Category: Politics

By Caitlin Johnstone

The most common pro-war talking point about Iran is that they massacred tens of thousands of protesters in January of this year -  but what’s funny is that they never cite the same number. Because it’s a completely fictional story, they can just make up any number they want.

In online discourse with empire apologists these past few months I’ve been told that the number of dead protesters is thirty thousand, forty thousand, fifty thousand, sixty thousand, seventy thousand, eighty thousand, ninety thousand, and a hundred thousand. 

They really do seem to just throw out whatever number feels believable in a given moment. I recently saw an exasperated Glenn Greenwald ask an interlocutor on Twitter, “How do you decide when to claim that Iran killed 30,000 protesters, or 45,000, or 70,000? Does it depend on the day of the week or lyrical flow or something else?”

Iranian regime change muppet Reza Pahlavi claimed in January that 50,000 protesters had been massacred by the Iranian government that month.

Notorious Korean propagandist Yeonmi Park put the number at 40,000.

In February, President Trump said it was 32,000. By April he had inflated that number to 45,000, and then later climbed it up to 60,000.

Last month I saw The Australian’s Cameron Stewart swelling the number to 80,000.

In February there was a viral tweet by a propaganda account called The Persian Jewess asserting that “90,000 protesters have been killed to date,” while right wing influencer Nicholas Lissack said it was actually 100,000.

The other day someone commented on a post of mine telling me “Iran killed over 40k protesters standing up for freedom,” and when I dismissed that claim another empire apologist came in and adjusted the number to 30,000.

The reason they can’t settle on a number is because it’s all made up. 

Nobody denies that thousands of people were killed in the January unrest; the Iranian government itself has stated that 3,117 people were killed in the violent clashes, including large numbers of security forces. Given that the US Treasury Secretary has repeatedly admitted that the US deliberately fomented the unrest in Iran, and given that Trump has admitted to sending weapons into the country with the goal of arming the protesters, and given that Trump’s previous secretary of state has suggested that Mossad was intimately involved in the so-called “peaceful protests”, it was inevitable that people were going to be killed.

But the war propagandists couldn’t be content with a few thousand deaths. They needed something more spectacular. Something sensational. So they started circulating thinly-sourced reports by shady individuals claiming the body count was much higher than acknowledged, and then further inflating the numbers in those reports.

And when they did this it made it clear that they’ve been lying about the whole thing, because anyone can see the numbers going all over the place depending on who happens to be speaking and what kind of mood they happen to be in. They made a classic blunder in fiction writing, as explained in a viral post that was doing the rounds on Tumblr a few months ago:

“speculative fiction writers i am going to give you a really urgent piece of advice: don’t say numbers. don’t give your readers any numbers. how heavy is the sword? lots. how old is that city? plenty. how big is the fort? massive. how fast is the spaceship? not very, it’s secondhand.

“the minute you say a number your readers can check your math and you cannot do math better than your most autistic critic. i guarantee. don’t let your readers do any math. when did something happen? awhile ago. how many bullets can that gun fire? trick question, it shoots lasers, and it shoots em hard.

“you are lying to people for fun. if you let them do math at you the lie collapses and it’s no fun anymore.”

If you’re going to write fiction, it’s important not to disrupt the illusion and snap the reader out of the imaginary world you are creating for them. The narrative about tens of thousands of dead Iranian protesters is fiction, and everyone’s waking up to the lies.

Texter av Catelina Johnstone

Utdrag från avdelningen för politik på Contents-sidan:

Den nödvändiga komplexifieringen av Burkeförståelsen

Om Charlie Kirks omprövning

Rockhill och den kompatibla vänstern

Xi på SCO-mötet

Diesen: Intervju med Wagenknecht

Att förstå atlantsystemet

Mer fredsteater?

SSU och NATO

“Rule by the Rich”

By Caitlin Johnstone

It used to be hard to help westerners see the depravity of the US empire. Now it’s just right in everyone’s face with raw genocide footage and insanely evil warmongering of direct economic consequence.

