REPEAT THIS, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN UNITL IT IS DRILLED IN ALL OUR HEADS ->
"If you want to fight the power, focus your opposition where the real power is. The war machine. Imperial power structures. Intelligence agencies. Plutocracy. Capitalism."
Well done, Caitlin and Tim. A real message and one that was needed for everyone to digest.
Most of the readers here will need little in the way of motivation to accept the truth telling.
It's the rest of the people who have remove the fog of Presidential make-believe, 4 years in the making and with hundreds of thousands more earmarked to end up in their graves, what is left of their bodies after a continuation of the US supplied body shattering bombs.
A fact.....The US acknowledges its 2000-pound bombs cause civilian deaths in Gaza and will pause supply on a shipment of the heavy weapons to Israel today... Yes, but another shipment tomorrow and on. It is the USA, after all
Another favourite US / Israel power game starting soon.
No, it's not been four years in the making. It has been 200 years to build the myth that voting works for you. It's been 50 years since the neoliberals took over Congress. And it's been around 25 years since the neocons convinced Congress that the best way to have peace is to bomb everyone else.
Never have I detected a neocon even mentioning peace. Perpetual war is the goal. I once witnessed a tv special that openly said this. Newt Gingrich had a short appearance.
For awhile they tried to sell that we were fighting other countries to achieve peace. Now peace has become a dirty word, as absent from their speech as Bernie's name in 2016.
pssst! if you'd prefer to defeat the power, rather than continually fighting it - I'd recommend disengaging from its 'terms', reject its 'conditions' and recognize the extent to which they have been drilled into your head...
Maybe you don't understand power? There will ALWAYS be a need to fight power - human civilizations (and life) is a story of power and changing powers...
In other words "opting out" of their speech and out of the fantasy they've spun. I'm a big proponent of opting out, of many things ... for my own sanity as well as to short-circuit their message.
Overall, probably disappointing for the shitlibs of the forum who just started setting themselves up comfortably in a safe space resembling a circle jerk, "unburdened" by the past shame of having voted for Biden in 2020, considering themselves fully awoke, and excited to finally unleash their inherent TDS with abandon.
Listen to chokaski shitlibs - don't do that. Focus on something past Trump. Treat your TDS with horse dewormer if it persists.
It was soo nice yesterday with "russian_bot" MIA from the substack. Too bad it can't be made permanent. Caitlin? I guess people will continue to have to ignore "russian_bot"'s brain-dead comments.
PS: Trump IS deranged. Hence, anyone that has TDS is sane. The people that don't have TDS may be the truly deranged ones. Also, I consider TDS to be a compliment, so thank you!
I thought russian_bot was being too critical until I read your response here. Please pay better attention to Caitlin's points that you praise. Being proud of having TDS or thinking that Trump is especially vile and not just another horrible creep like Biden is ignoring Caitlin's message.
John Naue, I agree with your assessment of Biden 100%. I am NOT comparing Trump to Biden. Biden IS a Genocider - and there is no greater evil (in my books) than that.
Because I hate Trump doesn't mean that I don't also hate Biden/Harris/Democrats/Republicans/etc. - I have a loathing for ALL that have enabled THIS (and other) Genocides.
My comment was more about a history of exchanges between "russian_bot" and me on this substack, and one would need context to understand them.
"russian_bot" is a Trump LOVER, a psychophant, a cultist - he has exposed himself to be so at every opportunity, including his profile (I elect Trumps).
your last paragraph - bring proof. where is it chokaski the proof. no amount of googling will help because you're a liar.
and what disturbs you most is you know it. that's why it's bothering you. you've made up smears and you keep doubling down while knowing you're lying. you've blocked me yet you look for my comments and respond when your little tapeworm brain thinks it can hurt me.
keep shaking and foaming chokaski. it's too amusing for me to drop the occasional "choke the chang" routine 🤣🤡
Your emotional reactions, outbursts, rants, and ad hominem attacks when ANYONE says anything FACTUAL that is BAD about Trump is ALL THE PROOF anyone needs. Q.E.D.
But seriously, you should consider getting a room with Trump and put your LOVE-FEST into high gear (though I doubt even a despicable character like Trump will be able to tolerate someone like you). Never hurts trying though...who knows...
"It was soo nice yesterday" - there was nothing to comment on yesterday, punctuated by your brown-nosing vacuous lick. let's see how your today's one performs 😳
btw, chokaski, report my posts and implore poodles to do the same. who knows, maybe one of these days pow! right in the kisser, to the moon alice!
Russian-bot, nice to see you are still revealing your character .... like a billboard in the spotlight. You really reveal yourself for all to see ... and chuckle. Sad little pony.
nice lick from chokaski you got. remember, it's a loan even if unsolicited. make sure you pay back triple. find ways. open additional accounts if need be. 🤣🤡
One of the symptoms of a severe late-stage TDS is inability to grasp details. The foaming at the mouth and shaking is usually a good indicator.
Triple your dose of horse dewormer, triple the usual three times a day too. 3 * 3 * 3 = 27 doses a day. Can't hurt for sure - you're past that - but could have some side effects, not necessarily negative.
You don't think the USSR, and to a much greater extent China, leveraged some aspects of capitalism while keeping other aspects like financial predators away from things like state funded healthcare and education - or their militaries?
In any case, it might be nice if Uncle Scam would take his boot off the neck of Cuba, and say, Venezuela so that we could once and for all be able to say whether state socialism, communism and/or anti-capitalism really works, no?
God forbid that a successful socialist society could exist anywhere on Earth!
Even the mild form of socialism that the UK's NHS was couldn't be allowed to exist.
That might make people like Jeffrey Peoples have to think that capitalism is not the only and best form of economics. Just imagine the cognitive dissonance that would cause!
