Let's pretend that all these supposedly "Russian" accounts really were Russian. They weren't, but whatever.
We now know that no Russian person ever may express an opinion regarding the policies or elections of any western country, lest some unsuspecting westerner overhear and be led astray.
Exactly. As if their mere ethnicity determined whether their opinions were worthy, or that Americans should be paternalistically shielded from them! Why, that would be sheer ...
Now, one certainly wouldn't catch James Clapper looking to "co-opt, penetrate, gain favor" ... no, sirree. I'm sure he'd even be happy to tell you so with a straight face. That is, while he himself is doing the very thing he's criticizing. Because that's just the kind of respect today's enlightened overlords have for their subjects.
Notice how hate speech is banned and excoriated, with one exception?
Once upon a time, not so long ago, any development that the establishment of the day didn't like could automatically be blamed on Jews.
*King's eldest son and heir is a homosexual? Jews did that.
*Crops failed? The fault of the Jews.
*Gripes with the Pope? No evidence needed. Because Jews.
Today's establishment is so much more enlightened. The do not blame Jews. They blame Russia,. Not only that, but to read the MSM tales of horror, Russian people apparently have powers of persuasion verging on psychic mind control.
Russia just warned it's citizens not to travel to Canada as they are in danger.
That's true.
Neither the USSR or Russia ever did one single thing to Canada. Not once, not ever.
Our deputy PM, Soros girl Chrystia Freeland - still has an apartment on the Maidan. Her granddad was a Nazi collaborator. She denied that, saying it was "Russian disinfo". She now admits it.
Canada has been training Ukraine troops for years. "Why?", is the question? Training them for what.
This war has been in the works for years.
The "Sovs" just got Brezinskied.
How the US provoked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and starting the whole mess
By William Blum
Interview with Zbigniew Brzeziński, Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76, translated from the original French by William Blum
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the Shadows], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahideen in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Speaking of media lies, if you go to CBC and look at pics of Freeland, you'll see shopped images that look nothing like her. One quick way to spot slant in a story is to see what kind of picture that they use to illustrate it.
I knew this article, at the New Yorker, was going to be a hit piece at a glance. And it was.
The establishment recognizes that the minds of their subjects today remain as malleable as those who came before it -- especially as they now stunt the mental growth of those subjects by rarely teaching history or critical thinking.
Thus one need only swap ethnicities. But never mind historical comparisons, even the simultaneous rank hypocrisy (treatment today by the establishment of Russians in contrast to their treatment of Jews/Blacks/Latinx etc.) will go unrecognized.
"especially as they now stunt the mental growth of those subjects by rarely teaching history or critical thinking." - Or forcing them to wear face masks for extended periods of time.
So you're telling me that the entire educated western world was chasing a crackpot conspiracy antisemitic theory that would have gotten its adherents laughed out of The John Birch Society, ca. 1962, but they called it "Russiagate" for some reason?
"'Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor ...' -- James Clapper (to a national TV audience)." - Holy projection, Batman!
Lived there five years. Doesn’t make me a Russian expert, but it’s pretty obvious they’re all pretty much like us. Clapper used the word “genetically”, which reminds me of a different use of that word: the genetic fallacy. Basically it means disproving (fallaciously) an argument by its origin, not its premises and logic. Which is pretty much what this quote strives to do.
You're not Russian. Listen to what someone like Konstantine Kisin, a Russian Jew whose family immigrated to Britain when he was a child, has to say, which is that in many respects, they are NOT like us.
Russia has a VERY different history, one that includes long periods of enormous suffering and oppression, and that does factor in.
So, they have evolved into different beings than regular humans, say, more sociopathic, maybe more capable of war and torture, and thus do not deserve the diplomatic niceties of us normal humans? Do tell. I think we need to understand fully the genetic differences are, and thus the implications for dealing with them, don't we?
The problem with insinuations and unspoken assumptions is they plant Sunsteinian seeds to subconsciously "nudge" people ... but without being held accountable.
Makes sense if you’re a believer in historicism and collectivism, where everyone is a slave to his class or ethnic origin. I don’t subscribe to that vision; I was just commenting on what I saw.
If you replace “Russians” with African Americans” (for example) within Clapper’s statement, pretty much all people would say this is appallingly racist. I am certainly of that opinion. And yet, the statement was used to justify censorship of regular people.
During the so called Cold war the Sovs had radio Moscow on the shortwave, and America had the Voice of America, the beeb of course, but also Deutsche Welle and Radio Canada. I know. I used to listen all the time.
