#johnstone
On War Crimes And Western Hypocrisy
The death toll has risen to 12 from Israel’s terror attack in #Lebanon on Tuesday which detonated explosive materials hidden in thousands of #pagers. Another 20 people were then killed in another attack on Wednesday with a second wave of explosions, this time using walkie talkies and home solar energy systems.
The total death toll now sits at 32. Two children and four healthcare workers are among the dead. Thousands have been injured.
As you would expect, western empire managers are getting really squirmy about this. White House spokesman John Kirby adamantly refused to answer any questions involving Israel’s responsibility for the attacks during a press conference on Wednesday, despite #Israel being widely reported as the responsible party, with outlets like The New York Times citing #US officials as their source.
“I’m not gonna speak to the details of these incidents,” Kirby said repeatedly when questioned about Israel’s role and what the US response will be.
It goes without saying that if a government like Russia, China or Iran were even suspected of being responsible for similar attacks, Kirby and his fellow podium people would be not just naming the suspected aggressor but fervently denouncing the attack as an act of terrorism.
And it is here worth reminding readers that in 2017, a leaked State Department memo explained in plain language that it is standing US policy to overlook the abuses of US allies while denouncing the abuses of US enemies in order to undermine enemies and show other countries the perks of being aligned with the United States.
The memo showed neoconservative empire manager Brian Hook teaching a previously uninitiated Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that for the US government, “human rights” are only a weapon to be used for keeping other nations in line. In a remarkable look into the cynical nature of imperial narrative management, Hook told Tillerson that it is US policy to overlook human rights abuses committed by nations aligned with US interests while exploiting and weaponizing them against nations who aren’t.
“In the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights,” Hook explained in the memo.
“One useful guideline for a realistic and successful foreign policy is that allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries,” Hook wrote. “We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them. For this reason, we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to US relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And this is not only because of moral concern for practices inside those countries. It is also because pressing those regimes on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”
It’s tedious going “If Group X did this western politicians and pundits would condemn it but because Group Y did it they’re fine with it” over and over again, but it’s important to highlight these discrepancies because they show how we’re being deceived.
Westerners are indoctrinated from birth into believing they live in a society that is basically good with governments that, while imperfect, are still far superior to the tyrants and corrupt autocrats of the global south. In reality the western power structure centralized around the United States is the single most murderous and tyrannical force on earth by an extremely massive margin, but that obvious fact is always omitted from the indoctrination curriculum.
By pointing out the glaring discrepancies between the way the western political-media class responds to things like Israel turning electronic devices into thousands of bombs placed throughout civilian populations and the way they respond when other groups detonate explosives among civilians, you’re helping to punch holes in the veil of indoctrination they have cast over our collective understanding of the world. The more you recognize that you only see your society as good and others as bad because of the way world events are framed by western news media and politicians, the closer you get to having your “Are we the baddies?” epiphany.
Hypocrisy and contradiction are not great moral evils in and of themselves, but they often run cover for great moral evils. The fact that we are trained to think about the world by people who facilitate great evils perpetrated by their own side when they’d condemn identical evils committed by their enemies shows that they do not stand against evil, and are deeply evil themselves.
Recognizing the problems in our world is the first step to solving them. That’s what the propagandists and empire managers work to prevent us from doing, and that’s what we try to do by pointing out the glaring plot holes and inconsistencies in their narratives over and over again.
The correct thing to do when western leaders talk about human rights or denounce abuses by enemy governments is to mock them and dismiss them. They’re not saying anything true about their actual values and beliefs; if they were there wouldn’t be so much hypocrisy in the way they denounce governments they don’t like for offenses they ignore and make excuses for in governments they do like. They’re never saying what they’re saying to stop human rights abuses or make the world a better place, they’re only saying what they’re saying to undermine their enemies so that the western empire can rule the world and be the only one administering abuse.
And the same is true of the mainstream western press. You’ll see them completely ignore the abuses of US-aligned governments while showing immense interest in alleged abuses by empire-targeted groups, often on very flimsy evidence. Mock them and dismiss them when they act like they care about human rights abuses. They don’t care. They just want to make sure the abusive power structure they conduct propaganda for is the one in charge.
#Johnstone
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/on-war-crimes-and-western-hypocrisy
C. #Johnstone
We Need Both Outer Work And Inner Work To Truly Free Ourselves
It’s brutal keeping track of the criminality of the empire lately. I personally don’t see how anyone could do it without an accompanying discipline like healing work, meditation, mindfulness, self inquiry, or other forms of inner work.
Whenever I talk about the importance of inner work with this stuff I’ll get people dismissing it as self-indulgent navel gazing nonsense and a distraction from the outer work of actually changing our material circumstances, but really nothing could be further from the truth. To have a consistent discipline of inner work is to take responsibility for your own psychological bullshit instead of spreading it around in ways that hurt the people near you and make the world a worse place.
