In 1961 Eisenhower gave a farewell speech warning about the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex. This post sums up what happened from 1961 to today, and explains why we are where we are now. by FreedomUltd in AskALeftist

[–]FreedomUltd[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In case u are American and wondering wtf is going on - here is a quick summary

In 1961 Eisenhower gave a farewell speech warning about the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex.

He knew they could get so powerful they completely submit the will of the American people and the globe.

He was right.

The Military Industrial Complex quickly grew into the Military congressional media intelligence industrial complex completely pre occupied with subjugating most of the globe.

When JFK became president he meant to deal with the problem by getting rid of the CIA.

By this time the CIA was already responsible for wrecking havoc in the global south - particularly South America and West Asia.

All for the benefit of US capitalists and backed by the military power of the MIC.

Instead JFK was assassinated and the enemies of America got their way.

When the Soviet Union collapsed they totally lost it!

US started talking about full spectrum dominance and the end of history.

As far as US leaders were concerned they had won and could subjugate the entire planet if they wanted to.

And they did want to!

After enjoying full spectrum dominance for about 20 years the architects decided it was time to weaken Russia and maybe divide it up into easily exploitable sections like they did the rest of the planet.

Only this time Russia said not today satan!

U see the neocons had gotten cocky and hadn’t done their homework.

They thought they could quickly collapse Russias economy but that failed. Instead it weakened the Europeans.

So Russia sick of the Wests lies and deceit pivots East to the economic giant that is China.

A colossal foreign policy failure on the part of the neocons.

So now Russia is stronger than ever. Able to stop the US’s worse impulses in Syria and West Asia in general.

While the neocons where handing out sanctions like skittles, nations where looking for alternatives to the Wests system. They found it in BRICS.

Now the major powers are in an economic alliance. And they r more powerful than the Western alliance.

This threatens dollars role as the reserve currency of the world which the US benefits from. Illegally confiscating peoples reserves didn’t help either.

So here we r. US has been utterly horrid to absolutely everyone on the planet

Treating only the golden billion (Western citizens (as humans) the rest of the globe could be kept poor and wretched via bombs or debt traps for the benefit of the golden billion.

Specifically the 1%.

So now Russia is the strongest military on the planet.

China is everyone’s most important trade partner.

And Iran is now the undisputed giant of West Asia.

US has 3 enemies on 3 continents and it isn’t in the position to defeat a single one of them militarily.

Yes! Not even Iran! Not without bringing a world of pain on itself anyway.

So what is a cruel and dying empire to do?

Well thats where we r now.

In order to get away with all of this the US had to completely destroy the anti war movement.

But right now that is our best shot. Revive the anti war movement. Amplify the voices of the anti imperialists.

The populists are racists and will lead to problems at home. Though their nationalism is well timed and why they r so popular.

But I write this because the US is in deep shit and the truth is being hidden from u.

It’s important that we all wake up because a scorched earth policy is not impossible.

The Neocons are stuck and they have no reverse gear.

I don't spend my time attacking the US war machine because I have any special love for Hamas, Iran, Russia, China, or any other power. I do it because the US empire is quantifiably the most destructive and tyrannical force on this planet, by an extremely massive margin. by FreedomUltd in AskALeftist

[–]FreedomUltd[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In my own words -

I'm sorry that the USA doesn't offer us something better. I'm sorry that it has become beyond obvious that it is not the force for freedom and democracy it promised it was. I couldn't be more sorry that it has proven itself to be unquestionably worse than Hamas, Iran, Russia, and China.

The US (along with most of the West) is currently waging war against humanity. Choosing a side in that war should be easy.

The USA doesn't necessarily need to be destroyed completely... but it cannot win a war against humanity. Again, easy.

If it wins, we lose all options. Multipolar > unipolar. Yet again, easy.

What Caitlin said:

I don't spend my time attacking the US war machine because I have any special love for Hamas, Iran, Russia, China, or any other power. I do it because the US empire is quantifiably the most destructive and tyrannical force on this planet, by an extremely massive margin.

No other power has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions and displacing them by the tens of millions. No other power is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, starving people around the world with blockades and economic sanctions, staging proxy wars, color revolutions and coups all over the earth, and working to destabilize and destroy any nation anywhere on this planet who dares to defy its dictates.

