by James Rothenberg for the Saker Blog
I read that we’ve entered a “post truth” age. I dislike the term because it seems too sure of itself, as if it encompasses all there is to encompass. As if it should come to mean the same thing to everyone. The worst is “holocaust”, a word I’ve forbidden myself to use for the reasons just mentioned.
Sure, something’s been accelerating. It’s hard to miss the competitive manipulation taking place in the “information age”, another shorthand though with more authenticity. At a certain point in his presidency, the Washington Post catalogued 10,000 of Donald Trump’s lies. They were practically giddy about it. “Now we’ve got him!”, they seemed to be saying. “10,000!”.
Isador Feinstein Stone published the newsletter, I. F. Stone’s Weekly, from 1953-1971. Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Eleanor Roosevelt were among the first subscribers. (If the reader is unimpressed, this is a good place to stop.) As an investigative journalist, Stone’s bedrock principle was that all governments lie. It’s tempting to say that we find too few like him today. More to the point, there are always and everywhere too few like him. They are the anti-authoritarians.
Once we accept as a given that all governments lie, it reduces to, whose lies can you trust? The answer is easy. You’ll trust the lies of your own country before any other. An example of “post truth”? No, the truth about the lies.
To lie is to be at cross-purposes with the target of the lie. It exposes an adversarial relationship between the two. The unavoidable conclusion is that government is in an adversarial relationship with its own people. How do these cross-purposes come to exist between our government and the people it lies to?
First we should define the sides in this internal conflict because it’s not just government on one side. Multinational corporations have become such a potent force that government must consult with them, and vice versa. Their symbiosis is based on capitalism with a revolving door existing between the public and private sector. When you’re high up in one, you’re not far from the other.
We wouldn’t know we were being lied to without government’s microphone, the mega corporations that disseminate information to us, also a potent international force. And then, easy to overlook, what is government but the only two competing political parties in America, “both sides of the aisle”. There is an aisle, and Democrats and Republicans do sit on opposing sides. And they do have their differences. Otherwise you couldn’t tell them apart. But these differences largely run along cultural lines, and increasingly so.
Not that these are unimportant. They’re very important, but the parties come to be identified mainly by their stances and clashes on sexuality, civil rights, reproduction, religion, immigration and skin color to the exclusion of what could be the most crucial area to disagree on, but isn’t.
Are we to assume that because they differ so strongly on certain things, that their agreement on other things is a good indication of their virtue? I think not because such conformity is less a sign of reasoned judgment than of subordination to larger interests. The result of their general agreement is that we have no major political party independent of capitalist imperialism as promulgated by Wall Street, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the intelligence/security industry.
This is where the “national interest” is manufactured, the great secret plans that are hammered out for our own good. Ordinary people cannot be entrusted to determine the interests of their own country because they might be at odds with the manufactured kind.
Imagine if the public had had a say over the question, in 2003, of whether or not we should invade Iraq. No, forget that. That’s not a good example. The public was in favor of it. But why? For months we were the target of an intense propaganda campaign to sway our support for a decision to attack that had already been made. If you convince people that we’re fighting them “over there” so that we don’t have to fight them “over here”, well, that figures to be enough to win them over.
Now go back to 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Much talk about a “peace dividend”. Nice ring to it. The United States has had the lion’s share of the world’s wealth since WW2, and now it had the wealth and no viable rivals anywhere in sight.
However, it was considered to be in the “national interest” to expand NATO, an alliance solely formed to counter the communist menace of the Soviet Union, which no longer existed. There was to be no peace dividend. It’s a made-up thing anyway.
Since then, 13 countries have joined NATO pushing east toward Russia’s borders. Russia’s leadership regards it as a provocation. You can argue against this but only if you wouldn’t consider it a provocation if Russia had formed a military alliance with Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, or any of the three. I suspect patriotic Americans will reject this dialectic.
Imagine if the public had had a say over the question, in 1991, of whether or not we should expand our military alliance with its attendant costs, or whether we should reap the dividend by seeking a more cooperative relationship with the whole of Eurasia including the Middle East. Missing was the propaganda campaign to win our support for a peace dividend so that we could spend “over here” instead of “over there”.
People will instinctively choose peace over war. We are naturally possessed of that much empathy for others. You have to be marshaled into killing. That we identify with peoples’ suffering is evident in all the Ukrainian flag flying. That’s people, not states. States deal in straight power concepts. It is in the anarchist spirit to resist this.
To declare that Ukraine is a pawn in a great-power game greatly overstates the country’s role. A pawn can force a win by checkmate or through progression. A better metaphor is Ukraine is the board the game is being played on. The main players are the United States and Russia.
The US-led NATO contingent would like to diminish Russia as a regional power so that it can fully concentrate on its primary target, China. Russia would like to diminish NATO and expand its influence throughout Eurasia.
