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Thread: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

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    United States Avalon Member onawah's Avatar
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    “Iran Must Begin Acting Like A Normal Nation,” Says Totally Normal Nation
    JANUARY 13, 2020
    By CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/01...normal-nation/



    "The government which runs a globe-spanning empire led by a reality TV host keeps talking about the lack of normality in the nation of Iran.

    “What we want all countries to join in,” said State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus in a recent Fox News interview, “is to help us not only to de-escalate any tensions with Iran, but to help us bring Iran to a place where they are ready to stop their terrorist and malign behavior, and where they are ready to discuss with the United States, with Europe, with everyone, about how they can change their behavior to act like a normal nation.”

    “We want Iran to simply behave like a normal nation,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a press statement the other day. “We believe that the sanctions we imposed today further that strategic objective.”

    These would be the additional sanctions which have been expanded to include virtually the entire Iranian economy, deliberately targeting Iran’s already sanction-starved populace, with the explicit goal of fomenting a civil war in that nation.

    Which is of course a perfectly normal thing to do, from a perfectly normal nation.



    This would be the same Iran whose cultural heritage sites were threatened with destruction if it retaliated for the totally normal assassination of its top military official via flying robot. The same Iran whose financial system was just threatened with destruction using the totally normal hegemony of American central banking. Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy.

    So what can Iran do to become a “normal nation”? Well, since it’s the United States making this demand, we can safely assume that it’s the model Iran should look to.

    In order to become a normal nation, Iran will need to expand its interests from the region and begin toppling noncompliant governments and invading nations all around the world.

    In order to become a normal nation, Iran will need to circle the planet with hundreds of Iranian military bases.

    In order to become a normal nation, Iran will need to obtain thousands of nuclear weapons, and actually use a couple of them.

    In order to become a normal nation, Iran will need to become the most dominant military, economic and cultural force in the world, and then use that dominance to destroy any government, political party, ideology, faction, movement or person who stands in its way.

    In order to become a normal nation, Iran will need to arm violent extremist factions all around the world with the goal of eliminating all governments that refuse to bow to its interests.

    In order to become a normal nation, Iran will need to become the dominant producer of films, music and TV shows and use this influence to propagandize its power structure’s ideology to every possible cultural sphere.

    In order to become a normal nation, Iran will need to begin meddling in scores of democratic elections all around the world and then crying for years at the possibility of any nation returning the favor.

    In order to become a normal nation, Iran will need to shore up economic control of the world so that it can crush any sort of disobedience by starving civilians and depriving them of medical care while pretending that it’s a force for peace.

    In order to become a normal nation, Iran will need to indefinitely occupy a vast region on the other side of the planet with thousands upon thousands of troops and trillions of dollars in military equipment, to no benefit of a single ordinary Iranian, and against the will of the people who live there.

    In order to become a normal nation, Iran will need to create a presidency led by a reality TV star oligarch who is only supported because Iran’s populace is so disgusted with the status quo of their government.



    I am kidding, of course. The US government does not want Iran to become like the US. The US government does not want any nation to become like the US. The US likes its abnormality among nations just the way it is, thank you very much. The US is the exception to all its own rules. That’s how American exceptionalism works. This is one of those “do as I say, not as I do” situations.

    The US doesn’t want Iran to be like America. The US wants Iran to be like the other nations which have allowed themselves to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized empire.

    The US would be perfectly happy for Iran to begin acting like Saudi Arabia: arming terrorist factions, beheading heretics, committing war crimes and deliberately creating humanitarian disasters for geostrategic convenience, yet aligning fully with US military, financial, and resource control agendas.

    The US would be perfectly happy for Iran to begin acting like Israel: a nuclear-armed military outpost which constantly bombs adjacent nations, interferes in the US and other nations’ politics to shore up support, works toward the slow extermination of its indigenous population and fires upon protesters with live ammunition.

    The US would be perfectly happy for Iran to begin acting like Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand or the EU: obedient military/intelligence assets who function as extra American states when it comes to foreign policy and international affairs.

    That is what the US means by acting “normal”. Not acting moral. Not acting healthy. Certainly not acting like the US. It means acting obedient, compliant, and enslaved.

    Which is precisely what Iran is resisting."
    Each breath a gift...
    _____________

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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    #CNNIsTrash Trends As Pushback Grows Against Oligarchic Election Meddling
    JANUARY 15, 2020
    by CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/01...tion-meddling/



    The hashtag #CNNIsTrash is the number one trend on Twitter as of this writing due to the network’s appalling treatment of Bernie Sanders in last night’s Democratic presidential debate in Iowa.

    The joint smear job against Sanders had many arms, including wildly biased questions like Wolf Blitzer deliberately associating Bernie with “Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei” by pointing out that they both want US troops out of the Middle East and demanding to know how he was going to avoid “bankrupting the country” with a healthcare plan used in nations all over the world.

    But by far the most glaringly egregious assault on the Vermont Senator’s image was when CNN moderator Abby Phillip took a completely evidence-free sexism smear which defies all logic and presented it to the debate audience as an established and undeniable fact. You can watch the exchange here:



    Phillip brought up a transparently ridiculous claim that was “leaked” to the press and confirmed by Warren that in 2018 Sanders had told Warren he did not believe that a woman could win a presidential election. It’s a completely unproven allegation about an unwitnessed private conversation, yet Phillip did not ask Sanders if he had said such a thing, she asked him why he said it, presenting it as a given fact.

    Sanders explicitly denied ever saying any such thing. He said there’s Youtube footage people can look up of him saying a woman could become president many decades ago, adding that he only ran for president in 2016 because Warren refused grassroots efforts to persuade her to run (efforts which he’d supported).

    “So Senator Sanders, I do want to be clear here, you’re saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman could not win the election?” asked Phillip.

    “That is correct,” Sanders replied.

    “Senator Warren,” Phillip then asked without missing a beat. “What did you think when Senator Sanders told you that a woman could not win the election?”

    It was such a brazen manipulation that even CNN’s heavily pro-establishment crowd audibly reacted. Warren then cooperated with this manipulation by responding as though the allegation was a proven fact, without acknowledging Sanders’ denial or defending her claim.

    In CNN’s post-debate analysis, pundits actively reinforced the completely fact-free narrative that this allegation was an established reality, with Van Jones referring to “a banana peel sitting out there for Bernie to slip on when it came to his comments about women,” an idea premised on the position that those comments are known to have actually happened.

    CNN’s Jess McIntosh took it even further, overtly dismissing Sanders’ denial and saying, “I think what Bernie forgot was that this isn’t a he said/she said story. This is a reported out story that CNN was part of breaking, so to have him just flat out say no I think wasn’t nearly enough to address that for the women watching.”



    Of course, the allegation absolutely is a he said/she said story, per any possible definition: Warren says it happened, Sanders said it didn’t. The fact that CNN “reported out” on that he said/she said story doesn’t magically turn it into a fact, as should be obvious to any grown adult who isn’t suffering from a severe head wound.

    More importantly, nobody actually believes that Bernie Sanders told Elizabeth Warren a woman cannot be president. Not Jess McIntosh, not Abby Phillip, not Van Jones, not Elizabeth Warren, not CNN, and not any of the establishment loyalists who are trumpeting this allegation as fact. Anyone who claims to believe that this interaction occurred is simply lying to advance a political agenda, and they know it.

    The belief that a woman cannot be elected president in 2020 is not a thing. Nobody believes that, and anyone who pretends to believe that anyone believes that is simply telling you that they are an unprincipled liar who would rather take a nonsense stand on a nonsense issue than promote actual policies and changes. The heavy favorite to win the 2016 election was a woman, and were she not literally in the middle of an FBI investigation during that election she would have overcome the narrow margins she lost by.

    It’s been years since anyone has believed that a woman cannot win a US presidential election. If you claim that the one person in the world who does believe this is a senator who’s spent decades advocating for feminism and women in politics, you are a liar. It absolutely is that simple.



