1. We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves.
2. Our adversary is solely responsible for this war.
3. Our adversary’s leader is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
4. We are defending a noble cause, not our particular interests.
5. The enemy is purposefully committing atrocities; if we are making mistakes this happens without intention.
6. The enemy makes use of illegal weapons.
7. We suffer few losses, the enemy’s losses are considerable.
8. Recognized intellectuals and artists support our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred.
10. Whoever cases doubt on our propaganda helps the enemy and is a traitor.
Besides keeping the population riled up and distracting them from defeat and economic decline, crude war propaganda begs the question how can anyone *negotiate* with an enemy so *evil*?
As if there's something in the water on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine that turns people into monsters.
Being a boomer it took a few years into the Vietnam war to understand almost nothing from promoters of war can be believed. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia etc. just reinforced my radar. I am always thankful people with integrity like Caitlin, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate work to provide truth when few other will. How many years will it take for the general public to realize they were lied to yet again, 2-4 yrs.
"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."
Next up. Images of Russian soldiers huddled around a fire eating roasted meat, intercut with images of small Ukrainian dogs, which those barbaric Russkies are using as a food source -- after roasting alive, of course. With all the dog lovers in the US, that'll put a helluva shock-charge into the innumerable war-loving factions; they'll be out in the streets calling for Russian heads on pikes. I'm fortunately unable to verify this story.
Very sickening, and a testimony to the fact some people will believe anything, but what is more disturbing is that "evidence" could be manufactured to support this insane accusation.
Watching this unfold and also looking at everything else the US and its allies have done, it's a wonder we ever even heard the truth about Iraq.
What is depressingly *not* surprising is how so many people believe that Iraq was just a one time thing and that usually, the government tells the truth. Or that only Republican presidents lie.
What's impressive is not only did we know the truth of the matter in real time about Iraq, but despite knowing the truth nothing was done about it. So much for the truth.
we make a big mistake in passively absorbing 'news'. have done in the past. the msm feeds us with propaganda and we absorb it thinking it is 'news'. it is not.
we need to do wholly what we currently do in part: dynamically, pro actively, seek out dependable authoritative sources for ourselves.
you know today the msm is simply redundant in fact.
we make the news, we find the news, we report the news today. it is a new world given the instant global comms we have. existing msm paradigm is redundant, anachronistic.
in numb braindeadness the mass follow the daily direction and pap of msm.
there's nothing happening there. nothing dynamic on the part of the 'viewer', the 'reader', the client.
they forget yesterday as a matter of habit. they are habituated to cleanse the mind anew each day the better to absorb the 'cause du jour'
this won't continue forever. they'll wake up.
the enormity of the deception and the evil is so great they can be excused, really, for not seeing it, not being aware of it.
"First, they pull them out of the incubators and throw them on the floor. Then they rape them as they're dying. Then they eat the bodies after they're dead. None of that can be independently verified, but it's obviously what Russians do because they're just born Chaotic Evil, and if you express the tiniest sliver of doubt that it's true then it's worth asking why you are defending baby rape. Is it something you do, too?" (That was my shitlib impression. I hope it was good.)
Last laugh is on the Russians, the Ukrainians already sprayed the people of Eastern Ukraine with depleted uranium shell dust, a gift from Uncle Sam and NATO.
To me there's a clear parallel of what's going on right now in the US and the "civilized" West and what was happening in Germany in 1930s-early 1940s. Did those people back then sign up to that ideology knowingly? Probably not, with the majority just following along enabling the organized few. Resulting in Germany as a country and eventually the rest of Europe led by it to reach those infamous "heights".
So, can the population be excused for the actions of its leaders?
no I don't think they can be holus bolus 'excused' for ultimately or from the word 'go' in a democracy they are responsible for what their leaders do.
In a democracy the people ARE the leader really, should be.
So 'they' can't be excused.
But I put 'they' in commas because we can't condemn the whole mass of people. Many of them can be and should be excused for they've tried to resist.
And many were just too unsophisticated, too unknowing and how are we to dictate the level of awareness and sophistication individuals must have in our society?
And many were too 'devout' and 'faithful' in that they know even to themselves that they do not know. They know themselves to be ignorant. But they don't have the pride, the arrogance, the temper, the wit, the desire, the individualism, the intellectual training, the whatever it might take - to 'find out' for themselves. So they 'trust' and follow obediently, like good soldiers. Can't really blame them for that too much.
So I don't think they can be excused but I think many of them can. Nice definite unambiguous answer there. :)
Well, you tried... I think a somewhat legitimate way out is to do away with the whole "democracy" fraud. To admit people really are unable to exert meaningful influence. Hence many just check themselves out, not necessarily consciously.