Only the US empire is doing this. No other power comes anywhere remotely close.

That's as murderous and tyrannical as it gets. Propaganda-addled empire simps sometimes try to act like it's strange and suspicious that I spend all my time criticizing the US war machine, when what's actually strange and suspicious is that everyone else does not.

It's like we're going, "Oh my god, civilians are being massacred on a daily basis by a racist apartheid regime!" And they're going, "Oh yeah well you know what we should really be worried about? Sauron, the Dark Lord." by FreedomUltd in AskALeftist

[–]FreedomUltd[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's insane how we're talking about actual children getting killed by the thousands, and they're talking about an entirely fictional "antisemitism" crisis that exists nowhere outside the imagination. It's like responding to warnings of another holocaust by babbling about Sauron.

It's like we're going, "Oh my god, civilians are being massacred on a daily basis by a racist apartheid regime!" And they're going, "Oh yeah well you know what we should really be worried about? Sauron, the Dark Lord."

You'd be like "What?? I'm talking about a real thing that's actually happening to actual real-life human beings! You're talking about a work of fiction by JRR Tolkien."

"Oh so you're just going to dismiss Sauron's plan to overrun Middle Earth with orcish hordes as soon as he recovers the One Ring?" they'd say. "What are you, some kind of Mordor lover?"

"What the hell are you babbling about??" you'd protest. "We're talking about actual, physical people being ripped apart by actual, physical military explosives, and you're talking about some imaginary fantasy land like it's a real thing! How are we supposed to address this actual real-life problem when you only want to talk about something that has no existence outside the realm of the imagination?"

"I guess you just hate hobbits," they'd say.

I mean, how would you even argue with someone like this? How do you debate someone about a real-life problem of unparalleled urgency when all they want to talk about is a completely made-up crisis that absolutely is not happening on this material plane? It's the most frustrating thing in the world.

If too many people wake up from the propaganda matrix it won't have any effect any longer, and without their propaganda our rulers cannot rule, because that's the entire control system upon which their rule is premised. by FreedomUltd in AskALeftist

[–]FreedomUltd[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The imperial murder machine has many strengths, but it also has weaknesses.

The globe-spanning power structure that is loosely centralized around Washington has invested in perception management more heavily than any other empire in history — that's what you're seeing with all the mass media propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, oligarch-funded think tanks, and mainstream culture manufacturing in New York and Hollywood. By using mass-scale psychological manipulation via the most sophisticated perception management system that has ever existed, the US-centralized empire is able to manufacture support for its agendas at home and abroad while dissuading the public from protest and revolution.

This is an immense strength, but it's also a weakness. Its so-called "soft power" narrative manipulation systems allow for an immense amount of control while still creating the illusion of freedom and democracy, thereby suppressing public desire to overthrow what would otherwise be perceived as a murderous and exploitative oppressor, but its heavy reliance on perception management means it can't afford to be seen in too negative a light without causing widespread distrust in its propaganda machine.

If too many people realize that their government is psychopathic and their news media and other indoctrination systems have been lying to them about it all their lives, the empire will lose the ability to propagandize them, because propaganda only works if you don't know it's happening to you. If too many people wake up from the propaganda matrix it won't have any effect any longer, and without their propaganda our rulers cannot rule, because that's the entire control system upon which their rule is premised.

The empire therefore needs to tread very carefully when public opinion starts to turn against it, and retreat whenever public trust in imperial institutions would be compromised too severely for the empire to continue on a given path. It simply cannot afford to wake the public up from the propaganda-induced coma it has spent generations lulling them into.

What this means is that the empire can be pressured into retreat simply by spreading enough awareness and sowing enough opposition to its depraved actions. If enough eyes open to the truth of what's happening in Gaza for example, there's no amount of geostrategic middle east agendas or Israel lobby funding that can outweigh the empire's existential need to prevent a mass-scale awakening from the mainstream imperial worldview and a transition into widespread revolutionary consciousness. The empire would necessarily need to step back before things reached that point, because its very existence depends on it.