    So angry Berners have been rightly decrying the despicable manipulations of CNN, which can only be a good thing. A massively influential news corporation owned by the largest telecommunications company on the planet should not be able to determine who voters select to the highest elected office in the most powerful country in the world.

    This is oligarchic election interference, plain and simple. If the US government is going to call a few thousand dollars in Russian facebook memes election meddling, then the billions which get poured into the billionaire media tilting the scale to advantage the billionaire class is far worse by orders of magnitude.

    Last May I wrote an article titled “The Worst 2020 Election Interference Will Be Perfectly Legal” saying that the most egregious forms of election meddling we’ll see in this presidential race will not be perpetrated by the Russians, nor by the DNC, nor by sleazy gerrymandering or voter ID requirements, nor by hard vote tally manipulation, but the everyday, in-your-face manipulations of corporate media outlets like CNN. Unsurprisingly, this is already proving undeniably true.



    In fact the power of these vast news media corporations to manipulate the way the populace thinks and votes stretches far beyond the consequences of a mere presidential election. The ability to manufacture consent for the agendas of the plutocratic class which controls these corporations enables war, ecocide, militarism, soul-crushing oligarchic neoliberalism, increasingly Orwellian surveillance programs and an increasingly militarized police force to destroy lives and this very world without it ever occurring to a critical majority that it would be possible for us to use the power of our numbers to force real changes to our advantage.

    It is good that people are loudly criticizing this dynamic. It’s important to keep drawing attention to the way we’re being manipulated out of having any control over not just what happens in our world, but over what we think about what happens in our world. Hopefully public trust in the mouthpieces of oligarchy can be weakened to such an extent that people stop buying into their deceptions."
    Each breath a gift...
    _____________

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    United States Avalon Member Dennis Leahy's Avatar
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words



    (Song lyrics are from a Caitlin Johnstone poem, published here.)

    May all of your illusions be shattered beyond your ability to reassemble them.

    May you learn quickly from your failures and successes.

    May life treat you how you treat life.

    May you reap swiftly that which you sow, and may it be highly educational for you.

    May all of the hidden parts of yourself enter the light.

    May all of your unfelt feelings be felt.

    May you have a crystal clear glimpse of your own boundlessness.

    May you have a crystal clear glimpse of your own insignificance.

    May your inner monologue cease and may you experience stillness.

    May you experience the beauty of each moment that the babbling mind eclipses.

    May you uncover the mystery that hides behind the veil of separation.

    May you know true courage.

    May you know true wisdom.

    May you know true humility.

    May you know true truth.

    May you know yourself intimately, without disguises or distortions.

    May you meet the world lucidly, without projections or prejudices.

    May you perceive the world clearly, without filters or fantasies.

    May your delusions disappoint you and may authenticity astonish you.

    May everything you have constructed in untruth crumble before your eyes.

    May life conspire to unmake every false object you have made.

    May you live each moment fully, not for the goal of grandiose achievement, but for living itself.

    May you truly, deeply see yourself, and find there what you’ve always been looking for.

    May you be truly, deeply seen by someone else. May you let yourself be seen by them.

    May you end your war against the feminine.

    May you finally let in the enormity of what your mother did for you.

    May you find a home in your body.

    May your body feel at home on this earth.

    May the earth feel your sorrow.

    May you feel the earth’s forgiveness.

    May the earth feel your gratitude.

    May the earth feel your love.

    May thrum of the earth dance through you.

    May you fall in love with that dance.

    Amen.
    - Caitlin Johnstone, published Sept 24, 2019


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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    ^ Thanks Dennis - truly one of the best things I have read and felt in some time.
    I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions. - Robert Anton Wilson

    The present as you think of it, and in practical working terms, is that point at which you select your physical experience from all those events that could be materialized. - Seth (The Nature of Personal Reality - Session 656, Page 293)

    (avatar image: Brocken spectre, a wonderful phenomenon of nature I have experienced and a symbol for my aspirations.)

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    United States Avalon Member onawah's Avatar
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    How To Be A Mentally Sovereign Human
    by Caitlin Johnstone
    1/20/20
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/01...vereign-human/

    "We all showed up naked, slimy and clueless in a world of inexplicable sensory input we couldn't make head or tail out of. We were then taught what's what by people who showed up under the exact same circumstances a blink of an eye earlier.

    The amniotic fluid is barely washed from our tiny naked bodies before we find ourselves in a marriage and a day job, staring down at a small pair of eyes looking up to us for guidance.

    This is not a good environment for developing mental sovereignty, the ownership and authorship of your own cognitive relationship with life.

    Stepping into the world as a small person is like stepping completely unarmored onto a battlefield with live ammunition flying in all directions, except instead of bullets, it's narrative.

    On one side of the battlefield you've got your family with rifles and side-arms firing their stories about what's important in life, what the world is like, how people should deal with problems, and what society ought to look like.

    On another side you've got teachers and preachers armed with shotguns spraying buckshot about the beliefs that various power structures want you to have about your experience on this earth.

    On another side you've got the advertisers, armed with machine guns, hammering anything that moves with narratives about inadequacy and problems you never knew you had.

    And, raining bombs from above, you've got the mass media propagandists.

    You're not going to make it off of that field without sustaining significant damage. You never stood a chance, really. At best you're going to spend a long time picking slugs, bullets and shrapnel out of your flesh and stitching up the wounds that they caused, and that's assuming you're one of the lucky few who makes it off the field at all. Most just absorb the beliefs that get blasted into them in the frenzy of living and keep almost all of them.

    Becoming a mentally self-sovereign human being means undoing all that damage, and protecting yourself from absorbing more. It means completely renouncing everything you've been told to believe about what's happening on these strange shores you washed up on small, sticky and confused, and setting off to find out for yourself instead. It means making it to the swamps of Dagobah and looking where the wise old muppet is pointing when he suggests "You must unlearn what you have learned."

    Being a mentally sovereign human means constructing your own understanding of this weird reality based on your own investigations and your own reasoning, which means constructing it from the ground up. Even your most basic assumptions about reality itself must be rigorously cross-examined with complete skepticism. Nothing must be taken on faith.

    Most people believe that they are truly free thinkers. Most people are wrong. Most people are controlled by unworthy, unquestioned ideas that were put in their heads long ago by other people.

    To attain a truly self-sovereign mind, you need to put truth above all else in every waking moment. You need to constantly dedicate yourself to learning what's true and what's real, and to living in alignment with the truth that has been discovered.

    Wanting true mental sovereignty means wanting to know the truth in all areas of your experience, come what may.

    It means wanting to know the truth about what's really happening in your world, and how it contrasts with what you're being told to believe about what's happening in your world by confident-sounding voices on the screens that you see.

    It means wanting to know the truth about your family and your relationships and the various unconscious, unquestioned dynamics that are at play there.

    It means wanting to know the truth about the various aspects of yourself that you keep hidden and compartmentalized out of sight.

    It means wanting to know the truth about reality itself, and how you might have been misperceiving various aspects of your own field of consciousness this entire time.

    It means wanting to know the truth, even if very powerful people don't want you to know the truth.

    It means wanting to know the truth, even if it hurts.

    It means wanting to know the truth, even if it is terrifying.

    It means wanting to know the truth, even if it means being wrong.

    It means wanting to know the truth, even if it means discovering that you've been completely wrong about everything your whole life.

    It means wanting to know the truth, even if it crumbles every belief you've ever had about what you are and what the world is.

    It means wanting to know the truth, even if it tears your life apart.

    It means wanting to know the truth, even though you know you'll never have all of it.

    Most people are content to sit in various degrees of untruth, accepting unexamined assumptions as true because it is much easier and more comfortable than confronting reality on reality's own terms. They're happy to let the lies that have been put in their heads by other people rule their experience of this world.

    The mentally sovereign human does not do this. The mentally sovereign human looks at life through lenses constructed out of an uncompromising dedication to unrelenting honesty, on all levels and facets of human experience.

    Mental self-rule is not for everyone. It is not for cowards. It is not for the lazy or complacent. It's not for those who do things only because there's some material or egoic reward in it for them. These people are destined to have their minds ruled by others.

