Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone Caitlin Johnstone

The New York Times reports that Ukraine is crawling with special forces and spies from the US and its allies, which would seem to contradict earlier reports that the US intelligence cartel is having trouble getting intel about what's happening on the ground in Ukraine.

This would also, obviously, put the final nail in the coffin of the claim that this is not a US proxy war.

Reading by Tim Foley.

"China is a strange, backwards nation ruled by tyrants," said the nation founded by Puritans who used to execute women for witchcraft and just killed reproductive rights protections because they think Jesus told them to.

The world is dominated culturally, economically and militarily by a regime that just killed women's reproductive rights because they make Jesus mad.

Reading by Tim Foley.

All of our world's worst problems are created by the powerful. The powerful will keep creating those problems until ordinary people use their superior numbers to make them stop. Ordinary people don't use their superior numbers to stop the powerful because the powerful are continuously manipulating people's understanding of what's going on. 

Humans are storytelling creatures. If you can control the stories humans are telling themselves about the world, you control the humans, and you control the world. 

Mental narrative plays a hugely prominent role in human experience; if you've ever tried to still your mind in meditation you know exactly what I'm talking about. Babbling thought stories dominate our experience of reality. It makes sense then that if you can influence those stories, you're effectively influencing someone's experience of reality.

The powerful manipulate the dominant narratives of our society in approximately five major ways: propaganda, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, government secrecy, and the war on journalism. Like the fingers on a hand they are distinct from each other and each play their own role, but they're all part of the same thing and work together toward the same goal. They're all just different aspects of the US-centralized empire's narrative control system.

Reading by Tim Foley.

"Because the Cold War is in the distant past, most people, especially younger people, haven't thought a lot about nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence, and they tend to be quite cavalier in their comments about nuclear weapons, and this makes me very nervous," Mearsheimer said.

It makes me nervous too. Especially when we've got a steadily escalating proxy war which the standoff in Lithuania could easily see spin out into a direct hot war between Russia and NATO powers, and when we hear the UK's top army general telling troops to prepare for World War Three.

Hey I've got a great idea, let's start World War Three over a NATO country that most Americans don't even know exists.

Liberals learned the word "Lithuania" ten seconds ago and they're ready to nuke Moscow over it.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Just for fun we all pretend to be strangers.
Just for fun we pretend we don't know each other on the street,
on the train, at the store, at the traffic light.

Just for fun we pretend we aren't locked in ecstatic union
and briefly ignore our intimate knowledge of the primordial secrets
behind each other's eyes.
We sit on the bus and try not to be the first to wink,
or to burst out laughing at the silliness of our game,
or to call out the goofy elephant in the room
about how we're all pretending to be strangers
just for fun.
Two spouses pause mid-coitus to shake hands and introduce themselves.
Two twins in the womb make awkward small talk about the weather.
The thumb and the index finger avoid eye contact on the elevator.
Two slimy babies squirt into the same universe,
made from the same stuff,
and then put on masks made of mind chatter
so we can pretend that we don't know each other.
My atoms are your atoms, and your atoms are mine.
We have danced this swirling energy orgy since before the Big Bang.
Playing positive and negative,
playing stimulus and response,
playing predator and prey,
playing mother and youngling,
playing enemies and lovers,
playing strangers on the internet,
just for fun.
I apologize, my timeless sibling,
for breaking character just this once.

Let us return now to our little game.

__________________

Reading by Tim Foley.