U.S. Empire
US Admits to Pushing Ukraine Into a Fight It Can’t Win
A US “windfall” in Ukraine comes at an unfathomable cost.
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We’re Taught About Liberal And Conservative Bias In Media, But Not US Empire Bias
One of the biggest problems with the urgent push for “media literacy” we’ve been seeing in the west these last few years is that everyone’s being taught about liberal bias and conservative bias in media, but they’re not being taught about US empire bias.
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Another Act of Terror. How the Media Do PR for Biden and Zelensky
Coverage of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and Nord Stream pipelines shows a western media willing to prioritise anti-Russian propaganda over facts.
Read More It’s Not Just the Settlers – or Israel – Responsible for the Torching of Huwwara
Endless indulgence from Israel’s supporters in the West has cleared a path to a fascist government intent on ‘wiping out’ Palestinian communities
Read More Caitlin Johnstone: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Caitlin Johnstone contemplates the war in Ukraine, corporate media, the U.S. empire and more.
Read More There Has Never In History Been A Greater Need For A Large Anti-War Movement
❖Things are escalating more and more rapidly between the US-centralized power structure and the few remaining nations with the will and the means to stand against its demands for total obedience, namely China, Russia, and Iran.
Read More Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
The longer the proxy war in Ukraine continues, the closer we come to a direct confrontation with Russia. Once that happens, the Dr. Strangeloves running the show will reach for the nukes.
Read More The Official Narrative On Ukraine
If you dispute any part of the official Ukraine narrative, you are an evil monster, and a disinformation agent. Because Vladimir Putin is the same as Adolf Hitler, you are also the same as Neville Chamberlain, and are guilty of the cardinal sin of supporting appeasement.
Read More How the Left Became Cheerleaders for US Imperialism
Figureheads like the Guardian’s George Monbiot have wrecked the left’s ability to think critically, encouraging an analysis of power politics more suited to the playground.
Read More The Puppets and the Puppet Masters
The judicial proceedings against Julian Assange give a faux legality to the state persecution of the most important and courageous journalist of our generation.
Read More Silencing the Lambs. How Propaganda Works.
In an address to the Trondheim World Festival in Norway, John Pilger charts the history of power propaganda and describes how it appropriates journalism in a ‘profound imperialism’ and is likely to entrap us all, if we allow it.
Read More When the Just Go To Prison
When those who expose the crimes of the state are criminalized and sent to prison, tyranny is inevitable.
Read More War with Iran
The United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel, responsible for military fiascos, hundreds of thousands of deaths and innumerable war crimes in the Middle East, are now plotting to attack Iran.
Read More NATO: The Most Dangerous Military Alliance on the Planet
The massive expansion of NATO, not only in Eastern and Central Europe but the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, presages endless war and a potential nuclear holocaust.
Read More Imperial Narrative Control Has Five Distinct Elements
The powerful will keep creating the world’s worst 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.
Read More The Triumph of Death
The global ruling class is cementing into place a world where they govern without accountability, we are reduced to serfdom, the climate crisis accelerates, and mass death is normalized.
Read More Assange Is Doing His Most Important Work Yet
British Home Secretary Priti Patel has authorized the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to be tried under the Espionage Act in a case which seeks to set a legal precedent for the prosecution of any publisher or journalist, anywhere in the world, who reports inconvenient truths about the US empire.
Read More Forget Liberating Ukraine – We First Need To Liberate Our Minds
Because we in the West are the strongest tribe on the planet, we are also the most deluded, the most propagandized, and the most dangerous.
Read More Russia-Ukraine War: George Bush’s Admission of His Crimes in Iraq Was No ‘Gaffe’
The former president’s confusion over the invasions of Iraq and Ukraine should lead to western soul-searching, not mirth.
Read More They’re Worried About The Spread Of Information, Not Disinformation
We are not being protected by a compassionate alliance of corporations and governments who only want us to know the truth, we are being manipulated and oppressed by an oligarchic empire that wants us to believe lies. That’s why they’re locking up Assange, that’s why they’re censoring the internet, that’s why they’re filling our minds with propaganda, and that’s why we can’t let them win.
Read More Israel’s PR Problem, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Israel’s mounting PR crisis boils down to the fact that its violence and oppression isn’t happening in some far off land as in the case with US wars, it’s happening right at home surrounded by video cameras and enforced by police and soldiers who are not adept PR spinmeisters.
Read More The US Could’ve Prevented This War Just By Protecting Kyiv From Nazis
This entire war could have been avoided if the US had simply pledged military protection for Zelensky against the far right extremists who were threatening to lynch him if he enacted the peacemaking policies he was elected to enact.