    Mental sovereignty is for those who put truth above all else, and who see truth as its own reward. Their dedication to learning what's true never ceases. These people rule their own minds.
    Each breath a gift...
    _____________

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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    Quote It means wanting to know the truth about the various aspects of yourself that you keep hidden and compartmentalized out of sight.

    It means wanting to know the truth about reality itself, and how you might have been misperceiving various aspects of your own field of consciousness this entire time.
    Perhaps not a popular viewpoint these days, but it was my early-adult-years sacramental experimentation with psychedelics (self-gathered-organic or of known provenance) which most aided me in the above areas of deprogramming and metaprogramming of my self and consciousness.
    Last edited by mountain_jim; 21st January 2020 at 15:56.
    I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions. - Robert Anton Wilson

    The present as you think of it, and in practical working terms, is that point at which you select your physical experience from all those events that could be materialized. - Seth (The Nature of Personal Reality - Session 656, Page 293)

    (avatar image: Brocken spectre, a wonderful phenomenon of nature I have experienced and a symbol for my aspirations.)

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    United States Avalon Member onawah's Avatar
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    The Empire’s War On Oppositional Journalism Continues To Escalate
    by CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
    JANUARY 22, 2020
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/01...s-to-escalate/


    Journalist Glenn Greenwald has been charged by the Bolsonaro government in Brazil with the same prosecutorial angle used by the US to target WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

    Per The New York Times:"Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime.”

    For instance, prosecutors contend that Mr. Greenwald encouraged the hackers to delete archives that had already been shared with The Intercept Brasil, in order to cover their tracks.

    Prosecutors also say that Mr. Greenwald was communicating with the hackers while they were actively monitoring private chats on Telegram, a messaging app. The complaint charged six other individuals, including four who were detained last year in connection with the cellphone hacking.

    This argument is essentially indistinguishable from the argument currently being used by the Trump administration in charging Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act. The US Department of Justice alleges that Assange attempted to provide Private Manning with advice and assistance in covering her tracks while leaking documents she already had access to, therefore making Assange party to a conspiracy against the United States."


    6/15/19
    Glenn Greenwald on the Leaked Brazil Archive Exposing Operation Car Wash
    Quote The Intercept
    140K subscribers
    The Intercept and the Intercept Brasil published a series of exposés that has created a major political earthquake in Brazil. In less than a week, the once-revered justice minister of President Bolsonaro’s government, Sergio Moro, now faces widespread calls to resign from the same large Brazilian media outlets that spent years transforming him into an untouchable icon of integrity and uncritically applauding his every move.

    Even more grave, the improprieties revealed by our reporting have cast serious doubt on the validity of numerous guilty verdicts issued by Judge Moro and the anti-corruption task force, beginning — most importantly — with the conviction and imprisonment of former President Lula da Silva last year at exactly the time that he was the overwhelming front-runner to win the presidency in 2018. That conviction by Judge Moro, which we now know was the byproduct of highly improper and unethical conduct, is now scheduled to be reviewed by the Supreme Court as early as next week.

    The archive we received from our source is vast, and contains many more explosive stories yet to be reported. We just published another story exposing even more serious improprieties by Judge Moro, widely regarded as the anchor of legitimacy for the Bolsonaro government, that has led for more calls for him to resign. Because of the importance, but also complexity of these issues for those outside of Brazil, we created a video explaining what this archive is about, what these revelations mean, and why the consequences of our reporting are so significant not only for Brazil but for the entire democratic world.
    Last edited by onawah; 22nd January 2020 at 04:15.
    Each breath a gift...
    _____________

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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    Lucid Living
    1/22/20
    by Caitlin Johnstone
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/01/23/lucid-living/

    "Beneath all our evolutionary conditioning, beneath all our cultural mind viruses and power-serving, power-promulgated belief systems, beneath the chaos and confusion of life in an insane society, there is a deep stillness.

    We all know deep down in our guts that that stillness is there, and that it is our natural condition. That's why we all spend our lives trying out different strategies for coming to inner tranquility. Most of those strategies are unhealthy and doomed to fail, but that inner stillness at the root of our being is what we're always reaching to experience.

    Beneath all the warmongering, conflict and violence in our species, there is a bottomless foundation of pure peace. We all know deep in our guts that it's there; that's why we all secretly long for peace, even if most of us are confused about how to get there.

    Beneath all the division, drama and us-versus-them othering, there is an underlying perception in each of us which sees only oneness. We all know deep in our guts that this perception is there, which is why, even though we get mixed up about how best to achieve it, we're always reaching in some way toward unity.

    Beneath all human hate, rejection, bigotry and prejudice, there is a profound love for all that arises. We all intuitively sense this love below our own surface-level awareness, which is why we all, in our own clumsy ways, seek love.

    We all know this, on some level. We all know that everything we really want is already our own true nature. That's why all of us, in our own convoluted, delusional, map-upside-down-and-compass-near-a-magnet ways, seek truth.

    That's all we're ever really dealing with here, those of us who value peace, truth and justice. All we're ever really dealing with (in ourselves and in others) is humankind's built-in impulse to come home, and its flailing, awkward attempts to manifest that impulse.

    Peace is your true nature. Oneness is your true nature. Love is your true nature.

    I am not here saying that there is some aspect of you that is these things, some small part of you which you can find by rummaging around in your mind and possibly locating underneath your id to the east of your latent oedipal complex or whatever. I'm saying that is you. It's what you really are, beneath everyone's mental stories about what you really are.

    Day after day from the moment this planet births our body, we experience a field of consciousness containing sensory input, thoughts and feelings. That field of consciousness is all any of us ever experience from cradle to grave, yet it almost never occurs to anyone to pop the hood and directly investigate what makes it tick.




    What intense investigation will show you is that all any of us are actually experiencing in any waking moment is this singular, unified field of consciousness being perceived by something that is utterly free from it, in the same way lucid investigation into a dream will reveal a singular, unified dream being perceived by a dreamer who has no stake in what happens to any of the dream characters.

    And, just as in the experience of lucid dreaming, when the dreamer realizes the truth of what's really happening, the experience suddenly becomes a lot more fun. You realize that you, the dreamer are not actually being chased by pirates or whatever, and that you're actually free from the drama and entanglements in the dream which until that moment seemed perilously threatening. From that free perspective, the dream is delightful. The dream is beloved.

    An ineffable something is perceiving the mysterious field of consciousness which has been arising every day since your physical form first showed up here. That ineffable something is your true nature. And it is everything you've ever sought in this strange dream world. The only thing keeping your from recognizing this has been your fixation on the drama of the dream.

    Lucid living means the dreamer of this waking life, the witness of this beautiful, dancing, ever-changing field of consciousness, is seen clearly to be what you really are.

    And the good news is that you are already what it is you've been seeking. You just have to perceive this with lucidity. Your innate love of truth is already calling you home. Just follow it."
    Each breath a gift...
    _____________

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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    WikiLeaks Editor: US Is Saying First Amendment Doesn’t Apply To Foreigners In Assange Case
    JANUARY 23, 2020 by CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/01...-assange-case/
    Copied and pasted here: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1332733
    Last edited by onawah; 24th January 2020 at 23:29.
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    Julian Assange Released from Solitary Confinement to Different Belmarsh Wing
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/01...estern-empire/

    Copied and pasted here: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1332923
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    Just For This Moment
    JANUARY 26, 2020
    by CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/01...r-this-moment/

    "We could sit here all day
    talking about how the news man is always lying
    or how both parties are functionally the same
    or how the Bastards toil endlessly to hide the truth from us
    or how we know better than all those foolish brainwashed sheep
    who are just trying to survive another day on this earth.

    We could sit here all day doing that.

    Or,
    maybe,
    just for this one moment,
    we could look inward
    and be honest with ourselves.

    Maybe just for this moment
    we could ask if we are truly being present here
    and perhaps contemplate what it is we might be running from.

    Maybe just for this moment
    we could be real about what ways we continue lying to ourselves
    and try breathing the light of truth onto those endarkened areas.