On February 4, Russia and China formally announced a strategic partnership, essentially declaring their intention to remake the world order. This wouldn’t have come as a surprise to the United States because it sits atop the existing world order — precariously — and knows perfectly well about the threat China poses to its hegemony. Russia needs China. China doesn’t need Russia, but finds it useful. This accounts for its “hands off” policy in Ukraine.
Putin seems to have calculated, correctly, that the United States has no appetite for a direct military clash over Ukraine. The partnership building with China was likely decisive in ordering the strike. The United States is in full-hypocrisy mode when Nancy Pelosi pledges, “to help the Ukrainian people as they defend democracy for their nation and for the world.”
You’re supposed to be oblivious to the United States orchestrated coup, in 2014, that removed a democratically elected Ukrainian president because he was not sufficiently pro-West. The script never changes. But you can trust it.
James Rothenberg writes on U.S. social and foreign policy.
Good article, but I must take issue with one remark. “China doesn’t need Russia.” This is dead wrong. If Russia were to be defeated and dismembered, as the Evil Empire wishes, China alone could not stand. China has the economic power, and virtually unlimited manpower for its armies, but militarily it is no match for the Empire. Russia and China need each other. Each has what the other lacks, in material terms. In terms of political philosophy, they are right on the same page, that self-determination is the right of every state, and that only the internationally agreed rule of law should prevail, not some artificial, self-serving “rules-based order”.
I agree, China needs Russia, if only to provide a buffer zone between itself and Europe, and of course, to protect their shared northern border.
More significantly, I postulate that the ‘Stans would, on the balance of probabilities, pivot West should Russia fall. The ‘Stans’ multi-vector foreign policies indicate, I believe, a bias to the Collective West rather than to the East. China would then be doomed.
Correct. And China needs Russian energy.
@pasha
I am in total agreement with you.
Russia is indispensable to China. One pundit quipped, “Russia is China’s bouncer.” [ in English slang a “bouncer” is one of those burly frightening security guards outside a nightclub ]
It could also be argued China is indispensable to Russia. While both could stand alone in the face of US agressive foreign policy objectives, both China and Russia have known the day would come when their unity is their strength.
Mao knew since the day Nixon severed the USD from gold on August 15, 1971 that China would need a plan to build a new system in economic and geopolitical terms if China was to survive the inevitable collapse of the US and its USD hegemony. That was over 50 years ago. To say the Chinese plan ahead is an understatement.
The marriage of Russia with China is one of convenience. Both have the objectives of survival by mutual respect and cooperation in trade, energy, and monetary affairs.
A symbiotic relationship – swapping finished goods for USD and recycling US debt – once shared with the US has been made redundant by the rise of China. This has been at the expense of the US, in what can only be described as blind greed and hubris by the cartel in charge in Washington and Wall Street that they could keep getting away with their nefarious plan of Empire ad infinitum. The “Great Whore of Babylon” and the Gods of Money have come face to face with their day of reckoning.
China has used US policies of control and containment to its advantage fooling the US into a false sense of its own hegemony and importance or “exceptionalism.” By the time the overstretched US realised China had geoeconomically and geopolitically outsmarted them it was too late.
The symbiosis baton was passed to Russia, a natural progression in the organic relationship and evolution of humankind toward a better future. Russia and China embrace opportunities and resist interference in their sovereignty by making their alliance impregnable.
[Symbiosis: definition in biology. The interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both]
Nancy Pelosi is married to a second tier investment banker. They have done well. Some of their wealth coming from government contracts and insider information. Diane Feinstein being a senator was married to the late Richard Blum. A top investment banker. Feinstein actually got into some trouble steering contracts to his MIC investments but this was quietly handled by the other senators and barely mentioned in the press. These are your famous California “progressive” politicians. It truly is a post truth world.
In the US, insider trading is illegal.
Unless you are a member of congress.
Fact.
_” In the US, insider trading is illegal.…”
Not if you are an actual “insider”.
“Outsiders” who breach the inner sanctum and become deluded they are “insiders”… are for whom “insider” penalties exist.
Agree.
Every smellying bad Democrat voted to support the destruction of war funding for yoookraine.
Now, no more UKraine. Whoopsy.
Lawfare and warfare are the truth of what we falsely call democracy.
The current laws of public health and rulers of America are mostly false, illegitimate, and must be struck down and or removed from power over us now.
Laws that are smell badly must be ignored and repealed.
Fake public health and safety regulations need to be dismantled and abandoned forever.
Actually Feinstein’s husband made a shitload of money from the war on Iraq as a private contractor.
Apparently, there is an interesting video making its rounds about the huge fiasco that was the Presidential coup for Biden!!!!!
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/2000-mules/
But my interest and certainly everyone’s else should be this piece which Glazyev summed up “an electronic concentration camp” or which I have been warning about here the globalists wet dream Rev 13.