It is absolutely true that the world and the cruel systems which guide it urgently need to change, and it is absolutely true that much of the suffering and mental illness we see in our society is due to the material, financial and psychological stress that people are placed under in this sick capitalist dystopia we find ourselves in. But that doesn’t mean you get to shirk your own adult responsibility to do the hard work necessary to bring the unconscious mechanisms of your own suffering and dysfunction into consciousness where they can be healed.
The truth is that even if you could snap your fingers and magically transport us into a socialist utopia where we are no longer ruled by tyrants and everyone has what they need, people would still find ways to make themselves miserable and would still act out their unconscious woundedness on the folks around them, because that’s just what the human mind does at this point in our development as a species. You see evidence of this all the time in the self-destructive behaviors and abusiveness of the rich and famous despite their having all their material needs taken care of.
So, as well as it might play in some circles, it’s just not good enough to blame all our suffering on the system. Doing so just encourages people to keep masturbating their inner wounds on everyone around them instead of growing up and doing the hard, uncomfortable work of becoming a conscious human being.
And conscious human beings are what we’re going to need if we’re going to win this thing. We’re never going to be able to bring about the actions necessary to topple the empire and create a healthy world if we’re still being whipped about by unconscious forces within us caused by early childhood trauma, maladaptive coping mechanisms, unhealthy belief systems and inaccurate assumptions about our reality and our experience, like the overwhelming majority of humanity is right now. Hell, if we were handed a perfect utopia today we’d destroy it in a matter of weeks just out of our own internal chaos and restlessness.
It’s actually often the people most interested in fighting the world’s evils who are most in need of inner work and discipline. It’s just an unfortunate fact that activists are frequently some of the most unconscious and irresponsible people you’ll ever meet, often using their rightful opposition to injustice and systemic abuses to hide all varieties of inner dysfunction and act out their inner demons on the people within their own faction. Most of the internal feuding you see on the western left is nothing other than garden variety drama addiction, trauma reenactment and attention/approval-seeking masquerading as Very Important Discourse about a hot social justice issue or the correct understanding of Marx or whatever.
Just as we all have a responsibility to help create a healthy and truth-based world, we also all have a responsibility to develop healthy and truth-based minds. We can make up any number of excuses for our failure to do so, or we can suck it up and do the work. This gives us the necessary inner stability to directly face the empire’s cruelty even in nightmarish hellscapes like Gaza, and it lets us move far more effectively in the world because we’re being guided by truth and compassion instead of flying blind guided by nothing but our own inner wounds.
I won’t tell you what kinds of inner work you should do because only you can know what will work best for you, but I will tell you that becoming a conscious person with a serene and harmonious mind takes a lot of work, a lot of consistent dedication, and a lot of courage. What matters is your intention to uproot any untruth and disharmony within yourself, and a sincere curiosity about where such things might exist within you.
As individuals none of us have the ability to single-handedly uproot all the unkindness and falsehood in our world, but we can each as individuals uproot the unkindness and falsehood within ourselves. And by doing so we make the world a kinder and more truthful place by just that much, because we tended the little plot of land we were given—our own personal slice of the human plight—with care and responsibility.
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/we-need-both-outer-work-and-inner
It's Actually Amazing How Stupid The Propaganda Is Getting
Caitlin #Johnstone
The correct thing to do when someone tries to tell you that opposing an active genocide is discriminatory against Jews is to laugh uproariously and then ignore everything else they say for the rest of their lives.
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Jewish Zionists are like “Excuse me, it’s actually against my religion for you to oppose #genocide. You need to stop religiously persecuting me with peace activism.”
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So many westerners say they support Israel and also support a two-state solution, which is a nonsensical position when Israel is aggressively opposed to a two-state solution. If you actually support the creation of a Palestinian state you are directly at odds with every meaningful power structure in #Israel.
It’s like saying you support Biden but want him to lose the election. It’s like saying you support unions but also support aggressive union busting. It’s an entirely self-contradictory position that can only be reconciled without cognitive dissonance if you don’t really care about a two-state solution.
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US intelligence estimates that Israel has only killed 30–35 percent of Hamas fighters in Gaza so far, and that Hamas has meanwhile been recruiting thousands of new fighters in the wake of Israel’s onslaught.
After more than seven months of unfathomable horror, Israel has come nowhere remotely close to accomplishing its stated goals in Gaza. Israel must therefore necessarily either (A) inflict much, much, much more horror upon Gaza for a very, very long time, or (B) revise its official goals.
And of course there’s also option (C), which is that Israel has been lying about its stated goals this entire time and is actually accomplishing exactly what it set out to accomplish.