    Maybe just for this moment
    we could stop escaping into smugness and self-righteousness,
    into ideological conflict and drama,
    into paranoia and suspicion of anyone who stands out,
    into worry and fear of what's coming,
    and be here now.

    And maybe we will find deep wounds inside.
    And maybe we can heal those wounds.

    And maybe we will find conflicted aspects of ourselves.
    And maybe we can move from conflict to integrity.

    And maybe we will find all the parts of ourselves which run to escape from here.
    And maybe we can love them, and reassure them, and nurture them into presence.

    And maybe then we'll look around,
    and notice that the smoke has cleared from our vision.

    And maybe we'll notice all sorts of things we'd never noticed before.
    Things about ourselves.
    Things about the life we've been living.
    Things about our social circles and relationships.
    Things about our political system and government.
    Things about our media and information systems.
    Things which were previously hidden by cowardice and compartmentalizing.

    And maybe we'll start seeing opportunities we'd never noticed before.
    Doors and windows which were previously invisible to us.
    New escape routes and entryways
    as we realize we'd been looking at a 3-D model in two dimensions.

    And maybe then we'll have a chuckle
    as we realize that the sages across the ages were right.
    That it really is all one.
    That we are inseparable from the whole.
    That any consciousness brought to any area helps awaken the totality.
    That the greatest gift anyone can bring to the world
    is their own self-realization."
    Each breath a gift...
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    The Establishment Doesn’t Fear Trump, And It Doesn’t Fear Bernie. It Fears
    You.
    JANUARY 27, 2020
    by CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/01...-it-fears-you/

    "During the George W Bush administration it was popular in conspiracy circles to speculate that events might be orchestrated which would allow the Bush family to complete a coup against the US Constitution and hold on to power indefinitely.

    Such paranoia and suspicion of government power in the wake of the extraordinary post-9/11 advancements in Orwellian surveillance programs and unprecedented military expansionism were perfectly understandable, but predictions that the younger Bush would not cede power at the end of his second term proved incorrect. In today’s hysterical Trump-centric political environment we now see mainstream voices in mainstream outlets openly advancing the same conspiratorial speculations about the current administration, and those will prove incorrect as well.

    What these paranoid presidential prognostications get wrong is not their extreme suspicion of government, but their assumption that America’s real power structures require a certain president to be in place in order to advance depraved totalitarian agendas. As anyone paying attention knows, intense suspicion of the US government is the only sane position that anyone can possibly have; the error is in assuming that there is no mechanism in place to ensure that the same agendas carry forward from one presidential administration to the next.

    Quote Michael Tracey
    @mtracey
    Schiff dwelling on the fact that Trump departed from the talking points prepared for him by national security officials so he could act "contrary to official US policy," which is to "deter Russian adventurism." Glad to know even the president is not permitted to change US policy
    3:01 PM · Jan 23, 2020·Twitter
    In a sense, the conspiracy theories about a Bush coup were actually correct: the Bush administration didn’t truly end. All of its imperialist, power-serving agendas remained in place and were expanded under the apparent oversight of the following administration. The same thing happened after the Obama administration, and the same thing–whether in 2021 or 2025–will happen after the Trump administration. The disturbing fact of the matter is that if you ignore election dates and just look at the numbers and raw data of US government behavior over the years, you can’t really tell who is president or which political party is in power at any given point in time.

    The mechanism which ensures the perpetuation of the same policies from administration to administration used to be referred to by analysts as the “deep state”, back before Trump and his supporters hijacked that term and began using it to essentially mean something like “Democrats and anyone who doesn’t like Trump”. Originally the term deep state referred not to one political party, nor to some shadowy cabal of Illuminati or Satanists or reptilians, but to the simple and undeniable fact that unelected power structures exist and tend to influence America’s official elected government. It wasn’t a conspiracy theory, it was a concept used in political analysis to describe how US government agencies and plutocrats form loose alliances with each other and with official Washington to influence government policy and behavior.

    It is inevitable that such a permanent second government would exist in the current iteration of the United States, if you think about it. It’s impossible to have a globe-spanning empire of the sort America now has without long-term plans spanning years or decades for securing control of world resources, undermining rivals, securing more compliant allies, and ensuring military and economic hegemony. If the US were a normal nation which simply minded its own affairs, a permanent government wouldn’t be necessary. But because it isn’t, one is.

    I very seldom use the term deep state anymore, because its meaning in mainstream discourse has been completely corrupted. Now when I want to point to America’s permanent unelected power structures I usually use the word “oligarchy” or “empire”, or simply “establishment”.



    This is why I haven’t been especially focused on the US presidential race, despite the Democratic primaries hitting fever pitch intensity. While I believe the race can be a useful tool for forcing establishment propagandists to expose themselves (virulent “never Trump” neocon Bret Stephens just came out in support of Trump if the Democratic nominee is anyone to the left of Pete Buttigeig, for example), the result of the 2020 election isn’t going to change a whole hell of a lot.

    This might be a bit offensive to both Trump supporters and Sanders supporters, but it’s true.

    Whenever I point out that the current administration has been advancing many longstanding agendas of the CIA and neoconservative war pigs–agendas like military expansionism, imprisoning Assange, regime change interventionism in Iran and Venezuela, and reigniting the Cold War–his supporters always come in saying “If he’s working for the establishment how come the establishment is working so hard to get rid of him, huh?”

    Well, for starters, they’re not. Nobody who can count Senate seats believes Trump will be removed from office in the current impeachment sideshow, and everyone who understood Russiagate knew it was going to dead-end at nothing. If they really wanted Trump gone they wouldn’t be pussyfooting around with a bunch of kayfabe combat that they know will never hurt him. Obviously he wasn’t the preferred 2016 choice of certain factions within the establishment, but there are mechanisms in place to ensure that the empire can tick right along with a less-than-ideal president in the White House.

    This will also hold true if Sanders miraculously makes his way through another rigged primary, and then through whatever sabotage gets thrown his way in the general election. Sure he might be able to sign a few somewhat beneficial executive orders and we probably wouldn’t see him flirting with an Iran war, but US imperialism will march on more or less unimpeded and his popular progressive domestic policies would require congress to successfully implement. At best he’d be a mild reformer who uses the bully pulpit to help spread awareness while being narrative managed on all sides by the billionaire media, and any changes he manages to squeak through which inconvenience the establishment at all will be reversed by a subsequent administration.

    Quote Sarah Abdallah
    @sahouraxo
    Huge anti-government protests happening now in Iran? Russia? Hong Kong?

    Nope. It’s #Paris, #France, today.

    So it won’t be plastered everywhere across mainstream media. #YellowVests #GiletsJaunes #greve25janvier


    https://twitter.com/i/status/1221088342428856320
    2,948
    9:12 AM - Jan 25, 2020
    Twitter Ads info and privacy
    1,846 people are talking about this
    &callback=loadx">

    2,948
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    Obviously the establishment would rather have someone in the White House who doesn’t constantly put an ugly face on the empire by accidentally exposing its mechanics all the time as Trump does, and obviously it would rather have an incompetent oaf like Trump in office than someone who actively points out the evils of oligarchy and imperialism like Sanders. But the establishment which runs the US-centralized empire is not afraid of Trump, and it is not afraid of Sanders. It’s afraid of you.

    The unelected power establishment has ways of ensuring its dominance amid the comings and goings of America’s official elected government; they are perfectly capable of dealing with one man being a less than ideal steward of the empire. What they absolutely cannot deal with, at all, is the prospect of ordinary people finally rising up and using the power of their numbers to force real change. That is what they are really fighting against when they try to sabotage populist candidates: not the candidates themselves, but populism itself.

    You wouldn’t know it from reading the billionaire media, but the Yellow Vests protests in France are still going on and have remained widespread for more than a year now. This lack of coverage is partially due to the fact that establishment narrative managers are responsible for conveying the idea that the only governments whose citizens dislike them are those which haven’t been absorbed into the imperial blob like China and Iran. But it’s also because the propagandists don’t want us getting any ideas.