Read More The Persecution of Julian Assange
According to UN torture expert, the UK and US have colluded to publicly destroy the WikiLeaks founder – and deter others from exposing their crimes.
Read More An Intellectual No-Fly Zone: Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm
Google has sent a warning shot across the world, ominously informing media outlets, bloggers, and content creators that it will no longer tolerate certain opinions when it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Read More Oh God It’s Going To Get SO Much Worse
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. By taking our control of information out of our hands without asking our permission and determining for us that we are to be a propaganda-based civilization for the foreseeable future, they have stolen something sacred from us. Something they had no right to take.
Read More They Actually Admitted They’re Lying To You! [News + Comedy with Lee Camp]
The Biden Administration and others have broken from the past and literally admitted they are “manipulating” or inventing various aspects of the war in Ukraine.
Read More The Pimps of War
The coterie of neocons and liberal interventionists who orchestrated two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East and who have never been held to account are now stoking a suicidal war with Russia.
Read More When You Lie It’s Misinformation, When They Lie It’s Cool: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Can’t believe we’ve been watching people lose their social media accounts for posting “misinformation” this whole time only for US officials to come right out and admit that they’ve been running an active disinformation campaign where they knowingly circulate lies about Russia.
Read More Liberals Are Adopting an Old Soviet Tactic: Painting Opponents as Mentally Ill
The pathologization of dissent is not going away. It will intensify as neoliberalism faces crisis after crisis and social polarization grows. Those who claim to be liberals defending democracy will soon be only too ready to snuff it out.
Read More Hedges: Waltzing Toward Armageddon with the Merchants of Death
The doctrine of permanent war dominated our lives during the Cold War and dominates our lives now.
Read More Social Media Giants Allow Hate Speech Against Russia but Silence Israel’s Critics
Silicon Valley’s decision to allow anti-Russia threats reveals it as little more than a propaganda arm of the West
Read More Twice in a Century: Russia Faces a War of Annihilation
The United States is in the early phases of a war of annihilation against Russia the aim of which is the total destruction of the economy, the culture, the population and the nation.
Read More Twitter Allows Death Threats Against Russians in New Ukraine War Policy
Twitter updated its terms of service to allow users to call for the deaths of Russian politicians and soldiers, due to the war in Ukraine. This comes soon after US Senator Lindsey Graham called for assassinating President Vladimir Putin, and Facebook greenlighted support for Ukrainian Nazis.
Read More Chris Hedges: Worthy and Unworthy Victims
Rulers divide the world into worthy and unworthy victims, those we are allowed to pity, such as Ukrainians enduring the hell of modern warfare, and those whose suffering is minimized, dismissed, or ignored. The terror we and our allies carry out against Iraqi, Palestinian, Syrian, Libyan, Somali and Yemeni civilians is part of the regrettable cost of war.
Read More Former UN Inspector Scott Ritter on What The Hell Is Happening in the Ukraine
UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter provides a concise summary of the geopolitics leading to the current Russia-Ukraine war.
Read More Let’s Re-Learn The Word ‘Detente’: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Western powers insisted that they were trying to prevent this war while doing everything possible to ensure that it happened. Now they say they are trying to end this war while doing everything possible to ensure it continues.
Read More The West’s Hands in Ukraine are as Bloody as Putin’s
If it succeeds, the West’s war machine will continue trundling over the bodies of the poor and marginalized as it drives us ever faster towards ecological collapse.
Read More Russia-Ukraine: Western Media Are Acting As Cheerleaders for War
Right now, we need voices from Russia to understand what Putin thinks and wants, not what the BBC’s “chief international correspondents” think he wants. We need information sources ready to quickly challenge both western and Russian “fake news”. And most of all we need to stop with our racist view of the world, in which we are always the Good Guys and they are always the Bad Guys, and in which our suffering matters and the suffering of others doesn’t.
Read More Spotify Purges Dissident Voices In Latest Censorship Escalation
Censorship escalates dramatically in the West. Anti-war political dissident Lee Camp tweeted Wednesday. “Let it be known – you can do anti-women, anti-trans or racist content on Spotify but you can’t be anti-war. That’s not allowed.”
Read More Has U.S. Imperial Striving Destroyed Our Chances for a Peaceful Multipolar World?
The U.S. government and ‘western’ media claim that the World condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That is however far from reality. It is only true if you believe that ‘the world’ solely exists of the 5-eye spying cooperation (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), the European Union, Switzerland, Japan and Singapore.
