One wonders if this war will continue in time for Israel to ceasefire at Trump’s request?
The only good thing about what’s happening in Gaza is that it’s waking westerners up to the fact that everything they’ve been told about their society, their media and their world is a lie. Cracks are appearing in the illusion, and those of us who care about truth, peace and justice need to help draw attention to them. From there, real change becomes a genuine possibility.
Source: Caitlin Johnstone: How the Imperial Media Report on an Israeli Massacre
President Biden is reportedly preparing to begin a new weeks-long bombing campaign in the middle east in retaliation for a drone attack which killed three US troops this past weekend. These strikes are expected to include Iranian targets, tempting the nightmare scenario of a full-blown war with Iran, despite the public acknowledgement that there’s no evidence Iran was behind the drone strike.
Source: Democrats are demented genocidal war sluts – Pearls and Irritations
We are ruled by murderous tyrants. By nuclear-armed thugs who would rather starve civilians to protect the continuation of an active genocide than allow peace to get a word in edgewise. Our world can never know health as long as these monsters remain in charge.
An Israel supporter walks up to a guy at a restaurant, grabs his sandwich, starts eating it.
Israel supporter: [Walks up to a guy at a restaurant, grabs his sandwich, starts eating it.]
Guy: Hey!
Israel supporter: What?
Guy: That’s my sandwich!
Israel supporter [still eating]: Sandwich? What sandwich?
Guy: Right there! You’re eating it right now!
Israel supporter: No I’m not.
Source: The Israel supporter and the sandwich – Pearls and Irritations
A peaceful resolution isn’t impossible, it just isn’t desired. It isn’t desired because Israel has long sought to further expel Palestinians from their land, and the “war on Hamas” provides cover for that goal. The claim that Israel has no other choice but to snuff out tens of thousands of lives in the name of fighting Hamas is patently false; it doesn’t need to, it just wants to. Ultimately their argument is “We need to kill all those people because we really really want to,” which is not a valid defense.
Israeli forces reportedly drove bulldozers over hospital patients in tents and buried people alive. Palestinian officials are seeking an urgent probe into allegations of an IDF bulldozer attack on patients at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, killing some twenty people.
That’s one of those things where even after everything that’s happened you still look at it and go “I must be reading this wrong.” You’d be considered a monster if you killed livestock in that way.
I will not look away, because these lives matter and I have a duty to honor them.
I will not look away, because that would be giving the bastards what they want.
I will not look away, because even in my powerlessness to help I still have the power to bear witness.
I will not look away, for the same reason that when my parents are dying I will hold their hand and stay by their bedside until they are gone.
Even if we can’t stop this, at the very least we can give them our seeing.
At the very least we owe them that.
If I were going to commit a genocide, I’d make sure to kill as many women and children as possible to eliminate the future generations of the people I was trying to wipe out. Come to think of it, I guess I’d basically do what Israel is doing in Gaza.
Source: Caitlin Johnstone: If I Were Going To Commit Genocide
They’re dropping bombs on a concentration camp full of kids. Even shitlibs and pseudo-leftists who get every other foreign policy issue wrong are managing to get this one right, it’s that obvious. Anyone getting this issue wrong can be permanently dismissed without any real loss.
Source: The moral complexities of bombing a concentration camp full of children – Pearls and Irritations
I don’t mention it often but I actually have a degree in journalism. I graduated with distinction from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2003, and while it would be another 13 years before I’d ever put my degree to any use, the experience played a massive role in forming my opinions about the mainstream press.
Source: The news has nothing to do with newsworthiness – Pearls and Irritations
One of the worst mistakes you can make when formulating your understanding of the world is to begin with the assumption that the truest and most accurate position must lie somewhere near the center of the two major political perspectives you see laid out all around you.
It’s a mistake not only because assuming that the center position must be the best one is a type of fallacious reasoning known as the middle ground fallacy (the correct position between “Drink a gallon of bleach daily for good health” and “Drink zero bleach daily for good health” is not “Drink half a gallon of bleach daily for good health”); it’s also a mistake because the entire framing arises from a situation that has been artificially engineered by the powerful.
After his department was caught pushing the ouster of the democratically elected Imran Khan, the U.S. secretary of state is now praising Pakistan’s preparations for “free and fair elections.”
A U.S. warship has been ushered into service in Sydney. The ship is called the U.S.S. Canberra to honor the military union of the United States and Australia, and, if that’s still too subtle for you, it has a literal star-spangled kangaroo affixed to its side.
If you watch western news media with a critical eye you eventually notice how their reporting consistently aligns with the interests of the U.S.-centralized empire, in almost the same way you’d expect them to if they were government-run propaganda outlets.
Source: Caitlin Johnstone: 15 Reasons Why Media Don’t Do Journalism
So that’s what we’re up against. There’s a failure to appreciate just how pervasive and powerful the empire’s propaganda machine is, even among those who are very critical of empire, because propaganda in our society is like water for fish — we’re swimming in it constantly, so we don’t see it. You have to step way, way back and begin examining our situation from its most basic foundations to get any perspective on how all-encompassing it really is.
Finding your way out of the propaganda matrix takes a lot of diligent work, tons of curiosity, the humility to admit you’ve been completely wrong about everything, and more than a little plain dumb luck. But if you keep hacking away at it eventually you get there, and then you can help others get there too. It’s a hard slog, but if our chains are psychological that means they’re ultimately only made of dream stuff. All that needs to happen is for enough of us to wake up.
Source: Most propaganda looks nothing like this – Pearls and Irritations
It doesn’t get any less self-reliant and sovereign than just handing over your nation’s military to a more powerful nation with a “There ya go mate, use it however you reckon’s fair.” You really could not come up with a more egregious abdication of national sovereignty if you tried.
And yet Australia’s prime minister babbles about sovereignty and self-reliance while doing exactly that.
Just annex Australia and make it the 51st state already. At least that way Australians would get a pretend vote in America’s fake elections.
One might argue the separation of the State and Media exists but from the Voters
It’s a safe bet the U.S. would be a completely different country if separation of media and state and separation of corporation and state were enshrined like the separation of church and state is, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
And in fact, we do not have to do it in our day, either. We don’t have to do it in any day. The only reason we’re being pushed toward a profoundly dangerous conflict with China is because it’s the only way for Western imperialists to maintain their hegemonic control of this planet, but their hegemonic control of this planet has brought us to a point of endlessly escalating nuclear brinkmanship and looming ecosystemic collapse. It hasn’t exactly been working out great, is what I am saying.
Source: Caitlin Johnstone: The West’s Long Plan to Crush China
One of the many, many signs that Australia is nothing more than a US military and intelligence asset is the way its government has consistently refused to intervene to protect Australian citizen Julian Assange from political persecution at the hands of the US empire.
Source: Australia isn’t a real nation, it’s a US military base with kangaroos – Pearls and Irritations
Here are the top seven reasons why I’m very glad Joe Biden won that election instead of the evil, sinister Donald Trump.
we’re getting a world where we’re being hammered harder and harder with propaganda encouraging us to accept global conflict as an unavoidable reality, where politicians who voice even the mildest support for diplomacy are shouted down and demonized until they bow to the gods of war, where nuclear brinkmanship is framed as safety and de-escalation is branded as reckless endangerment.
olddogthoughts 
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