    The reason the propagandists work so hard to manufacture the consent of the governed is because they absolutely do require that consent. If enough people decide that the status quo isn’t working for them and begin rising up to force it to change, there’s not really anything the establishment can do to stop them. Right now the only thing keeping people from rising up in this way is the fact that they’ve been successfully propagandized not to, and the propagandists intend to keep it that way.

    But eyes are beginning to open. If real change is coming, it will come from there. Not from electing anyone president, but from a large-scale awakening to the reality of our situation. The only thing standing in the way is a thin layer of narrative fluff.
    Last edited by onawah; 27th January 2020 at 06:36.
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    The Primary Mechanism Of Your Oppression Is Not Hidden At All
    by Caitlin Johnstone
    FEBRUARY 2, 2020
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02...hidden-at-all/


    "I write a lot about government secrecy and the importance of whistleblowers, leakers and leak publishers, and for good reason: governments which can hide their wicked deeds from public accountability will do so whenever possible. It's impossible for the public to use democracy for ensuring their government behaves in the way they desire if they aren't allowed to be informed about what that behavior even is.

    These things get lots of attention in conspiracy circles and dissident political factions. Quite a few eyes are fixed on the veil of government opacity and the persecution of those brave souls who try to shed light on what's going on behind it. Not enough eyes, but quite a few.

    What gets less attention, much to our detriment, is the fact that the primary mechanism of our oppression and exploitation is happening right out in front of our faces.

    The nonstop campaign by bought politicians, owned news outlets, and manipulated social media platforms to control the dominant narratives about what's going on in the world contribute vastly more to the sickness of our society than government secrecy does. We know this from experience: any time a whistleblower exposes secret information about the malfeasance of powerful governments like NSA surveillance or Collateral Murder, we see not public accountability, nor demands for sweeping systemic changes to prevent such malfeasance from reoccurring, but a bunch of narrative management from the political/media class.

    This narrative management is used to shift attention away from the information that was revealed and onto the fact that the person who revealed it broke the law or misbehaved in some way. It's used to convince people that the revelations aren't actually a big deal, or that it was already basically public knowledge anyway. And it's used to manipulate public attention on to the next hot story of the day and memory hole it underneath the white noise of the media news churn. And nothing changes.

    We've seen it happening over and over and over again. The narrative management machine has gotten so effective and efficient that it's been able to completely ignore the recent revelation that the US, UK and France almost certainly bombed Syria in 2018 for a completely false reason. A few half-assed Bellingcat spin jobs and an otherwise total media blackout, and it's like the whole thing never happened. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/22/i...k-douma-syria/

    What this tells us is that our first and foremost problem is not the fact that conspiracies are happening behind a curtain of government secrecy, but that the way people think, act and vote is being actively manipulated right out in the open. Government secrecy is indeed one aspect of establishment narrative control, but controlling the public's access to information is only one aspect. The bigger part of it is controlling how the public thinks about information.

    The reason people never use the power of their superior numbers to force real change, even though they're being exploited and oppressed in myriad ways by the ruling class, is because they've been propagandized into accepting the status quo as desirable (or at least normal). The propaganda of the political/media class is therefore the establishment's front line of defense. Its most powerful, and essential, weapon.

    This is important for dissidents of all stripes to understand, because it means we're not just passively waiting around for another Manning or Snowden or an Ian Henderson to give us information which we can use to fight the oppression machine. Those individuals have done a great public service, but the battle to awaken human consciousness to what's really going on in our world is in no way limited to leakers and whistleblowers. It is not at the mercy of government secrecy.

    If you are engaged in any type of media, you are engaging the narrative matrix which keeps the public asleep and complacent. https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/s...x-787c7e2539ae It doesn't matter if you have a Twitter account, a Youtube account, some flyers or a can of spray paint: if you are capable of getting any kind of message out there, you are able to directly influence the mechanism of your oppression. You are able to inform people that they are being lied to, you are able to explain why, and you are able to point them to where they can find more information.

    This is extremely empowering. You do not need to wait around hoping that some bombshell piece of information makes it past all the various security checks and spinmeisters and triggers a real social awakening. You can be that information. You can become a catalyst for that awakening.

    The key to turning this ship around does not lie hidden somewhere behind a veil of government opacity. It lies in you. It lies in all of us. We can begin awakening our fellow humans right now by attacking the narrative management of the propaganda machine that sits right in front of us, unarmored and unhidden."
    Last edited by onawah; 2nd February 2020 at 04:34.
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    DNC Completely Loses Public Trust In Its Primary Process On Very First DayFEBRUARY 5, 2020
    CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02...ery-first-day/

    "After a 2016 presidential primary race riddled with scandals, all of which worked against Bernie Sanders to the advantage of anointed establishment favorite Hillary Clinton, the 2020 Democratic presidential primary elections officially began with a massive scandal working against Bernie Sanders to the advantage of an establishment favorite.

    The 2020 Iowa caucuses turned out to have been designed to depend on the use of a new, untested app with extensive ties to establishment insiders and to the Pete Buttigeig campaign, and because of problems using this app as of this writing we are still waiting on the full results of the election. The Iowa Democratic Party has bizarrely released a partial result with 62 percent of 99 counties reporting, which just so happens to have favored the campaign of a Mr Peter Buttigeig, who in the sample came out on top in delegates despite coming in second in votes.

    A popular “gold standard” poll by the Des Moines Register that is normally released shortly before the Iowa caucuses had Sanders comfortably in first place. The results of the poll were instead left unpublished this time until after elections were underway due to a complaint by the campaign of, you guessed it, Pete Buttigeig. This would be the same Pete Buttigeig who attended the infamous “Stop Sanders” meetings with Democratic Party insiders last year, by the way.
    Quote #IowaCaucusDisaster Update: @leefang reports Acronym—the main investor in #IowaCaucus app developer "Shadow"— had senior leadership that "regularly expressed hostility to @BernieSanders supporters."

    CEO of Acronym also married @PeteButtigieg staffer https://t.co/HP6QVx61BX

    — Jordan (@JordanChariton) February 4, 2020
    According to an Iowa precinct chair, the problems using the app (developed by the aptly named Shadow, Inc) included literally switching the numbers entered into it on the final step of reporting results.

    “A precinct chair in Iowa said the app got stuck on the last step when reporting results,” CNN reports. “It was uploading a picture of the precinct’s results. The chair said they were finally able to upload, so they took a screenshot. The app then showed different numbers than what they had submitted as captured in their screenshot.”

    It doesn’t actually matter anymore who really won Iowa at this point; the damage is already done. Iowa is a sparsely populated state with an insignificant number of delegates; nobody campaigns there for the delegates, they campaign to make headlines and generate excitement and favorable press for themselves in the first electoral contest of the presidential primary race. This has already happened, and with Buttigeig first declaring victory before any results were in, followed by his delegate count lead announced hours later, the favorable press has predominantly gone his way.

    Even if Sanders turns out to have won the delegate count as well, this will already have happened. He will have already lost the opportunity to start off the primary contest with a win and a rousing victory speech. In every way that matters, he has already been robbed, by extremely shady establishment dealings, in the very first electoral contest of the race.

    The very first. Berners are already as outraged as they were at the height of the 2016 DNC scandal, which was still months out from this point in the race. They’re already getting screwed over, and it’s just getting started.

    I see many people blaming this on incompetence, some in bad faith and some in good, but in either case there is no legitimate reason to do that anymore. It has been my experience that if someone seems to be totally incompetent but every “oopsie” they make just happens to end up benefiting them, it’s manipulation you’re dealing with, not incompetence. Some people are happy to look dumb if they can get what they want. If you watch their actions and ignore their words, a very revealing pattern shows up immediately.

    This is all extremely blatant, and the feelings it brings up in people are completely legitimate. Yet narrative managers like Neera Tanden and Shannon Watts are telling everyone they’re just like Trump if they suspect the Democratic establishment is again doing the thing it did just four years ago.

