by Caitlin Johnstone - 28 Sep 2021
Don’t side with the powerful against the less powerful. Just don’t. Don’t side with police against protesters. Don’t side with the US against the targets of western imperialism. Don’t side with Israel against Palestinians. Siding with the powerful means you’ve taken a wrong turn.
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It sure is a strange coincidence how all the US government’s grave concerns about Julian Assange endangering national security all manifested in ways that just so happen to look exactly the same as the world’s most powerful government persecuting a journalist for telling the truth.
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May all the journalists who helped manufacture consent for Assange’s persecution one day look in the mirror and see someone who helped the most powerful government in the world torture an autistic person for doing their job better than them.
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Watching TV when you’re not used to it is like a nonstop machine gun punch-in-the-face reminder of how completely unsustainable capitalism is.
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Q: What is capitalism?
A: Capitalism is a system of transferring blame for society’s problems from the people who cause those problems onto the people who are hurt by them.
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Q: What is democracy?
A: Democracy is getting to choose between a political party who doesn’t think the abuses of capitalism are excessive enough and a political party who thinks the level of abusiveness is just about right.
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There is no “good” version of capitalism. Any system in which human behavior is driven by profit will necessarily see a steadily mounting rise in exploitation, inequality, ecocide and militarism, because all of those things are profitable. We need to end the profit motive itself.
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Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that wealthy and powerful people would manipulate global affairs in all sorts of immoral ways over a paltry trillions of dollars.
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Indie media figures who spend a lot of time sniping at and talking shit about other indie media figures do so solely because their interest in social climbing and sectarian tribalism grew to exceed their interest in the values which brought them to indie media in the first place.
Nobody really talks about the way you get pulled into different factions once you start gaining a following in indie media, but it’s very much a thing. You get added to group chats, people cozy up to you and amplify you and ask to be amplified, then before you know it you find yourself involved in agendas and sectarian spats that have nothing to do with your values. Takes a lot not to get drawn in.
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Remember when CNN staged a scripted interview with a seven year-old Syrian girl to have her explain that Assad was responsible for a recent sarin gas attack and drum up support for US military interventionism?
I think about this a lot. She’s plainly either reading or reciting from a script, which means CNN’s Alisyn Camerota necessarily had the other half of that script. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
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“Why don’t you talk more about Covid and vaccines, Caitlin?”
Yeah why don’t I spend my life trying to explain a nuanced and evolving perspective about a hot-button issue to hysterical people on the internet who are all determined to misinterpret the words I’m saying, sounds fun.
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People say Marx was smart but I’ve read his stuff and he barely spends any time at all yelling about Jimmy Dore.
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AOC’s habit of word-salading on difficult issues is what you get when you have news media driven by access journalism who politicians know will never try to pin them down on their answers and say “Yeah nothing you just said makes sense. Please explain what you meant by that?”
Politicians of a certain level understand that as far as the media are concerned it doesn’t matter so much how you answer as that you answer. If it’s a difficult question you just keep your mouth moving without actually saying anything until the question goes away.
This is why it always feels like you’re being lied to when you watch presidential debates. Candidates understand how to keep their mouths moving and word salad about freedom and American democracy and whatever without actually giving a concrete answer to a difficult question.
They do it because they know it works. And they know it works because they know the plutocrat-controlled media are driven by empire apologia first, ratings second, advertisers third, and holding the powerful to account somewhere near the bottom of the list.
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Democratize the media, free the internet, end government secrecy, end corporate and financial secrecy, end patents, establish centers for psychedelic use and consciousness expansion, eliminate most laws and thereby most police and prisoners, govern in rotating shifts like jury duty, eliminate mass-scale manipulation including advertising, build systems for collaboration with each other and our ecosystem, end all war and militarism, get mothers all the material support they need to raise mentally and physically healthy children, end wealth inequality, give everyone enough, make shelter, water, food and air inalienable human rights.
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