Read More Defending Freedom And Democracy Sure Requires An Awful Lot Of Censorship
You’d think a society devoted to truth and freedom, the kind of society western powers purport to be trying to defend in Ukraine, would not require a Ministry of Truth to protect us from “disinformation” about a government long targeted by the US-centralized empire, or from trying to seek out alternative perspectives beyond the homogeneous blanket of authorized mainstream narratives.
Read More The Single Most Important Question In The World Right Now
There is one question today that is more important than any other question that could possibly be asked, and it’s this: “Is what the US and its allies are trying to accomplish in Ukraine worth continually risking nuclear armageddon for?”
Read More Russell Brand Offers Food for Thought on the Ukraine Crisis
Russia has invaded Ukraine – according to the much of the MSM and certain politicians it’s as simple as Putin being the new Hitler. But is it that simple? What role did our own governments play? And are we headed towards WW3?
Read More The Field of Peace
Until we dismantle the empire and terminate the Military-industrial complex, something like Ukraine will recur again and again, whether instigated (as is usual) by the US imperial hegemon or by the adversaries it generates from its us-versus-them worldview. Can’t we write another plot for the human drama?
Read More Russia-Ukraine: A Different Invasion, the West’s Same ‘Madman’ Script
Simple-minded media propaganda – like the claim Russia’s Putin is deranged – is precisely what brought us to the crisis over Ukraine.
Read More US Gov’t Knew NATO Expansion to Ukraine Would Force Russia To Intervene
Former US Ambassador to Russia William J. Burns, who is now CIA director, admitted in a classified 2008 embassy cable that NATO expansion to Ukraine crosses Moscow’s security “redlines” and “could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”
Read More Hedges: Chronicle of a War Foretold
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, there was a near universal understanding among diplomats and political leaders at the time that any attempt to expand NATO was foolish, an unwarranted provocation against Russia that would obliterate the ties and bonds that happily emerged at the end of the Cold War.
Read More Twelve Thoughts on Ukraine
This whole thing could very easily have been avoided with a little bit of diplomacy. The only reason that didn’t happen was it would have meant the US empire taking a teensy, weensy step back from its agenda of total planetary domination.
Read More We’re Sleepwalking Into Nuclear War
This is so dangerous. This whole two-front nuclear brinkmanship game is so very, very dangerous, and they keep finding ways to make it more dangerous. And hardly anyone notices it, because the news media outlets that people look to to understand the world aren’t telling them it’s dangerous.
Read More The America that Almost Was and Yet May Be
The assassination of president John F. Kennedy represented a turning away from a promising future for the United States – from the promise of a government “of the people, by the people and for the people,” to a sham government powered by the elite and self-interested industry. Is there any way this can be reversed?
Read More Netflix To Launch WikiLeaks Smear Job Three Days Before Assange Court Date
Netflix will begin streaming a brazen hatchet job on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for its American subscribers on October 24th, just three days prior to a significant court date in Assange’s fight against extradition from the UK to the United States on October 27th.
Read More Warmongers Should Be Treated Like Serial Killers And Child Rapists
California Representative Ro Khanna announced on Monday that he’d just hung out with Iraq war architect Bill Kristol and had a wonderful exchange of ideas, fully discrediting the myth of the progressive Democrat with a single tweet.
Read More Chernobyl Alert and The Doomsday Clock
Inescapably, the bane of nuclear power, once dangerously out of control, remains dangerously out of control, forever and on it goes, beyond human time.
Read More Israel’s Big Lie: This Isn’t Self Defense — It’s a War Crime, Aided and Abetted by the U.S.
Nearly all the words and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza are a lie.
Read More Can You Trust the Media? | Manufacturing Consent Explained
“Second Thought” takes a look at whose interests the corporate media serves, and evaluate whether we should trust mainstream news.
Read More US Bombs Syria And Ridiculously Claims Self Defense
The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor.
Read More How the Media Cracks Down on Critics of Israel
It is widely recognized that critics of Israel, no matter how well-founded the criticism, are routinely punished by both public and private institutions for their speech.
Read More You’re Not A Radical, You’re Just Sane
The status quo isn’t the baseline of normality, sanity is. A sane, healthy world would look wildly different from this one, and we need to help people get clear on the distinction so we can all start creating that world together.
Read More Papering Over the Rot
The staggering concentration of wealth at the top has deformed our governing institutions — new window dressing will not end oligarchy.
Read More The Assange Extradition Ruling Is A Relief, But It Isn’t Justice
British Judge Vanessa Baraitser has ruled against US extradition for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but not for the reasons she should have.
Read More Wonder Woman Is a Hero Only the Military-Industrial Complex Could Create
In preparation for the release of the latest Wonder Woman installment, we revisit Jonathan Cook’s review of the original 2017 Wonder Woman, peeling back the layers of comic-book fun to reveal below the film’s disturbing and not-so-covert political and militaristic messages.
