
Amen Caitlin, what you express today is exactly what I and others have been saying for years. It is painfully obvious that the Global War Of Terror was ordered by Israel in its Grand Chessboard to advance the notion of Greater Israel. The US Government and its military are but pawns in that diabolical game.
It’s ludicrous! Btw, can someone explain to me why anyone is pressuring Netanyahu to ‘come up with a plan’ after the Genocide? It’s not up to him! He’s the enemy of Palestinians! It’s for the Palestinians to chart their future. And don’t tell me there’s no one to govern! There are many brilliant, educated Palestinians that can get together and form a coalition. Both in the area and In sure some that were driven out into the diaspora.
and it's not as if the information that is the evidence for this pattern is hidden - just the 'history of ... ' section about any middle country demonstrates it clearly. As Caitlin says "If the oil-rich nations in the middle east ever had democratic rule, their governments would quickly move away from their official and unofficial alliances and partnerships with the United States and Israel, and would in all likelihood form their own powerful bloc in support of their own interests." People hate the fact that Saddam and Gadhafi were both elected (Fake news! Rigged!) and proceeded to try to trade oil in Dinars, the primary reason for their countries' annihilation. But empire tactics don't always work, with Iran being the greatest example. Despite their lies about 'defending democracy' the US and the British connived to oust Mossadeq's elected socialist government because they immediately set about nationalising their oil industry and getting rid of the West based big oil corporations. In response the allies staged a coup and put the brutal dictator Shah in place, which the Iranians finally rid themselves of. Of course, because democracy had been completely corrupted by then, it had to be accomplished by revolution, with Islamic Religion being the only rallying flag available. That this regime is so hard line is a by product of the need for absolute control that revolutions necessitate. Left to it's own devices - i.e. not economically sanctioned, and not surrounded by enemy military bases on all sides, and not having wars with their neighbours deliberately provoked and paid for, Iran would surely gradually revert to the perfectly pleasant and vibrant country it has been since time immemorial. As it is, like in so many countries oppressed by the US empire, a strong and unwavering regime is needed simply to hold a nation together. The alternative - as Iran is quite aware - is subjugation, chaos, poverty, having all your resources stolen.
Perhaps it is rationalized/justified/done in order to keep those nations from becoming strong and thereby is protective of our righteous shining city on a hill. But because it inverts and makes a mockery of our moral authority, a cornerstone of our rightful existence as global superpower, this explanation doesn't work for me. What does make sense is that our government is peopled by sociopaths who've institutionalized corruption, who are excited by the gravity and destruction and bloodshed of war, and who are addicted to this "supply". Like junkies who've destroyed their lives to feed their addiction, our leaders in government will destroy the nation and all the beauty of civilized humanity if there is no intervention.
I saw that! Good drop. Lesser known fact, many moons ago, Caitlin Johnstone was on the Jimmy Dore show - back in Jimmy Dore's Pre-Covid days - when he had the illustrious Graham Elwood and Ron Placone. Also lesser known fact: Graham & Ron met with Caitlin in Australia though Ron Placone nearly burned down an entire building with a toaster.
Fascinating Caitlin and Jimmy trivia! You have piqued my curiosity—I will have to look into this further. Speaking of which, if you have any information re the Counterpunch hit piece on Caitlin from about eight years ago, I’d be most grateful. And to think that 20 years ago I was a paid subscriber of Cockburn. The shame!
No info on Counterpunch. I learned about Johnstone while watching the Jimmy Dore show many years ago. I became a big fan of Dore when he was on TYT and was a member of his show for many years. I still enjoy his shows today, but am a bit more selective in what I will watch.
"...Nothing will radicalize you against the US and its allies like watching them murder and displace your loved ones right in front of you."
So true. One wonders if the oligarchs realize that it also works the same way domestically. American workers today are observing their lives becoming more and more difficult, watching family members die early of preventable and curable diseases/injury because they don't have universal health care, losing their homes because the cost of housing has become unbearable. Perhaps the oligarchs want to make more "domestic terrorists" so they have more reasons to sic their militarize police on the people and take what little resources they still have?
>>"One wonders if the oligarchs realize that it also works the same way domestically."