Yes, that's exactly what I am referring to. I've been watching as the NHS is constantly underfunded, to open the gates to an American-style for-profit health care system.
That is my point, about China. China could not have developed a more flourishing economy without "capitalism."
I will not disagree about cuba or Venezuela. The united states should not be trying to sabotage their economies. But allowing cuba and Venezuela to trade and to interact more fully with "capitalist" countries will say nothing about whether communism works.
Cuba has been trading with “capitalist” countries during that 66 years. North Korea has also survived since its independence. Survival isn’t particularly a great demonstration of a system’s potential. Most people want more in life than survival. Which is probably why China and now Cuba itself introduced reforms that brought in “capitalistic” elements.
I don’t view the socialist caricature of monopolistic totally unregulated sociopathic “capitalism” the ideal system. The binary created by communists is ridiculous. Blaming anything on “capitalism” is intellectually lazy, as to some purist communists, anything but a dictatorship of the proletariat is “capitalism.”
Yeah, lifting 800,000,000 of it's people out of poverty and having cities that resemble something out if a futuristic sci-fi movie, building thousand of Klms of high speed rail in several countries and turning out thousand of university graduates a year is utterly ridiculous.
I see you have read some Marx, Governments must go through the period of Capitalism. Marx told Lennon, Trotsky and Stalin they would fail. Chins reverted in time and the 100 yr. plan seems to be working nicely.
Yes of course they would fail, communism is irrational and idiotic. It’s like a doctor promoting shit eating to cure balding, but then telling patients when they eat shit that they have to wait until they are dead before it will work.
Most people who are Marxist merely have faith in Marxism; they don’t even bother to try to understand it because they hate their material conditions and injustices in the world and it promises to fix it all with obtuse gaudy rhetoric, which for many people makes it easier to believe because they can project whatever they want into it. Marxism is more incoherent than the trinity and as empirically valid as astrology.
your point is post-hoc rationalization, imo. (like kamala would have been a much better president for women's rights). maybe they could have, but the circumstances didn't allow it.
The problem is simple: the entire US consciousness is fucked. Dem, Repub, Lib, Conserv, no matter. All are so inundated by the ads hurled at them nonstop, saturating the mind-space — and by the ingrained tradition of propagandized exceptionalism — that the prevailing opinion seems to be that “everything will work out, will be all right”. I’ve spoken to acquaintances who’ve been Trumpers since ’15, and they’re convinced he’ll do the right things for America; just like numnutz shitlib acquaintances who opined the same about the Kamala-Biden admin. The reality-facers — who realize that the shit keeps repeatedly hitting the fan regardless — constitute a tiny fraction of this country’s population.
Class consciousness is the bane of the oligarchs' existence. So they pound American brains with propaganda from the moment they're able to understand and mouth the words "Mama" or "Dada" - And you're correct about the exceptionalism - that too. But also:
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
But socialism did gain a foothold in the U.S. during the New Deal, brought to us by FDR, the class traitor. And the oligarchs were so livid they actually attempted the overthrow of the government by an army of WWI vets led by General Smedley Butler -- except he reported it.
One of the biggest mistakes the U.S. ever made, not prosecuting those traitors who tried to overthrow the government by force of arms. But they were so important! We know those people don't live under the same laws as the rest of us. But if Prescott Bush had gone to prison, he would never have become a senator, and we wouldn't have enjoyed two warmongering Bush presidents.
The communist witch hunts in the 1950s were begun in order to root out FDR's adherents in the State Department. The State Department used to be the most important part of the Executive Branch, but the Military/CIA now have that position, and the State Department has been gelded. Never thought to see the head of the CIA running around negotiating with countries, but now we do.
True. I didn't want to get into a history lesson, but when socialism (and communism) did get a foothold (BEFORE the New Deal), the oligarchs of the day had no qualms using the fascist power of state and non-state (ex. Pinkerton thugs) actors to quash it, followed by jailing Debs, the Business Plot, the Red Scare(s), and ultimately the CIA-led infiltration and co-optation of the American left through the Frankfurt School (eventual neocons) and academia, which brought us to the idpol "woke" "left" ideology of today filling the vacuum.
"American Midnight" is a good retelling of a lot of that and the birth in earnest of the American fascist state.
Believe me, FDR didn't pass the New Deal because he was trying a form of socialism. He was doing it - and he was very clear about it - to save capitalism and ward off the possibility that the suffering poor might turn to socialism to right their wrongs.
Moreover, you have the march on Washington by the WWI vets all wrong too. They were promised a bonus by the government and then the government reneged on their promise. It a shame on the country that they were forced to leave by General Smedley Butler.
Go read some history before you say anything more.
The reason you see directors of the intelligence services conducting state-to-state negotiations is that you don’t have any specialized diplomatic education. Your ambassadors are political appointees, not alumni of foreign service academies.
It's a soap opera. The purpose is to enthrall and keep the dupes coming back to see the commercials. It's a money machine providing bread and circuses. It's Kabuki, feigned opposition and grandstanding for X and C-SPAN.
That's the thing. US folks need to switch off the TV, switch off commercial radio, stop buying newspapers and stop reading MSM porn sites online.
They need to withdraw from the incessant message pushng and allow their souls to just detoxify, to absorb the messages of the natural world and start to think for themselves again.
Such as: System properties take precedence (needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one), emergent properties of complex systems unpredictable from simple reductionist analysis of its parts, feedback regulation, reciprocity in all transactions, etc. I agree with you, but again, what minuscule fraction of the species Homo sapiens is prepared to live by those messages of the natural world? Sorry, I despair.
By my count there's at least 9 Zionists in Trump's cabinet alone. For anyone who voted 'America First' (any by extension, withdrawal from any perpetual overseas wars) this is an absolute kick in the balls.