    Quote Folks who are claiming anything may be rigged sound like Trump. Exactly like him. It’s pathetic.

    — Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) February 4, 2020
    If such extremely shady shenanigans had occurred in Russia or Venezuela, within minutes Mike Pompeo would have been holding a press conference demanding a new election under UN supervision and an international coalition of sanctions. It’s hilarious how America is constantly staging coups, implementing sanctions and arming violent militias on the basis that their government has an illegitimate democratic process, yet its own most important electoral proceedings would make any third world tin pot dictator blush.

    And don’t give me that crap about how Democratic Party primaries are separate from the US electoral system and therefore don’t undermine American democracy; of course they do. If your country has a rigidly enforced two-party system and one of those parties has bogus internal elections, then you do not have any degree of democracy in your country. Saying “Well if you don’t like our rigged primary process you can vote for the other corrupt warmongering pro-establishment party” is not democracy.

    The difference between a true totalitarian dictatorship and America is that the totalitarian dictatorship enforces one political belief system which supports the status quo, whereas in America you get the freedom of choice between two political belief systems which support the status quo. The entire system is stacked to ensure the continued rule of the oligarchs, spooks and warmongers who really run things behind the two-handed sock puppet show of the official elected government. The US doesn’t attack and undermine nations when they lack “freedom” or “democracy”, they attack and undermine them when they refuse to bow to the demands of the power establishment which controls the US government and its allies.

    The sooner people wake up to this, the better. In Iowa, things couldn’t have gone worse for those responsible for keeping people asleep."
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    The Myth Of Incompetence: DNC Scandals Are A Feature, Not A Bug
    FEBRUARY 6, 2020
    CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02...ure-not-a-bug/

    "The Iowa caucus scandal has continued to get more egregious by the hour, with new revelations routinely pouring in about extremely suspicious manipulations taking place which all just so happen to disadvantage the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the first Democratic electoral contest of 2020. By the time you read this article, there will likely have been more.

    Following the failure of an extremely shady app developed by vocally anti-Sanders establishment insiders which reportedly was literally altering vote count numbers after they were entered, Black Hawk County supervisor Chris Schwartz shared the election results in his county on Facebook so the public could have some idea of what’s going on as the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) slowly trickles out the results of the caucuses.

    Sanders supporters quickly highlighted the fact that the IDP’s reported numbers for Black Hawk County were wildly different from those reported by Schwartz, with votes taken from Sanders and given to minor fringe candidates Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer. The IDP then announced that it would be making “a minor correction to the last batch of results”, which just so happened to be in Black Hawk County and just so happened to give Sanders back some votes (but still remains different from that reported by Schwartz).

    It’s probable that this only happened as a result of one Black Hawk County supervisor taking to social media to report the vote tallies for this one particular county. What about all the Iowa locations where this did not happen and local Democratic Party officials didn’t report their numbers on social media? Does anyone actually believe that the one instance where the IDP got caught is the one instance in which such vote tampering occurred?

    That would be a very silly belief to hold, in my opinion. It would be like a store clerk discovering that a can of beans is completely rotten, then going ahead and putting the rest of the pallet on the shelf under the assumption that the other cans are fine.

    Another of the countless revelations hemorrhaging from this fustercluck is a report from CNN and The New York Post that the DNC, not the IDP, is “running the show” in managing the Iowa caucus scandal. This means that this Democratic presidential primary scandal is being managed by the same committee which orchestrated the last Democratic presidential primary scandal, and that the campaign being victimized by this scandal, that of Bernie Sanders, is the same in both cases.

    This would be the same DNC whose chairperson, Tom Perez, recently stacked its nominating committee with dozens of odious alt-centrist establishment insiders who are ideologically opposed to Sanders in every meaningful way.

    “Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez has nominated dozens of lobbyists, corporate consultants, think tank board members, and former officials linked to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton to serve on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) nominating committee this July,” Kevin Gosztola reported for Grayzone last month. “Many of Perez’s nominees are vocal opponents of Senator Bernie Sanders and spoke out against his campaign when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2016.”

    As these scandalous revelations continue to emerge I don’t see anyone online expressing surprise that the Democratic establishment is once again stacking the deck against Sanders, but I do see some people expressing surprise that they are being so brazen about it. Which is perfectly understandable; if this party wants to screw over progressive voters, you’d expect that they’d at least try to hide it a little bit so they don’t alienate their progressive base before November.

    The flaw in this expectation is its premise that Democratic Party elites care if their party wins in November. They do not.

    Put yourself in the shoes of one of the leading movers and shakers within the Democratic Party for a minute. Pretend you’re getting a nice paycheck, pretend you’re getting great healthcare benefits, pretend you get plenty of prestige and exclusive access and invitations to classy parties. And pretend you’re the type of person who’s willing to manipulate and deceive and kiss up and kick down and do whatever it takes to get to the top of such a structure.

    Now ask yourself, if you were such a person in such a situation, would you care if voters pick Donald Trump or Pete Buttigeig in November? Would it affect your cushy lifestyle in any way whatsoever? Would you lose your job, your prestige or your influence? No party elites lost those things in 2016. Why would you expect this time to be any different?

    But you might be at risk of losing your cushy lifestyle if a forcefully anti-elitist progressive movement gets off the ground and takes control of your party. So you’d stand everything to gain by doing everything you can to prevent that from happening, and, because you don’t care if Trump gets re-elected, you’d stand absolutely nothing to lose.

    These people do not care if Trump gets re-elected, because they lose nothing if he does. The only people who stand anything to lose are the ordinary citizens who are suffering under a corrupt status quo of soul-crushing neoliberalism and increasing authoritarianism, many of whom currently support Sanders. Democratic Party elites are perfectly happy to keep shrieking about Russia for another four years while making sure that the status quo which rewards their manipulative behavior remains intact, and ensuring that they never wind up like those poor suckers out there who are suffering from poverty and lack of healthcare.

    And everything I just said is equally true of the media class who are currently working in conjunction with the DNC’s shenanigans to spin Pete Buttigeig as the clear winner of the party’s first presidential electoral contest. They enjoy all the same perks, and move in many of the same circles, as Democratic Party elites, and it’s all conditioned on their protection of the status quo.

    I keep seeing the word “incompetence” thrown around. “Gosh these Democratic Party leaders are so incompetent!”, they say. “How can anyone be so bad at their job?”

    Well, they are not bad at their job. They are very, very good at their job. It’s just that their job isn’t what most people assume it is.

    Their job is not to win elections and garner public support, their job is to ensure the perpetuation of the status quo which rewards them so handsomely for their malignant behavior. Toward this end they are not incompetent at all. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re doing it well.

    They are extremely competent. Depraved, certainly. Sociopathic, possibly. But not incompetent.

    They’re happy to make their nefariousness look like incompetence though, whenever they can get away with it. Any manipulator worth their salt always will be. If they can make their planned, deliberate acts of sabotage look like innocent little oopsies, they’ll gladly do so. But you learn in life that whenever you see someone making a lot of “mistakes” which just so happen to benefit them every time, you’re dealing with manipulation, not incompetence.

    What do the bad guys say in the movies when they order someone’s murder? They say “Make it look like an accident.” If it’s an accident you’ve got no trouble. You won’t be seen for what you are.

    But of course it’s no accident, and anyone with clear eyes and good intentions sees this. If you see someone working hard to make you believe that it’s incompetence, you are dealing with someone who is invested in maintaining the status quo in some way. You are being manipulated.

    The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly the way it’s intended to work. It ain’t a bug, it’s a feature. And that feature will remain in operation until the entire sick system is torn down and replaced with something healthy."
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  • Link to Post #76
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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    This should be required reading for every Avalon member:
    Quote "The mechanism which ensures the perpetuation of the same policies from administration to administration used to be referred to by analysts as the “deep state”, back before Trump and his supporters hijacked that term and began using it to essentially mean something like “Democrats and anyone who doesn’t like Trump”. Originally the term deep state referred not to one political party, nor to some shadowy cabal of Illuminati or Satanists or reptilians, but to the simple and undeniable fact that unelected power structures exist and tend to influence America’s official elected government. It wasn’t a conspiracy theory, it was a concept used in political analysis to describe how US government agencies and plutocrats form loose alliances with each other and with official Washington to influence government policy and behavior.