Read and weep or be excited that the end is arriving for this Satanic Ball called earth:
The self-proclaimed elites have gathered in Switzerland at the World Economic Forum (WEF). One of the newest ideas is a microchip in pill form. No, this is not a conspiracy theory. The president of Pfizer spoke publicly about a pill that would dissolve in the stomach and send an immediate signal to all storing your data that you complied and took the pill. “Imagine the implications of that – the compliance!” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla daydreamed.
The WEF crowd has publicly shared their ideas to build a total surveillance system and microchip human beings to gain ultimate control. “Once you can hack something, you can also engineer it,” Yuri Harari, Schwab’s top mouthpiece, said in 2018.
No major media outlet has called out these dystopian plans for total control, and any mention of the topic will result in an instant ban from all social media platforms. Microchips are NOT a conspiracy theory; rather, it is a plan that they are currently devising and will implement once the opportunity presents itself. Do not comply.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/corruption/imagine-the-compliance-microchips-are-coming/
The WEF, COVID, Zelazny, Ukrainian Biolabs, Bio-weapon labs everywhere, Monkeypox, Gates, Biden, the Ukrainian War are all tied together. I expect the “Great Reset” is all the computers go down so no money or deeds, then you own nothing but are happy because by being good you can live in their house. Actually, I have no idea what they are trying to do? Depopulate? Shut down industry? Is Russia the resistance, or is it being used to divide us as part of the plan.
Think about it as a lie.
People make the mistake again again again to hope and take the next lie as some truth. Why would they lie?
Because like psychopaths they love to put slow pain on people and drag it out for a long time, the enjoyment of seeing peoples suffering and misery.
All these psycho games have one overall headline: Depopulation. We are too many, too little resources. Thus they have found the excuse for psychopaths to kill, impose pain and make people suffer.
Not impressed at all with this article.
Needless to say, I am not impressed at all with this comment. It should not have seen the light of day.
Reasons:
It is useless
It is empty of thought or substance
Einstein the commentator is not
Kindly don’t respond to this.
I see a censorship slowly occurring, but that’s okay. I see numbers dwindling and that is okay too.
After the immenent defeat by Russia over the West, the guns are turned to China. Many are trying to salvage prestige, now saying that Russia should be a friend. It is duly noted that it was the West that tried to cripple Russia and it is they who provide weapons to western Ukraine.
No, they will soon start writing about how China is the one who is arming Ukraine. To blame the corporations and not blame the totally controlled media is a feeble excuse. Of course the financial mafia system is also left out.
The negotiations that they were ignoring, in the belief that you could humble and subjugate Russia is now back on the table. Depending on Russia’s agreement, you will then say: you averted a nuclear war. BS. You can’t fight people that can fight back!
To say that China does not need Russia or vice versa is a hope and dream. Their friendship has absolutely nothing to do with many assumptions. They simply will never again be subdued by the West.
Only god knows how you can ever re-create the West, founded on the stolen wealth of all other countries? That too is coming to and end.
That’s my observation as well, recently US commenters have been prompt to lessen Russia’s relevance and to push China on the frontal plan. Obviously as much to distract from the Ukrainian fiasco engineered by NATO than to contain China’s evergrowing political influence.
Well stated Mr Karl luck!
“People will instinctively choose peace over war”.
That turns out not to be the case. Especially they believe that their side is likely to win, as Westerners for some time past have automatically assumed.
“We are naturally possessed of that much empathy for others”.
That is most certainly NOT the case. Most people have a certain amount of empathy for their friends, relatives (some of them!), and a few friends and acquaintances. Whether they would pay any money (a good test) to save any of those people from death or serious trouble… well, that’s a different question. I suspect not.
If I may presume on readers’ patience to quote a moderately long paragraph from Adam Smith – one of the mildest and most benevolent of men, living in the Enlightenment of the 18th century:
“Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own”.
– Adam Smith (“The Theory of Moral Sentiments”)
Smith writes a fallacy, what kind of love is that which loves those it has never seen and ignores the neighbor who is its neighbor?
“It’s true there are lies, but it’s a lie that there is no truth.” – anonymous
We don’t have to live like this. It’s a choice to lie.
It is our government, our democracy, and the Moslems fault. Its the politicians. The politicians didnt do their homework, they steal, they lie, they are corrupt. We ordinary people are not, and certainly not me!
The politicians only think of one thing: Money for themselves. Therefore they lie. Gobbling dollares in their pockets. I do not!
I am the good goody goody. If I had access to all these money I would give all government money to people in trailer parks, the homeless, the poor, the sick, and not keeping anything for myself!
Wait, wait, wait, I should also be paid for doing my job. Not much, but a little, sufficient.
Then I would purge all the rich people and make them pay more taxes! Wait, wait, wait, the rich people would come after me and I need protection in form of a bulletproof limousine and bodyguards, not many, not too expensive, only sufficient.
To live protected from the bad guys because I purged all the rich guys for their money, I would need a bigger house with a wall around, not big big, but green environmental with view and access to the sea, not too expensive, but sufficient to do my goody goody job better than the lying politicians.