And guess what, listening to all those competing voices I did not get propagandised, I got educated. Imagine that.
I was thinking the same thing Finster. SO WHAT! Even if everything they say is true. Are we too stupid to sort out truth from fiction? I guess not in OrwellWorld.
By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms -- elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest -- will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial [...]. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.
You write: "[T]here’s no way to keep a cap on 8 billion voices." True enough. But, 99.9% of of censorship is of the self-censorship variety. We weigh our actions and inactions in the balance. We ask: "What might the consequences be for expressing these ideas?" What we will never know is how many would-be Taibbis and Shellenbergers have already decided to pursue a career in something like accounting, in response to the way you and others have been treated by those who took an Oath to respect the highest office in the land, which is the Office of Citizen.
Antifa is nothing. It is either controlled opposition, or a tiny organization. I'm thinking the 'anti-Fascism' Long referred to is most fitted by the term "The Resistance" that was used by some establishment legislators and media pundits to describe themselves and their anti-Trump efforts. The French Resistance was genuinely anti-Fascist. But legislators and media today, working to protect the establishment, are working to protect the surveillance state, military-industrial complex, and corporate machine that: manages our war machine, killing millions over seas via drone strikes, air strikes, proxy wars, and sanctions; manages our prison complex (2 million + Americans in prison, cops shooting dead over 1,000 per year), and now manages the increasingly expanding surveillance and media censorship state (anti-disinformation'). If Trump had an organized army of black shirts beating people to death in basements then he might be the fascist; but as we saw during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, the establishment is actually much more comfortable with Trump than with a Bernie Sanders, and given that choice, would choose Trump again. The true great purveyor of violence is still as MLK said: the US government. And when we have people like George Bush coming onto 'Liberal' media outlets like NPR to give favorable sound bites, and when Liz Cheney becomes the darling of the Democrats, and Nancy Pelosi saying "We need a strong Republican Party" then I feel comfortable saying the merger is complete between the party establishments. So 'The Resistance' and the 'Anti-Disinformation' organizations are I believe the coming-into-being of the sense of Long's prediction.
"A major subtext of the CIC story is that ordinary people are going to have to build their own media and oversight institutions to represent them, as virtually the entire landscape of traditional institutional checks on power seems to have been compromised."
I keep coming back to the same conclusion that young people are both the source of the problem and the solution. They are the source of the problem because they are so damn easy to influence and manipulate with passion. It is the reason they make great soldiers... and social justice warriors... and the same reason that they should be looked at as the solution.
The compromised landscape of traditional institutional checks on power, although extending into non-profits, our government and our media... are supposed to be dealt with by democracy. The 2016 election was exactly that... the political outsider... the anti-establishment candidate... the imperfect tonic to a boiling kettle of wrongness that half of the nation could see happening.
But the institutional power base... a global one... and one wounded by Brexit and then Trump... and noting they would have to go ALL IN to save their Great Reset project... I think they fucking released a pandemic. That is a fantastic conspiracy theory except that with what we know now from the Twitter Files and the work of Matt and Micheal and others it is really not so fantastic at all.
Then the giant anti-Trump and woke propaganda campaign... but one coordinated to include the education system and big tech. The focus was on the young people. Brainwash the young people to go hard left. Then the CIS... take out the opposition to the giant propaganda campaign.
Had the GOP won back the Senate and had stronger control of the House as should have been the case in the 2020 election or the 2022 election, much of the legislative work to correct the problems would be underway. It might include the need to impeach Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and install Kevin McCarthy as POTUS. Severe? Not really considering the consequences we are dealing with.
But the kids came out in unheard of numbers for both of those elections and put Democrats in power... put the globalist corporatist cabal in power... put the corrupt establishment in power.
We will lose the nation... may have already lost the nation... until and unless we fix the youth problem. The first step is to absolutely destroy the existing education system as is and reform it.
Agreed. And unlike our overlords, we don't have decades to counter this long-con psy-op. Call it "While America Slept".
But I'm also convinced this "youth problem" is a refined version that appears noticeably impervious to all reason -- call it v3.0 (or, a series of "v3.x"). We had a v1.0 that took place in the 1960s, but nobly subjected itself nevertheless to debate, while a lesser-noticed but more bull-headed v2.0 woke-ism was tried in the late 80s/early 90s, although there was still sufficient resistance from conservatives. Now, after another generation (the peaks look 30 years apart), we have a youth that appears completely intolerant of interaction (debate) ... as if they have been more perfectly coached in resisting elders, both people and ideas ...