The empire has been walking that line this entire time. Whenever you see it doing things like stepping back from invading Cuba or Syria or refraining from going as authoritarian as it could go on a given issue, it isn't because the empire suddenly evolved a conscience. It's because it hasn't yet succeeded in manufacturing public consent for such agendas, and imposing them before the public has been manipulated into accepting them would snap them out of the matrix of psychological control. They work so hard to manufacture public consent because they absolutely need it.

So the empire can be pressured on Gaza and on every other issue if enough people put enough energy into spreading awareness of the truth. That's why the empire managers are freaking out about this new protest movement right now; they understand the absolutely fundamental role that narrative control plays in the existence of imperial power structures, and how much they stand to lose if it is taken away.

And hopefully it will be. Hopefully one day, maybe even soon, we will see people begin unplugging their brains from the matrix of imperial mind control at so widespread a scale that no amount of retreating and backpedaling can save the empire from the people collectively deciding they'll have none of its murderous tyranny anymore. From there it will lose its allies and assets abroad, it will succumb to revolutionary sentiments at home, and the people can start working toward building a healthy world together.

UN General Assembly (not the Security Council, so no veto possible) will vote on a resolution that grants Palestine almost the full rights and privileges of a member "EVEN if the UNSC fails to admit Palestine". Designed to bypass US veto, virtually guaranteed to be approved. by FreedomUltd in AskALeftist

[–]FreedomUltd[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Israeli UN ambassador has already said that “if it is approved, I expect the United States to completely stop funding the U.N. and its institutions, in accordance with American law."

Alan Dershowitz vows he will engage in "massive offensive lawfare" against allegedly "anti-Semitic" student protesters. He threatens to have their dorm rooms taken away, take their cars and boomboxes, and "bankrupt" them. He says this is necessary to "deter" the return of Hitler by FreedomUltd in AskALeftist

[–]FreedomUltd[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Why is he making himself look like one lawyer determined to do what he can, when he's part of the establishment machine that is already doing these things?

CNN Compares Campus Protesters To Nazis In Stunning Propaganda Segment - “Again, what you just saw is 2024 in Los Angeles. Hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe, and I do not say that lightly. The fear among Jews in this country is palpable right now.” - Dana Bash by FreedomUltd in AskALeftist

[–]FreedomUltd[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

CNN Compares Campus Protesters To Nazis In Stunning Propaganda Segment

In one of the most appalling propaganda segments I have ever seen in my life, CNN’s Dana Bash launched into a fire-and-brimstone sermon on Wednesday comparing anti-genocide university protesters to the brownshirts of Nazi Germany — doing so in defense of a fascistic police crackdown against those very same protesters.

After playing a clip of Zionist activist Eli Tsives theatrically claiming campus protesters at UCLA were blocking him from his classroom, Bash solemnly said, “Again, what you just saw is 2024 in Los Angeles. Hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe, and I do not say that lightly. The fear among Jews in this country is palpable right now.”

According to journalist Jeremy Lindenfeld — who happens to be Jewish — Tsives wasn’t even being denied access to his classroom, but was only being denied access to the protesters’ encampment which he’d conveniently decided he wanted to walk through in order to get there. Dana Bash makes no mention of this, framing this instead as a terrifying attack on Jews which could soon see them being loaded onto trains headed for extermination camps.

Bash played a clip of New York City Mayor Eric Adams saying “There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I’m not going to wait until it’s done,” as though preventing the spread of radical political opinions is something a mayor is elected to do in the United States.

“They’re calling for a ceasefire,” says Bash. “Well, there was a ceasefire on October 6, the day before Hamas terrorists brutally murdered more than a thousand people inside Israel and took hundreds more as hostages.”

This is a brazen propagandistic lie. Israeli forces had been routinely murdering Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in the weeks and months preceding the October 7 attack. On October 6 2023, The New Arab published an article titled “2023 is ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinian children say human rights groups,” citing the Defence of Children International — Palestine along with other sources.

“This hour, I’ll speak to an American Israeli family whose son is still held captive by Hamas since that horrifying day, that brought us to this moment,” said Bash, adding, “You don’t hear the pro-Palestinian protesters talking about that. We will.”