And if we accept there's no such thing as democracy in its practical sense, then we can absolve ourselves from responsibility, at least a large part of it.
I’ve been thinking of this sort of thing with regard to pre-ww2 Germany. The kaiser had taken complete control of Germany and engaged much of the war as a dictator. How did it make justifiable sense to egregiously penalize the German people, ie the Weimar Republic, for ww1, when it was the norm in Europe to vilify pacifists and war resistors, after merely exiling one of the the mad men, the kaiser, central to starting and perpetuating the mass murder of that war?
I don't quite see it like that. I agree it's a 'democracy fraud' at the moment but I do think we can get somewhat close to a 'democracy in a practical sense'.
And I think we should try. I see no better aim than 'govt of the people by the people for the people', really.
And I agree many do just 'check themselves out'. And I think there's a number of reasons for that, some maybe even good and some bad and some changeable and some perhaps not.
It seems clear, for instance, that a vast number of people do not want to 'govern by the people for the people', do they?
They can't be bothered. They have other interests. It's not their 'bag', not what they do.
They employ plumbers to do the plumbing, electricians to do the electrical work and they would rather employ specialists to run the country - and that's kinda fair enough, really, isn't it?
But I think there's hope and a way out, at least one way out.
If we all 'registered' our names and our vote on a govt website the same way as we register our names and our details with our banks, for our online bank account, then govt could poll that collection at any time.
Perpetual on demand referendums.
If married with the ability to change our vote at any time we feel like it. Log on, alter your vote just like logging into the bank and changing an option. Log off. Job done.
The biggest failure of practical democracy right now has to be the 'representation' I think, don't you agree? The fact that my 'voice' gets submerged along with many thousand others into this particular person: our 'elected rep'.
And the second biggest practical failure is this 'periodic representation' or the hiatus between opportunities to pass your opinion. i.e. voting every three or four years only, whatever it is in your jurisdiction.
Both of those are addressed, largely 'cured' by such a system. We have instance voice contemporary with the issue and every voice remains intact, not 'submerged'.
When we think of a system like that and put it in context with the nature of our social realities now we see much better possibilities.
I mean regarding the internet and smartphones, of course, the fact that we are all 'one' now, notionally, all 'joined' in that one web, that one machine, that one reality.
That makes a completely different human animal, human presence on the earth.
Used to be if you wanted to define human beings or humanity on planet earth you'd have to include the fact that they could not communicate except by messages carried on foot or by horse.
And then they could use trains and cars.
And then they could use telephones
And so on... it was changing all the time and it was a very important and noticeable feature of us. Because it limited, defined, what we could and couldn't do. Actually defined how we could think and couldn't thin because of its bearing on access to information.
I maintain that today's human being individually is effectively a sentient terminal in one huge planet wide computer. Potentially in command of enormous processing power, enormous communications ability, the data of the whole planet, skills of all kinds of experts... on and on...
Making for a very different human being to anything that we've ever seen before or even imagined. Like Orwell in his fearsome 1984 foresaw the evils of totalitarian government but he never foresaw the commensurate ( because of the prevailing technology) change in the nature of the populace, its behaviour, its powers, its strengths.
So kinda all bets are off. All predications based on the 'old' human being in the 'old' social order are more or less incomplete to even pure irrelevance sometimes.
So that new human, that new planet wide human with its 'brain' of billions of joined interconnecting people, will find and use sources of factual information just the way we 'dissenters' do now. Or at least turn to the dissenters who're doing the work for them and ask 'what's the truth?' 'What do you guys say?'
Different people. Different world. Different behaviours. It can all come good I think. I hope.
I once was the only civilian on a flight into Grand Rapids. The rest were all GIs returning from Iraq. They told me how Saddam would have the wives and daughters of his enemies raped in front of them. I didn’t have the heart to tell them the US promoted exactly the same BS about the N Vietnamese. Of course there was probably baby eating too. Who can prove there wasn’t!?
Better yet, you could have told them that the CIA gave him the money to buy his way into running a successful coup d'état against the (democratically elected) Baathist Party of Iraq, and of course CIA/DOD gave him the chemical weapons, delivery devices, and intelligence to deploy them first on Iran and then on his own people.
Pathetic. Despicable. But not surprising. It's all entertainment afterall, right? And what's more entertaining than insane fabrications of one-year-old babies being raped? How's that absurdity any different than accusations by QAnon of Dems being satanic pedophiles who seek the blood and adrenaline of children for sustenance and power?
And I'm wondering whether, if the Ukraine government went so far as to say "In addition all the baby rape (which by the way we under-reported the first time and is actually something that literally every single Russian soldier does because they're Russian), Russians are also torturing puppies to death because that's how Russians get their kicks", people would hear that and be like "Okay, I find THAT hard to believe!" or if they would accept *that* uncritically as well.