Just had a colleague tell me about an observation by a guest on Maher’s show. He said today’s youth go to college as consumers. They go for the experiences not the learning.
So their PMC parents have bred another batch of stupid navel gazers. We continue with the Century of ME (Freud) instead of the Century of WE (Jung). Me vs the collective we. Those who have decided to abandon college and go grow things and fix things also have abandoned politics. We are screwed.
"noting they would have to go ALL IN to save their Great Reset project... I think they fucking released a pandemic." - Talk about an AHA moment. Knowing all I know about our government's history (which I've been researching for 16 years now), I think that's a very plausible theory.
Been saying this to those that think I'm nuts since day one. Literally as soon as I heard about this, I remember seeing pictures of Obeyme and the cunt pelosi in wuhan. And I wondered why. Sorry for the language but at times that word is appropriate.
I smelled a rat when Obama inexplicably expelled a bunch of Russian diplomats in the dying days of his administration, trying to lock in the “mUh RuSsIA!!” narrative so it could be used against Trump.
I'm trying to find it now, and ya know it's amazing. Every mention of it except that it's bullshit has been scrubbed. Funny, but the only people talking about it are snopes, USA Today, on and on ad nauseum. You won't find a mention of it anywhere except for the lying fact checkers claiming it's false. Hm. Pretty sure there was a pic, it had here and Obeyme inthe pic, looking at some lab shit, and a caption that read what I said. Looked like a newspaper article. Now you can't find a lick of it. Ahwell, maybe I was bamboozled as well.but I will say this. The single most plausible explanation for the virus, and the ensuing carnage brought about by the vaccine, is those two. And think on this.if they lost that election and trump won by the landslide he actually won by, the vaxx was already in motion and they would be screaming about the injuries. It's a win win for the jackals.
Props to Shellenberger for coining the Censorship-Industrial Complex. To win the war against the totalitarianists, philanthropaths, and propagandists, we must use the power of (re)framing to expose their lies, corruption, and psychological manipulation tactics.
You may find the list of historical examples I’ve compiled in this piece protesting censorship useful:
NGO. That is another way of saying, a non-profit with a political point of view. The problem with NGOs is that they get funded by governments, rich people, and maybe corporations who have an agenda. Anyone can start an NGO, as long as someone like Lois Lerner allows them to exist. The Boards of these NGOs are typically disengaged people who like to tell their friends at cocktail parties that they are doing good for the world. They are unpaid, but don’t need the money. The employees of these entities are activists, and basically subsidized through their tax exemption, get to do their works in the shadows. Until Elon, Matt, Michael, et al, came along.
Mahalo, Matt. I’ve seen and heard my elderly, life-long democrat parents listen to the relentless untrue messages from CNN & MSNBC; and if I mention a different perspective, they don’t budge an inch.
I’ve admired your work for a while and learned a lot from your courageous writings and public speaking especially 2008 crises and Twitter Files. All the best!
I've had the same experience but it's with my children. My daughter and son-in-law, both well educated, firmly believe that Russia blew up its own pipeline so they could blame it on the US and deprive Germany of cheap energy. A line directly from the BBC.
The scariest demonstration of how the CIC can literally crush the entire world is the global Covid response, which was completely and absolutely planned and controlled by the same international media-NGO-intelligence/military cartel, plus utterly corrupt government-industry partnership. It would make the whole CIC story more applicable and relevant to a much broader public if you were to expose the Covid response which destroyed so many all over the world for the propaganda extravaganza that it was (and still is).
The Who said "We Won't Get Fooled Again." If they would have said "You Can't Get Fooled Again" it would have been a very different song. But then again, as Dan Quayle said, in his famous riff on the UNCF slogan "It's a terrible waste to lose one's mind."
RE: "[T]here’s no way to keep a cap on 8 billion voices forever."
I recommend reading about the technology already developed and partially implemented that CAN shut down dissent by means of social estrangement and economic penalties wielded in concert to manipulate behavior and bypass consent:
"[A]ll of these groups to act in concert, essentially as one giant, incestuous intelligence operation — not of the people, but paternalistically 'for' the people"
I'm convinced what's at the root here, driving this behavior of this new elite, is a current more profound than mere paternalism. Given the vicious disparagement of their subjects, this is no 'noblesse oblige'. It drives a stake in the heart of the very concept of (actual) democracy, similar IMO to the way organized religions often do.