Read More We Are the Terrorists
The US and its allies have been helping Saudi Arabia deliberately kill children and other civilians on mass scale in order to achieve a political goal. Which would of course be a perfect example of any standard definition of terrorism.
Read More Obama Is An Asshole, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Blogger/journalist Caitlin Johnstone provides us with her latest thoughts on the devastating distortions of the mainstream narratives.
Read More The Planet Cannot Begin to Heal Until We Rip the Mask off the West’s War Machine
After four years of Trump, the war machine once again desperately needs a makeover.
Read More This Isn’t Feminism, It’s Imperialism In Pumps
We should not be cheering for women rising to the top of a psychopathic war machine. We should be dismantling that war machine and rolling back all the conditions which led to it. True feminism, which is interested in guiding the world toward balance and heath in a way that benefits women and their children, would make this a priority.
Read More Chris Hedges: American Requiem
Well, it’s over. Not the election. The capitalist democracy. However biased it was towards the interests of the rich and however hostile it was to the poor and minorities, the capitalist democracy at least offered the possibility of incremental and piecemeal reform. Now it is a corpse.
Read More Capitalism Is Double-Billing Us: We Pay From Our Wallets Only for Our Future to Be Stolen From Us
There can be no escape from the death wish of capitalism without recognising that death wish, and then demanding and working for wholesale change.
Read More A Wrong Turn At Albuquerque: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Political blogger and activist Caitlin Johnstone shares her thoughts of the day about U.S. Empire and the precarious state of our society.
Read More Eyewitness to the Agony of Julian Assange
Journalist John Pilger has spent the last three weeks watching Julian Assange’s extradition trial at London’s Old Bailey. He spoke with Arena Online’s editor, Timothy Erik Ström.
Read More You Can Have Peace Or The US Empire. You Can’t Have Both.
A nation that cannot exist without ceaseless war is not actually a nation at all: it’s an ongoing military operation with some suburbs and schools mixed in. This is true of Israel, and on a larger scale it is true of the globe-spanning, empire-like oligarchic world order that is loosely centralized around the United States.
Read More Nuclear War: A Thought Experiment
Living on the same planet as armageddon weapons and a global contract of mutually assured destruction should be something that you are acutely aware of, and something you have grappled with on an existential level to the fullest extent possible.
Read More Another Hiroshima Is Coming… Unless We Stop It Now
In a major essay to mark the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, John Pilger describes reporting from five ‘ground zeros’ for nuclear weapons – from Hiroshima to Bikini, Nevada to Polynesia and Australia. He warns that unless we take action now, China is next.
Read More As US Eviction Crisis Looms, Remember That Poverty Is Weaponized By The Elite
CNBC News reports that Americans are looking at the possibility of up to 40 million evictions in the coming months as unemployment payments expire and a federal moratorium on evictions runs out.
Read More Cheyenne River Sioux Chair Offers to Rip Down Mount Rushmore—”Free of Charge… By Myself If I Must”
Describing the iconic South Dakota mountain carving that depicts the heads of famous U.S presidents as nothing but a monument to “our molesters,” the chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation this week said he would willingly tear down Mount Rushmore if given the chance—with or without help—and pay for its destruction personally.
Read More This Russia-Afghanistan Propaganda Story: Anything to Prevent Peace Breaking out?
Western propagandists are turning this completely empty story into the mainstream consensus, not with facts, not with evidence, and certainly not with journalism, but with sheer brute force of narrative control. And just in time to prevent the possibility of steps towards peace between the U.S. and Russia.
Read More May All Be Revealed
Written by Caitlin Johnstone “If wars can be started by lies then they can be stopped by truth.” ~...
Read More The Doomsday Clock
Never before this year 2020 has the world-famous Doomsday Clock registered only “100 seconds-to-midnight.” According to the Science & Security Board, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, since WWII, the world has never been so perilous.
Read More I Reckon We Can Win This Thing
All in all, I reckon we can win this thing. Not the anti-policing protests necessarily; I don’t quite know what will happen with those in the long run. I mean the whole thing. Winning it all. Actually getting out from underneath the elite and beginning to function as a healthy organism on this planet.
Read More We Are Watching The Story Of America Crash Headlong Into The Reality Of America
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The U.S. empire is losing control of the narrative.
Read More Hilarious Kim Jong Un Jokes, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Blogger Caitlin Johnstone drops a series of humorous/painful truth bombs from her recent musings on U.S. Empire and more…
Read More U.N. Chief Says There’s a Bigger Threat Than Coronavirus
In Earth Day speech, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres challenges President Donald Trump on fossil fuel subsidies.