But hardly unexpected to anyone paying attention to Trump's tongue baths to Miriam Adelson, Zionist billionaire par excellence. And Sheldon's widow is only the tip of the iceberg.
Excellent piece. It took me way too long to bow out of the show but yesterday I declared I was done with presidential politics. I am indeed turning my attention elsewhere. You made a list and my subject is on it: Intelligence community. I plan to spend the next year writing about being raised by an undercover CIA agent, how it affected my life and career and ways in which the Agency has affected all our lives. Folks don't even begin to understand that they are and have been at the effect of the Intel Community. Thanks, Caitlin.
I'd be very interested to read that. What era did he work in? My education about the CIA began with Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes. Oh, what an eye-opener. And then Stephen Kinzler's book, Poisoner in Chief, about Sidney Gottlieb, who ran MK-ULTRA (oh no, that's a conspiracy theory. Not anymore) and worked on interrogation techniques. Yes, we're the good guys all right.
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
"They will die of old age surrounded by wealth and luxury,"
Notice how those in power are surrounded by luxury no matter how many people are living on the streets in tents and poverty? Look at the trappings of every government surrounded by luxury no matter what country they represent.
We were supposed to get rid of the kings of old, but some things never die.
"As long as they can keep us clapping along with the puppet show, we’re never going to pay attention to the forces pulling the strings. We’re never going to bring enough awareness to the real problems to find actual solutions and carry them out. We’re never going to be able to bring real opposition to real power.
And that’s the whole idea. That’s why this silly puppet show keeps coming back every four years.
Stop clapping along and start looking around the theater. You know where the empire managers want you to place your attention, so start looking where they don’t want you to look."
I don’t think you e been paying attention if you honestly believe that Trump is part of the puppet show. The puppet show has done e everything in its power to get rid of him.
If we just fight Capitalism, the war machine, imperial power structures and all that goes with those things will collapse as well. We were warned about the industrial, military complex a long time ago. Too bad more people didn't listen.
I don't think those two actually like each other, but I also don't think they hate each other. Before Trump came along, I think most politicians were drinking with one another, despite their party differences.
But I do agree with your take of how all these rich people will die in luxury while so many poor people are killed under their poor decisions (ie Gaza). I don't see the term oligarchy thrown around much at the US, but with the way Elon Musk poured in millions of dollars to the Trump campaign, why isn't the US often labeled as an oligarchy? (or am I missing something?)
Look up the 2014 Princeton Study. They concluded that the US is indeed an oligarchy, not a democracy, and that whatever average people ask their elected representatives to do, they'll be ignored, but the billionaires and corporations get what they ask for 99% of the time.
The Clintons and the Trumps were great friends before the 2016 election. In fact, the Hillary Clinton emails that WikiLeaks published showed that HRC wanted a straw man like Trump to run against her
Everyone in America knows we can trust the corporations to do what's best for us in every circumstance. They only want what's good for us! They would never do anything underhanded or wrong, even if doing so means they would make tons more money or gain more power!
That is why we in the U.S. trust private corporations to own and program our voting machines. Of course they are completely honest about how they're doing this. We don't need to see the programming! That's why it is forbidden, because it's beside the point! And even though those machines were hacked in 30 seconds the last time they challenged anyone to do it, we know that when election day comes, they are perfectly secure!
And I have to hand it to the Trump Show to have completely silenced the discussion on the voting machines by giving the lead on that issue in 2020 to "crazy people," and "conspiracy nuts." Then, they topped it off with the massive judgement in the defamation lawsuits against everyone who said anything about it. So, no challenging the voting machines now.
Yes, when Bush gave us the "Help America Vote Act" (my gods, the irony of that title), I would say that democracy ended then, except it ended when he was installed by the Supreme Court in 2000, contrary to anything in the Constitution. And the Democrats didn't make a peep.
Amazing isn't it? Slightly less mail-in balloting this time, but it was still in use. And suddenly no "ballot stuffing" or "Venezuela hacking the machines" or any of the vote rigging we were told was so rampant in 2020! Of course, mostly silence from the other wing of the uni-party, the Blue Team, on "Russian hacking" and "meddling" in the elections, too. Turns out all Americans need is the appearance of a "landslide" or handy victory and suddenly the vote is fair! *Except in countries officially designated as "hostile foreign powers" or baddies like Venezuela and Russia.
Yeah, funny, since we were repeatedly assured that "democracy was on the ballot", Biden seems pretty cheerful about handing 'democracy' over, considering.
Nothing else needs to be said… Except to point out, that Jeff Epstein and P Diddy are somehow connected to one or both - and at LEAST one of those is a Zionist Operation.
Oh…and as regards ‘Kayfabe’… Trump is in The WWE HALL OF FAME.
“ If you want to fight the power, focus your opposition where the real power is. The war machine. Imperial power structures. Intelligence agencies. Plutocracy. Capitalism. Fully unplug your emotional energy from the illusion of electoral politics and dedicate your attention instead to the concrete movements of weapons, resources, and wealth.”
Peculiar, no mention of Zionists there. It’s as if in her model the Israel lobby isn’t run by ideologues fanatically committed to the mythological genocidal state of Israel. No religious zealots in her model, just greedy rich people. Don’t look to the synagogue or the church or mosque, but only to Wall Street. Theodore Herzl and Rabbi Kook were apparently stock traders, and John Hagee is an arms dealer. Or maybe she counts the synagogue, church, and mosque as “imperial power structures.”
Zionists are not a tool of the war machine, they are a consumer and producer. If anything the war machine is a tool of Zionists. And zionists do not care about the American empire except for what it can do for Israel. If we were to take the perspective of a sane american imperialist, Israel is only preventing the American empire from becoming what it could be if it did not have a vampiric genocidal cult draining its taxes on behalf of an apartheid state. Zionism's greatest success thus far has probably been convincing so many people, even those who are opposed to its policies and the american empire itself, the ludicrous idea that supporting Israel is in the interests of the American empire. If America does not remove Israel's fangs from its neck it will bleed to death, not to mention Palestine.
My point isn’t that rich people don’t have power, but that people have ideological motivations, and that includes rich people. And Zionists aren’t all rich, it includes millions of people who vote and act upon their ideological motivations and aren’t particularly wealthy. Herzl, the prophet of modern Zionism wasn’t particularly rich when he wrote the Jewish State. He even *went into debt* to promote his ideological cause. Nor were the thousands of soldiers who carried out ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Nor were the thousands of grunts moving the Zionist propaganda machine in the U.S.
Hechler, the Christian Zionist who stood by the side of Herzl when he died, also died impoverished, even though he was instrumental in promoting the vision of Zionism to the German aristocracy.
Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, and the military strategist who led the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, was not rich — middle class would probably characterize his financial status at the time before his ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The creation of the Jewish State would be better characterized as the result of a religious messianic movement like Mormonism and the creation of Utah, than say, the colonization of South Africa. And the same ideological zealotry necessarily responsible for the ethnic cleansing in 1948 is necessarily responsible for the genocide today.
so poor religious zionist zealots pulled the strings of the rich. the rich let this happen because the poor religious zealots know how to pull the right string, the one that, at least, promises them more wealth. from this perspective the owners are again not to blame, the ideological status quo is preserved.
Everything in history isn’t “string pulling”, there is often a lot of collaboration between influential factions and people. Herzl never got rich — maybe you are, but not everyone in the world is solely motivated by amassing as much wealth for themselves for nothing but sitting on it like dragons. There were certainly rich people who cooperated with Herzl, and rich people who opposed him. “The rich” is not a monolith. Some of them probably took their actions because they thought it could improve their wealth, and some probably did it for ideological reasons. The way Israel was founded does not redeem corrupt rich people for all their actions, it just means corrupt rich people can’t be solely or primarily blamed for every historical event. And Zionism wasn’t the “ideological status quo”— it was actually a deep ideological shift in Judaism, from a stance that discouraged political nationalism after disastrous revolts in the first and second centuries c.e. to a stance that zealously promoted it again.
'collaboration between influential factions and people' is 'string pulling' in pr-talk. - i'm not rich. - 'the rich' is a monolith as they're all wealthy enough to move things. - the rich ones in history that took actions for ideological reasons endangering and eliminating their wealth and position are very, very few. - corrupt, rich people can be blamed for the vast majority of historical events, since means and power are almost always at the basis of any historical event (make things move). - imo, zionism is just another iteration of the ideological status quo in which the few rule over the many.
The beginning of the zionist state of israel began, not with the greed of a corrupt rich person, but the zeal of a person who wasn't rich. What first started to make things move was religious zealotry, not the rich. Some rich people definitely eventually helped, but you would be missing the most fundamental factor of its birth if you myopically focused on rich people or "the empire" as Caitlin Johnstone did in her article and you are. But I'm aware that basic historical documented facts are often not any match for ideological zealotry. Not even promises of riches would matter.
I mostly feel for those shitlibs who really thought their side was fighting fascism going against Trump, when in reality it's just one big club of oligarchal warmongers and we are not part of it
"As long as they can keep us clapping along with the puppet show, we’re never going to pay attention to the forces pulling the strings. We’re never going to bring enough awareness to the real problems to find actual solutions and carry them out. We’re never going to be able to bring real opposition to real power.
And that’s the whole idea. That’s why this silly puppet show keeps coming back every four years.
Stop clapping along and start looking around the theater. You know where the empire managers want you to place your attention, so start looking where they don’t want you to look."
REPEAT THIS, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN UNITL IT IS DRILLED IN ALL OUR HEADS ->
"If you want to fight the power, focus your opposition where the real power is. The war machine. Imperial power structures. Intelligence agencies. Plutocracy. Capitalism."
Thank you Caitlin, as always!
Yes, Chang, I agree.
Well done, Caitlin and Tim. A real message and one that was needed for everyone to digest.
Most of the readers here will need little in the way of motivation to accept the truth telling.
It's the rest of the people who have remove the fog of Presidential make-believe, 4 years in the making and with hundreds of thousands more earmarked to end up in their graves, what is left of their bodies after a continuation of the US supplied body shattering bombs.
A fact.....The US acknowledges its 2000-pound bombs cause civilian deaths in Gaza and will pause supply on a shipment of the heavy weapons to Israel today... Yes, but another shipment tomorrow and on. It is the USA, after all
Another favourite US / Israel power game starting soon.
No, it's not been four years in the making. It has been 200 years to build the myth that voting works for you. It's been 50 years since the neoliberals took over Congress. And it's been around 25 years since the neocons convinced Congress that the best way to have peace is to bomb everyone else.
Never have I detected a neocon even mentioning peace. Perpetual war is the goal. I once witnessed a tv special that openly said this. Newt Gingrich had a short appearance.
For awhile they tried to sell that we were fighting other countries to achieve peace. Now peace has become a dirty word, as absent from their speech as Bernie's name in 2016.
pssst! if you'd prefer to defeat the power, rather than continually fighting it - I'd recommend disengaging from its 'terms', reject its 'conditions' and recognize the extent to which they have been drilled into your head...
Maybe you don't understand power? There will ALWAYS be a need to fight power - human civilizations (and life) is a story of power and changing powers...
that's the story you know, and the one I guess you'd like to continue-since you seem to want to 'fight ' on the terms given to you...
It's not what I know, it's the HISTORY of human civilization and societies - which you are free to ignore at your own peril.
Chang is just a 'know-all.'
I am surprised he hasn't yet blocked others like me who don't agree.
Sometimes he's right; sometimes he's not.
But what interests me is his 'agenda?'
He cuts off people who disagree with him............can he cope with comments that disagree with him?
WHY is he here?
You are speaking about America
No, I'm speaking about the whole world - every country has a 1%. Power needs to be challenged (by the 99%) EVERYWHERE.
In other words "opting out" of their speech and out of the fantasy they've spun. I'm a big proponent of opting out, of many things ... for my own sanity as well as to short-circuit their message.
"IN ALL OUR HEADS" - speak for yourself chokaski.
Overall, probably disappointing for the shitlibs of the forum who just started setting themselves up comfortably in a safe space resembling a circle jerk, "unburdened" by the past shame of having voted for Biden in 2020, considering themselves fully awoke, and excited to finally unleash their inherent TDS with abandon.
Listen to chokaski shitlibs - don't do that. Focus on something past Trump. Treat your TDS with horse dewormer if it persists.
It was soo nice yesterday with "russian_bot" MIA from the substack. Too bad it can't be made permanent. Caitlin? I guess people will continue to have to ignore "russian_bot"'s brain-dead comments.
PS: Trump IS deranged. Hence, anyone that has TDS is sane. The people that don't have TDS may be the truly deranged ones. Also, I consider TDS to be a compliment, so thank you!
I thought russian_bot was being too critical until I read your response here. Please pay better attention to Caitlin's points that you praise. Being proud of having TDS or thinking that Trump is especially vile and not just another horrible creep like Biden is ignoring Caitlin's message.
John Naue, I agree with your assessment of Biden 100%. I am NOT comparing Trump to Biden. Biden IS a Genocider - and there is no greater evil (in my books) than that.
Because I hate Trump doesn't mean that I don't also hate Biden/Harris/Democrats/Republicans/etc. - I have a loathing for ALL that have enabled THIS (and other) Genocides.
My comment was more about a history of exchanges between "russian_bot" and me on this substack, and one would need context to understand them.
"russian_bot" is a Trump LOVER, a psychophant, a cultist - he has exposed himself to be so at every opportunity, including his profile (I elect Trumps).
chokaski liar what's new chokaski.
your last paragraph - bring proof. where is it chokaski the proof. no amount of googling will help because you're a liar.
and what disturbs you most is you know it. that's why it's bothering you. you've made up smears and you keep doubling down while knowing you're lying. you've blocked me yet you look for my comments and respond when your little tapeworm brain thinks it can hurt me.
keep shaking and foaming chokaski. it's too amusing for me to drop the occasional "choke the chang" routine 🤣🤡
Your emotional reactions, outbursts, rants, and ad hominem attacks when ANYONE says anything FACTUAL that is BAD about Trump is ALL THE PROOF anyone needs. Q.E.D.
But seriously, you should consider getting a room with Trump and put your LOVE-FEST into high gear (though I doubt even a despicable character like Trump will be able to tolerate someone like you). Never hurts trying though...who knows...
"It was soo nice yesterday" - there was nothing to comment on yesterday, punctuated by your brown-nosing vacuous lick. let's see how your today's one performs 😳
btw, chokaski, report my posts and implore poodles to do the same. who knows, maybe one of these days pow! right in the kisser, to the moon alice!
Russian-bot, nice to see you are still revealing your character .... like a billboard in the spotlight. You really reveal yourself for all to see ... and chuckle. Sad little pony.
nice lick from chokaski you got. remember, it's a loan even if unsolicited. make sure you pay back triple. find ways. open additional accounts if need be. 🤣🤡
The people who post on this blog are anti Biden fool, you are either a lier or you don't read the comment section.
And criticism of you lord Trumpstien isn't TDS.
One of the symptoms of a severe late-stage TDS is inability to grasp details. The foaming at the mouth and shaking is usually a good indicator.
Triple your dose of horse dewormer, triple the usual three times a day too. 3 * 3 * 3 = 27 doses a day. Can't hurt for sure - you're past that - but could have some side effects, not necessarily negative.
This moment in history Their legacy, our shame. Our blood, and kids and the planet.....
There it is. Right off the bat. All of the bullshit that is spewed is all about “fighting Capitalism” in favor of some bullshit Communist utopia.
”Capitalism” isn’t going anywhere; when will the communist laity learn from China and the Soviet Union?
You don't think the USSR, and to a much greater extent China, leveraged some aspects of capitalism while keeping other aspects like financial predators away from things like state funded healthcare and education - or their militaries?
In any case, it might be nice if Uncle Scam would take his boot off the neck of Cuba, and say, Venezuela so that we could once and for all be able to say whether state socialism, communism and/or anti-capitalism really works, no?
God forbid that a successful socialist society could exist anywhere on Earth!
Even the mild form of socialism that the UK's NHS was couldn't be allowed to exist.
That might make people like Jeffrey Peoples have to think that capitalism is not the only and best form of economics. Just imagine the cognitive dissonance that would cause!
The NHS is slowly being eroded, and education monitised. Thatcher and Reagan started the neoliberal wave that took over.
Yes, that's exactly what I am referring to. I've been watching as the NHS is constantly underfunded, to open the gates to an American-style for-profit health care system.
War was more important.
That is my point, about China. China could not have developed a more flourishing economy without "capitalism."
I will not disagree about cuba or Venezuela. The united states should not be trying to sabotage their economies. But allowing cuba and Venezuela to trade and to interact more fully with "capitalist" countries will say nothing about whether communism works.
I think the fact that Cuba has survived despite 66 years of illegal Amerikan sanctions says a lot about state socialism.
Cuba has been trading with “capitalist” countries during that 66 years. North Korea has also survived since its independence. Survival isn’t particularly a great demonstration of a system’s potential. Most people want more in life than survival. Which is probably why China and now Cuba itself introduced reforms that brought in “capitalistic” elements.
I don’t view the socialist caricature of monopolistic totally unregulated sociopathic “capitalism” the ideal system. The binary created by communists is ridiculous. Blaming anything on “capitalism” is intellectually lazy, as to some purist communists, anything but a dictatorship of the proletariat is “capitalism.”
Yeah, lifting 800,000,000 of it's people out of poverty and having cities that resemble something out if a futuristic sci-fi movie, building thousand of Klms of high speed rail in several countries and turning out thousand of university graduates a year is utterly ridiculous.
I see you have read some Marx, Governments must go through the period of Capitalism. Marx told Lennon, Trotsky and Stalin they would fail. Chins reverted in time and the 100 yr. plan seems to be working nicely.
Yes of course they would fail, communism is irrational and idiotic. It’s like a doctor promoting shit eating to cure balding, but then telling patients when they eat shit that they have to wait until they are dead before it will work.
Most people who are Marxist merely have faith in Marxism; they don’t even bother to try to understand it because they hate their material conditions and injustices in the world and it promises to fix it all with obtuse gaudy rhetoric, which for many people makes it easier to believe because they can project whatever they want into it. Marxism is more incoherent than the trinity and as empirically valid as astrology.
your point is post-hoc rationalization, imo. (like kamala would have been a much better president for women's rights). maybe they could have, but the circumstances didn't allow it.
BOTH those nations governments control the wanna Corporate TotalitarianFascist Oligarchs. Otherwise they’d both look like PRE-PUTIN 1990s Russia.
“Wanna-Be”
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The problem is simple: the entire US consciousness is fucked. Dem, Repub, Lib, Conserv, no matter. All are so inundated by the ads hurled at them nonstop, saturating the mind-space — and by the ingrained tradition of propagandized exceptionalism — that the prevailing opinion seems to be that “everything will work out, will be all right”. I’ve spoken to acquaintances who’ve been Trumpers since ’15, and they’re convinced he’ll do the right things for America; just like numnutz shitlib acquaintances who opined the same about the Kamala-Biden admin. The reality-facers — who realize that the shit keeps repeatedly hitting the fan regardless — constitute a tiny fraction of this country’s population.
Class consciousness is the bane of the oligarchs' existence. So they pound American brains with propaganda from the moment they're able to understand and mouth the words "Mama" or "Dada" - And you're correct about the exceptionalism - that too. But also:
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
But socialism did gain a foothold in the U.S. during the New Deal, brought to us by FDR, the class traitor. And the oligarchs were so livid they actually attempted the overthrow of the government by an army of WWI vets led by General Smedley Butler -- except he reported it.
One of the biggest mistakes the U.S. ever made, not prosecuting those traitors who tried to overthrow the government by force of arms. But they were so important! We know those people don't live under the same laws as the rest of us. But if Prescott Bush had gone to prison, he would never have become a senator, and we wouldn't have enjoyed two warmongering Bush presidents.
The communist witch hunts in the 1950s were begun in order to root out FDR's adherents in the State Department. The State Department used to be the most important part of the Executive Branch, but the Military/CIA now have that position, and the State Department has been gelded. Never thought to see the head of the CIA running around negotiating with countries, but now we do.
True. I didn't want to get into a history lesson, but when socialism (and communism) did get a foothold (BEFORE the New Deal), the oligarchs of the day had no qualms using the fascist power of state and non-state (ex. Pinkerton thugs) actors to quash it, followed by jailing Debs, the Business Plot, the Red Scare(s), and ultimately the CIA-led infiltration and co-optation of the American left through the Frankfurt School (eventual neocons) and academia, which brought us to the idpol "woke" "left" ideology of today filling the vacuum.
"American Midnight" is a good retelling of a lot of that and the birth in earnest of the American fascist state.
Believe me, FDR didn't pass the New Deal because he was trying a form of socialism. He was doing it - and he was very clear about it - to save capitalism and ward off the possibility that the suffering poor might turn to socialism to right their wrongs.
Moreover, you have the march on Washington by the WWI vets all wrong too. They were promised a bonus by the government and then the government reneged on their promise. It a shame on the country that they were forced to leave by General Smedley Butler.
Go read some history before you say anything more.
Gee, I was enjoying the lesson until you smacked me in the face at the end. Teaching works better without corporal punishment.
You annoyed me
Is this about your petty ego or the truth? Please try not to be so rude.
FDR could not have avoided the pitchforks either.
The reason you see directors of the intelligence services conducting state-to-state negotiations is that you don’t have any specialized diplomatic education. Your ambassadors are political appointees, not alumni of foreign service academies.
It's a soap opera. The purpose is to enthrall and keep the dupes coming back to see the commercials. It's a money machine providing bread and circuses. It's Kabuki, feigned opposition and grandstanding for X and C-SPAN.
That's the thing. US folks need to switch off the TV, switch off commercial radio, stop buying newspapers and stop reading MSM porn sites online.
They need to withdraw from the incessant message pushng and allow their souls to just detoxify, to absorb the messages of the natural world and start to think for themselves again.
Such as: System properties take precedence (needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one), emergent properties of complex systems unpredictable from simple reductionist analysis of its parts, feedback regulation, reciprocity in all transactions, etc. I agree with you, but again, what minuscule fraction of the species Homo sapiens is prepared to live by those messages of the natural world? Sorry, I despair.
By my count there's at least 9 Zionists in Trump's cabinet alone. For anyone who voted 'America First' (any by extension, withdrawal from any perpetual overseas wars) this is an absolute kick in the balls.
https://thedailybeagle.substack.com/p/a-rebuttal-to-media-praises-on-trump
But hardly unexpected to anyone paying attention to Trump's tongue baths to Miriam Adelson, Zionist billionaire par excellence. And Sheldon's widow is only the tip of the iceberg.
Wake Up Caitlin says. Americans are a very somnolent group of people.
Yup the USSA is a huge Mental Hospital, welcome to groundhog day Amerika !!!!!!
no society based upon the compulsory and coercive monopoly state will ever succeed.
regardless of what people think of its government which is only 3 branches
Yes, the whole Democratic/Republican thing is just a sports match. Only the fans of the two teams think it matters who wins.
And now you understand why the establishment of both parties have been so supportive of the efforts to delegitimize Trump.
Excellent piece. It took me way too long to bow out of the show but yesterday I declared I was done with presidential politics. I am indeed turning my attention elsewhere. You made a list and my subject is on it: Intelligence community. I plan to spend the next year writing about being raised by an undercover CIA agent, how it affected my life and career and ways in which the Agency has affected all our lives. Folks don't even begin to understand that they are and have been at the effect of the Intel Community. Thanks, Caitlin.
I'd be very interested to read that. What era did he work in? My education about the CIA began with Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes. Oh, what an eye-opener. And then Stephen Kinzler's book, Poisoner in Chief, about Sidney Gottlieb, who ran MK-ULTRA (oh no, that's a conspiracy theory. Not anymore) and worked on interrogation techniques. Yes, we're the good guys all right.
Approx 1951 - 1975. CIA doctor. I believe he was very much a part of MK Ultra and that's what I'd like to learn more about.
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
-Frank Zappa
Frank was a child of the M.I.C.- as was Jim Morrison, et al...go figure!
(but no- you won't fool the children of the revolution)
;)
This!
"They will die of old age surrounded by wealth and luxury,"
Notice how those in power are surrounded by luxury no matter how many people are living on the streets in tents and poverty? Look at the trappings of every government surrounded by luxury no matter what country they represent.
We were supposed to get rid of the kings of old, but some things never die.
"We were supposed to get rid of the kings of old, but some things never die."
Power was kicked upstairs to The State as a facade for actually ending it.
Even people today are all concerned about state government but not The Deep State itself
Exactly.
"As long as they can keep us clapping along with the puppet show, we’re never going to pay attention to the forces pulling the strings. We’re never going to bring enough awareness to the real problems to find actual solutions and carry them out. We’re never going to be able to bring real opposition to real power.
And that’s the whole idea. That’s why this silly puppet show keeps coming back every four years.
Stop clapping along and start looking around the theater. You know where the empire managers want you to place your attention, so start looking where they don’t want you to look."
I don’t think you e been paying attention if you honestly believe that Trump is part of the puppet show. The puppet show has done e everything in its power to get rid of him.
If we just fight Capitalism, the war machine, imperial power structures and all that goes with those things will collapse as well. We were warned about the industrial, military complex a long time ago. Too bad more people didn't listen.
I don't think those two actually like each other, but I also don't think they hate each other. Before Trump came along, I think most politicians were drinking with one another, despite their party differences.
But I do agree with your take of how all these rich people will die in luxury while so many poor people are killed under their poor decisions (ie Gaza). I don't see the term oligarchy thrown around much at the US, but with the way Elon Musk poured in millions of dollars to the Trump campaign, why isn't the US often labeled as an oligarchy? (or am I missing something?)
Look up the 2014 Princeton Study. They concluded that the US is indeed an oligarchy, not a democracy, and that whatever average people ask their elected representatives to do, they'll be ignored, but the billionaires and corporations get what they ask for 99% of the time.
I came to the same conclusion in a study of my gut around 1979, but nonetheless, I didn't make it into Princeton...
The Clintons and the Trumps were great friends before the 2016 election. In fact, the Hillary Clinton emails that WikiLeaks published showed that HRC wanted a straw man like Trump to run against her
Yeah, but he wasn't supposed to win.
Thank you, Caitlin.
Everyone in America knows we can trust the corporations to do what's best for us in every circumstance. They only want what's good for us! They would never do anything underhanded or wrong, even if doing so means they would make tons more money or gain more power!
That is why we in the U.S. trust private corporations to own and program our voting machines. Of course they are completely honest about how they're doing this. We don't need to see the programming! That's why it is forbidden, because it's beside the point! And even though those machines were hacked in 30 seconds the last time they challenged anyone to do it, we know that when election day comes, they are perfectly secure!
And I have to hand it to the Trump Show to have completely silenced the discussion on the voting machines by giving the lead on that issue in 2020 to "crazy people," and "conspiracy nuts." Then, they topped it off with the massive judgement in the defamation lawsuits against everyone who said anything about it. So, no challenging the voting machines now.
Yes, when Bush gave us the "Help America Vote Act" (my gods, the irony of that title), I would say that democracy ended then, except it ended when he was installed by the Supreme Court in 2000, contrary to anything in the Constitution. And the Democrats didn't make a peep.
Amazing isn't it? Slightly less mail-in balloting this time, but it was still in use. And suddenly no "ballot stuffing" or "Venezuela hacking the machines" or any of the vote rigging we were told was so rampant in 2020! Of course, mostly silence from the other wing of the uni-party, the Blue Team, on "Russian hacking" and "meddling" in the elections, too. Turns out all Americans need is the appearance of a "landslide" or handy victory and suddenly the vote is fair! *Except in countries officially designated as "hostile foreign powers" or baddies like Venezuela and Russia.
Yeah, funny, since we were repeatedly assured that "democracy was on the ballot", Biden seems pretty cheerful about handing 'democracy' over, considering.
he seems remarkably better (Biden, that is...)