It is embodied in the most fundamental -ism that exists in 2023, rarely unacknowledged (and thus has no name that I'm aware of): "Intellectism", where those who are deemed* to have static inferior intelligence and/or knowledge are *thereby* a subhuman subspecies -- one that must be managed as one herds cattle. or culls excess wildlife. In other words, the moral (and personhood!) inferiority of the low-intelligence and low-knowledge human beings is in today's world too often *taken for granted* -- the only issue being whether the label has been applied correctly to the given persons, given how tricky the evidence can be.**
Intellect-ism is more fundamental than classism, which acts as a proxy, and which is at least acknowledged in some quarters but is now completely eliminated from the dimensions championed by today's establishment "Left", i.e. the Democratic Party.
----------
*Rarely demonstrated in any conclusive ways. But that is really a completely different point, even if it is more readily acknowledged as problematic.
**And no, I'm not talking about people with identifiable conditions such as Down syndrome, who apparently are generally well-protected, even if, in IMO, some unacceptably paternalistic ways.
Intellectualism is classism for people who are too "virtuous" to admit it. it is the thinking that allows them to fly private and demand that others not fly at all.
Lincoln had a reply to someone who argued whites must be the master of blacks because whites are more intelligent. In his inimitable way, Lincoln replied that since everyone likely has varying intelligence, we would then have to rank everyone by intelligence. For example, he told the person, if he, Lincoln, happened to be more intelligent, that would mean he should be that person’s master.
Reportedly, he adapted this argument from Henry Clay. Too bad we don’t have someone with his rare combination of intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence around today in the public sphere. They’re all midgets.
FYI - there have been a lot of junk article in my feed recently pointing to issues of bank health, the dollar/world's reserve currency under stress (and no mention of dedollarization really). Combining this with what I perceive to be a series of new financial institutions (an odd time for the empire to rebrand) in our local community here in the Midwest ---- indicates to me that the Empire is trying to pull a Phillip Morris (and rebrand to Altria) using the entire finance sector.
While twitter craziness, foreign policy blunders, and the march to fascism hold sway over the recent weeks news cycles, let us not forget that ultimately, money runs the show in this oligarchy. And that institutional memory must be suppressed for the elite financiers to keep their resources at the end of empire and unipolarity. All of this steam about financial crisis and US Debt ceilings ($31 Trillion) and world's reserve currency seem to be baked into this narrative of doom, which will leak into the economy. Let us not forget that the policy makers have been running straight ahead as fast as they can to accelerate this process ---- which indicates complicity.
Let's pretend that all these supposedly "Russian" accounts really were Russian. They weren't, but whatever.
We now know that no Russian person ever may express an opinion regarding the policies or elections of any western country, lest some unsuspecting westerner overhear and be led astray.
Exactly. As if their mere ethnicity determined whether their opinions were worthy, or that Americans should be paternalistically shielded from them! Why, that would be sheer ...
"Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor ..." -- James Clapper (to a national TV audience) [https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-may-28-2017-n765626]
Now, one certainly wouldn't catch James Clapper looking to "co-opt, penetrate, gain favor" ... no, sirree. I'm sure he'd even be happy to tell you so with a straight face. That is, while he himself is doing the very thing he's criticizing. Because that's just the kind of respect today's enlightened overlords have for their subjects.
Notice how hate speech is banned and excoriated, with one exception?
Once upon a time, not so long ago, any development that the establishment of the day didn't like could automatically be blamed on Jews.
*King's eldest son and heir is a homosexual? Jews did that.
*Crops failed? The fault of the Jews.
*Gripes with the Pope? No evidence needed. Because Jews.
Today's establishment is so much more enlightened. The do not blame Jews. They blame Russia,. Not only that, but to read the MSM tales of horror, Russian people apparently have powers of persuasion verging on psychic mind control.
It's not okay to hate anyone.
Unless they are Russian of course.
Russia just warned it's citizens not to travel to Canada as they are in danger.
That's true.
Neither the USSR or Russia ever did one single thing to Canada. Not once, not ever.
Our deputy PM, Soros girl Chrystia Freeland - still has an apartment on the Maidan. Her granddad was a Nazi collaborator. She denied that, saying it was "Russian disinfo". She now admits it.
Canada has been training Ukraine troops for years. "Why?", is the question? Training them for what.
This war has been in the works for years.
The "Sovs" just got Brezinskied.