I can recall a ferocious backlash against a Lance Cpl. David Motari, Marine who killed a puppy in Iraq, court-martialed and given dishonorable discharge, making him hardly employable. I can remember the backlash against the conviction of Edward Gallagher, so yes, people are less important than puppies, at least in America.
Oh, I saw video of that, much as I wish I hadn't. I'm glad that it wasn't overlooked entirely, as I first assumed.
On the one hand I'm glad that people care about animals, but it would sure be nice if they cared every bit as much about humans as well. All humans, not just the "worthy victims".
Years ago there was an announcement by the IDF making the rounds about how they provided vegan uniforms (no leather, I guess) for whichever of their soldiers were vegan. The same soldiers who kill Palestinians regularly. So there's another case of caring more about animals than humans. (Not to mention that plenty of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip DO own pets like people everywhere. I wonder how those vegan IDF personnel reconcile that with their professed commitment to animal welfare whenever Gaza gets bombed, since the pets aren't any more bomb-proof than the humans.)
Oh come on. Yes, some people in America care more about puppies than they do muslims or arabs, but they are hardly the majority. Trump's base for example doesn't care about puppies being murdered by American gi's and they don't care about teenage Arab and/or Muslim boys being murdered by same. Trump's base also doesn't care about Ukrainians being murdered by Russian gi's and Trump's base loves them some Putin.
Have I ever talked to one? Jesus! I'm surrounded by them on all sides. The question is Mr. Canuck, have you ever talked to one or better yet, have you ever had to live amongst them? No, you haven't.
And you're telling me that they all think Putin is just the greatest guy ever?
And that they all want more military intervention to kill Arabs and/or Muslims, despite Trump's message in 2016 being "We should NOT be bombing all these countries and we should invest that money back home instead, i.e. America First"? (Trump would not actually stop any of the interventions once he was in office, but lots of people who voted for him undoubtedly hoped that he would.)
And finally, are you telling me that every single last person who voted Trump in 2016 or 2020 did so because they were crazy about him and not, say, because while they were NOT crazy about him they considered Hillary and/or Biden to be the greater evil...which, they may have actually been right about?
Do YOU care about the US and its proxies murdering people in Syria or do you believe that Hillary was right when she responded to Trump bombing that country by criticizing him for not bombing the country MORE?
When the media is resorting to using atrocity propaganda against Russia, and given the number of times this tactic has been used in the enemedia's history, you can tell Russia is succeeding in its objective vis a vis Ukraine.
No surprises there. We've just seen two years of covid propaganda. We don't need to be told, we KNOW that our governments are totally mendacious. AND our mass media is the same. AND our population largely doesn't know/doesn't care.
Largely. Not wholly.
Those are the facts.
Well established now.
How to deal with them?
Well the growth of such as substack, scheerpost, eugyppius, lifesite, the expose, represents the creation of a growing number of 'sources of truth and reason' which are effectively networked, connected together, via their audiences, aren't they? Us.
Those and many more.
Currently we have no 'centres for the 'sources' but that will happen.
And they are building their reputations - some consistently good, some not quite so much.
It is a web within a web.
A distributed web of reliable and topical sources.
Eventually it will be very strong. And very widespread. You know it will grow across countries - across languages. With translation softwaren now ubiquitous this becomes possible. So it gets to be really global, really a thing of the people, all people.
And I reckon eventually it will become known to the wider mass of people - which is by far the majority, maybe 90% compared to those 'inside' this inner web, i.e. 9 times as many.
It will become known to them and they will come to see it as not a bunch of far out whacky space cadets but as definitely an authoritative, true and reliable source.
The masses will begin to turn to it.
As throughout the ages the masses have always turned this way or that seeking the sense, the truth and the way that will free them of irksome yokes, oppression.
What we've got right now is a population that largely doesn't see itself as oppressed.
Is the problem.
They have faith in vaccines.
They even have faith in masks.
They believe the narratives.
But the results over time will break the news to them. I think that's unavoidable. Here, there and everywhere, about this and then that and then the other.
And they'll begin this paradigm shift: to turning to this 'inner web' for the truth, the facts and the way.
So I reckon we just keep going.
And each one of us tries to build a library of unassailable facts, of real data, of excellent dissertations, of illuminating conversations, discussions, videos, whatever.
To help build this 'web within the web' and make it stronger and stronger.
Build indexes to it, guides to it, directories of the inhabitants of it.
We are totally, absolutely totally and completely in our tiny infancy at the moment, there's so far we can go, we have not yet begun to fight.
For instance the best we have for mask refutations are perhaps the graphs and charts in the book 'unmasked' and similar that have been published in many of our 'source' areas.
