Home » Posts tagged 'us empire' (Page 2)

Tag Archives: us empire

❖

Julian Assange suffered a mini-stroke in October during the hearing for the US appeal of a UK court’s ruling on his extradition case.

“The WikiLeaks publisher, 50, who is being held on remand in the maximum-security jail while fighting extradition to America, was left with a drooping right eyelid, memory problems and signs of neurological damage,” The Daily Mail reports. “He believes the mini-stroke was triggered by the stress of the ongoing US court action against him, and an overall decline in his health as he faces his third Christmas behind bars.”

“Assange was examined by a doctor, who found a delayed pupil response when a light was shone into one eye – a sign of potential nerve damage,” the article reads.

“Julian is struggling and I fear this mini-stroke could be the precursor to a more major attack. It compounds our fears about his ability to survive the longer this long legal battle goes on,” Assange’s fiance Stella Moris told the Daily Mail.

“Assange’s stroke is no surprise,” tweeted UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer in response to the news. “As we warned after examining him, unless relieved of the constant pressure of isolation, arbitrariness and persecution, his health would enter a downward spiral endangering his life.”

Melzer examined Assange with medical experts in 2019 and published a report with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights saying that “Mr. Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

John Pilger: A Judicial Kidnapping

December 12, 2021

John Pilger: A Judicial Kidnapping

Julian Assange’s High Court judges offered no mitigation, no suggestion that they had agonised over legalities or even basic morality, writes John Pilger.

“Let us look at ourselves, if we have the courage, to see what is happening to us” –- Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sartre’s words should echo in all our minds following the grotesque decision of Britain’s High Court to extradite Julian Assange to the United States where he faces “a living death”. This is his punishment for the crime of authentic, accurate, courageous, vital journalism.

Miscarriage of justice is an inadequate term in these circumstances. It took the bewigged courtiers of Britain’s ancien regime just nine minutes on Friday to uphold an American appeal against a District Court judge’s acceptance in January of a cataract of evidence that hell on earth awaited Assange across the Atlantic: a hell in which, it was expertly predicted, he would find a way to take his own life.

Volumes of witness by people of distinction, who examined and studied Julian and diagnosed his autism and his Asperger’s Syndrome and revealed that he had already come within an ace of killing himself at Belmarsh prison, Britain’s very own hell, were ignored.

The recent confession of a crucial F.B.I. informant and prosecution stooge, a fraudster and serial liar, that he had fabricated his evidence against Julian was ignored. The revelation that the Spanish-run security firm at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where Julian had been granted political refuge, was a C.I.A. front that spied on Julian’s lawyers and doctors and confidants (myself included) – that, too, was ignored.

Collage of UC Global surveillance photos made for C.I.A. inside Ecuador embassy. (Cathy Vogan)

The recent journalistic disclosure, repeated graphically by defence counsel before the High Court in October, that the C.I.A. had planned to murder Julian in London – even that was ignored.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

British Court Rules Julian Assange Can Be Extradited To US

December 10, 2021

British Court Rules Julian Assange Can Be Extradited To US

More than 2.5 years have passed since Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London after 7 years in hiding from British authorities, during which time Assange has struggled through a lengthy court battle, all while remaining imprisoned. And yet it seems Assange’s real nightmare is only just beginning as Britain’s high court ruled Friday that he could be extradited to the US to face charges that could see him imprisoned for the rest of his life.

Judges at the Royal Courts of Justice in London overruled a lower court judge who had decided nearly a year ago that Assange shouldn’t be extradited to the US due to the threat of him facing unjust physical harm (not to mention the very real possibility that Assange might kill himself, as the judge acknowledged). They ruled that Assange can face extradition to the US, practically guaranteeing that he will stand trial in an American courtroom.

Assange can appeal the ruling, but it’s clear at this point that the chips are stacked against him. The US government has been quietly pursuing charges against the Wikileaks founder under the Espionage Act for years. According to what’s been publicly revealed, Assange is facing an 18 count indictment in the US with most of the charges focused on violating the Espionage Act. Should he be found guilty, Assange could be imprisoned for up to 175 years.

In response to the ruling, Wikileaks slammed the US for trying to avoid accountability by covering up the “collateral murder” incident where two Reuters journalists were killed in Iraq, along with innocent civilians, by the US military. The infamous footage from that incident, which was first published by Assange after being leaked by Chelsea Manning (back when she was an army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The US Manufactures Weapons And Consent: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

December 4, 2021

The US Manufactures Weapons And Consent: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

The only manufacturing jobs left in the US are military weapons and consent.

