By Caitlin JOHNSTONE
Yep. Just hanging around, killing time, waiting to find out whether the US is going to start World War 3 now or a little later on.
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Washington: Russia’s gonna invade Ukraine.
Moscow: We’re not gonna invade Ukraine.
Kyiv: Yeah Russia’s not gonna invade Ukraine.
Washington: Russia’s definitely about to invade Ukraine.
Entirety of western media: RUSSIA 100% CERTAIN TO INVADE UKRAINE ANY SECOND NOW
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Both Moscow and Kyiv agree that there wil be no unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. Washington keeps insisting that if there’s a war Russia will be the aggressor, but in reality all that has to happen for there not to be a Ukraine war is for US/NATO powers not to start one.
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It’s actually a bit enraging to see western elites kicking around people’s emotions and personal psychology like a motherfucking hacky sack with bullshit propaganda all the time just to make money for the military-industrial complex and advance some dopey geostrategic agendas in Eurasia.
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Biden says “everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard.” Jen Psaki says Eastern Europe is “our eastern flank”. The US government firmly believes its territorial borders extend to the outer planets in our solar system.
.@PressSec: “We have a sacred obligation to support the security of our eastern flank countries…It’s important to remember who the aggressor is here…it is Russia who has tens of thousands of troops on the border of Ukraine. They have the power to deescalate.” pic.twitter.com/Rtzy0RJ8h3
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 24, 2022
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NATO is bad, actually.
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The US government is the most evil and destructive regime on this planet and you should want its leadership to be ineffectual and its agendas to fail.
I’ve never encountered anyone who can refute my claim that the US is quantifiably the most evil and destructive government in today’s world. They try, but they generally weren’t even aware of the facts that I use to make my case until I show them to them. This says so much about the power of US propaganda.
Hardly any westerners are aware that the US government has spent the 21st century slaughtering millions in wars of aggression, or that it’s circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and working to destroy any nation which disobeys its dictates. This stuff should be the first thing anyone learns when they’re beginning to research international conflicts and global power dynamics. Instead it’s like this obscure esoteric secret that’s hidden from them while they’re fed an IV drip of propaganda about Russia and China.
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If you’re a leftwardly-inclined politically active person in the western world, you will eventually discover that many of the figures you were initially drawn to are terrible on imperialism and militarism. How you respond to this discovery says a lot about your character.
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Whenever someone regurgitates a western propaganda narrative, ask them what articles they’ve read disputing that narrative. If they say “none” (or more commonly “What articles dispute this??”, which means the same thing), they’ve admitted to having no idea what they’re talking about. And at that point they’ve already lost the argument, because they just admitted they’ve done no real research into whether or not their claim is actually true. They just told you they’re blindly regurgitating television narratives without bothering to check if they’re factual.
If the narrative you just repeated is the same as what the TV and the US State Department are saying, and you haven’t researched opposing perspectives on that narrative, you haven’t done any actual research at all. You’re just a mindless automaton acting out your programming.
After this has been established, you can go ahead and say they’re done. If they keep going I sometimes say “If I had just admitted to doing zero meaningful research into whether or not the claim I just made is true, I personally would shut the fuck up about it.”
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The old model of slavery came with bad PR and you had to feed and house your slaves. The new model of slavery has great PR, you don’t even have to pay them enough to house themselves, plus it’s easy to profit from the way the slaves are always forced into debt with interest.