But the public see none of that.
And if they did it wouldn't appeal to them much.
But there's the whole world of high tech and advertising smarts out there for us to employ did we wish and did we get activist enough.
Those charts could be presented in dynamic videos of great appeal that just pounded the message home.
Just like the govt propaganda does but better by an order of magnitude.
And with a crucial difference: our perhaps flamboyant and populist presentations can be accompanied by sober and authoritative references backing up and demonstrating every thing we say.
We have a tremendous stock pile of ammunition: we have the truth. A vast world of data and logical reasoning.
We have a tremendous innate ability amongst us in all fields. The sciences, the arts, the humanities.
We have it all.
And we haven't yet started. Not at all. I contend not at all.
Where I live in two years I have not seen one single public presentation designed to get truths across to the people. Not one flyer handed out. Not one piece of paper posted up anywhere at any time. Not one tiny bit of graffiti. Far less a bombardment.
So what I'm saying is that yes the problem is huge but it is being addressed, the troops are signing on, the army is a-building, the ammunition is being collected and stock piled, the weapons of 'war' are being assembled.
We all ought to know that because we all should be part of it.
Without a sneeringly obsequious, dead eyed hive-minded PMC, programmed by gleefully brainwashed yuppie liberal parents; intentionally blatant große Lüge would be mistaken for a bad taste "Onion" wannabe. It's like Tea Party 'Baggers or crankhead MAGA Nazis: this ridiculously obvious BS is like those films of monkeys, hitting a switch for a methamphetamine fix; electrodes sticking out of where their brain used to be? Little WHITE lies & TV dopamine fixes are now trying to trigger adrenaline, like Fallschirmjäger turning GREEN upon death?
I'm calm as calm can be, but I support no side, and this conflict has three sides or more, in this tragedy, or I should say tragedy for the unwashed Ukrainians being exploited, dispossessed and murdered.
Why do we bother with making fictional entertainments when we can just have these insane fairy tales made up by the mainstream media thrown at us? What's next? "Russians raid Kiev Zoo and barbecue rare white rhinos?" "Russians create food trucks serving roasted baby-meat delicacies?" "Russians wake up each morning and drink the freshly squeezed blood of Ukrainian virgins?" Atrocity propaganda by its very nature reveals the over-zealousness of its creators. Let's hope the public can smell a rotten story by the scent of its rotten writers.
Once again, who is this "we?" Most Americans are not paying any attention to Russia's war on Ukraine. Most Americans are not concerned with it. The national mainstream news is for insiders, it's not for the unwashed. Local news is for the unwashed and local news limits its coverage of Russia's war on Ukraine instead focusing on local violence, the weather and sports.
You must hang with a different crowd than I do. Most people I know are paying attention to the war. They watch national news on mainstream media outlets for the most part. "We" or most Americans love to be entertained and watch fictional stories on TV. That's what I was saying--we don't need any more soap operas or space operas on the telly when we have these insane propaganda pieces that are much more salacious than anything rom-com scriptwriters can come up with.
Speaking of Ukraine War atrocities, have we had any status updates from the International Commission Investigating the Bucha Atrocities?
I was hoping that by now that the Commission's forensic experts would have at least published a preliminary list of victims, with cause of death and estimated time of death.
Yeah, like, "we're not Nostradamus, who knew?" But they act like they know, and the idiot Bush even claimed God instructed him, gave the high five. But, as pointed out, they did know: Scott Ritter told them, and if Colon Powell wasn't obviously full of shit, shit exists nowhere.
The weird thing is that this type of propaganda always works and has always worked. I doesn't much change over the centuries because it doesn't need to. People always believe it.
The Ten Commandments of War Propaganda:
1. We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves.
2. Our adversary is solely responsible for this war.
3. Our adversary’s leader is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
4. We are defending a noble cause, not our particular interests.
5. The enemy is purposefully committing atrocities; if we are making mistakes this happens without intention.
6. The enemy makes use of illegal weapons.
7. We suffer few losses, the enemy’s losses are considerable.
8. Recognized intellectuals and artists support our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred.
10. Whoever cases doubt on our propaganda helps the enemy and is a traitor.
Besides keeping the population riled up and distracting them from defeat and economic decline, crude war propaganda begs the question how can anyone *negotiate* with an enemy so *evil*?
As if there's something in the water on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine that turns people into monsters.
Being a boomer it took a few years into the Vietnam war to understand almost nothing from promoters of war can be believed. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia etc. just reinforced my radar. I am always thankful people with integrity like Caitlin, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate work to provide truth when few other will. How many years will it take for the general public to realize they were lied to yet again, 2-4 yrs.
Goering on war:
"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."