❖

Gotta keep dropping bombs because they gotta keep making bombs. Gotta keep making bombs because they made the entire economy dependent on bomb-making. This is the only type of system that could possibly work.

❖

The goal of internet censorship is to suppress and marginalize unauthorized ideas so much that the internet actually becomes a net negative for ordinary people, because the only ones who will be able to rapidly share ideas of consequence will be the propagandists and their acolytes.

❖

Because people who object to US-led imperialist aggressions against their governments are routinely purged from social media, those of us who do not live in nations that are being targeted by those aggressions have a special duty to forcefully speak out against US imperialism.

❖

“Come to our Summit for Democracy,” said the nation whose elections are completely fake and whose intelligence agencies have interfered in scores of foreign elections and which openly works to topple democratically elected governments around the world all the time.

I mean, come on:

❖

Capitalism is such a garbage system that news media will shriek all day about “crime” like it’s this mysterious alien phenomenon being inflicted upon society from the outside instead of a very obvious symptom of economic injustices with very obvious and widely known solutions.

❖

I was fully expecting Biden to be absolute shit but I will still admit to being disappointed that he just flat-out lied about ending the war in Yemen. Yes I know it serves me right for getting my hopes up. But it is still horrific that this atrocity continues.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Nobody Who Says “You Can Criticize Washington AND Beijing” Actually Does

November 19, 2021

Nobody Who Says “You Can Criticize Washington AND Beijing” Actually Does

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

Whenever I criticize the US empire’s manipulations and aggressions on a nation which disobeys its dictates I always get comments from people saying “You know, Caitlin, two things can be bad at once. You can criticize both.”

They say it like it’s some kind of profound esoteric insight being passed down from on high instead of a generic response I hear from westerners every single day. Like, oh, you mean I can criticize two things instead of just one thing? You just blew my mind. Thanks for baptizing me with your magic wisdom sauce, Gandalf.

Of course it’s possible to criticize both the US and its targets. That’s obvious to anyone with functioning gray matter between their ears. The issue is that westerners, especially westerners who hasten to urge you to be more critical of governments targeted by western imperialism, do not do this.

Lately this happens most often with China, since that’s where the propaganda brainwashing has been most concentrated lately. I’ll say something about how the US empire is the clear and obvious aggressor in the escalating tensions between the two nations or how Australians are being brainwashed into supporting a war over Taiwan with astonishing forcefulness, and some internet genius will wheelbarrow his gigantic brain into my notifications with the comment “Caitlin it’s possible to criticize both the US and China.”

And if there were enough time in the day for me to respond to all of these galaxy-brained intellectual giants I would tell them something like, “Okay. But you don’t. Or if you do it’s not in proportion to how deserving of criticism they both are.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Call It The Department Of Aggression, Not ‘Defense’: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

November 14, 2021

Call It The Department Of Aggression, Not ‘Defense’: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Most of what consumes human attention is narrative; stories about what’s happening, which can be easily manipulated by the powerful. Things that are not narrative include weapons, troops, and resources. You can punch through the narrative distortion by just watching where the weapons, troops and resources go.

❖

If you believe the mainstream narrative about any US-targeted nation you will wind up on the wrong side of debates about that nation. This is because the US empire is the single most corrupt and murderous institution on earth and its power is held in place by lies and propaganda.

❖

It’s so obnoxious how the empire destroys entire countries and sows chaos, destruction and poverty around the world and the only mainstream pushback we ever see against any part of this is opposition to the arrival of immigrants who are fleeing that devastation.

❖

Hey remember when it was confirmed that the CIA still plots assassinations of journalists, with a known plan drawn out in 2017 against Julian Assange, and then nothing whatsoever was done about this horrifying fact?

❖

I still routinely run into people online who think Assange’s extradition case is about the 2016 WikiLeaks publications. It’s probably believed by a majority of politically active liberals, even though the news media never actually told them this. Gaslight people enough about reality and eventually they’ll start gaslighting themselves.

❖

It’s silly to call the US war machine the Department of Defense. The US military doesn’t do “defense”, it does nonstop unprovoked aggression around the world. Defense is what the nations who resist US acts of aggression against them are doing.

❖

House Fire Is a Problem Flamethrowers Can Help Solve pic.twitter.com/YWvkFdkEoJ

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) November 12, 2021

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Next European War

November 3, 2021

The Next European War

The notion that history has nothing to teach us is one of the most pervasive beliefs in modern industrial society. It’s also one of the most misguided. Sure, we’ve got all these shiny new technological trinkets, and we love to insist to ourselves that this means we’re constantly breaking new ground and going where no previous society has ever gone before. Clinging to that fond delusion, we keep on making mistakes that were already old when bronze swords were high tech, and flailing helplessly when the usual consequences yet again land on top of us.