Thats a start. I would really be a do-gooder goody goody and never lie. But thats me! :-D.
Has mr. anonymous managed to provide a consistent definition of “truth”?
Way back when, in the 1950’s or 60’s, we were negotiating with the USSR Communists. One of our people said something about the truth, and the Communist response, was, “People sometimes tell the truth but governments never do.” It is a matter of curiosity with me who said that and when.
Existence is not Essence. Lies exist, but they are not the essence of humanity. Truth is the essence of humanity.
Can inter generational lying become part of our DNA? Can deceptions be passed from generation to generation preserving the lie(s)? Can serial lying change brain chemistry? It is nihilism to accept the false prominence of lying. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob hates lies and loves truth.
A couple things about the relationship between Russia and China at the end I don´t agree with. That said, I enjoyed the article and view it as an excellent perspective. Thank you for offering it.
It’s not fair of me to pick up on one major foopah (social indiscretion and not large vagina ) in an otherwise sea of truth, however . . . . .’ Russia needs China, China doesn’t need Russia but finds it useful . . . .this accounts for its hands off policy in Ukraine’ is glaringly an egregious statement.
China depends on Russia for Energy, Grains, Metals/Minerals and Security. What does Russia depend on China for? Maybe as a financial conduit while its being attacked by the Western Financial/Banking System. This will be meaningless in a year or two.
The writer must have been in a hurry to finish his composition and/or has little understanding of economics or as Martyanov would say, Real Economy.
Russia needs China because it is a market for its raw materials. Economically the two countries are a good fit together. It is actually a kind of mercantilism. Russia as the pseudo colonies that provide the raw materials and market for manufactured goods produced in China. Because of the degree of specialization and the great variety of products that a modern society uses, the scale of production has to be large to allow for efficient production. It would appear that Russia, China, and a few other countries thrown in are sufficiently large to avoid any serious downturn even if completely isolated from the rest of the world.
I am okay with Russia getting its way in the Ukraine, but otherwise I can’t really be pleased with what is going on. If this thing continues as it is, the culturally European countries will be doing themselves considerable damage, and I am locked in to being part of that group. Economic damage along with a chance of nuclear war thrown in just for fun.
If every country built a wall around/isolated themselves tomorrow (discounting Islands or some small states ) Russia would flourish way ahead of other major nations.
China needs to expand in order to survive and feed its nation of 1.5 billion.
If you can manufacture a Kinzhal then anything else required could be manufactured in next to no time, much like the Agri-industry
I’m not suggesting China and Russia do not compliment one another much like Germany and Russia, which is the icing on the cake for Russia and America’s greatest fear.
China has not been a warlike country, preferring trade and a strong government.
Chinese communism owes much to the Legal School of the past and that similarity is the basis of its legitimacy.
China remains the Middle Kingdom, which is key to its success, so that “expansion” is not a part of its DNA.. Should you ever live there, you might be overwhelmed, as I was, by the abundance of domestically grown food.. A current issue is food-wastage and a national campaign to curb this tendency..
Food security is not a problem when the majority eat either noodles or rice, 3 times a day, every day, even when affordable options are available..
“The Information Age” is propaganda: it is The Disinformation Age.
Add Geroge Seldes as a reference on par with I.F.Stone.
“However, it was considered to be in the “national interest” to expand NATO, an alliance solely formed to counter the communist menace of the Soviet Union, which no longer existed. There was to be no peace dividend. It’s a made-up thing anyway.”
While NATO was undoubtedly aimed at the Soviet Union, it was formed BEFORE the Warsaw Treaty group of countries. So this argument is weak or incomplete.
There was no real danger from a Soviet invasion of the NATO sphere of influence. You can find NATO documents that admit this. The danger was domestic. For example, France and Italy had huge and influential Communist Parties, not yet compromised, as did a number of other countries in the immediate post-war period. This is the whole idea of the Marshall Plan; to short-circuit the European left when the right had been so thoroughly discredited with their odious association with the Nazis, etc..
This idea has been expressed differently, without naming the threat from the left; e.g., the aim of NATO was to “keep Russia out, American in, and Germany down” or words to that effect.
The author got this idea right but just didn’t go far enough, IMHO.
Agree NH. I read an excellent article at Strategic Culture a few weeks ago NATO: The Founding Lie. Among other things the writer Werner RÜGEMER, explains that the Cold War really began in 1941. The US didn’t get into the war in a big way until 1944 and it was intentional.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/05/01/nato-the-founding-lie/
]…”-The danger was domestic. For example, France and Italy had huge and influential Communist Parties, not yet compromised, as did a number of other countries in the immediate post-war period. “.
A reading of Operation Gladio … the stay behind plan, where the CIA and associated entities conducted terrorism across Europe to frame the”communist”/ “socialist” or generally basic communal welfare tendencies is worth discovering, for those not yet familiar.