From the horse's mouth. And such horses are many. But who's listening?
It's in their genes, doncha know. That's why it's so believable.
Good post.
In 3., you could replace "resembles the devil" with "is literally Hitler".
Regarding no negotiations with an enemy so evil, just see Sen. Lindsey Graham's May 8 comments about there being "no offramp" for Russia.
Next up. Images of Russian soldiers huddled around a fire eating roasted meat, intercut with images of small Ukrainian dogs, which those barbaric Russkies are using as a food source -- after roasting alive, of course. With all the dog lovers in the US, that'll put a helluva shock-charge into the innumerable war-loving factions; they'll be out in the streets calling for Russian heads on pikes. I'm fortunately unable to verify this story.
Very sickening, and a testimony to the fact some people will believe anything, but what is more disturbing is that "evidence" could be manufactured to support this insane accusation.
Watching this unfold and also looking at everything else the US and its allies have done, it's a wonder we ever even heard the truth about Iraq.
What is depressingly *not* surprising is how so many people believe that Iraq was just a one time thing and that usually, the government tells the truth. Or that only Republican presidents lie.
What's impressive is not only did we know the truth of the matter in real time about Iraq, but despite knowing the truth nothing was done about it. So much for the truth.
we make a big mistake in passively absorbing 'news'. have done in the past. the msm feeds us with propaganda and we absorb it thinking it is 'news'. it is not.
we need to do wholly what we currently do in part: dynamically, pro actively, seek out dependable authoritative sources for ourselves.
you know today the msm is simply redundant in fact.
we make the news, we find the news, we report the news today. it is a new world given the instant global comms we have. existing msm paradigm is redundant, anachronistic.
in numb braindeadness the mass follow the daily direction and pap of msm.
there's nothing happening there. nothing dynamic on the part of the 'viewer', the 'reader', the client.
they forget yesterday as a matter of habit. they are habituated to cleanse the mind anew each day the better to absorb the 'cause du jour'
this won't continue forever. they'll wake up.
the enormity of the deception and the evil is so great they can be excused, really, for not seeing it, not being aware of it.
that's how i see it.
Don’t they eat the babies after they’ve raped them..
"First, they pull them out of the incubators and throw them on the floor. Then they rape them as they're dying. Then they eat the bodies after they're dead. None of that can be independently verified, but it's obviously what Russians do because they're just born Chaotic Evil, and if you express the tiniest sliver of doubt that it's true then it's worth asking why you are defending baby rape. Is it something you do, too?" (That was my shitlib impression. I hope it was good.)
Last laugh is on the Russians, the Ukrainians already sprayed the people of Eastern Ukraine with depleted uranium shell dust, a gift from Uncle Sam and NATO.
Eat NATO for Breakfast #16 - NATO and depleted uranium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXnyGKxUg9M
You forgot the accusation of being on the Russian payroll.
America ate me , and spit me back out since I taste bad, since I was young helpless child.
Wish Mom had aborted me
America has been pure unending evil
Wish I can go back to Russia
It's not that USA is pure unending evil, really, it's that the American people are in the grip of a cabal of relentless pure unending evil.
Same as is happening to Ukrainians.
How about a cost benefit analysis right now, today?
Count the dead and injured and the property destruction
And compare that with an estimate of how many dead and injured and what destroyed if Ukraine had acceded to Putin's requests prior to all this?
But the 'cabals of evil' have urged them down this path.
To me there's a clear parallel of what's going on right now in the US and the "civilized" West and what was happening in Germany in 1930s-early 1940s. Did those people back then sign up to that ideology knowingly? Probably not, with the majority just following along enabling the organized few. Resulting in Germany as a country and eventually the rest of Europe led by it to reach those infamous "heights".
So, can the population be excused for the actions of its leaders?
no I don't think they can be holus bolus 'excused' for ultimately or from the word 'go' in a democracy they are responsible for what their leaders do.
In a democracy the people ARE the leader really, should be.
So 'they' can't be excused.
But I put 'they' in commas because we can't condemn the whole mass of people. Many of them can be and should be excused for they've tried to resist.
And many were just too unsophisticated, too unknowing and how are we to dictate the level of awareness and sophistication individuals must have in our society?
And many were too 'devout' and 'faithful' in that they know even to themselves that they do not know. They know themselves to be ignorant. But they don't have the pride, the arrogance, the temper, the wit, the desire, the individualism, the intellectual training, the whatever it might take - to 'find out' for themselves. So they 'trust' and follow obediently, like good soldiers. Can't really blame them for that too much.
So I don't think they can be excused but I think many of them can. Nice definite unambiguous answer there. :)
Well, you tried... I think a somewhat legitimate way out is to do away with the whole "democracy" fraud. To admit people really are unable to exert meaningful influence. Hence many just check themselves out, not necessarily consciously.