The shambolic end of the US occupation of Afghanistan earlier this autumn is a case in point. The self-satisfied gooberocracy that runs the United States these days talked itself into believing that the hard-earned lessons of the Vietnam war didn’t matter any more, and sent American soldiers blundering into a country that earned the name “the graveyard of empires” long before the United States was a twinkle in Ben Franklin’s eye. It wasn’t just Vietnam that the slackjawed warlords of Washington ignored, of course. The Russians had their own messy experiences in Aghanistan, so did the British, so did half a dozen great Asian empires, and so did Alexander the Great. None of that made any difference, because the political class in the US had convinced itself that the past didn’t matter.

Back when the invasion first happened, wags suggested that “Kabul” is how you pronounce “Saigon” in Pashto, and of course they were quite right. Having refused to learn from their history, four US administrations duly repeated it, right down to the humiliating final scenes of helicopters on rooftops and victorious insurgents parading with captured US military hardware…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why the Troubled U.S. Empire Could Quickly Fall Apart

November 1, 2021

Why the Troubled U.S. Empire Could Quickly Fall Apart

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The U.S. wars lost in Iraq and Afghanistan showed imperial overreach beyond what even 20 years of war could manage. That the defeats were drawn out for so many years shows that domestic politics and the funding of the domestic military-industrial complex were, more than geopolitics, the key drivers of these wars. Empires can die from overreach and sacrificing broadly social goals for the narrow interests of political and economic minorities.

The United States has 4.25 percent of the world’s population yet accounts for about 20 percent of global deaths from COVID-19. A rich global superpower with a highly developed medical industry proved to be badly unprepared for and unable to cope with a viral pandemic. It now wrestles with a huge segment of its population that seems so alienated from major economic and political institutions that it risks self-destruction and demands the “right” to infect others. Refusing to accept lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates in the name of “freedom” mixes a frightening stew of ideological confusion, social division, and bitterly rising hostility within the population. The January 6 events in Washington, D.C., showed merely the tip of that iceberg.

Levels of debt—government, corporate, and household—are all at or near historical records and rising. Feeding and thereby supporting the rising debts is the Federal Reserve with its years of quantitative easing. Officials at the highest levels are now discussing the possible issuance of a trillion-dollar platinum coin to have the Fed give that sum in new credit to the U.S. Treasury to enable more U.S. government spending. The purpose goes far beyond political squabbling over the cap on the national debt…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The US Has Placed Itself In Charge Over Which Nations Get To Eat

October 18, 2021

The US Has Placed Itself In Charge Over Which Nations Get To Eat

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

The globally influential propaganda multiplier news agencies AP and AFP have both informed their readers that a “fugitive” has been extradited to the United States.

“Fugitive businessman close to Venezuela’s Maduro extradited to US,” reads the AFP headline.

“Alex Saab, a top fugitive close to Venezuela’s socialist government, has been put on a plane to the U.S. to face money laundering charges,” AP announced on Twitter.

You’d be forgiven for wondering what specifically makes this man a “fugitive”, and what that status has to do with his extradition to a foreign government whose laws should have no bearing on his life. The Colombian-born Venezuelan citizen Alex Saab, as it happens, is a “fugitive” from the US government’s self-appointed authority to decide which populations on our planet are permitted to have ready access to food. His crime is working to circumvent the crushing US sanctions which have been starving Venezuelan civilians to death by the tens of thousands.

Saab is being extradited from the African nation of Cabo Verde where he has been imprisoned since last year under pressure from the US government. In an article published this past May titled “Alex Saab v. The Empire: How the US Is Using Lawfare To Punish a Venezuelan Diplomat“, Roger D Harris explains how the US uses its domination of the international financial system to crush nations which disobey it and outlines the real reasons for Saab’s imprisonment, which has included torture and draconian living conditions. Harris writes:

Special Envoy and Ambassador to the African Union for Venezuela Alex Saab was on a humanitarian mission flying from Caracas to Iran to procure food and gasoline for the Venezuelan CLAP food assistance program. Saab was detained on a refueling stop in the African nation of Cabo Verde and has been held in custody ever since June 12, 2020.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It Takes A Lot Of Education To Keep Us This Stupid

October 17, 2021

It Takes A Lot Of Education To Keep Us This Stupid

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

The oligarchic empire is working harder and harder to bolt down our minds in service of its agendas.