I'm sure they are aware of it. Hence the need to spend vast amounts of resources to propagandize, brainwash, and gaslight the public. Part of the oligarchy's strategy is to invent enemies (like Russia, China, Iran, immigrants, etc.) and moral panics (using fear) and then deflect all blame towards them (scapegoating). As long as the level of critical thinking of the public is low (or things get reallllyyyyy desperate), I'm unable to see much of a change or enough of a challenge to the status quo (unfortunately).
The Evil Empire, as Caitlin so aptly calls it, is run by war junkies who get their high from death, destruction and domination. They are the real terrorists who hold the rest of the world hostage and, God help us, they will take everyone down with them if they have their way!
It's why Israel's claim to be destroying Gaza to "defeat Hamas terrorists" is so blatantly absurd and false. They've radicalised tens of thousands of young people who will grow up and take up arms against the oppressor.
There are no Hamas in the West Bank. And the Israelis for the last 6 months have been stepping up their murderous rampage there as well. So the whole: it's about Hamas is just another lie, although one of the Big Lies.
The other Big Lie is the rising "Anti-Semitism" in the US and if you oppose Zionism then you're an Anti-Semite and Holocaust supporter. These two big lies are key pieces of propaganda to provide cover for the ongoing sadistic genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. So far, both lies have been enough to brutally assault students in college campuses all over the world, and continue to have Genocide Joe supply Gaza with 2,000 pound bombs - to get the "Hamas", as opposed to wiping out all hospitals, universities and flattening most of Gaza to make it unliveable, and murdering 14,000+ children while doing it along with another 16,000+ unarmed civilians. The Big Lie is the Israeli claim that this is a legitimate act in warfare. No, it is a deliberate massacre and ethnic cleansing supported by the United States. These kinds of barbaric acts are considered human atrocities and crimes against humanity EVEN IN times of war.
Israel claims to be killing fewer noncombatants than any other army in history. This is because Israel helpfully classifies all of its victims as enemy combatants, men, women, old people, children, pets.
Zionists claim a massive upsurge in antisemitism, which somehow justifies genocide. This is because the Zionists helpfully classify even the most timid demurral of anything Israel does as antisemitism identical to Hitler and Himmler.
Demonstrating just how powerful a "lie" can be. And how people are so susceptible and victimized to a deliberate "lie". Why, what Caitlin is repeatedly writing here on her substack is so vitally important - the remarkable power of a "lie", and how important to expose a lie for what it is. And how much cruelty and human sadism can be hidden behind it.
Lol you need to get to know some Palestinian people and other Muslims. I've never known such loving people, and no, they don't hate jews for being jews. They hate Israel for committing horrible oppression against them for a century, and they have every reason to. Get to know some people different from you and learn the real history and you'll know the truth.
Congratulations, you just recapitulated a favorite Nazi trope.
Tell us, do "savages " deserve to die?
Well and succinctly stated.
Thanks.
Dido!! 👍👏🙏
Bingo….
"There are no Hamas in the West Bank."
And Israel has been genociding Palestine decades before Hamas was elected. As has been said, Israel was attacking and blockading Gaza on October 6 and was allowing Israeli settlers to attack the Al Asia mosque and people in the West Bank before October 7. Only people ignorant of history believe that Hamas started the war.
I don't see any signs of the bodies of all those Hamas terrorists they claim to have killed.
It is the same thing that the PLO, Hamas, and now any survivors will do. It is why IDF targets women and children, ethnic cleansing via Genocide.
I read that the middle east is experiencing more climate change related heat than anywhere else in the world. Maybe Israel and the US will move in and burn in the hell they deserve. https://truthout.org/articles/genocide-fuels-climate-crisis-the-fate-of-palestine-shapes-our-climate-future/
Actually the Philippines has just gone through the worst heat in History. All those US bases on the above named island!
Ralph
An excellent summary on the subject. However, if we add some cunning, practised over 75 years, lots of political grafting money, then as an additional prize, you now own the USA and white / anglo governments everywhere......., but not the intelligent students planning for their future.
Now for oil
Remember when Dubya solemnly pronounced that "They hate us for our freedoms!" and people acted like he was Pericles or something?