How the US provoked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and starting the whole mess
By William Blum
Interview with Zbigniew Brzeziński, Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76, translated from the original French by William Blum
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the Shadows], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahideen in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
https://williamblum.org/essays/read/how-the-us-provoked-the-soviet-union-into-invading-afghanistan-and-starting
Freeland finally fessed up to Dear Old Grandad's role volunteering for the Nazis?
Since I cannot post images here.
This: https://substack.com/profile/18802120-bill-owen/note/c-15246153
Speaking of media lies, if you go to CBC and look at pics of Freeland, you'll see shopped images that look nothing like her. One quick way to spot slant in a story is to see what kind of picture that they use to illustrate it.
I knew this article, at the New Yorker, was going to be a hit piece at a glance. And it was.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/glenn-greenwald-the-bane-of-their-resistance
Turned out that she knew all along!!! All this was actually reported in the Ottawa Citizen by David Pugliese. (Pugliese used to follow me on Twitter)
At our supper table dad would sometimes talk about his time on the North Atlantic Convoy run fighting Nazis.
I wonder how supper went at the Freiland haus? "Und zen I said to Heydrich, "Jews, vat are ze gut for?" - Grandpa
I'm sure Freeland was well aware and approves entirely of her grandfather's past. The question is whether she will admit it in public.
The establishment recognizes that the minds of their subjects today remain as malleable as those who came before it -- especially as they now stunt the mental growth of those subjects by rarely teaching history or critical thinking.
Thus one need only swap ethnicities. But never mind historical comparisons, even the simultaneous rank hypocrisy (treatment today by the establishment of Russians in contrast to their treatment of Jews/Blacks/Latinx etc.) will go unrecognized.
"especially as they now stunt the mental growth of those subjects by rarely teaching history or critical thinking." - Or forcing them to wear face masks for extended periods of time.
Jedi mind tricks, even.
Don’t kid yourself, they still blame “the Jews.” It is no coincidence that we are witnessing an unprecedented rise in antisemitism worldwide.
So you're telling me that the entire educated western world was chasing a crackpot conspiracy antisemitic theory that would have gotten its adherents laughed out of The John Birch Society, ca. 1962, but they called it "Russiagate" for some reason?
"'Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor ...' -- James Clapper (to a national TV audience)." - Holy projection, Batman!
"not wittingly" lol
Lived there five years. Doesn’t make me a Russian expert, but it’s pretty obvious they’re all pretty much like us. Clapper used the word “genetically”, which reminds me of a different use of that word: the genetic fallacy. Basically it means disproving (fallaciously) an argument by its origin, not its premises and logic. Which is pretty much what this quote strives to do.
You're not Russian. Listen to what someone like Konstantine Kisin, a Russian Jew whose family immigrated to Britain when he was a child, has to say, which is that in many respects, they are NOT like us.
Russia has a VERY different history, one that includes long periods of enormous suffering and oppression, and that does factor in.
"When he was a child"
Russians are human beings EXACTLY LIKE YOU.
Hard to believe, I know.
Are they a bit paranoid about yet another invasion?
Of course they are. They should be, there is another one going on now. There are German tanks on their border.
So, they have evolved into different beings than regular humans, say, more sociopathic, maybe more capable of war and torture, and thus do not deserve the diplomatic niceties of us normal humans? Do tell. I think we need to understand fully the genetic differences are, and thus the implications for dealing with them, don't we?
The problem with insinuations and unspoken assumptions is they plant Sunsteinian seeds to subconsciously "nudge" people ... but without being held accountable.
... thus bypassing open debate, and following that where it leads. An essential element of a democracy.
Makes sense if you’re a believer in historicism and collectivism, where everyone is a slave to his class or ethnic origin. I don’t subscribe to that vision; I was just commenting on what I saw.
I could care less what he says. Why should I?
If you replace “Russians” with African Americans” (for example) within Clapper’s statement, pretty much all people would say this is appallingly racist. I am certainly of that opinion. And yet, the statement was used to justify censorship of regular people.
You got it! Follow the logic.
Thanks!
If a Russian tells me, "War is the ultimate evil and must be avoided at all costs", is that Truth or Lies?
"Stop the war!", knows no nation.
It’s also worth noting that Clapper flagrantly lied to congress about domestic surveillance which is a felony. No cries for him to be sent to prison.
Surely just an oversight. Doubtless Biden will get on it any day now.
During the so called Cold war the Sovs had radio Moscow on the shortwave, and America had the Voice of America, the beeb of course, but also Deutsche Welle and Radio Canada. I know. I used to listen all the time.
And guess what, listening to all those competing voices I did not get propagandised, I got educated. Imagine that.
