Caitlin Johnstone

Rogue Journalist and Independent
Truth Teller

“White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s task force has reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system to give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what, and whether hospitals can accommodate them, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions,” reads a recent article by Politico, adding, “But the prospect of compiling a national database of potentially sensitive health information has prompted concerns about its impact on civil liberties well after the coronavirus threat recedes, with some critics comparing it to the Patriot Act enacted after the 9/11 attacks.”

“Mass surveillance methods could save lives around the world, permitting authorities to track and curb the spread of the novel coronavirus with speed and accuracy not possible during prior pandemics,” The Intercept‘s Sam Biddle wrote last week, adding, “There’s a glaring problem: We’ve heard all this before. After the September 11 attacks, Americans were told that greater monitoring and data sharing would allow the state to stop terrorism before it started, leading Congress to grant unprecedented surveillance powers that often failed to preempt much of anything. The persistence and expansion of this spying in the nearly two decades since, and the abuses exposed by Snowden and others, remind us that emergency powers can outlive their emergencies.”

As we discussed recently, it’s an established fact that power structures will seize upon opportunities to roll out oppressive authoritarian agendas under the pretense of protecting ordinary people, when in reality they’d been working on advancing those agendas since long before the crisis being offered as the reason for them. It happened with 9/11, and we may be certain that it is happening now.

The reason for this is simple: the powerful are afraid of the public. They always have been. For as long as there has been government power, there has been the fear that the people will realize the power of their numbers and overthrow the government that is in power. And understandably so; it has happened many times throughout history.

Leaders are made vastly more fearful and skittish by the fact that this dissatisfaction with the current world order just happens to be occurring at a time when that world order is already at its most tenuous point in decades, with a surging China poised to surpass the US as a superpower on the world stage and collaborating with Russia and other unabsorbed nations to create a truly multipolar world. It becomes much more difficult to control dominant narratives in a way that can effectively manufacture consent for the aggression that will be necessary to freeze and reverse this shift away from unipolar domination when the denizens of that unipolar empire are out in the streets demanding its downfall.

And so of course internet censorship is being ramped up as well, with the mass media demanding that plutocrat-owned tech companies do more to combat coronavirus “disinformation” and these government-allied tech giants all too happy to oblige. In a recent escalation in this ongoing trend, Youtube changed its rules and began deleting videos accordingly after David Icke said there is a connection between coronavirus and 5G in a controversial video on that platform. Youtube is owned by Google, which has been a military-intelligence contractor with ties to the CIA and NSA since its very inception; you don’t have to like Icke or his views to be repulsed by the idea of this institution manipulating human communication with an increasingly iron fist.

The escalations in internet censorship and the escalations in surveillance are both directed at a last-ditch effort to control the masses before control is lost forever, and neither are intended to be rolled back when the threat of the virus is over. People are now off the streets, with their communications being restricted and the devices they carry in their pockets being monitored with more and more intrusiveness. There are of course some good faith actors who legitimately want to protect people from the virus, just as there were some good faith actors who wanted to protect people from terrorism after 9/11, but where there is power and fear of the public there will be an agenda to reel in the freedom of the masses.

Journalist Jonathan Cook said it best when he wrote, “Our leaders are terrified. Not of the virus – of us.”

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Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, Soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

Tags: AUTHORITARIANISM - CENSORSHIP - CORONAVIRUS - COVID-19 - SNOWDEN - SURVEILLANCE - YELLOW VESTS

Some conspiracy-type people say the world is messed up because we’re ruled by illuminati or reptilians, but I’m way more out there than that: I say our entire society is made of imaginary thought stories with little relation to objective reality, and some clever manipulators have figured out how to exploit this.

I say even what we take to be our very self is an ultimately illusory narrative construct made up of a disconnected network of thought, language and memories; look hard for a solid “me” entity and you’ll never find one. Same is true of most things people value in this world.

Some people lack healthy empathy centers, and as such they don’t use language the way the rest of us do: to understand and connect with each other. Instead, they use it to get things they want. They figured out how to trade stories for material goods, narrative for actual wealth. You can trade narratives about love for sex, narratives about God for tithes, narratives about terrorists or Russians or Democrats/Republicans for votes, narratives about the economy for wealth, narratives about government for real power, etc. Manipulators learn this and exploit it.

Manipulators without empathy rise to the top, because they’re willing to do whatever it takes and manipulate whoever they need to in order to get there. This problem is further compounded by the fact that wealth itself kills empathy. In a system where sociopaths are rewarded with wealth, and where wealth equals power, we naturally find ourselves ruled by sociopaths. They manipulate our faulty perceptions of objective reality to amass wealth and power, which they use to grab more.

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For as long as there has been language and power there have been narratives circulating to advantage the powerful. Much of our so-called “culture” is just ancient power-serving proto-propaganda deliberately interwoven into our ancestors’ worldviews.