Operation Gladio and it’s activities, was, or course, dismissed as a conspiracy theory, right up until it was revealed, and now, of course, buried in the memory hole.
“China doesn’t need Russia”
If Russia was a US colony, China would fall next.
The way it works is that societies get group cohesion through a set of assumed truths. It is not so much whether they are true or not, what they are is arbitrary. Opinions that are to be accepted regardless.
A nicely done example of it is in the Declaration of Independence as written by Thomas Jefferson (with some assist from his friends).
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Run through the above statement and try to treat it as literal truth, and it falls apart. We most certainly are not equal in the biological sense. We are born with differing abilities and some are born crippled. People kill each other, negating the God given “unalienable” right to be alive. Liberty? Some are born and die slaves. And the opportunity to pursue happiness is variable.
The list of rights are is an effort to establish the ‘rights’ as the assumed truths to be held by those in the revolutionary movement. Things that are not to be questioned but routinely accepted for the sake of social cohesion.
A little aside here is that the list of rights deviates from the then current social norm. A more common thing to assert would be “life, liberty, and property.” Even though we formed a capitalist society where the right to property was ordinary, for some reason they didn’t want to go there. So, they chucked in “pursuit of Happiness,” as a substitute.
While we have never really lived up to the Declaration of Independence, we used to somewhat resemble it. Alas, the degree to which that is true is fading. We are becoming the propaganda are us society.
“Whose Lies Can You Trust?”
Since omniscience is not an option, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth cannot exist perceptually, only momentarily in limited perception as a function of any interaction.
Mr. Chomsky was of the opinion that his country did not tell lies, since to tell a lie you need to know the truth.
Consequently trust is rendered belief and hence not subjected to analysis, consequently metamorphising the salient question to become – who can believe the beliefs ?, which informs “propaganda”, but not omnisciently.
This was one of the bases of Mr. Rove’s misguided observation that “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you should concentrate on” predicated on an attempt to deny dynamics/time.
– NATO, an alliance solely formed to counter the communist menace of the Soviet Union, …
I was suprised to learn NATO was nothing of subtance till1953. 1953 was the end of Korea war.
Something else happened 1953: Stalin disappeared.
Stalin was an allied of West.
1953 then Slavs (the real nationalists) took over USSR.
So I think NATO did not have much to do with Communism after all.
“NATO, an alliance solely formed to counter the communist menace of the Soviet Union, ”
Not solely nor even particularly, although that is a widely believed illusion/narrative.
The components of and subsequent coalescences of NATO was a force multiplier of “The United States of America” to add components to “The United States of America” initially in “Western Europe” – France, Germany and Italy being early examples through Gladio – with the complicity and co-operation of the “representatives” of others being rendered components of “The United States of America”, including not restricted to Europe, the “Marshall Plan” being another force multiplier to facilitate these purposes.
The Soviet Union was never a “menace” to “The United States of America”, but the illusions of some that “The Soviet Union” was a menace to “The United States of America “, was yet another force multiplier to add sustainability within the added components of “The United States of America” which in some form exists until the present,and forms the prepared basis upon which much of the attempts at propaganda/perception management by “The United States of America” of “our values” are still based.
By 1969 some understood that “The Soviet Union” and “The United States of America” were coercive relations emulative to some degree of one another, and that to some degree their mutual sustainability was dependent upon maintaining levels of emulation, but that the efforts at individual sustainability were becoming increasingly divergent, thereby undermining mutual sustainability, and hence they should co-operate in facilitating the transcendence of both “The Soviet Union” and consequently/subsequently “The United States of America” with the complicity of both, through replacing coercive social relations by social relations based upon co-operation.
“The Soviet Union” was never, nor perceived to be, a “menace” to/by “The United States of America” but an acceptable irritant to facilitate some of their purposes.
The Russian Federation is perceived as not only an unacceptable “menace”/obstacle in facilitating some of the purposes of “The United States of America”, but by some as an existential threat to “The United States of America” in obfuscation of the notion that “The United States of America” is an existential threat to “The United States of America”
“So I think NATO did not have much to do with Communism after all.”
Neither did “The Soviet Union”.
If Americans only knew, what America lies about, we’d never have to worry about the impact of our lies.
Whose lies can you trust? What kind of question is that? Maybe you could say Whose sincere strategic agenda would you support even if it has tactical and operational deceptions. I skimmed thru the article, not my cup of tea.
The USSR-era Pravda was so over-the-top that virtually nobody viewed it as factual, but a good source of laughter..
Now, the western media has reached or extended that paradigm and has become a daily source of eye-rolling frivolity, yet many believe all of it..
The bottom line about lies for 95%+ of the global population is that one must ascertain which lies one must adhere to in public to retain economic prospects, further them etc etc.