I was thinking the same thing Finster. SO WHAT! Even if everything they say is true. Are we too stupid to sort out truth from fiction? I guess not in OrwellWorld.
By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms -- elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest -- will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial [...]. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, 1958
Prophetic me thinks Bill.
It happened. Thanks!
When I read Huxley in college in the late 70's it was considered a great work of fiction. HA HA! Little did we know. Have you read Neil Postman's
"Amusing ourselves to Death"?
You write: "[T]here’s no way to keep a cap on 8 billion voices." True enough. But, 99.9% of of censorship is of the self-censorship variety. We weigh our actions and inactions in the balance. We ask: "What might the consequences be for expressing these ideas?" What we will never know is how many would-be Taibbis and Shellenbergers have already decided to pursue a career in something like accounting, in response to the way you and others have been treated by those who took an Oath to respect the highest office in the land, which is the Office of Citizen.
Exactly! Police wouldn't have to shoot that many jaywalkers before people would become afraid to cross the street.
That happened.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/california-deputies-who-shot-man-allegedly-jaywalking-debated-whether-to-stop-him-1.5322083?cache=%3FclipId%3D89530
Proud supporter Matt, brilliant work to you and the team. Keep up the good work.
A little nugget I think seems apt, from Michael Hudson's new book:
"When Louisiana demagogue Huey Long was asked in the 1930s whether fascism could come to America, he replied "Sure, only we'll call it anti-Fascism.""
As in Antifa?
Antifa is nothing. It is either controlled opposition, or a tiny organization. I'm thinking the 'anti-Fascism' Long referred to is most fitted by the term "The Resistance" that was used by some establishment legislators and media pundits to describe themselves and their anti-Trump efforts. The French Resistance was genuinely anti-Fascist. But legislators and media today, working to protect the establishment, are working to protect the surveillance state, military-industrial complex, and corporate machine that: manages our war machine, killing millions over seas via drone strikes, air strikes, proxy wars, and sanctions; manages our prison complex (2 million + Americans in prison, cops shooting dead over 1,000 per year), and now manages the increasingly expanding surveillance and media censorship state (anti-disinformation'). If Trump had an organized army of black shirts beating people to death in basements then he might be the fascist; but as we saw during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, the establishment is actually much more comfortable with Trump than with a Bernie Sanders, and given that choice, would choose Trump again. The true great purveyor of violence is still as MLK said: the US government. And when we have people like George Bush coming onto 'Liberal' media outlets like NPR to give favorable sound bites, and when Liz Cheney becomes the darling of the Democrats, and Nancy Pelosi saying "We need a strong Republican Party" then I feel comfortable saying the merger is complete between the party establishments. So 'The Resistance' and the 'Anti-Disinformation' organizations are I believe the coming-into-being of the sense of Long's prediction.
Thanks for taking the time to explain. I've always suspected today's Antifa is controlled opposition.
Ding Ding Ding! Johnny, tell him what hes won.
"A major subtext of the CIC story is that ordinary people are going to have to build their own media and oversight institutions to represent them, as virtually the entire landscape of traditional institutional checks on power seems to have been compromised."
I keep coming back to the same conclusion that young people are both the source of the problem and the solution. They are the source of the problem because they are so damn easy to influence and manipulate with passion. It is the reason they make great soldiers... and social justice warriors... and the same reason that they should be looked at as the solution.
The compromised landscape of traditional institutional checks on power, although extending into non-profits, our government and our media... are supposed to be dealt with by democracy. The 2016 election was exactly that... the political outsider... the anti-establishment candidate... the imperfect tonic to a boiling kettle of wrongness that half of the nation could see happening.
But the institutional power base... a global one... and one wounded by Brexit and then Trump... and noting they would have to go ALL IN to save their Great Reset project... I think they fucking released a pandemic. That is a fantastic conspiracy theory except that with what we know now from the Twitter Files and the work of Matt and Micheal and others it is really not so fantastic at all.
Then the giant anti-Trump and woke propaganda campaign... but one coordinated to include the education system and big tech. The focus was on the young people. Brainwash the young people to go hard left. Then the CIS... take out the opposition to the giant propaganda campaign.
Had the GOP won back the Senate and had stronger control of the House as should have been the case in the 2020 election or the 2022 election, much of the legislative work to correct the problems would be underway. It might include the need to impeach Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and install Kevin McCarthy as POTUS. Severe? Not really considering the consequences we are dealing with.