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Donald #Trump told the press that sentient Reaper drone Nikki Haley is “going to be on our team” because the two of them share “a lot of the same ideas.”
This man is openly saying he’s going to once again team up with warmongering swamp monsters for his next term, and is openly saying he’s going to continue #Biden’s warmongering in Ukraine and Gaza. But I am with absolute certainty still going to get brainwashed Trump supporters telling me he’s going to end the wars and fight the Deep State.
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It’s actually amazing how stupid the propaganda has gotten. Bombing kids and hospitals is self-defense. An extremely blatant ethnic cleansing campaign is actually a #war. A few western Zionist Jews saying they feel unsafe on campus is a more urgent concern than an active genocide.
Sometimes it feels like they’re experimenting on us, just to see how dumb of a narrative they can get people to swallow.
“Let’s tell them Hamas just attacked Israelis completely unprovoked, like totally out of nowhere. Act like Israel was just sitting there minding its own business and a bunch of terrorists attacked them because they’re evil and hate Jews.”
“What? Come on man, they’ll never buy that. The entire Israel-Palestine conflict is public record!”
“They’ll buy it. Just slyly suggest it on the news over and over again in a confident, authoritative tone and it’ll go right in.”
Actually, a lot of the breathtakingly stupid things the empire asks us to believe aren’t even believed by the people who voice them. Who actually believed it was ridiculous to suggest that Israel might attack a Palestinian hospital and lie about it? Who actually believes there’s a terrifying antisemitism epidemic in our society? I am convinced a lot of the people who claim to believe these things actually know better, but are pretending to believe fake nonsense in order to advance their political agendas.
The empire asks us to believe idiotic things all the time, year after year, but the narratives about what’s happening in Gaza are at a whole other level. It’s just a nonstop assault on people’s sense of reality.
Luckily, they appear to have ramped up the stupid faster than they could get away with this time. More and more people are waking up to their lies, and the eyes that are snapping open in 2024 are going to remain open to empire #propaganda for the rest of their days.
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/its-actually-amazing-how-stupid-the
More perspectives from Caitlin Johnstone and others
#Johnstone #Chomsky #Pilger #Hedges #Ukraine
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/07/14/caitlin-johnstone-much-needed-clarity-on-ukraine/
Caitlin dares to say things that are hard to hear. That's why I listen.
They’ve lied about every war, and they’ve openly acknowledged lying about this very war, but you’re a Kremlin agent if you say they’re lying to us about this war.
#Caitlin #Johnstone #mainstream #media #lies #capitalist #elite #corruption #power #war
Richard Medhurst ~ The End? Last Us Troops Leave Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZM6bLLLbms
https://amplifireproject.com/2021/08/30/caitlin-johnstone-the-completion-of-the-afghanistan-withdrawal-is-nothing-to-celebrate/
#richardmedhurst #medhurst #theend #troops #leave #afghanistan #neocons #us #uk #occupation #war #warmongers #joebiden #cia #contractors #mercenaries #special-forces #mi6 #sas #media #msm #journalism #war-sells #caitlinjohnstone #johnstone
I Desire Your Freedom – Caitlin Johnstone
“I desire your freedom,” the old professor told me.
“My freedom?” I asked, leaning in.
“Yes. I want you to be free from all forms of tyranny and oppression. Inward and outward, from the past or in the present.”
“Thank you,” I replied, unsure what to say.
“I don’t think you fully understand what I am saying to you right now,” the professor said. “I desire your freedom more than you yourself desire your freedom. I desire your freedom more than most of what’s in you desires your freedom.”
“I desire your freedom from oppression by those with more power than you. The government. The police. The wealthy. I want you to be free from any powerful forces who would inhibit or constrain your own will for your own life.
“I want you to be free from all transgressions against your personal sovereignty in any way. From family members. From friends and acquaintances. From employers and coworkers. From romantic partners. I desire your self-sovereignty over your will for your own life, in every possible way.
“Moreover, I want you to be free from all psychological manipulation which subverts your authentic will for your life. I want your mind to be free of manipulative parasites in your personal life who trick you into enacting their will instead of yours. I want your mind to be free from the toxic manipulations of advertisers who trick you into thinking you are inadequate and incomplete to try and squeeze a few bucks out of you. I want your mind to be free from the manipulations of propagandists in politics and news media who pull the wool over your eyes about what’s really going on in your society, in your nation and in your world.
“Your true will for your life cannot express as long as you are being successfully manipulated into enacting someone else’s will, whether that be an abusive partner or an abusive government. You cannot enact your own will for your life if you don’t know what your will is, and as long as manipulation holds sway over you it is impossible to clearly see your own will. You therefore cannot be fully self-sovereign as long as this is happening. You are not free until you are fully free of manipulation.