No consultant doctor in the UK told the truth in public about Covid19 because they would have been sacked had they done so. They delineated the party line and stuck to it. They were not acting in the interests of patients, they were acting in their own interests. However, had they all been sacked, the patients would have been without doctors, so not doing so great either….
George Soros told an absolutely enormous lie at the WEF conference last week. He said Putin had to be crushed to ‘prevent climate change catastrophe’. He said it because he is part of the caucus aiming to institute world government by billionaires and bugger the 7 billion plus humans who will be reduced to serfdom as a result.
Boris Johnson lied to the Sue Grey enquiry, lied to Parliament about his lying and has lied about almost everything that he has spoken about since becoming UK Prime Minister. His lying has had many motives, those concerning lockdown parties being very different to those concerning NATO, Ukraine and the EU. But he is a professional liar who seems to get away with far more than his lying deserves….and getting away with it is the litmus test for professional politicians.
It’s really only children, idealistic students, mavericks, gypsies, ‘back to the land’ eco-fanatics and the comfortably retired who can afford to tell the truth very often.
The biggest challenge for most people is not having hypocrites at work calling them liars when everyone at work lies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The only thing that matters is which lies are acceptable.
The entire UK Parliament believes the US lies about Ukraine because the UK economy is linked far too much to the US economy. If their economy were far more closely linked to that of Russia, I guarantee you that the UK MPs would be lying in completely different ways.
The BBC lies about everything to reflect the views of the self-serving set of elitist snobs that think they are worthy of the running the country. They lie about the EU, Brexit, Climate Change, Covid19, Ukraine, BLM, ‘taking the knee’ nowadays, just as they lied about Iraq, Syria, Libya, in the past.
Teachers in school lie to children about lots of things, mainly to keep their jobs.
And people in business/commerce/cultural engagement tell masses of white lies to self-aggrandise themselves and smear opponents. It’s universal, especially in charities, ‘green arenas’ and those who claim to be promoting human peace and tranquility.
Telling the truth is an incredible act of economic self-harm 95% of the time….
He said Putin had to be crushed to ‘prevent climate change catastrophe’
@ Rhys Jaggar
LOL?!?!?! He actually said that?
Just wait until he learns the truth that climate change has far more to do with all of the lying and thievery that is going on than anything to do with industrial pollution. The Bible refers to it as Divine Communication which is what occurred over Bravo Company during the Iraq War and how they were stopped dead cold by a series of storms that came up from nowhere:
“According to a radio newscast I heard while in my car during the Iraq war, a lone Moslem in the city of Baghdad had been screaming, “Hey, look what God is doing to the U.S. Forces.” Upon hearing this, I scoured the newspapers for any news about what this gentleman was talking about and came across a report about Bravo Company when they were some twenty-five miles from Baghdad. They were stopped dead by a series of storms that sprung up out of nowhere. The day had begun calmly enough, clear and sunny, but as they neared the city, they encountered a windstorm so fierce that it obscured the sun, turning the desert black. The wind was strong enough to batter and shake their tanks and personal carriers. After several hours, the sandstorm turned into a hailstorm with accompanying thunder and lightning. It turned the sand into mud, bogging down their vehicles and stalling their advance. They had to deal with the forming of a lake which almost swamped their vehicles.”
This is typical of how God Almighty works. The conditions of the Old Testament are literally coming back in the Middle East. Sadly, it took one lone citizen of the city of Baghdad—a Moslem, no less—to recognize it for what it was: an act of Almighty God. He, of all people, could see what others could not. No doubt this was due more to his acclimatization to that environment than his education in matters of the Bible or the Koran (assuming there’s anything in that book regarding the weather). In the desert, no one ever lives to see a hailstorm, in so abrupt a manner and over an army.”
In the bible there are hundreds of scriptures which testify to this being the work of God but I will post one from Isaiah and the other by Job:
“The Lord will cause people to hear his majestic voice and will make them see his arm coming down with raging anger and consuming fire, with cloudburst, thunderstorm and hail.” (Isaiah 30:30}
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?” (Job 38:22–23)
Now isn’t this interesting especially the one from the book of Job!
God is a military commander with his own weapons
.
Does this then explain what occurred at Fort Carson?
https://youtu.be/Gi7GOcwUwQg
Raises some serious questions does it not?
Further to this a more serious question needs asking and that is given the scripture in the Book of Revelation about the coming war against God:
“They will make war against the Lamb, but the Lord will
overcome them because He is Lord of lords and King of
kings-and with him will be His called, chosen and faithful
followers.” {Rev. 17:14}
Would Soros and the WEF go to war against God? Could it be possible that with our amazing military they will think to take on even God or what purports to be god by way of aliens which is all the rage today?
Take for example the S-500 which could be used against meteorites. Wow, if only military schools and colleges taught this maybe the fear of God as taught in Proverbs would go a long way to solving all of the sin and killing throughout the world? Perhaps then we would learn or experience the truth of the words:
“It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31)
What Soros and the WEF need to do is go open a Bible and read it along with the book Climate Change the Work of God! Perhaps then the truth will start being told and the lying stop?