But the kids came out in unheard of numbers for both of those elections and put Democrats in power... put the globalist corporatist cabal in power... put the corrupt establishment in power.
We will lose the nation... may have already lost the nation... until and unless we fix the youth problem. The first step is to absolutely destroy the existing education system as is and reform it.
"until and unless we fix the youth problem"
Agreed. And unlike our overlords, we don't have decades to counter this long-con psy-op. Call it "While America Slept".
But I'm also convinced this "youth problem" is a refined version that appears noticeably impervious to all reason -- call it v3.0 (or, a series of "v3.x"). We had a v1.0 that took place in the 1960s, but nobly subjected itself nevertheless to debate, while a lesser-noticed but more bull-headed v2.0 woke-ism was tried in the late 80s/early 90s, although there was still sufficient resistance from conservatives. Now, after another generation (the peaks look 30 years apart), we have a youth that appears completely intolerant of interaction (debate) ... as if they have been more perfectly coached in resisting elders, both people and ideas ...
Just had a colleague tell me about an observation by a guest on Maher’s show. He said today’s youth go to college as consumers. They go for the experiences not the learning.
So their PMC parents have bred another batch of stupid navel gazers. We continue with the Century of ME (Freud) instead of the Century of WE (Jung). Me vs the collective we. Those who have decided to abandon college and go grow things and fix things also have abandoned politics. We are screwed.
"noting they would have to go ALL IN to save their Great Reset project... I think they fucking released a pandemic." - Talk about an AHA moment. Knowing all I know about our government's history (which I've been researching for 16 years now), I think that's a very plausible theory.
Been saying this to those that think I'm nuts since day one. Literally as soon as I heard about this, I remember seeing pictures of Obeyme and the cunt pelosi in wuhan. And I wondered why. Sorry for the language but at times that word is appropriate.
I smelled a rat when Obama inexplicably expelled a bunch of Russian diplomats in the dying days of his administration, trying to lock in the “mUh RuSsIA!!” narrative so it could be used against Trump.
Those two being in Wuhan is news to me. I'll have to look into it. If you could point me to some sources, that would be great, too.
I'm trying to find it now, and ya know it's amazing. Every mention of it except that it's bullshit has been scrubbed. Funny, but the only people talking about it are snopes, USA Today, on and on ad nauseum. You won't find a mention of it anywhere except for the lying fact checkers claiming it's false. Hm. Pretty sure there was a pic, it had here and Obeyme inthe pic, looking at some lab shit, and a caption that read what I said. Looked like a newspaper article. Now you can't find a lick of it. Ahwell, maybe I was bamboozled as well.but I will say this. The single most plausible explanation for the virus, and the ensuing carnage brought about by the vaccine, is those two. And think on this.if they lost that election and trump won by the landslide he actually won by, the vaxx was already in motion and they would be screaming about the injuries. It's a win win for the jackals.
Matt, you and the entire team are the journalists that Woodward and Bernstein could have been had they not fallen in love with the
DC Intell Elite.
Props to Shellenberger for coining the Censorship-Industrial Complex. To win the war against the totalitarianists, philanthropaths, and propagandists, we must use the power of (re)framing to expose their lies, corruption, and psychological manipulation tactics.
You may find the list of historical examples I’ve compiled in this piece protesting censorship useful:
• “Letter to US Legislators: #DefundTheThoughtPolice” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-us-legislators-defundthethoughtpolice)
I've unrolled Twitter Files part 21 and 22 here, if anyone would like to read them:
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/twitter-files-parts-xx-and-xxi-unrolled
This is awesome, thanks
NOTED
https://substack.com/profile/18802120-bill-owen/note/c-15233963
NGO. That is another way of saying, a non-profit with a political point of view. The problem with NGOs is that they get funded by governments, rich people, and maybe corporations who have an agenda. Anyone can start an NGO, as long as someone like Lois Lerner allows them to exist. The Boards of these NGOs are typically disengaged people who like to tell their friends at cocktail parties that they are doing good for the world. They are unpaid, but don’t need the money. The employees of these entities are activists, and basically subsidized through their tax exemption, get to do their works in the shadows. Until Elon, Matt, Michael, et al, came along.
Mahalo, Matt. I’ve seen and heard my elderly, life-long democrat parents listen to the relentless untrue messages from CNN & MSNBC; and if I mention a different perspective, they don’t budge an inch.
I’ve admired your work for a while and learned a lot from your courageous writings and public speaking especially 2008 crises and Twitter Files. All the best!