Silicon Valley is working more and more openly in conjunction with the US government, and its algorithms elevate empire-authorized narratives while hiding unapproved ones with increasing brazenness.

The mass media have become so blatantly propagandistic that US intelligence operatives are now openly employed by news outlets they used to have to infiltrate covertly.

NATO and military institutions are studying and testing new forms of mass-scale psychological manipulation to advance the still developing science of propaganda.

A transparently fake “whistleblower” is being promoted by the US political/media class to manufacture support for more internet censorship and shore up monopolistic control for institutions like Facebook who are willing to enforce it.

Wikipedia is an imperial narrative control operation.

They’ve imprisoned a journalist for exposing US war crimes after the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate him.

The powerful work so hard at such endeavors because they understand something that most ordinary people do not: whoever controls the dominant narratives about the world controls the world itself.

Power is controlling what happens; absolute power is controlling what people think about what happens.

If you can control how people think about what’s going on in their world, if you can control their shared how-it-is stories about what’s happening and what’s true, then you can advance any agenda you want to. You’ll be able to prevent them from rising up against you as you steal their wealth, exploit their labor, destroy their ecosystem and send their children off to war. You can keep them voting for political institutions you own and control. You can keep them from interfering in your ability to wage wars around the world and sanction entire populations into starvation to advance your geostrategic goals.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

All Our Problems Are Built On Us-Vs-Them Propaganda

October 8, 2021

All Our Problems Are Built On Us-Vs-Them Propaganda

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

Liberal pundit Keith Olbermann shared a video the other day where he ranted about people who don’t want to take the Covid vaccine with such emotional vitriol that spittle flew from his mouth and drool poured down his chin. I found it hard to watch, partly because it’s always uncomfortable to see someone come apart like that and partly because it made me realize that I’ve probably spent the last few years making fun of a media personality who has some actual diagnosable psychological disorders.

Rather than lay out what he thinks are the best arguments for taking the vaccine as most of his peers have been doing, Olbermann instead spouts vituperations about what “cowards” and “snowflakes” unvaccinated people are.

“They’re afraid!” Olbermann screams over and over again, as though being afraid of something makes you some sort of monster. As though we’re not all afraid of something, whether it be the vaccine or the virus or being alone or the fact that thawing arctic permafrost is pouring methane into the atmosphere. This commonality should draw us closer together, but here it’s being used for partisan us-vs-them theatrics which drive us further apart.

Us-vs-them frameworks are used constantly to manipulate people into espousing various narratives, and narrative manipulation is the underlying source of all of humanity’s problems.

Today’s world is dominated by a unipolar power structure loosely centralized around the United States government. It is comprised of many nations which are ostensibly independent, but, since they move in near-complete alignment with each other on all international issues of major importance, this power structure can effectively be called an empire. This empire sets the economic, environmental and military policies which are causing all the ecocide, war and nuclear brinkmanship we see driving humanity toward its destruction today.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why did the Taliban Win? Lessons From Ancient History

September 22, 2021

Why did the Taliban Win? Lessons From Ancient History

How did the Taliban manage to defeat the most powerful army in the world? One word: corruption. It is not new, it has already happened in many other cases in history. Here, I propose a comparison of the recent Taliban campaign with the case of the Numidian wars at the time of the Roman Republic. (above: these fighters are probably Tajiki, not Taliban, but that does not affect the substance of my interpretation)

During the 2nd century BC, the Roman Republic attempted to defeat the Numidians, a tribal population inhabiting a desertic area of North-Western Africa. Surely, the Numidian fighters were no match for the mighty Roman armies, yet the Numidian kings held on their own for decades. It was only in 105 BC that their last king, Jugurtha, was definitively defeated by the Romans.

The ups and downs of the Numidian wars left the Romans perplexed. How could it be that those unrefined Barbarians could keep at bay the Romans for so long? The opinion of the historian Sallustius was that the Numidians had used corruption to buy the Roman commanders. Sallustius reports that Jugurtha himself said about Rome, “Venal city! You would sell yourself if a buyer were to appear!”.