Sure its the work of God. But arent we doing it a bit too complicated? KISS Keep It Simple its the weather Stupid.
Off course God can control the weather without finance newspeak if he wants, and thats it.
Many Orthodox, Protestants and Catholics know that we are living in the end times (it does not mean that it is the End of the World, nobody knows that) and that we are preparing the infrastructure of the antichrist right now. We Christians will be persecuted like vermin and those who kill us will believe they are doing god’s will.
Great article but it failed to mention the private Central Banks and the role of Anglo-Zionists, i.e., the parasite that has overwhelmed the West.
What lurks yonder on those Central Bank Balance Sheets in US, Germany, France, UK, Canada and Brussels would scare the shit out of Freddy Krueger? The West is living in make-believe land, living a Lie. The family (stolen) silver was pawned several decades ago and it’s now living on borrowed time, which is scary as the psychopoths have little to lose
They couldn’t even do an audit of the Federal Reserves Books or for that matter the gold-plated tungsten in the vaults of Fort Knox or London.
Look what happened when they last tried to audit the Pentagon for the missing $2 Trillion Rumsfeld’s known knowns. A lot of pen-pushers died.
When American “lies” were about unicorns, fairy dust & the “dream”… it was one thing, but now (last 50 years) that it’s lies are ALL about war, greed, power & nihilism, I find Americans are reaching their saturation. Americans aren’t reactionary to either truth or lies anymore, they’re just fricken angry. And for those the last 20+ years trying their usually foreign campaigns of destabilizing country, which is reaching a crescendo here in the US, will be very surprised when it comes about. They was a civil war based on class or race or some such thing they can harness, direct & control. I believe they will be unpleasantly surprised if USA becomes violently unstable. I sense anger is fever pitch high, held in check & restrained, but as deluded as EU/UK/USA are about their “Russia” campaign… these same “influencers” will be just as stupid continuing on with their own nations destabilization campaigns they are all currently fostering. This is where I part with the articles analyzation.
Completely empty commentary. The US is a fake democracy. The people do not rule. At best the people are called upon to cheerlead a policy determined elsewhere. They seem content to leave it at that and the more fools they. You can get worked up over the lies as you wish.
There are people who disagree with the government but they have no effective influence. If they did we would see the US going from a soft and hidden tyranny to a hard one overnight. Still, someday disaffection may have some influence. We shall see.
Stop saying we; it is they. They rule. When times get sufficiently tough the US may see rebellion. Whether it will matter is yet to be seen. Past history suggests it won’t.
People can only lie to you when you let them.
If you are the gvt, you are fighting a fantasy perfect political proxy war, a war of resources to create a perfect world according to your input and results.
If you are a concerned citizen, you are fighting today against a proxy war where the determined future results are never ending, and demand the actions of the past be explained so as to not rerun the mistakes continuously administration after administration. This is measured in debt vs tangible goods in hand, and the cost of living as a side dish.
Author: “The US-led NATO contingent would like to diminish Russia as a regional power so that it can fully concentrate on its primary target, China. Russia would like to diminish NATO and expand its influence throughout Eurasia.”
Counterpoint: Russia has the most resources per capita of any country in the world, by far. The USA is #2. China is way down the list. Expansionist economy (the model we all share) needs to expand into those resources, so both “the west” and China need Russian resources.
Russia is capable of defending those resources.
Global economy has stopped growing, and is in decline, but also in denial of that reality.
There is no good model for healthy economy in a phase of economic shrinkage.
Russia has most recently gone through a transition of economic collapse, while under predatory attack, and somehow survived, revived, and became robust and antifragile.
maybe it is Russia’s turn to lead economically.
Maybe… Maybe Japan could pull it off again.
I’m growing vegetables.
Whose lies can you trust? Too easy. You cannot trust a liar. If whoever lied to you once, they can and likely will do so again.
That leaves verification. It’s more work, and it means you have to think with your brain, not your television. But, it is rewarding, if sometimes lonely.
Is that the “post truth” world. No, it’s just the world.
This might be a helpful way of parsing what is true from what is false and determining who to trust:
Professor Anthony Sutton – Stanford University – Hoover Institution
It is an old lecture, 1976, but he was on to the US intelligence state long before everyone else:
THE THREE LEVELS OF INFORMATION:
1] Level #1: Establishment Version (what they want you to know). “Only coincidentally is it the truth”. At this level the criteria are: “what do we want them to know and is it consistent with what we told them the last time”? Examples: US and UK corporate media networks.
2] Level #2: The Revisionist Level. It is limited by the fact that it uses information from the first level. It goes through the establishment version checking it for inconsistencies. In the US, someone like Tucker Carlson / Greenwald does this… quoting conflicting official sources (so he can’t be labeled a misinformationist).