I've had the same experience but it's with my children. My daughter and son-in-law, both well educated, firmly believe that Russia blew up its own pipeline so they could blame it on the US and deprive Germany of cheap energy. A line directly from the BBC.
The scariest demonstration of how the CIC can literally crush the entire world is the global Covid response, which was completely and absolutely planned and controlled by the same international media-NGO-intelligence/military cartel, plus utterly corrupt government-industry partnership. It would make the whole CIC story more applicable and relevant to a much broader public if you were to expose the Covid response which destroyed so many all over the world for the propaganda extravaganza that it was (and still is).
It worked once. People were fooled once. And as Dubya wisely intoned: "you can't get fooled again".
I thought it was The Who that said that.
The Who said "We Won't Get Fooled Again." If they would have said "You Can't Get Fooled Again" it would have been a very different song. But then again, as Dan Quayle said, in his famous riff on the UNCF slogan "It's a terrible waste to lose one's mind."
Yeah, but they didn't mean it.
They also said, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
Kudos, Matt (and team)!
Matt, keep up this important work. People need to wake the fuck up, recognize, and reject the manipulation. We are being pitted against each other.
Matt, you know what you have to do, but you can't bring yourself to do it. "...and that is why I am supporting Donald Trump for President in 2024."
RE: "[T]here’s no way to keep a cap on 8 billion voices forever."
I recommend reading about the technology already developed and partially implemented that CAN shut down dissent by means of social estrangement and economic penalties wielded in concert to manipulate behavior and bypass consent:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/04/shoshana-zuboff-surveillance-capitalism-assault-human-automomy-digital-privacy
"[A]ll of these groups to act in concert, essentially as one giant, incestuous intelligence operation — not of the people, but paternalistically 'for' the people"
I'm convinced what's at the root here, driving this behavior of this new elite, is a current more profound than mere paternalism. Given the vicious disparagement of their subjects, this is no 'noblesse oblige'. It drives a stake in the heart of the very concept of (actual) democracy, similar IMO to the way organized religions often do.
It is embodied in the most fundamental -ism that exists in 2023, rarely unacknowledged (and thus has no name that I'm aware of): "Intellectism", where those who are deemed* to have static inferior intelligence and/or knowledge are *thereby* a subhuman subspecies -- one that must be managed as one herds cattle. or culls excess wildlife. In other words, the moral (and personhood!) inferiority of the low-intelligence and low-knowledge human beings is in today's world too often *taken for granted* -- the only issue being whether the label has been applied correctly to the given persons, given how tricky the evidence can be.**
Intellect-ism is more fundamental than classism, which acts as a proxy, and which is at least acknowledged in some quarters but is now completely eliminated from the dimensions championed by today's establishment "Left", i.e. the Democratic Party.
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*Rarely demonstrated in any conclusive ways. But that is really a completely different point, even if it is more readily acknowledged as problematic.
**And no, I'm not talking about people with identifiable conditions such as Down syndrome, who apparently are generally well-protected, even if, in IMO, some unacceptably paternalistic ways.
Intellectualism is classism for people who are too "virtuous" to admit it. it is the thinking that allows them to fly private and demand that others not fly at all.
Lincoln had a reply to someone who argued whites must be the master of blacks because whites are more intelligent. In his inimitable way, Lincoln replied that since everyone likely has varying intelligence, we would then have to rank everyone by intelligence. For example, he told the person, if he, Lincoln, happened to be more intelligent, that would mean he should be that person’s master.
Reportedly, he adapted this argument from Henry Clay. Too bad we don’t have someone with his rare combination of intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence around today in the public sphere. They’re all midgets.
FYI - there have been a lot of junk article in my feed recently pointing to issues of bank health, the dollar/world's reserve currency under stress (and no mention of dedollarization really). Combining this with what I perceive to be a series of new financial institutions (an odd time for the empire to rebrand) in our local community here in the Midwest ---- indicates to me that the Empire is trying to pull a Phillip Morris (and rebrand to Altria) using the entire finance sector.
While twitter craziness, foreign policy blunders, and the march to fascism hold sway over the recent weeks news cycles, let us not forget that ultimately, money runs the show in this oligarchy. And that institutional memory must be suppressed for the elite financiers to keep their resources at the end of empire and unipolarity. All of this steam about financial crisis and US Debt ceilings ($31 Trillion) and world's reserve currency seem to be baked into this narrative of doom, which will leak into the economy. Let us not forget that the policy makers have been running straight ahead as fast as they can to accelerate this process ---- which indicates complicity.
FYI