And if we accept there's no such thing as democracy in its practical sense, then we can absolve ourselves from responsibility, at least a large part of it.
I’ve been thinking of this sort of thing with regard to pre-ww2 Germany. The kaiser had taken complete control of Germany and engaged much of the war as a dictator. How did it make justifiable sense to egregiously penalize the German people, ie the Weimar Republic, for ww1, when it was the norm in Europe to vilify pacifists and war resistors, after merely exiling one of the the mad men, the kaiser, central to starting and perpetuating the mass murder of that war?
I don't quite see it like that. I agree it's a 'democracy fraud' at the moment but I do think we can get somewhat close to a 'democracy in a practical sense'.
And I think we should try. I see no better aim than 'govt of the people by the people for the people', really.
And I agree many do just 'check themselves out'. And I think there's a number of reasons for that, some maybe even good and some bad and some changeable and some perhaps not.
It seems clear, for instance, that a vast number of people do not want to 'govern by the people for the people', do they?
They can't be bothered. They have other interests. It's not their 'bag', not what they do.
They employ plumbers to do the plumbing, electricians to do the electrical work and they would rather employ specialists to run the country - and that's kinda fair enough, really, isn't it?
But I think there's hope and a way out, at least one way out.
If we all 'registered' our names and our vote on a govt website the same way as we register our names and our details with our banks, for our online bank account, then govt could poll that collection at any time.
Perpetual on demand referendums.
If married with the ability to change our vote at any time we feel like it. Log on, alter your vote just like logging into the bank and changing an option. Log off. Job done.
The biggest failure of practical democracy right now has to be the 'representation' I think, don't you agree? The fact that my 'voice' gets submerged along with many thousand others into this particular person: our 'elected rep'.
And the second biggest practical failure is this 'periodic representation' or the hiatus between opportunities to pass your opinion. i.e. voting every three or four years only, whatever it is in your jurisdiction.
Both of those are addressed, largely 'cured' by such a system. We have instance voice contemporary with the issue and every voice remains intact, not 'submerged'.
When we think of a system like that and put it in context with the nature of our social realities now we see much better possibilities.
I mean regarding the internet and smartphones, of course, the fact that we are all 'one' now, notionally, all 'joined' in that one web, that one machine, that one reality.
That makes a completely different human animal, human presence on the earth.
Used to be if you wanted to define human beings or humanity on planet earth you'd have to include the fact that they could not communicate except by messages carried on foot or by horse.
And then they could use trains and cars.
And then they could use telephones
And so on... it was changing all the time and it was a very important and noticeable feature of us. Because it limited, defined, what we could and couldn't do. Actually defined how we could think and couldn't thin because of its bearing on access to information.
I maintain that today's human being individually is effectively a sentient terminal in one huge planet wide computer. Potentially in command of enormous processing power, enormous communications ability, the data of the whole planet, skills of all kinds of experts... on and on...
Making for a very different human being to anything that we've ever seen before or even imagined. Like Orwell in his fearsome 1984 foresaw the evils of totalitarian government but he never foresaw the commensurate ( because of the prevailing technology) change in the nature of the populace, its behaviour, its powers, its strengths.
So kinda all bets are off. All predications based on the 'old' human being in the 'old' social order are more or less incomplete to even pure irrelevance sometimes.
So that new human, that new planet wide human with its 'brain' of billions of joined interconnecting people, will find and use sources of factual information just the way we 'dissenters' do now. Or at least turn to the dissenters who're doing the work for them and ask 'what's the truth?' 'What do you guys say?'
Different people. Different world. Different behaviours. It can all come good I think. I hope.
No, they send them to an organ harvesting farm in Siberia where they treat them like the Japanese treat their Wagyu beef cattle before slaughter.
I once was the only civilian on a flight into Grand Rapids. The rest were all GIs returning from Iraq. They told me how Saddam would have the wives and daughters of his enemies raped in front of them. I didn’t have the heart to tell them the US promoted exactly the same BS about the N Vietnamese. Of course there was probably baby eating too. Who can prove there wasn’t!?
Better yet, you could have told them that the CIA gave him the money to buy his way into running a successful coup d'état against the (democratically elected) Baathist Party of Iraq, and of course CIA/DOD gave him the chemical weapons, delivery devices, and intelligence to deploy them first on Iran and then on his own people.
a truth free media is leading us to a very dark time
Pathetic. Despicable. But not surprising. It's all entertainment afterall, right? And what's more entertaining than insane fabrications of one-year-old babies being raped? How's that absurdity any different than accusations by QAnon of Dems being satanic pedophiles who seek the blood and adrenaline of children for sustenance and power?