“For this reason, I also want you to be free from any forms of manipulation which have made their way into your mind through culture. I want your mind to be free from the religions which were concocted in ancient times to keep the peasants passive and obedient, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and glorifying poverty and meekness. I want your mind to be free from the power-worshipping attitudes which have been passed on from generation to generation, like reverence for police and military personnel, respect for politicians and government institutions, treasuring civility, and disdain for the underclass.
“For countless generations stretching back to the dawn of history the powerful have been shaping culture for their own benefit, and this is reflected in our values, language and customs even today, even for many of us who feel we have transcended such things. We show up in this world and are immediately indoctrinated with the will of not just parents, teachers, politicians and preachers, but also of long-dead lords and emperors who lived on the other side of the world. Our authentic will for ourselves lies buried beneath all that.
“This is what I want for you. Freedom to express your own will for your own life, but your real, authentic will. The will that has been buried beneath mountains of manipulation geared toward tricking you into manifesting other people’s will for your own life, funneled into your head since you were a baby. I want you to find your true, uncorrupted will, and I want you to manifest it in the world as you see fit.
“More than this, I desire your complete freedom from manipulation in all its forms, even your own conditioned impulse to manipulate. Growing up in a society that is steeped in manipulation conditions us to believe that that is the path to safety and security: manipulating others into doing certain things or being a certain way for us. Manipulating situations toward our advantage. Manipulating our own thoughts to weave pleasant mental stories for ourselves or to feel like we are in control.
“I desire your freedom. Your real freedom. From all forms of oppression, from all forms of manipulation, even your own. That is true sovereignty. I desire this for you. I desire this for everyone.”
Silence.
“That’s… I think that must be the most loving thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I replied tearfully.
“It would heal all our world’s problems,” said the professor, leaning her head back on her pillow.
“You mean if everyone were truly free?”
“Wouldn’t take nearly everyone to get the snowball rolling,” she said. “It would only take some of us.”
“It just looks so hopeless!” I exclaimed, now fully sobbing. “The world is dying and everyone’s sleepwalking through it! It just feels so powerless and pointless and hopeless and worthless.”
“Only the living are dying,” the professor responded. “The dead are not dying, they’re gone. The fact that you say the world is dying shows you the world is still very much alive.”
I just bit my lip and stared at her, a complete blubbering mess.
“Look at me,” she said. “They tell me I’m dying, but I’ve never been more alive. The other day Ron referred to this as my deathbed, just in passing in the middle of one of those dark jokes of his. It surprised me, not because it was wrong of him to say‒it’s a perfectly accurate label I suppose. Thing is, ever since I got back from the hospital I’d been thinking of it as my cradle. I feel like a newborn baby.”
“There’s something about this stage in life that clarifies so many things that eluded me up until I got here,” she continued, squeezing my hand reassuringly. “I look within myself and I see vast expanses of my being that I couldn’t even begin to describe if I had to. I see now that this experience, this human experience we all talk about in our little philosophy books‒the work I gave my entire life to‒the part that we can think about and talk about an analyze, is just a teeny tiny microfraction of what’s actually here. The rest is… ineffable. It’s a mystery. The parts of the human experience you can understand with your mind are just the tiniest tip of the iceberg. Not even that, really.
“We are giants, and we are mysteries. There are limitless abysses within all of us in which world-changing potentiality can be hiding. There is simply no way to know how this adventure ends, because we can only see and comprehend the smallest piece of what we’re made of. Just watch the ride unfold. I guarantee that whatever ends up happening, humanity will surprise you. I’m super jealous you get to see it happen!”
“I don’t know how to do it without you,” I sobbed.
“Yes you do. You do, and you will. There is so very, very much more to you than you realize.”
“I love you,” I sniffled. I had never said that to her before.
“Oh I love you too,” she said. “Now come give me a hug. The morphine’s kicking in and I’m about to turn into a fuzz-brained idiot. I won’t have you see me in such a state.”
I gave the professor a long, deep hug and whispered a treasured secret in her ear. I said goodbye to Ron and walked out their front door for the last time.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/02/15/i-desire-your-freedom/
#CaitlinJohnstone #Caitlin #Johnstone #Caitlin_Johnstone #story #Freedom
New York Times Job Listing Shows How Western Propaganda Operates
~ Caitlin Johnstone ~
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/new-york-times-job-listing-shows
'Mainstream reporters say things that aren't #true because in order to be hired by #mainstream #news #outlets, you need to jack your mind into a #power-serving #worldview that isn't based in #truth.'
#caitlinjohnstone #johnstone #newyorktimes #job #listing #russia #western #propaganda #media #brainwashing #msm #journalism