    It is inevitable that such a permanent second government would exist in the current iteration of the United States, if you think about it. It’s impossible to have a globe-spanning empire of the sort America now has without long-term plans spanning years or decades for securing control of world resources, undermining rivals, securing more compliant allies, and ensuring military and economic hegemony. If the US were a normal nation which simply minded its own affairs, a permanent government wouldn’t be necessary. But because it isn’t, one is.

    I very seldom use the term deep state anymore, because its meaning in mainstream discourse has been completely corrupted. Now when I want to point to America’s permanent unelected power structures I usually use the word “oligarchy” or “empire”, or simply “establishment”."
    The Deep State were in control of the USA, Inc. when John F Kennedy thought he (a democrat, by the way) was in control of the USA, Inc.

    The Deep State took Kennedy out. Democrat Kennedy. So the big coup, the big power play in the USA, Inc. in the last 100 years happened with a Democrat in power. They blew his head wide open. You really think the "Deep State" has its roots in the Democrat political party when they showed all of us what happens when you don't behave as ordered by the Deep State?

    The Deep State isn't the Democrats, the Democrats are just one cluster of representatives of the Deep State.

    Conversely, the Deep State isn't the Republicans, the Republicans are just one cluster of representatives of the Deep State.

    "Deep" refers to being under cover, covert, hidden. The 2 USA, Inc. political parties are overt, in plain sight, the public relations face of their lords and masters: the oligarchs/plutocrats. There is nothing "deep" about the USA, Inc. corporate, faux-political parties, in any sense of the word. Well, unless we're talking about the deep mountain of sh!t that these puppets of Empire orally excrete any given day, and how high your boots need to be to wade through it.

    The consistency of warmongering and pro-corporate agenda from W bush to obomber should have been a wake-up call to every democrat supporter alive that the USA, Inc. agenda is written "by others." The consistency of warmongering and pro-corporate agenda from obomber to trumph should have been a wake-up call to every republican supporter alive that the USA, Inc. agenda is written "by others." Nothing is covert - it's all there for anyone with eyes. The next USA, Inc. president, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next will be pro-military, pro imperialism and will do as they are told or the Deep State will blow their head off.

    The democrat gang and the republican gang are the enemies of the people of the USA, and they represent only the establishment, Empire, plutocrats/oligarchs, Deep State.

    There is going to be a test on Caitlin's words, and if you fail (by insisting that one or the other of the USA, Inc. political parties is - or is mostly or primarily - the Deep State, you have to have a menage a trois with klinton and trumph.


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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/0...us-voting-app/

    “Seth Klarman is the founder of the Boston-based Baupost Group hedge fund and a longtime donor to corporate Republican candidates. After Donald Trump called for forgiving Puerto Rico’s debt, Klarman — the owner of $911 million of the island’s bonds — flipped and began funding Trump’s opponents.

    The billionaire’s crusade against Trump ultimately led him to Mayor Pete’s wine cave.”

    https://www.rt.com/shows/news-with-r...chez-february/

    “How did Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana come from fourth place to become frontrunner of the 2020 Iowa Caucus? RT America's Michele Greenstein examines Buttigieg's ominous connections to the Defense Dept. and US intelligence community.”


    Evidence of Buttigieg being chosen by “Shadow Inc” (as Caitlyn J. so aptly notes is so aptly named), for our “choice” .

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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    2020 Is Going To Get Much Crazier. Prioritize Your Mental HealthFEBRUARY 7, 2020
    by CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02...mental-health/
    ( Too many hyperlinks in the article to embed here)


    "The outrage over the Iowa caucus scandal has continued to burn white hot as more and more establishment manipulations against the Bernie Sanders campaign come into view.

    At the beginning of a CNN town hall with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg last night, immediately following the network’s town hall with Sanders, the event’s host Chris Cuomo announced that 100 percent of the caucus results were now in and the former South Bend mayor had narrowly won the contest. These results had been announced by the Iowa Democratic Party moments before Buttigieg’s town hall appearance.

    There is no reason for anyone, let alone a major news outlet, to believe these results are legitimate. They are full of easily demonstrable errors and discrepancies which have been highlighted by both the Sanders campaign and The New York Times, and they have yet to be addressed. Furthermore, Sanders has a perfectly legitimate claim to the win given the undisputed fact that he received thousands more votes. This is without even getting into all the other extremely shady shenanigans with the now-infamous Shadow app whose crash has given the media days to sing Buttigeig’s praise, which has in turn given him a major polling bump for New Hampshire.

    But Chris Cuomo (who is the brother of a Democratic New York governor and the son of another Democratic New York governor) declared Buttigieg (who because of his establishment grooming and alt-centrist ideology is beloved by billionaires and spooks) the winner anyway. In front of millions of people. While Buttigieg was standing right there in the spotlight. Immediately after the “results” were released.

    We’re watching a major US election being rigged in real time, right in front of our eyes, and it’s intense. And it’s only just getting started.

    In the 2016 race between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the Iowa caucuses saw some suspicious activity and there was some controversy over improbable coin toss results, but nothing like the furor we’ve been seeing over Iowa for the last several days. It wasn’t until the Nevada caucus that things really started to get crazy in the 2016 race, and we’re still a couple of weeks out from that.

    So we’re way ahead of schedule in terms of emotional intensity tied to this presidential primary race, and possibly at a more heated point after the very first 2020 primary contest than at any point in the 2016 race between Sanders and Clinton. And it’s only going to get crazier from here.

    And that’s just looking at the US Democratic presidential primary. Later this month we’ve got the beginning of Julian Assange’s extradition trial, we’ve got the OPCW narrative managing its own scandal by smearing the whistleblowers who revealed that the US, UK and France almost certainly bombed Syria in 2018 under false pretenses, we’ve got continuing revelations that pretty much everything the Trump administration told the world to justify the assassination of Qassem Soleimani was a lie, we’ve got an escalating new cold war between the US and Russia, increasing establishment attempts to censor the internet, an increasing propaganda war against China, the general militaristic belligerence of the US-centralized empire, and God knows what else.

    As I said back in November, things are going to get weirder and weirder throughout the foreseeable future. We’re coming to a point in history where the only reliable pattern is the disintegration of patterns, and 2020 has come storming out of its corner swinging for the fences working to establish this pattern with extreme aggression. We’re not going to hit a point of stability or normality this year, we’re going to see things get crazier and crazier and crazier. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know it’s going to be nuts.

    In such an environment, it’s going to be absolutely essential to take exceptional care of your psychological health if you want to remain engaged with what’s going on in the world in a positive way.

    And I do mean exceptional. Whatever you’re doing now, do more. Start cultivating new habits to keep yourself lucid and serene, and start now before things get super crazy. Work out your issues with your family and with yourself. Remember to move your body in ways that feel good to you. Carve out some time out each day for just being quiet with yourself. Notice the beauty around you. Give cuddles, get cuddles. Take a shower and sing your heart out. Feel your feet on the floor, nestle your bum into your chair and listen to yourself breath like it’s a song on the radio. Yawn. Belch. Stretch. Roar. Put on some loud music and rock out. Whatever you know works for you to get you out of your head and back in to your body, remember to do it, and remember to do it regularly. Make it habitual.

    Be proactive with this rather than reactive; if you wait until you have to react to things going ass-side up later on it’s going to feel like you’re fighting to get your head above water. If you do it now you’ll have the mental space needed to navigate tumultuous waters.

    This is what will be necessary if you want to engage with the increasingly frenetic narrative matrix in the future. The only alternative will be to disengage completely and throw your attention into escapism, or at least away from politics and news. And if you don’t make the cultivation of mental well-being your first and foremost priority you will be forced, in a very unpleasant way, to disengage anyhow.