Sallustius’ interpretation is believable, even though it is not substantiated by historical data. Corruption is an unavoidable side effect of money and Rome was the most monetarized society of antiquity. The Romans had built their prosperity on the precious metal mines of Northern Spain and used their wealth to pay the large armies that they used to dominate the Mediterranean Region. But money is a double-edged weapon: it can be used to pay soldiers to fight, but also not to fight, or to fight someone they were not supposed to fight.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Manufacturing Dystopia: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

September 13, 2021

Manufacturing Dystopia: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

We live in a world of manufactured lack, manufactured enemies, manufactured crises and manufactured consent. We’ve had sufficient resources to care for everyone for generations. All our wars are based on lies. All our problems are cooked up by a few psychos with too much power.

❖

Ever since he came to Australia my American husband still finds it strange to see a parrot out in the open instead of sitting in a cage. I feel much the same whenever I see George W Bush.

❖

The capitalist class has never voluntarily returned anything it has stolen from the working class; every time it manages to give people less it never reverses it, no matter how much greater profits become. Capitalism is never going to get less abusive. It will only grow more so.

❖

If there were good billionaires they wouldn’t still be billionaires.

It’s impossible to be a good billionaire, not just because it’s immoral to remain that wealthy in a world full of need and because all billionaires are parasitic middlemen siphoning the profits off other people’s labor, but also because in order to obtain that much wealth you generally have to manipulate the actual movement of human civilization to your benefit in some way.

❖

“You’re anti-American!”

No I’m anti-war, anti-militarism, anti-empire, anti-ecocide, anti-oligarchy, anti-capitalism and anti nuclear brinkmanship. It just happens that the US is at the center of a globe-spanning power structure that is the worst offender on all these fronts by an extremely wide margin.

❖

The most evil and destructive things Trump did as president weren’t the Trumpian things but the American things. The things his predecessors and his successor are also guilty of doing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

End of the US Empire–Orwell’s 1984 Newspeak & Dirt Cheap Gold

September 12, 2021

END OF THE US EMPIRE – ORWELL’S 1984 NEWSPEAK & DIRT CHEAP GOLD

The final phase of Empires normally ends with the same signals whether it was 2000 years ago in Rome or today in the US.

One of the first signs is losing wars together with excessive debts, deficits, devaluations and decadence The US being defeated and hurriedly fleeing from Afghanistan in a few days clearly signifies the end of the US empire.

The mighty US military has in the last few decades conducted disastrous wars against very small countries with no big armies or weaponry. Vietnam, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan come to mind but there are many more as we show below.

Brown’s University has just made a study of the US cost of wars since 9/11. They arrive at a staggering $8 trillion and the loss of 900,000 lives .

So in the last 20 years, the US has spent $8 trillion or 40% of annual GDP on conducting totally unsuccessful wars. The report also states that even after the exodus from Afghanistan the US is still involved in wars in over 80 countries.

US CURRENT WAR ACTIVITY

The cost of being involved in some kind of war activity in 85 countries will continue to cost the dying US empire dearly for decades to come.

1984 IS HERE AGAIN

Are the 2020s going to be a return to Orwell’s 1984 with Big Brother watching us everywhere?

Well, it certainly looks like many governments and the elite is leading us in that direction.

Covid has been a superb excuse for controlling the people in a number of countries. Free speech has been banned in the media and unacceptable censorship is now the rule on social media whether it relates to vaccines, climate or race.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The World’s Deadliest Terrorist Group: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

September 11, 2021

The World’s Deadliest Terrorist Group: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

The CIA just casually discussed sinking a boat full of Cuban refugees and planting bombs in Miami and blaming Castro, but you’re bat shit crazy if you suspect such agencies may have had similar discussions about other geostrategic situations and decided to go through with it.

❖

There’s more public criticism of ordinary people taking ivermectin than there is of planet-dominating power structures driving humanity to armageddon.

❖

Nobody who supports internet censorship does so because they’re worried they themselves might consume dangerous words and believe them, it’s always to protect other people from dangerous words. It’s about the most megalomaniacal, emotionally stunted desire anyone could possibly have.

They see themselves as responsible adults who can be trusted to independently sort out truth from falsehood, but see other people as infants who cannot be trusted to do this. This is nothing other than garden variety narcissism.

❖

Internet censorship via monopolistic government-tied tech corporations isn’t just a problem because of free speech issues, it’s a problem because the way it’s applied is completely uneven and power-serving: politicians and the mass media circulate disinformation constantly without ever being censored. It’s not just silencing people, it’s actually shifting power upwards.

❖

There is no path forward for humanity on this planet without complete female reproductive sovereignty.

❖

Imagine if the world’s deadliest terrorist group got their hands on drones and cruise missiles and nuclear warheads and aircraft carriers and circled the planet with hundreds of military bases and began waging wars and destroying any country which disobeyed their dictates.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: us empire

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts