The fact that Instant Pot is already being framed as a corporate cautionary tale — the company that went bankrupt because they made a product so durable and versatile that its customers had little need to buy another one — instead of as a critique of corporatism is deeply, deeply depressing.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Professional psychopath John Bolton has an article out with The Hill titled “America can’t permit Chinese military expansion in Cuba” which inadvertently spells out exactly what’s wrong with the way the US empire keeps amassing heavily armed proxy forces on the borders of its large Asiatic enemies.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
In just a few years Democrats flipped from freaking out about Nazis, shrieking that Trump was going to start a nuclear war, and denying US election results to cheering for Nazis, demanding more nuclear brinkmanship, and accusing anyone who denies election results of treason.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Voting in a “democracy” is like in The Simpsons when Marge is driving with the baby and the baby has a toy steering wheel. All the worst atrocities in human history have been perpetrated by governments. The law isn’t there to protect you from bad people, it’s there to protect bad people from you.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
15 Reasons Why Mass Media Employees Act Like Propagandists. If you watch western news media with a critical eye you eventually notice how their reporting consistently aligns with the interests of the US-centralized empire, in almost the same way you’d expect if they were government-run propaganda.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
You Can’t Vote Your Way Out Of A Mess You Never Voted Yourself Into. No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain. Presidential elections the unplugged video game controller you give your baby brother so you can stop him from whining to play without actually letting him.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Propaganda Restricts Speech More Than Censorship Does. The biggest impediment to free speech is people’s belief that they have it. Not censorship. It’s the fact that most people are propagandized into saying what the powerful want them to say, and don’t know it.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Are Americans okay with their government risking a very fast, very radioactive third world war to defend the freedom and democracy of a nation that imprisons US citizens for speech crimes? If governments need to keep ramping up censorship, is it really freedom and democracy? Is it worth defending?(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Propaganda excludes voices that are critical of the established status quo from being heard and influencing people, it amplifies voices which support the status quo, and it creates the illusion that the range of political opinions presented are the only reasonable political opinions to have.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says “weaponized” the First Amendment rights of Americans.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
It’s Good To Be Mean To War Propagandists. Sydney Morning Herald editor Bevan Shields has published an article titled “We are not above criticism but these attacks go too far“, tearfully rending his garments over criticisms his paper’s three-part war-with-China propaganda series.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
US Officials Really, REALLY Want You To Know The US Is The World’s “Leader”. White House National Security Council’s John Kirby made no fewer than seven assertions that the US is the “leader” of the world. This is from one single press conference.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
The latest New York Times report on the Nord Stream pipeline bombing is something else. According to NYT’s anonymous US government sources, the pipelines were blown up by a “pro-Ukrainian group” It’s actually insulting how stupid it is. But Sy Hersh's and Matt Taibbi's anonymous sources are bad.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
It Is The Mass Media’s Job To Help Suppress Anti-War Movements. The mainstream western media exist first and foremost to administer propaganda on behalf of the US-centralized empire. And chief among their propaganda duties is to suppress the emergence of a genuine peace movement.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
My research has led me to conclude that there’s an elite conspiracy to enslave us all and turn us all into brainwashed automatons mindlessly enacting the wishes of our rulers in a cruel dystopia built by the powerful, for the powerful. Haha, just kidding. That already happened.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Top 20 Most Cringeworthy Zelensky PR Moments. Here are 20 of the cringiest moments of establishment PR using Zelensky to market the McProxy War to the western world, in no particular order. Are people not tired of having their intelligence insulted yet?(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Western Journalists Are Cowardly, Approval-Seeking Losers. All the years of hysterical shrieking about Russian trolls interfering in US democracy — a narrative that has been used to drum up support for censorship and increasing US government involvement in the regulation of online speech — was false(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Military Groomers Are Increasingly Infiltrating US High Schools(caitlinjohnstone.com)
NATO Exists To Solve The Problems Created By NATO’s Existence(caitlinjohnstone.com)
The Guardian Could Help Assange By Retracting All The Lies It Published About Him. They signed a letter calling for the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange. This is after all the same Guardian which published the fake news that Manafort had met secretly with Assange.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Musk’s Free Speech Moves On Twitter Have So Far Been Unimpressive(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Zelensky And Bush To Give Joint Pro-War Presentation(caitlinjohnstone.com)
The Profoundly Stupid Narrative That Nuclear Brinkmanship Is Safety And De-Escalation Is Danger. “An understandable desire to avoid a nuclear war could actually make the world more dangerous if it means rushing to implement a ‘peace’ in Ukraine that serves Russian interests.”(caitlinjohnstone.com)
“Maybe my government is actually in the wrong here and is just lying and manipulating to advance its own interests?” should be a much more common thought. It’s a line of inquiry that should be taught to schoolchildren. It is by design that it doesn’t occur to people more often.(caitlinjohnstone.com)
Don’t let anyone tell you your criticisms of US warmongering make no difference; if they didn’t, the empire wouldn’t work so hard to dissuade you from making them. They work so hard to manufacture public consent for their agendas because they absolutely require that consent.(caitlinjohnstone.com)