    And honestly this is something all activist types should be doing anyway. Believing you can help the world without doing serious inner work is like believing you can clean the house while covered in raw sewage. You can always spot the political activists who engage without doing any inner work by the chaotic, unskillful and frequently counterproductive form their actions take. They can’t see clearly enough to operate efficaciously, because their vision is clouded with unresolved suffering and conflict. Get in the shower and wash the yuck off yourself before trying to clean the house.

    Some of my readers want a Sanders insurgency in the Democratic Party, some support third parties or independents, while others eschew electoral politics altogether and endorse other approaches to pushing for real change. But in my experience you all care deeply about the world, regardless of your preferred path toward doing so, and that’s going to take a heavy toll as all manner of things unravel over the next year if you don’t have the psychological spaciousness to navigate it lucidly.

    Above all, be gentle with yourself. We got a ways ahead of us, and we need you fresh and feeling good. You won’t be able to help wake the world up if you let the chaos and confusion drag you down. Know when to take a break from the information stream and all the babbling narratives trying to twist your perception of it. Use your tools to distance yourself from the narratives so that you can perceive them objectively. Ground yourself, find your center, then, when you’re ready, wade back in.

    No matter how chaotic things get, your ability to navigate that chaos skillfully needs to be your first and foremost priority. Put your mental well-being first, and everything else will fall into place.

    Be the peace and harmony you want to see in the world."
    Each breath a gift...
    _____________

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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    Big Buttigieg Bloviations
    2/ 9 /2020
    CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
    Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02...rative-matrix/


    "Prediction: if Sanders somehow manages to win the primary, a majority of the centrist pundits screaming “vote blue no matter who” at Bernie supporters right now will help amplify smear campaigns against him and undermine his campaign against Trump.

    ~

    The UK media’s shrieking, deceitful smear campaign against Corbyn last year far exceeds anything we’ve seen against Sanders so far in terms of intensity and egregiousness. I point this out to highlight the fact that there’s still plenty of room for it to get a whole lot worse.

    ~

    Bernie’s most important job is being a very reasonable thing that the people want and the establishment refuses to let them have. Force them to kill his run openly and you can wake more people up to the reality that they’re not living in the kind of nation they thought they were.

    ~

    Fun fact: Amy Klobuchar’s support base consists of nothing but TV news pundits and mainstream op-ed writers.

    ~

    Fun fact: the most dangerous synthetic material ever invented in a laboratory for public consumption is Pete Buttigieg.

    ~

    Most politicians are experts at the art of spouting eloquent-sounding bloviations that never actually say anything. Pete Buttigieg is like the Mozart of that art.

    ~

    Buttigieg has almost no political history and still has to deal with significant scandals from his tiny mayoral stint. Yet he’s still polling well. Very interesting.

    ~

    Nobody’s shocked that the Democratic establishment is rigging the election, but some are shocked that they’re being so brazen about it. Don’t be. Remember, there are no consequences for these people: they know they’ll never lose their jobs, and they’re fine with Trump winning.

    If you’re suffering under the status quo, you’re much more likely to care about changing it. If you’re benefiting from the status quo, you’re more likely to care about protecting it and making sure you never become one of those poor suckers who are being crushed to death by it. Establishment lackeys benefit from it.

    ~

    One under-appreciated establishment-friendly perk of the Iowa caucus rigging is that the scandal completely eclipsed the big story of the day: the spectacular face-plant of the anointed king Joe Biden. If not for the scandal, that’s all anyone would be talking about right now.

    ~

    At some point the establishment narrative managers are going to realize that criticizing “Bernie bros” for being angry isn’t an effective strategy, because the answer coming back is only ever going to be “Oh you have no ****ing idea.”

    ~

    By July establishment Democrats are going to be literally urinating on progressives and telling them they’re helping Trump if they react in any way.

    ~

    Any political issue which doesn’t directly threaten the interests of oligarchs and the military-industrial complex is incapable of delivering meaningful political change; it will be hijacked and used as a carrot or a stick by the two-headed one-party system to distract from anything that threatens existing power structures.

    ~

    Anyone who claims the left is starting a “class war” is claiming that the billionaire class has not already been waging war on normal people on a multitude of fronts for many years. They’re saying that the exploitation, oppression, manipulation, corruption and poverty is all in your imagination.

    ~

    There is a large and influential political faction which has spent the last three years subtly indoctrinating the American public into assuming that all of America’s problems will go away once Trump is out of office. These people are doing far, far more harm than good.

    ~

    All the major power players are perfectly fine with Trump getting reelected; he’s been advancing all their key toxic agendas. Democratic Party leaders are fine with it too; they’ll all keep their jobs, wealth and influence regardless of what happens in November, and they know it.

    ~

    Trump supporters who can’t see that their guy is as much a part of the establishment machine as Pelosi are just as dumb as the pussyhatted #Resistance liberals YASS-QUEENing about Nancy ripping some paper. Just because the Dems look extra dumb right now doesn’t mean you’re smart.

    You’ve been had. You were duped by narrative and empty words into supporting a garden variety Republican president. Your anti-establishment sentiments were successfully corralled by propaganda into a standard GOP ideology with some edgy window dressing.

    ~

    The CIA website has a kids section with games where children can “solve puzzles, crack codes, and discover clues like a real CIA officer”.

    This is like ISIS starting an ice cream truck business.

    ~

    I said back in September that I won’t be authoring any essays about the stupid impeachment side-show because it’s boring and irrelevant, and I never did the entire time, even on days when it was the only thing in the news. I am awesome.

    ~

    Everyone with a brain knew Russiagate and Ukrainegate would fizzle, including leading Democrats. They only pushed them to distract from their own failures and scandals in 2016, and to avoid making any meaningful changes to their party or its policies. Trump supporters who claim it was a major Deep State coup attempt are premising that belief on the idea that the Deep State was capable of orchestrating a massive domestic regime change operation but was incapable of counting Senate seats. There was never any real establishment threat to Trump, because Trump is fully aligned with the establishment.

    ~

    When it comes to Julian Assange, if you zoom out from the noise of propaganda, the question that is very clearly being asked here is this: Should publishers and journalists be jailed for exposing war crimes? Our answer to that question will shape our world for decades to come.

    This is the actual thing we’re pushing against. Every partisan angle that people come up with is just trying to avoid tackling the central question that Assange’s case hinges on. Try to keep the debate focused on this one question. Keep hammering it home. Liberals will tell you it’s about Russia Russia Putin Putin, Trump supporters will babble some gibberish about it having something to do with fighting the Deep State, but the real issue is and always has been about whether we should punish journalists and publishers for exposing war crimes

    ~

    Superhero comic writers often envisioned variations on an evil nerd inventing some powerful technology and trying to use it to take over the world. Their work turns out to have been prophetic, except the technology is more boring, and there are no superheroes to stop them.

    ~

    As far as the empire is concerned Palestinians have no more rights than whales dying from Navy sonar tests or wildlife in a prime military base location. Israel is a nuclear-armed imperial military outpost, and Palestinians, as far as the empire is concerned, are just in the way.

    ~

    A nation which requires endless violence to maintain is not a real nation, anymore than a house which requires nonstop, round-the-clock construction work is a real house. If your house needed 24/7/365 construction work to prevent it from collapsing, you’d either move or come up with a radically different design plan.

    ~

    Those pushing the continuation of wars, military expansionism, oligarchic corruption, exploitative neoliberalism, police militarization and Orwellian surveillance are the ones to oppose. Those pushing the opposite way are the ones to support. This perspective should be common sense and obvious to everyone, but it’s been twisted by propaganda into a “fringe” opinion. This is the primary obstacle to sanity right now."
    Each breath a gift...
    _____________

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    Default Re: The thread of Caitlin Johnstone's words

    Caitlin seems to think Bernie supporters would “hardcore out-meme” Trump supporters in a Bernie vs Trump election battle.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/caitoz/st...49391169830912



    Trying to find good Bernie memes on a reddit forum but they seem a bit cringe. Anyone know of any good Bernie forums that are producing memes good enough to take out Trump?

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