Well, his own defense secretary Don Rumsfeld commissioned some opinion research in the Middle East. Seems that the Muslim world didn't hate us for our freedoms. If anything, they liked freedom.
If they hated us, it was for our hypocrisy, our outrageous double standards and blatant favoritism in support of Israel and their own homegrown tyrants.
Needless to say, that one got memory-holed with a doubleplus quickness.
9/11 was the mother of all false flags
It absolutely was a false flag (see my comment here):-
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-us-empire-deliberately-stokes/comment/56442610
💯 Building 7 is THE fly in the ointment.
Not a false flag? To weak a metaphor? Another objection?
"They hate us for our freedom" - an inversion of truth, as you point out.
Satanists can be easily identified by their fondness for promoting ideas that are inversions of truth.
BINGO !!!
and the Goy are easily identified by their fondness of swallowing them ...
“Someday there will be a large-scale violent attack on the US in retaliation for its genocide in Gaza, and the response from the US will with absolute certainty be more military expansionism in the middle east.”
It will also be the excuse for even more security-state expansion domestically.
As I said above reading from many sources on here and elsewhere the US cannot keep up the weapons supplies and is way behind in 'new thinking.'
I often wonder how long your average US worker and taxpayer - maybe having to do 2 jobs just to make ends meet - is going to take to work out how they are being screwed. It's not that their tax dollars are going abroad, but that they are funding the lifestyles of everyone in the arms industry - from the well paid workers with steady jobs with benefits, to the owners' sickening luxury. Will they ever understand that the taxes they pay for armaments are not about subjugating enemies abroad, but about subsidising one small section of US society.
Nobody will ask the average frustrated American. Truly, the quote below never grows old!
Later in the conversation, Gilbert recorded Goering's observations that the common people can always be manipulated into supporting and fighting wars by their political leaders:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
https://www.mit.edu/people/fuller/peace/war_goering.html
I guess you represent an 'average US worker and taxpayer' - in your case one of those who has not worked it out, and likely never will. Your government doesn't care if the people you are paying them to subjugate are followers of Allah or not - they are just an enemy that is convenient right now because it's easy to persuade people such as yourself to keep sending them money to keep the whole war machine running, especially as the war with Russia is fizzling out, and the new war with China hasn't got going yet.
Hi Timothy
Amerikkka DESERVES such an attack. But I hope that this one will take place in the Washington Septic Tank and pump it out for good.
monsters, inc
The Zionists and the MIC/security state staged a spectacularly televisual murder of 3,000 people as a pretext for never ending war against people in West Asia and North Africa, and to incite hatred and fear of Muslims.
You bet! The CIA and Mossad also assassinated JFK, most likely because he didn’t want Israel to have nuclear proliferation. He was in the way of the Zionist plan. How many Israeli spies have been found out?
There are two more pieces to this arrangement: the propaganda that keeps American enthusiastic about the military; and the careful arrangement that has put at least one MIC plant in every Congressional district, so there will be a constituency yammering about their jobs if there is any threat of cutting anything.
But John Michael Greer posited that a likely way this empire end will be by military defeat, which may seem counterintuitive, but he points out that other nations don't use their military spending the way the US does, with decision dictated not by assessments of need by the military dogs, but by MIC lobbyists, and by enormous levels of acceptable fraud--from ordinary items charged at twenty times the normal price, to shrink wrapped pallets of $100 bills getting "lost" enroute to Iraq to the F35 plane that doesn't work well if it rains but still gets billions thrown at it.
F16s that require absolutely clean runways. If the runway has a loose piece of gravel, the F16 aspirates it and the engine goes south.
Wait long enough and someone will say exactly what I was thinking. If I may however, I would like to expand on Mary's idea:
Caitlins piece implies that there is someone in charge, doing these things when in fact, the Oligarchy is simply moving in the direction of increasing stockholder wealth. The cycle of outrage followed by "terrorist" strikes increases stockholder wealth that is why it is happening (not because of some mythical "leadership"), and that is why it will continue for as long as the US exists in its current form.
While I more or less agree with your conclusion, I think you are seriously mis-characterising Caitlin’s argument by saying that she is implying that “there is someone in charge”. She discusses “empire managers”, which implies that there are various competing plutocratic interests at play.
No insult intended.
See my piece on Resilience.org , a World Run By Machines, sc roll down it was posted yesterday
Enjoyed reading your article. Thank you.
Mary, Im sorry but I can't find your piece. The Resilience site is not allowing searches by author, or title. You should leave a URL.
Hm. I've done searches there before--but it's still on the top page, you just have to scroll down to near the bottom.
Including Bernie Sanders the senator for Northrup Grumman. A co lifetime in public office as a “ liberal” and in all that time he could not manage to establish a more useful set of job than making tools for murder.
The bipartisan, near universal sacred cow status of the military is a common feature in Third World countries.
We must recognize that hate and racism are the essential instruments of imperialism for the last 400 years. America is a violent and racist society in large part because it has been infused with the imperialist warlords using these to justify their global wars and genocides. It is a paranoid view of the world that everybody is a potential enemy and must be slain economically or militarily. The American empire was mentored by the British empire which killed millions in its time.
Senator Lindsay Graham is a deranged infantilized victim of what happens to those who embrace the lies and dogma of the empire.
The decline of empire is why western politics has gone berserk... the political zombies know the party is over and they refuse to face this reality.
"Senator Lindsay Graham is a deranged infantilized victim"
Off his rocker for sure.
And someone somewhere probably has some "interesting" photos of him.
Apparently on all of us, including you. Who is safe in a security state that can do whatever the fuck it wants? Nobody is. That's what the US Constitution is suppose to be about, protecting the rights of ordinary Americans. When you got a spy agency doing whatever the fuck it wants to anybody it wants, that's a lawless, security state - and you can't call that freedom son.
May well be true, so we might as well be hanged for sheep as lambs and keep on speaking out.
I agree. Many refuseniks. You wouldn't know this if you went on comments on the Washington Post!
It doesn't matter that Graham is a sociopath and not a very clever one to boot.
His vote counts exactly the same.
Remember after 9/11 ? “Why do they hate us” ? They hate us because of our “freedom” !!!! How fucking stupid can Americans be ?
Yep.
It's not just a resource and land grab, it's the Greater Israel Project aka the Ided Yonen Plan from 1982 that's unfolding. Rothschild central bankers fund Zionism and want to increase the size of their fiefdom if it takes a hundred more years and they can print as much money as they need to fund it by buying off politicians, police, University Administrators, mainstream media stooges, ad nauseum. The brutal treatment of students by the Zionist Storm troopers shows how "over target" the students are by saying no to these fascists and their racist, apartheid state.
https://rumble.com/v3vtvds-the-preplanned-genocide-of-palestinians-oded-yinon-plan-1982.html
Very similar piece could be written about the history of Israeli “self-defense” - use whatever provocation necessary to get a violent response from a neighboring Arab state or Palestinians in the occupied territories, and use that response to justify a much larger military operation. Over the years, this has led to not only to expansion of land under Israeli control, but also to further enriching the US MIC through the continuing purchase of billions of dollars worth of arms to “protect” Israel from the potential attacks of those it continues to oppress and provoke.
Amen Caitlin, what you express today is exactly what I and others have been saying for years. It is painfully obvious that the Global War Of Terror was ordered by Israel in its Grand Chessboard to advance the notion of Greater Israel. The US Government and its military are but pawns in that diabolical game.
It’s ludicrous! Btw, can someone explain to me why anyone is pressuring Netanyahu to ‘come up with a plan’ after the Genocide? It’s not up to him! He’s the enemy of Palestinians! It’s for the Palestinians to chart their future. And don’t tell me there’s no one to govern! There are many brilliant, educated Palestinians that can get together and form a coalition. Both in the area and In sure some that were driven out into the diaspora.
Vital step in The Scam is Step 6:
Induce Congress to buy more weapons and tech services…….from companies owned by the oligarchs that handpick the cabinet and all other empire managers.
and it's not as if the information that is the evidence for this pattern is hidden - just the 'history of ... ' section about any middle country demonstrates it clearly. As Caitlin says "If the oil-rich nations in the middle east ever had democratic rule, their governments would quickly move away from their official and unofficial alliances and partnerships with the United States and Israel, and would in all likelihood form their own powerful bloc in support of their own interests." People hate the fact that Saddam and Gadhafi were both elected (Fake news! Rigged!) and proceeded to try to trade oil in Dinars, the primary reason for their countries' annihilation. But empire tactics don't always work, with Iran being the greatest example. Despite their lies about 'defending democracy' the US and the British connived to oust Mossadeq's elected socialist government because they immediately set about nationalising their oil industry and getting rid of the West based big oil corporations. In response the allies staged a coup and put the brutal dictator Shah in place, which the Iranians finally rid themselves of. Of course, because democracy had been completely corrupted by then, it had to be accomplished by revolution, with Islamic Religion being the only rallying flag available. That this regime is so hard line is a by product of the need for absolute control that revolutions necessitate. Left to it's own devices - i.e. not economically sanctioned, and not surrounded by enemy military bases on all sides, and not having wars with their neighbours deliberately provoked and paid for, Iran would surely gradually revert to the perfectly pleasant and vibrant country it has been since time immemorial. As it is, like in so many countries oppressed by the US empire, a strong and unwavering regime is needed simply to hold a nation together. The alternative - as Iran is quite aware - is subjugation, chaos, poverty, having all your resources stolen.
Excellent synopsis 👍
YES YES YES YES YES
Thank you
Perhaps it is rationalized/justified/done in order to keep those nations from becoming strong and thereby is protective of our righteous shining city on a hill. But because it inverts and makes a mockery of our moral authority, a cornerstone of our rightful existence as global superpower, this explanation doesn't work for me. What does make sense is that our government is peopled by sociopaths who've institutionalized corruption, who are excited by the gravity and destruction and bloodshed of war, and who are addicted to this "supply". Like junkies who've destroyed their lives to feed their addiction, our leaders in government will destroy the nation and all the beauty of civilized humanity if there is no intervention.
Jimmy Dore introduced you & your X posts to his eyes wide open audience - I appreciated that Rumble platform. Thanks for your courage & determination.
I saw that! Good drop. Lesser known fact, many moons ago, Caitlin Johnstone was on the Jimmy Dore show - back in Jimmy Dore's Pre-Covid days - when he had the illustrious Graham Elwood and Ron Placone. Also lesser known fact: Graham & Ron met with Caitlin in Australia though Ron Placone nearly burned down an entire building with a toaster.
Fascinating Caitlin and Jimmy trivia! You have piqued my curiosity—I will have to look into this further. Speaking of which, if you have any information re the Counterpunch hit piece on Caitlin from about eight years ago, I’d be most grateful. And to think that 20 years ago I was a paid subscriber of Cockburn. The shame!
No info on Counterpunch. I learned about Johnstone while watching the Jimmy Dore show many years ago. I became a big fan of Dore when he was on TYT and was a member of his show for many years. I still enjoy his shows today, but am a bit more selective in what I will watch.
"...Nothing will radicalize you against the US and its allies like watching them murder and displace your loved ones right in front of you."
So true. One wonders if the oligarchs realize that it also works the same way domestically. American workers today are observing their lives becoming more and more difficult, watching family members die early of preventable and curable diseases/injury because they don't have universal health care, losing their homes because the cost of housing has become unbearable. Perhaps the oligarchs want to make more "domestic terrorists" so they have more reasons to sic their militarize police on the people and take what little resources they still have?
>>"One wonders if the oligarchs realize that it also works the same way domestically."
I'm sure they are aware of it. Hence the need to spend vast amounts of resources to propagandize, brainwash, and gaslight the public. Part of the oligarchy's strategy is to invent enemies (like Russia, China, Iran, immigrants, etc.) and moral panics (using fear) and then deflect all blame towards them (scapegoating). As long as the level of critical thinking of the public is low (or things get reallllyyyyy desperate), I'm unable to see much of a change or enough of a challenge to the status quo (unfortunately).
The Evil Empire, as Caitlin so aptly calls it, is run by war junkies who get their high from death, destruction and domination. They are the real terrorists who hold the rest of the world hostage and, God help us, they will take everyone down with them if they have their way!