Yes. I think he's going to Peru.
Did he suddenly get better medication or was this all a sham?
The easiest way to hack an election with voting machines is simply to flip the votes.
Like in 2004?
that's how you cook the burger
Nothing else needs to be said… Except to point out, that Jeff Epstein and P Diddy are somehow connected to one or both - and at LEAST one of those is a Zionist Operation.
Oh…and as regards ‘Kayfabe’… Trump is in The WWE HALL OF FAME.
“ If you want to fight the power, focus your opposition where the real power is. The war machine. Imperial power structures. Intelligence agencies. Plutocracy. Capitalism. Fully unplug your emotional energy from the illusion of electoral politics and dedicate your attention instead to the concrete movements of weapons, resources, and wealth.”
Peculiar, no mention of Zionists there. It’s as if in her model the Israel lobby isn’t run by ideologues fanatically committed to the mythological genocidal state of Israel. No religious zealots in her model, just greedy rich people. Don’t look to the synagogue or the church or mosque, but only to Wall Street. Theodore Herzl and Rabbi Kook were apparently stock traders, and John Hagee is an arms dealer. Or maybe she counts the synagogue, church, and mosque as “imperial power structures.”
The Zionists are simply one of the tools in the war machine that is currently trying to sustain the American empire.
Zionists are not a tool of the war machine, they are a consumer and producer. If anything the war machine is a tool of Zionists. And zionists do not care about the American empire except for what it can do for Israel. If we were to take the perspective of a sane american imperialist, Israel is only preventing the American empire from becoming what it could be if it did not have a vampiric genocidal cult draining its taxes on behalf of an apartheid state. Zionism's greatest success thus far has probably been convincing so many people, even those who are opposed to its policies and the american empire itself, the ludicrous idea that supporting Israel is in the interests of the American empire. If America does not remove Israel's fangs from its neck it will bleed to death, not to mention Palestine.
do you know of any poor religious zionist zealots pulling the strings?
My point isn’t that rich people don’t have power, but that people have ideological motivations, and that includes rich people. And Zionists aren’t all rich, it includes millions of people who vote and act upon their ideological motivations and aren’t particularly wealthy. Herzl, the prophet of modern Zionism wasn’t particularly rich when he wrote the Jewish State. He even *went into debt* to promote his ideological cause. Nor were the thousands of soldiers who carried out ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Nor were the thousands of grunts moving the Zionist propaganda machine in the U.S.
Hechler, the Christian Zionist who stood by the side of Herzl when he died, also died impoverished, even though he was instrumental in promoting the vision of Zionism to the German aristocracy.
Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, and the military strategist who led the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, was not rich — middle class would probably characterize his financial status at the time before his ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The creation of the Jewish State would be better characterized as the result of a religious messianic movement like Mormonism and the creation of Utah, than say, the colonization of South Africa. And the same ideological zealotry necessarily responsible for the ethnic cleansing in 1948 is necessarily responsible for the genocide today.
I encourage you to read my book:
https://minorityreport.substack.com/p/the-children-of-amalek
so poor religious zionist zealots pulled the strings of the rich. the rich let this happen because the poor religious zealots know how to pull the right string, the one that, at least, promises them more wealth. from this perspective the owners are again not to blame, the ideological status quo is preserved.
Everything in history isn’t “string pulling”, there is often a lot of collaboration between influential factions and people. Herzl never got rich — maybe you are, but not everyone in the world is solely motivated by amassing as much wealth for themselves for nothing but sitting on it like dragons. There were certainly rich people who cooperated with Herzl, and rich people who opposed him. “The rich” is not a monolith. Some of them probably took their actions because they thought it could improve their wealth, and some probably did it for ideological reasons. The way Israel was founded does not redeem corrupt rich people for all their actions, it just means corrupt rich people can’t be solely or primarily blamed for every historical event. And Zionism wasn’t the “ideological status quo”— it was actually a deep ideological shift in Judaism, from a stance that discouraged political nationalism after disastrous revolts in the first and second centuries c.e. to a stance that zealously promoted it again.
'collaboration between influential factions and people' is 'string pulling' in pr-talk. - i'm not rich. - 'the rich' is a monolith as they're all wealthy enough to move things. - the rich ones in history that took actions for ideological reasons endangering and eliminating their wealth and position are very, very few. - corrupt, rich people can be blamed for the vast majority of historical events, since means and power are almost always at the basis of any historical event (make things move). - imo, zionism is just another iteration of the ideological status quo in which the few rule over the many.
The beginning of the zionist state of israel began, not with the greed of a corrupt rich person, but the zeal of a person who wasn't rich. What first started to make things move was religious zealotry, not the rich. Some rich people definitely eventually helped, but you would be missing the most fundamental factor of its birth if you myopically focused on rich people or "the empire" as Caitlin Johnstone did in her article and you are. But I'm aware that basic historical documented facts are often not any match for ideological zealotry. Not even promises of riches would matter.
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I mostly feel for those shitlibs who really thought their side was fighting fascism going against Trump, when in reality it's just one big club of oligarchal warmongers and we are not part of it
Exactly.
"As long as they can keep us clapping along with the puppet show, we’re never going to pay attention to the forces pulling the strings. We’re never going to bring enough awareness to the real problems to find actual solutions and carry them out. We’re never going to be able to bring real opposition to real power.
And that’s the whole idea. That’s why this silly puppet show keeps coming back every four years.
Stop clapping along and start looking around the theater. You know where the empire managers want you to place your attention, so start looking where they don’t want you to look."
Thank You Caitlin
A farcical dance of the devils. (Of course, to the Palestinians there's nothing farcical about this danse macabre.)