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Make and keep these two promises to any manipulator in your life and they’ll lose all power over you forever:

“I promise you that I will never again believe anything you tell me about yourself.”

“I promise you that I will never again believe anything you tell me about me.”

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Man China’s gonna be so surprised when it finds out it interfered in the November election.

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It would have been perfectly sane and normal for a novel virus to surface in China and the world to go “Uh-oh, let’s take care of people and help one another see our species through this!” instead of ramping up propaganda campaigns and fanning the flames of cold war hysteria.

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Media-driven anti-China hysteria is not about Covid-19, nor about racism, nor even really about anti-communism. It is ultimately, like most things, about power. The US empire wants global hegemony and the rising China doesn’t want to give it to them, so a confrontation is coming.

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America’s attempts to undermine Russia are inseparable from its attempts to undermine China; it’s literally the same agenda. A Pentagon white paper published last year titled “Russian Strategic Intentions” mentions the word “China” 108 times. Some noteworthy excerpts:

* The world system, and American influence in it, would be completely upended if Moscow and Beijing aligned more closely.”

* “The allies’ goal should be deterrence. At the same time, the US should bilaterally engage Russia to peel them away from China’s orbit.”

* “He also encourages the development of the US’s ‘capability to effectively foster distrust and unease between the Russia Federation and China.’”

* “Along with Beijing, Moscow seeks a multipolar world in which US hegemony comes to an end. As Alexander Lukin recently pointed out, the ‘common ideal of a multipolar world [has] played a significant role in the rapprochement between Russia and China.’”

* “Russia and China were explicitly mentioned in the 2018 National Defense Strategy as the great powers with which the US is in competition. Both Russia and China have come a long way since the 1990s, and the ‘friendship’ that emerged in the immediate post-Tiananmen period and continued to grow over the years now today appears to be one of the strongest bilateral alliances on the planet.”

* “Together, Russia’s tentacles on its former Soviet neighbors and Moscow’s strategic alliance with Beijing in pursuit of a multipolar world (in which the US is no longer the global hegemon) form the two main pillars upon which Putin’s grand strategy rests. All other aspects of its foreign policy behavior can be traced back to this dual-pronged grand strategy.”

These Pentagon strategists are basically seen pleading for US leaders to try to court either Russia or China to peel them apart, but the decision has been made to aggressively escalate against them both instead, likely because they know that both Beijing and Moscow are aware if they let the other fall then they’re next. This has driven them closer together.

“That will not be the case,” Ryabkov said. “People will bypass, in literal terms. And people will find ways how to defend themselves, how to protect themselves, how to guarantee themselves against any emergencies if someone comes up at the White House or whatever, at the Treasury, at the State, and says ‘Hey guys, now we should stop what is going on in Country X, and let’s squeeze them out.’ And this country sits on the dollar. So they will be done the moment those ideas will be pronounced. So China, Russia and others, we create alternatives that we will most probably continue using not just national currencies, but baskets of currencies, currencies of third countries, other modern barter schemes.”

“We will use ways that will diminish the role of dollar and US banking system with all these risks of assets and transactions being arrested, being stopped,” Ryabkov concluded.

And indeed, this is what has been happening. That, right there, is the real reason you’re being sold Russia and China hysteria today.

Anyone who saw through the anti-Russia bullshit but cheerleads for the anti-China bullshit is a moron, as is anyone who sees through the anti-China bullshit but cheerleads for the anti-Russia bullshit. It’s the same bullshit. Don’t be a moron. Insist on detente, peace, collaboration, and a respect for sovereignty.

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The first draft of the Patriot Act was rolled out a week after 9/11. Does anyone really believe they gathered all the necessary information and wrote hundreds of pages in one week from scratch? Does anyone believe there aren’t pre-planned authoritarian agendas being rolled out now?

Powerful people are with absolute certainty conspiring to exploit our current situation, and there are a multitude of theories about the specifics of how that might be happening. Calling these “conspiracy theories” is not an argument, it’s just saying what’s happening.

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As new technology will soon enable coronavirus-detecting drones to patrol Australian skies, I predict a much older technology will also soon be making a resurgence:

I hope you Bernie Bros are aware that if you refuse to vote for the demented racist authoritarian rapist with whom you share no common ideological ground, it’s the same as voting for the other demented racist authoritarian rapist with whom you share no common ideological ground.

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If Team Biden wants votes the least they could do is tell you who his handlers will be if he gets elected. Just a simple introduction, “Hi I’m Ted, I’ll be making all the president’s fiscal policy decisions while he watches Matlock” etc.

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Most political arguments are basically just someone saying “Hey maybe our society doesn’t have to be sociopathic and crazy” and then someone else calling them unreasonable.