It took a lot of work to help the average westerner understand that NATO aggressions actively provoked the war in Ukraine, or that western interventionism played a major role in the violence and chaos in Syria, or that US economic warfare was largely responsible for the suffering of Cubans and Venezuelans. The murderous savagery of the empire was hidden behind layers of obfuscation, allowing the propagandists to frame the western power structure as a passive witness to the abuses of foreign regimes.

Now the propagandists have very little to work with, so those obfuscations can no longer take place. There’s no way you can spin a school full of children blown up by an American double-tap airstrike as anything other than what it is. There’s only so much narrative manipulation you can exert on raw video footage of a western-backed genocide playing out in full view of the entire world day after day for years. There’s no way to propagandize westerners into believing they want to pay a lot more more money for their fuel and groceries.

I saw former EU parliament member Luis Garicano complaining on Twitter that Trump’s actions are making it look as though leftists have been correct about the US empire this whole time, saying “Many of us, liberal Europeans, spent decades pushing back against the European extreme left’s cartoon version of America (it’s all oil/ imperialism/getting rich at the expense of others) and then one dumb administration walks in and performs the caricature to perfection.”

Garicano’s entire worldview depends on his ability to avoid recognizing the obvious truth: that the so-called “extreme left” has always been correct, and that the empire he worships has always been evil. It’s just having a harder and harder time masking its true nature, because of the very evils it has tried to conceal.

Everything’s becoming more and more revealed. More and more transparent. What was once done solely by whistleblowers, investigative journalists, activists and dissident media is now being done by the empire itself, because there’s only so long you can hide the truth about something so malignant. An empire that is held together by lies, corruption and endless slaughter was never going to remain unseen. The brutality necessary to dominate the planet had to come out into the light eventually.

“May all be revealed” has been my prayer for our world for many years now. That dearly held wish is now being answered, and the truth is looking every bit as ugly as expected.

May all be revealed. May all that is hidden become seen. In the empire. In our governments. In our culture. In our community. In our interpersonal relationships. In ourselves.

All abusiveness ultimately boils down to a lack of clear seeing. Governments are able to abuse people because the dynamics of corruption and tyranny aren’t clearly seen by the public, who would violently revolt if they truly understood what their leaders are doing to them and to their world. Domestic violence and family sexual abuse can only continue when the rest of the community doesn’t see and understand what the abuser is doing. Our own abusive tendencies can only persist for as long as our trauma responses and maladaptive coping mechanisms remain hidden in the shadows of our subconscious mind.

All of these dysfunctional dynamics will lose their durability as we become more and more conscious of what’s really going on, in ourselves and in our world. Things look ugly now because the truth is ugly, but it is only by truth revealing itself that we can move toward health and harmony as a species.

If you’ve ever done deep inner work on your own psychology you have seen this play out in your own personal experience. You can heal your inner woundedness if you can gather up the courage to plunge into your own darkness and face with uncompromising honesty the uncomfortable realities you’ve been avoiding within yourself throughout your entire life  –  but you kept those things unconscious for a reason. They’re scary. They’re painful. They’re shameful. Facing them can feel like the end of the world. Yet it is only by coaxing them into the light of consciousness that they can be fully seen, reconciled, and healed.

The whole world is like that. Humans as a collective cannot fix problems which we don’t clearly see and understand. Our rulers pour so much energy into maintaining influence operations like news media propaganda, Hollywood psyops, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation and government secrecy in order to obstruct our clear seeing and understanding. 

But it’s all coming tumbling out into the cold light of day now. More and more is becoming visible. 

May the lies and obfuscations continue to unravel. May the truth continue to reveal itself.

Texter av Catelina Johnstone

Kirk. Hur de liberala ekonomiska inslagen i hans burkeanism ledde honom till att försvara en samtida höger vars version av denna ekonomiska politik, tvåhundra år efter Burke, var urmodig och med tiden med obestridlig historisk evidens kom att visa sig enbart destruktiv för de viktiga konservativa värden och insikter han i övrigt ville värna. En inbyggd, konstitutiv motsägelse i all anglo-amerikansk konservatism, som ju varken kan eller vill avvisa de förutsättningar och villkor som är givna med den allmänna modernitet inom vars ramar den rör sig.