3] Level #3: The Truth. Based on new documentary evidence, leaked or declassified. Examples: Wikileaks, Snowden/Greenwald, Climate Gate emails, Hunter Biden laptop. It is difficult to do and may take many years to get to the truth. And it is easy to go wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXWsv_qPGwU&t=277s
It is not a perfect method, but it pretty much lets you disregard much of what the corporate media purveys.
I will give one example: that people lean toward peace rather than war.
First: People are different in different parts of the world, continents, countries, cities, towns, and even neighborhoods. Some would rather have peace than war, but even that is mostly true only when the proposed war is in their backyard, or literally in their town. The farther the war is, the less people tend to care, one way or another.
Second: People, today’s adults, are mostly products of a well-oiled indoctrination, alienation, conformism machine called “education” and “child care”. Such people don’t have their own opinion – they follow the crowd. That’s the only thing they know how to do and they do it impeccably because, for most of their lives, they were either bullied and ostracized or excommunicated in some way, if they differed from the crowd. You can see this in your place of work: you observe some form of corruption and you choose to stay quiet because that’s what “group think” is all about. If you don’t do as others, you’ll lose your job and the entire industry will turn against you. Fear (of losing the support of the crowd, which ties into fears of abandonment, losing a job, house, family whatever) is what guides these people. All a government has to do is play on fears, and portray their narrative as having “grassroots support” and most of those brain-washed kids in adult bodies will run to not only obey but cheer, anything, a war, a mass murder, torture of children, you name it, they will support it. Just put a nice spin on it, and add a liberal amount of emotion, such as fear, and you got the vast majority on your side.
“in a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives,” Hermann Goering stated “voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
I fundamentally believe that is why America has got off scotch free through all the wars that they have waged on other countries around this world. They simply do not feel the effects of what they have been an accessory to.
The public of course daily is fed the narrative of how great we are in upholding values, which is really absent from their real world. No, the homeless, drug addiction, crimes, infrastructure decay etc.. is not a problem, only the perceived threats from outside forces who must be attacked.
The few that realize the reality is faced with losing everything that they have worked for, as was the case of hundreds. Don’t rock the Titanic!
Those that manage to get further education are met with the mind control specialists who tell you who to hate and who to respect. Looking for a job? You better tow the line. A 70 year old empire that seems to want to disappear tomorrow.
Really?
Russia needs China. China does not “need” Russia?
“The US-led NATO contingent would like to diminish Russia as a regional power so that it can fully concentrate on its primary target, China. Russia would like to diminish NATO and expand its influence throughout Eurasia.
On February 4, Russia and China formally announced a strategic partnership, essentially declaring their intention to remake the world order. This wouldn’t have come as a surprise to the United States because it sits atop the existing world order — precariously — and knows perfectly well about the threat China poses to its hegemony. Russia needs China. China doesn’t need Russia, but finds it useful. This accounts for its “hands off” policy in Ukraine.”
It’s a good question. I usually start with whether they have a reason to lie; if not, then there’s some benefit of the doubt granted. I ask myself what they might be lying about and why. And I assume that every government and most movements are lying about something. It may be by degrees or tactical behavior in service of a larger issue.
But mostly I go on track record. This makes it pretty easy since I know that just about every “leader” in my country is a liar. Many of them are quite proud of it. I don’t believe other national leaders just because they’re against mine. I just know mine are lying, every time.
In another small point in I.F. Stone’s favor is that he wrote a book called The Trial of Socrates. Among team blue congregants Socrates has a holy place and stands as a symbol of what they see themselves as whenever they’re called to account for their lying and malice, the more intelligent one set upon by inferiors. Stone admitted that that’s what he thought he was going to find when he started the book. Only he found that Socrates was a fascistic asshole who was an enemy of democracy and who, while outspoken in mocking Athens’ leaders in most times was conspicuously silent when it was briefly taken over by Sparta and by a group of dictators. He found that Socrates was not treated very unfairly by Athens. Unfortunately, no team blue congregants bother to read that book.
“Russia needs China. China doesn’t need Russia, but finds it useful.”
Had this comment appeared earlier in the article I would have known to stop reading & avoid wasting my time – but to say this demonstrates the elementary lack of education, knowledge & intellect of the commentariat & general journalism in the western world today. Imagine that China does not need Russia. So China does not need Russian military technology because China is so fantastic at manufacturing advanced weaponry. Imagine China does not need minerals, rare metals, not to mention oil & gas from Russia, because China clearly has other sources: only where are these sources? Imagine China does not need Russia as a strategic depth for a potential full scale world war in which China is subject to a ground assault, where would China find its strategic depth – maybe in space, they are doing well in moon exploration. And so on and so on. No need to continue, you can not make a statement like that & be taken seriously, much less be considered intelligent & knowledgeable. And yet you presume to write about world affairs as if you have some understanding to impart to a public out there – when in fact, you know nothing.