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There are such large-scale shifts happening in such an unclear information environment right now. Those of us who are dedicated to truth will probably have to revise our understanding of what’s going on in the world in some very significant ways within a few months.

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To minimize infection the UK is granting early release to all non-violent, non-Julian Assange prisoners.

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America has the Second Amendment because a well-armed populace is a nation’s best defense against tyranny, like in case a class of plutocrats hijacks the government and starts stealing ever-increasing amounts of wealth and power away from the citizenry or something.

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Almost everything in the news is empty/irrelevant narrative. The only relevant information is where the money is moving, where the resources are moving, where the weapons are moving, and where the people are moving. Everything else is narrative meant to justify, manipulate or distract from those movements.

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There are two kinds of journalists: those who present themselves as unbiased reporters of objective factual reality, and those who are honest.

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Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, Soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

Tags: CAITLIN JOHNSTONE - CHINA - CONSPIRACY - MANIPULATORS - NARRATIVE - MATRIX - RUSSIA

Bernie Sanders has suspended his presidential primary run, leaving the 2020 race a simple contest between former Vice President Doe Truden and President Jonald Bimp. The time is now for Sanders supporters to lay aside the many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many many differences they have with Truden to avoid the re-election of someone with whom they have many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many many differences.

It’s time to tell it like it is, Bernie Bros: if you refuse to vote for Truden just because he’s a demented right-wing racist authoritarian warmongering corporate whore who has been credibly accused of rape and with whom you share no common ideological ground, that’s the same as voting for the other demented right-wing racist authoritarian warmongering corporate whore who has been credibly accused of rape and with whom you share no common ideological ground. Now do you really want that on your conscience?

I hear some Berners arguing that they see it as the exact opposite: that a vote for Truden is the same as a vote for Bimp, because the ideological distance between a leftist and Truden is orders of magnitude greater than the ideological difference between Truden and Bimp. But nothing could be further from the truth! For example, both Truden and Bimp have completely different names, with completely different letters in them. Don’t believe me? Look at their names for yourself. They’re not even spelled the same.

I hear others arguing that if refusing to vote for Truden is the same as voting for Bimp, then isn’t refusing to vote for Bimp the same as voting for Truden? And the answer to that is hush. You shut your filthy mouth.

If Bernie Bros decide to stay home, or vote third party, or vote down-ballot only, or assemble a political movement that stands a chance at actually changing things, or donning yellow vests and taking to the streets, or getting the word out to the public that they’re all living a lie and the mass media is actually a highly sophisticated propaganda operation designed to lull them into supporting the status quo in fake election after fake election where the game is rigged and the plutocrats own both parties, that’s the same as voting for Jonald Bimp, and why would you want that when you could have a president from a completely different party, who has a completely different name?

Time to grow up and get realistic, Bernie Bros. Now sit down and clap for our puppet show.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world.” Preventing the rise of China (and its loose network of other unabsorbed allies like Russia) has been a lasting agenda of the western world for generations, and the continuation of this agenda has set the world on a trajectory toward aggressive confrontation. The US has been surrounding China with military bases, many of them nuclear-armed, in preparation for a confrontation that it sees as ultimately inevitable, since China has no interest in being absorbed into the US power alliance and the US has no interest in allowing China to surpass it as a superpower.

What this means for us ordinary people is that we have found ourselves smashed between steadily increasing escalations between two nuclear-armed nations and their nuclear-armed allies hurtling toward a confrontation which benefits none of us in the slightest, while propagandists spoon feed us narratives about why this is something we should eventually support.

It doesn’t have to be this way. China doesn’t have to be the “sleeping giant” that we all fear. We don’t have to live in a world where nuclear-armed governments duel for planetary domination without our consent or permission and roll the dice on nuclear armageddon with greater and greater frequency each passing day. We don’t have to live in a world where the emergence of a new disease which kills human beings is seen as a tool to be exploited in a propaganda war instead of a problem to be solved together. We could all just get along and work together to create a better world for each other and for our ecosystem.

People will say this is unrealistic and unreasonable, but unrealistic and unreasonable as opposed to what? A few idiots waving armageddon weapons at each other because the other guys are standing on the wrong segment of dirt? A bunch of sociopaths pushing for the advancement of an omnicidal, ecocidal paradigm in service of an imaginary monetary system? Sounds like they’re the unreasonable and unrealistic ones to me.

Napoleon Bonaparte said China is a sleeping giant, but I know a bigger one. It’s all of us ordinary people who are sick of being crushed, exploited and imperiled by a few psychos who only care about power. All of us around the world, regardless of what dirt we stand on or what color our skin is or what political party they tell us we belong to. When we awaken, baby, that’s when the earth will shake.

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Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, Soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

Tags: AMERICA - CHINA - COLD WAR - NUCLEAR - POLITICS - PROPAGANDA - UNIPOLARITY

The Freedom Cycle