Ah yes, such brave, up-punching journalistic integrity for you to talk about the Israeli hostages, Dana. Not like we haven’t been hearing about them every single day from the imperial media for the last seven months while orders of magnitude more Palestinians are butchered by US-supplied war machinery.

“At UCLA, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups were attacking each other, hurling all kinds of objects, a wood pallet, fireworks, parking cones, even a scooter,” Bash says.

Another lie. The footage going around makes it abundantly clear the violence is being consistently instigated by Zionist counter-protesters, with videos of pro-Israel thugs launching fireworks and hurling bottles of chemicals into the encampment, ganging up on a protester on the ground and beating him with sticks, and tearing down parts of the encampment while screaming “Second Nakba!”

Later on in the same segment of Bash’s own show, CNN’s Stephanie Elam contradicts Bash’s both-sides lie by commenting on some of this footage, saying, “And you can see that in the video, it looked like people from this side were breaking down the encampment from the pro-Palestinian side last night, throwing objects in there. As well as it looks like some sort of maybe pepper spray or something coming from the other side over here.”

It should here be noted that Dana Bash gets her surname from her first husband Jeremy Bash, who went on to serve as the chief of staff for both the CIA and the Pentagon. The woman is pure swamp.

It should also be noted that CNN’s own staff recently leaked to The Guardian that they have been pressured to report on the Gaza onslaught with an extreme pro-Israel bias, attributing the pressure to the network’s new CEO Mark Thompson.

I for one think it’s great that the imperial media are becoming so transparently obvious about their propagandistic nature, and I hope they keep exposing mainstream westerners to the fact that the primary purpose of these outlets is to promote the information interests of the US and its allies.

Propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you, so hopefully they keep going mask-off like this for everyone to see.

Re: The softening and backtracking by many Zionists who are calling out the situation in Gaza “sickening, horrifying, unthinkable” now and disassociating from an “extremist government” that they apparently never supported. As though we don’t have receipts (lol). by FreedomUltd in AskALeftist

[–]FreedomUltd[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I’m a researcher, so I spend more time asking questions and listening than speaking. I have engaged with hundreds of Zionists in the last 10 years and most in the last 7 months. Every single one of them were filled with vengeful rage after Oct 7 and most are now indicating an interesting level of satisfaction and softening.

The number of deaths seems to have satisfied a “lesson” taught to Palestinians. Hence, the softening and backtracking by many Zionists who are calling out the situation in Gaza “sickening, horrifying, unthinkable” now and disassociating from an “extremist government” that they apparently never supported. As though we don’t have receipts (lol).

Netanyahu was always meant to take the fall. In fact, his personality type of insatiable greed, toxic ego, and unhinged leadership is what Zionism needed, so it becomes easier to throw him under the bus at the right time.

Don’t be fooled by their newfound morality. Zionists will do anything to protect the Zionist project because colonizers are only loyal to the colony, not its people.

The likes of @amyschumer spent months fuelling the flames of “war” and genocidal revenge in the guise of “Israel has the right to defend itself.” If it was about self defence, why change your stance now? Is there no longer a threat of “terrorism”?

Simple logic would suggest there’d be even more threat of Palestinians becoming “radicalized” after Israel murdered their children. But this was never about safety, it was always about power.

More worrisome is the fact that every Zionist I have ever spoken to has revealed a level of hatred towards Palestinians that I have never seen in ANY community (hate crimes is my area).

You see, Zionism has entire families, communities, a nation convinced of their racial religious superiority, even little old ladies doing interfaith work in 🇨🇦 are willing to defend the human rights of anyone, BUT Palestinians 😉.

The Zionists I have engaged with have never shown hatred towards me as a Muslim, just towards Palestinians. In fact, they have tried hard to convince me that they (🇵🇸) don’t deserve me, suggesting I am more like them (🇮🇱) - “civilized” and “better”.

This is NOT a religious war. This is NOT a war on terror. This is very simply a colonial land grab. And the only way they can convince themselves they have the right to eliminate those existing on that land before them is to treat them as sub-human and less deserving of life.

And what better way to convince the world to look away than to lean on the “war on terror” and make it about those “inherently violent Muslims” at a time when hating Muslims is the only acceptable hate entrenched in policy and discourse.