Read More 1 Year Since Julian Assange’s Arrest: A Panel Discussion
A panel discussion marking one year since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and arrested by British police. Assange is fighting extradition to the United States where he faces 175 years in prison on the first-ever charges of espionage for publishing truthful information in the public interest.
Read More The Real Conspiracy: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
In a system where sociopaths are rewarded with wealth, and where wealth equals power, we naturally find ourselves ruled by sociopaths. They manipulate our faulty perceptions of objective reality to amass wealth and power, which they use to grab more.
Read More US Escalates Warmongering Against Venezuela Because Of… Drug Trafficking?
The Trump administration is sending Navy ships to patrol Venezuela, the latest escalation against the government targeted by an aggressive hybrid US regime change intervention.
Read More The US Is Using Germ Warfare On Sanctioned Nations
In some very important ways the US government has clearly seen the coronavirus outbreak not as a dangerous humanitarian crisis, but as a strategic advantage to be weaponized against governments which refuse to bow to its empire-building agendas.
Read More Cold War, Coronavirus, And The Illusion Of Control
Everyone’s stressed right now, and if you ask them why they’re stressed they’ll tell you it’s because of the virus. But he primary driver of the stress is not the virus itself, but uncertainty about its future effects.
Read More The One-Choice Election
There is only one choice in this election. The consolidation of oligarchic power under Donald Trump or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden.
Read More What Is Happening to Assange Will Happen to the Rest of Us
Assange risks 175 years in prison for the publication of secret US government documents revealing U.S. war crimes and torture, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Guantanamo even though the publication of classified documents is not yet a crime in the United States. But if Assange is extradited and convicted, it will become one.
Read More U.S. ‘Democracy’ Once Again Showing Its True Colours
After a 2016 presidential primary race riddled with scandals, all of which worked against Bernie Sanders to the advantage of anointed establishment favorite Hillary Clinton, the 2020 Democratic presidential primary elections officially began with a massive scandal working against Bernie Sanders to the advantage of an establishment favorite.
Read More Politics as Usual Isn’t Working: It’s Time for a Revolution
Falling life expectancy. Rising economic inequality. Power concentrated in hands unelected elites. An environment poisoned by profits. For some, the crises present day America faces are existential. As such, the political response needs to be commensurate to the moment and nothing short of a root and branch political revolution. For others, this revolutionary impulse on the Right and Left spells disaster.
Read More America: Land of Make-Believe
The embrace of collective self-delusion marks the death spasms of all civilizations. We are in the terminal stage.
Read More Chris Hedges & Ray Saurez Discuss “A People’s History of the USA”
Chris Hedges discusses the importance of historian Howard Zinn for a fuller understanding of American history, with journalist Ray Suarez, author of ‘Truth has a Power of its Own: A Conversation about A People’s History with Howard Zinn.’
Read More The Disaster of Utopian Engineering
The problem is that our utopian engineers in their giddy dismantling of an economic and democratic system, as well as their draining of state resources in the wars they prosecute overseas, have dynamited the tools that could save us. They have left us no option but to revolt and remove them from power.
Read More The Empire’s War On Oppositional Journalism Continues To Escalate
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has been charged by the Bolsonaro government in Brazil with the same prosecutorial angle used by the US to target WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Read More Guantánamo’s Indelible Legacy: Or How This Became a Gitmo World
Here are eight ways in which the toxic policies of Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility have contaminated American institutions, as well as our laws and customs, in the years since 2002.
Read More How Democracies Die
Democracy was not extinguished in 2016 when Trump was elected. It was slowly strangled to death by the Republican and Democratic parties on behalf of their corporate masters.
Read More So The US Is Invading Iraq Again
Though It won’t be as exciting as last time. If the initial invasion of Iraq was a violent sexual assault by a stranger in a dark alley, this one is more like an abusive husband raping his wife and then making her cook him dinner. But it is just as much a violent violation of personal sovereignty in both instances.
Read More Chris Hedges: The Myth of the Glory of War
If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war.
Read More The Impeachment’s Moral Hypocrisy
If our political leaders truly want to restore the rule of law and uphold the constitution, then why didn’t they impeach Bush and Obama (and Trump for his ongoing complicity) for starting illegal wars, assassinating U.S. citizens without due process, carrying out illegal torture, mass spying on the U.S. citizens, and many other serious human rights abuses.
Read More Hope Lies in the Streets
Hope lies in the streets. Millions of people in Hong Kong, India, Chile, France, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon understand. It is time to join them.
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