Written by Caitlin Johnstone

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” who had no known connections to any military or intelligence agency, but somehow had all the information, skills, diving equipment and military explosives necessary to carry out such an attack.

It’s actually insulting how stupid it is. It reads like a small child lying about who broke the lamp in the living room; “Uhh, some bad guy came in and broke it, then he left. He was wearing a black cape and had a twirly mustache.” At least respect us enough to make up a better lie than “Yeah it turns out it was just some random people with a boat, man! It’s crazy I know!”

They literally wrote an entire article without ever addressing how bizarre it is to just keep referring to the alleged perpetrators as just a “group”. Like that’s a thing. “Yeah you know, one of those Groups we’ve all been hearing about in the news. You know Groups, they sail around the world destroying international undersea energy infrastructure.”

Imagine having to tell this Scooby Doo-esque tale about a yacht of Ukraine-loving mischief-makers who pranked Europe’s energy supply like it’s a real thing. Like, “Oh come on, who among us has not taken a boatload of military explosives to go blow up international pipelines for fun with their friends?”

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I’m finding myself growing more and more enraged at the way war with China is being aggressively pushed in Australia. There’s nothing more evil than starting a completely needless war for power and profit. The people who are pushing this monstrous depravity should be afraid to go out in public.

War is the worst thing in the world, and a war between China and the US alliance would be the worst of all wars. The people who are trying to inflict this incomprehensible horror upon humanity (all in the name of securing US unipolar hegemony, mind you) are enemies to our species.

People who beat the drums of world war should be treated with the same revulsion and rejection as child rapists and serial killers. They should be afraid to show their faces outside, and in a remotely sane society, they would be. In a remotely sane society, people who even attempted to shove hot garbage like this down people’s throats would be driven out of every town they tried to enter. They’d die miserable, cold and alone in a cave somewhere, nibbling on bats and fungus.

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Notice how there’s bipartisan support for escalations against Russia with the occasional voice of sanity permitted on the Republican side, and there’s bipartisan support for escalations against China with the occasional voice of sanity permitted on the Democrat side:

The Democrats furiously promote escalations against Russia with Republicans playing a more passive accepting role, and Republicans furiously promote escalations against China with Democrats playing a more passive accepting role. Each carries forward different parts of the agenda.

In this way the empire prevents partisans from arguing about if cold war escalations should occur, and gets them arguing instead about how and where they should occur. The debate isn’t “Should we militarize against a powerful country?” it’s “Should we militarize against Russia or against China?”

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American exceptionalism means the rules apply to everyone except America.

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The US is like one of those annoying dogs that’s always barking at the neighbors and at passersby on the street because it thinks they are trespassing on its property.

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When lots of Russians are dying I get empire simps saying “Haha I bet you’re sad you evil bitch,” when lots of Ukrainians are dying I get empire simps saying “Ooh I bet you’re happy you evil bitch,” but really I’m just angry knowing the US empire could have prevented all this with a little diplomacy and a few low-cost concessions.

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Don’t call it a “proxy war”. By calling it a proxy war you are denying Ukraine’s sovereignty as a sovereign US military asset and its agency to do whatever the US wants it to do.

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Wikipedia is one of the most brilliant tools of imperial narrative management ever devised. The ways it’s stacked in favor of the empire are hidden behind the illusory alibi of being a people-driven information source, so its readers have no idea they’re consuming propaganda.

Ben Norton had a great write-up with the Grayzone a few years ago on the way Wikipedia’s fraudulent narrative about itself as a free encyclopedia maintained by a community of volunteers through open collaboration masks a top-down control system slanted to favor the empire. Like all the best tools of imperial control, Wikipedia disguises itself as a populist instrument of the people while being owned and operated by individuals with deep ties to status quo power. But how many people who visit Wikipedia are familiar with articles like the above and the facts laid out therein? Almost none of them. It’s one of the most-visited websites in the world, and people don’t know this.

Sometimes all you can do is stop and stare in slack-jawed marvel at how ingenious the empire is at manipulating the ways people think about their world. It’s depraved, it’s abusive, and it’s profoundly destructive, but by God is it brilliant.

Just imagine what humanity could accomplish if our species was pouring all its innovation and ingenuity into coming up with ways to make the world a better place for everyone instead of figuring out the best ways to control people’s thoughts, reap massive profits, and wage wars.

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