I'm suddenly feeling very, very tired.
And I'm wondering whether, if the Ukraine government went so far as to say "In addition all the baby rape (which by the way we under-reported the first time and is actually something that literally every single Russian soldier does because they're Russian), Russians are also torturing puppies to death because that's how Russians get their kicks", people would hear that and be like "Okay, I find THAT hard to believe!" or if they would accept *that* uncritically as well.
I can recall a ferocious backlash against a Lance Cpl. David Motari, Marine who killed a puppy in Iraq, court-martialed and given dishonorable discharge, making him hardly employable. I can remember the backlash against the conviction of Edward Gallagher, so yes, people are less important than puppies, at least in America.
Oh, I saw video of that, much as I wish I hadn't. I'm glad that it wasn't overlooked entirely, as I first assumed.
On the one hand I'm glad that people care about animals, but it would sure be nice if they cared every bit as much about humans as well. All humans, not just the "worthy victims".
Years ago there was an announcement by the IDF making the rounds about how they provided vegan uniforms (no leather, I guess) for whichever of their soldiers were vegan. The same soldiers who kill Palestinians regularly. So there's another case of caring more about animals than humans. (Not to mention that plenty of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip DO own pets like people everywhere. I wonder how those vegan IDF personnel reconcile that with their professed commitment to animal welfare whenever Gaza gets bombed, since the pets aren't any more bomb-proof than the humans.)
Oh come on. Yes, some people in America care more about puppies than they do muslims or arabs, but they are hardly the majority. Trump's base for example doesn't care about puppies being murdered by American gi's and they don't care about teenage Arab and/or Muslim boys being murdered by same. Trump's base also doesn't care about Ukrainians being murdered by Russian gi's and Trump's base loves them some Putin.
Have you ever even talked to a Trump voter? Or do you just believe everything BlueAnon tells you about them and imagine them to be all the same?
Have I ever talked to one? Jesus! I'm surrounded by them on all sides. The question is Mr. Canuck, have you ever talked to one or better yet, have you ever had to live amongst them? No, you haven't.
And you're telling me that they all think Putin is just the greatest guy ever?
And that they all want more military intervention to kill Arabs and/or Muslims, despite Trump's message in 2016 being "We should NOT be bombing all these countries and we should invest that money back home instead, i.e. America First"? (Trump would not actually stop any of the interventions once he was in office, but lots of people who voted for him undoubtedly hoped that he would.)
And finally, are you telling me that every single last person who voted Trump in 2016 or 2020 did so because they were crazy about him and not, say, because while they were NOT crazy about him they considered Hillary and/or Biden to be the greater evil...which, they may have actually been right about?
Do YOU care about the US and its proxies murdering people in Syria or do you believe that Hillary was right when she responded to Trump bombing that country by criticizing him for not bombing the country MORE?
Don't feed the lazy, mendacious bears. It only shows up after whacking off to internet porn in Mom's den.
When the media is resorting to using atrocity propaganda against Russia, and given the number of times this tactic has been used in the enemedia's history, you can tell Russia is succeeding in its objective vis a vis Ukraine.
No surprises there. We've just seen two years of covid propaganda. We don't need to be told, we KNOW that our governments are totally mendacious. AND our mass media is the same. AND our population largely doesn't know/doesn't care.
Largely. Not wholly.
Those are the facts.
Well established now.
How to deal with them?
Well the growth of such as substack, scheerpost, eugyppius, lifesite, the expose, represents the creation of a growing number of 'sources of truth and reason' which are effectively networked, connected together, via their audiences, aren't they? Us.
Those and many more.
Currently we have no 'centres for the 'sources' but that will happen.
And they are building their reputations - some consistently good, some not quite so much.
It is a web within a web.
A distributed web of reliable and topical sources.
Eventually it will be very strong. And very widespread. You know it will grow across countries - across languages. With translation softwaren now ubiquitous this becomes possible. So it gets to be really global, really a thing of the people, all people.
And I reckon eventually it will become known to the wider mass of people - which is by far the majority, maybe 90% compared to those 'inside' this inner web, i.e. 9 times as many.
It will become known to them and they will come to see it as not a bunch of far out whacky space cadets but as definitely an authoritative, true and reliable source.
The masses will begin to turn to it.
As throughout the ages the masses have always turned this way or that seeking the sense, the truth and the way that will free them of irksome yokes, oppression.
What we've got right now is a population that largely doesn't see itself as oppressed.
Is the problem.
They have faith in vaccines.
They even have faith in masks.
They believe the narratives.
But the results over time will break the news to them. I think that's unavoidable. Here, there and everywhere, about this and then that and then the other.
And they'll begin this paradigm shift: to turning to this 'inner web' for the truth, the facts and the way.
So I reckon we just keep going.
And each one of us tries to build a library of unassailable facts, of real data, of excellent dissertations, of illuminating conversations, discussions, videos, whatever.
To help build this 'web within the web' and make it stronger and stronger.
Build indexes to it, guides to it, directories of the inhabitants of it.
We are totally, absolutely totally and completely in our tiny infancy at the moment, there's so far we can go, we have not yet begun to fight.
For instance the best we have for mask refutations are perhaps the graphs and charts in the book 'unmasked' and similar that have been published in many of our 'source' areas.
But the public see none of that.
And if they did it wouldn't appeal to them much.
But there's the whole world of high tech and advertising smarts out there for us to employ did we wish and did we get activist enough.
Those charts could be presented in dynamic videos of great appeal that just pounded the message home.
Just like the govt propaganda does but better by an order of magnitude.
And with a crucial difference: our perhaps flamboyant and populist presentations can be accompanied by sober and authoritative references backing up and demonstrating every thing we say.
We have a tremendous stock pile of ammunition: we have the truth. A vast world of data and logical reasoning.
We have a tremendous innate ability amongst us in all fields. The sciences, the arts, the humanities.
We have it all.
And we haven't yet started. Not at all. I contend not at all.
Where I live in two years I have not seen one single public presentation designed to get truths across to the people. Not one flyer handed out. Not one piece of paper posted up anywhere at any time. Not one tiny bit of graffiti. Far less a bombardment.
So what I'm saying is that yes the problem is huge but it is being addressed, the troops are signing on, the army is a-building, the ammunition is being collected and stock piled, the weapons of 'war' are being assembled.
We all ought to know that because we all should be part of it.
The covid
The Ukraine war
Vaccines
Abrogation and theft of democracy
Denial of truth and reason
Dissemination of outright lies
Wholescale malfeasance
It's all got to go and it will.
Without a sneeringly obsequious, dead eyed hive-minded PMC, programmed by gleefully brainwashed yuppie liberal parents; intentionally blatant große Lüge would be mistaken for a bad taste "Onion" wannabe. It's like Tea Party 'Baggers or crankhead MAGA Nazis: this ridiculously obvious BS is like those films of monkeys, hitting a switch for a methamphetamine fix; electrodes sticking out of where their brain used to be? Little WHITE lies & TV dopamine fixes are now trying to trigger adrenaline, like Fallschirmjäger turning GREEN upon death?
Stay Calm - and Support Russia against Ukro-Nazis
I'm calm as calm can be, but I support no side, and this conflict has three sides or more, in this tragedy, or I should say tragedy for the unwashed Ukrainians being exploited, dispossessed and murdered.
Why do we bother with making fictional entertainments when we can just have these insane fairy tales made up by the mainstream media thrown at us? What's next? "Russians raid Kiev Zoo and barbecue rare white rhinos?" "Russians create food trucks serving roasted baby-meat delicacies?" "Russians wake up each morning and drink the freshly squeezed blood of Ukrainian virgins?" Atrocity propaganda by its very nature reveals the over-zealousness of its creators. Let's hope the public can smell a rotten story by the scent of its rotten writers.
Once again, who is this "we?" Most Americans are not paying any attention to Russia's war on Ukraine. Most Americans are not concerned with it. The national mainstream news is for insiders, it's not for the unwashed. Local news is for the unwashed and local news limits its coverage of Russia's war on Ukraine instead focusing on local violence, the weather and sports.
You must hang with a different crowd than I do. Most people I know are paying attention to the war. They watch national news on mainstream media outlets for the most part. "We" or most Americans love to be entertained and watch fictional stories on TV. That's what I was saying--we don't need any more soap operas or space operas on the telly when we have these insane propaganda pieces that are much more salacious than anything rom-com scriptwriters can come up with.
Speaking of Ukraine War atrocities, have we had any status updates from the International Commission Investigating the Bucha Atrocities?
I was hoping that by now that the Commission's forensic experts would have at least published a preliminary list of victims, with cause of death and estimated time of death.
Yeah, like, "we're not Nostradamus, who knew?" But they act like they know, and the idiot Bush even claimed God instructed him, gave the high five. But, as pointed out, they did know: Scott Ritter told them, and if Colon Powell wasn't obviously full of shit, shit exists nowhere.
The weird thing is that this type of propaganda always works and has always worked. I doesn't much change over the centuries because it doesn't need to. People always believe it.
Nothing weird about it, it's human nature. It's naivete that enables it. Maybe that's the angle to work on to try to fight it.
Greed, mendacity, and sometimes just plain exhaustion at getting through another day in bonded slavery hell contribute to intentional ignorance.