Men vad Nash kallade den konservativa intellektuella rörelsen i USA under efterkrigstiden såg ändå ut att delvis vara något helt annat och mer: inte bara den gamla vanliga och med kalla kriget förnyade och intensifierade kapitalistiska antikommunismen, utan en djupare, såväl historiskt som metafysiskt förankrad humanistisk-kulturell, moralisk och andlig kritik även av den västerländska liberalismen och dess demokrati, ja i väsentliga avseenden även av just kapitalismen och hela moderniteten. Av den amerikanska imperialismen i Babbitts mening, atombombningarna av Hiroshima och Nagasaki, exempelvis. Försvaret av överordnade värden var reellt och förblir angeläget. Även om Nash också räknade libertarianer, fusionister och neokonservativa till rörelsen, fanns där också en rad åtminstone i anglosfärens sammanhang mer distinkt konservativa profiler som Kirk. Det är det som är det intressanta med den. Det är det som äger bestående värde.

Russell Kirk: Prospects for Conservatives

Viktig intervy med Gabor Maté om sionism, antisemitism och relaterade ämnen, i historiskt perspektiv men också med fokus på dagens situation, på Pascal Lottaz’ kanal Neutrality Studies.

Foto: Gabor Gastonyi

“Felix Marquardt speaks with physician and trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté about anti-Semitism claims, Zionism, colonialism, Gaza, French and European politics, censorship, Israeli dissent, and the push to criminalize anti-Zionism. They also discuss trauma, propaganda, victimhood, media silence, and the wider crisis inside Western power and public debate.”

Long Live Innovationism!

Independently published, 2024

Amazon.com

Publisher’s description:

In this book, Caleb Maupin explains that, while he remains committed to his principles of anti-imperialism and the belief in a rationally organized economy, he no longer identifies as a “communist” nor seeks to align with the Marxist movement. The text explores why the Center for Political Innovation now describes its outlook as “Innovationist” rather than socialist or communist, highlighting where the organization diverges from Marxist-Leninist ideology while still upholding certain core principles. The book offers a thorough critique of the current “Communist” movement in America, arguing that it must be abandoned to effectively pursue anti-imperialist goals. Maupin explains that the Center for Political Innovation seeks to create a government of action that to fights for working families, while opposing the rise of a low-wage police state, and preventing the drive toward a new world war.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Whenever Israel is killing tons of civilians the western media always start churning out articles about “antisemitism” and Jewish feelings.

“Jews Begin to Wonder: Is Anywhere Safe?” blares a recent headline from The Wall Street Journal, subtitled “‘It feels like the 1930s again.’ Hostility against Jews surges in Western countries where they felt safe in recent decades.”

An article for The Atlantic titled “Canada’s Polite Pogrom” bizarrely tries to argue that “tolerance for zealotry” is somehow “purging Jews from public life.”

A Washington Examiner headline proclaims that “Jewish voters feel ‘politically homeless’ as antisemitism rises on both sides.”

A headline for The Telegraph asserts that “Many Jews are sensing frightening echoes of 1930s Germany in 2020s Britain.”

War Criminal Tony Blair writes an article for The Free Press titled “Why the West Fails to Stop Antisemitism”.

Meanwhile, in real life, people are being mercilessly butchered in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine by Israel and its allies. The uglier it gets, the more aggressive the concern-trolling about “antisemitism” becomes.

The Jewish Chronicle has published an article by Maureen Lipman titled “Does the world have any idea of how tired the people of Israel are?”, subtitled “A dear friend told me that his grandchildren have needed to enter their safe room more than 200 times since the current battle began.”

“The BBC and reporters worldwide do not go into the shelters where children are trained to lie on the floor when the sirens go off,” writes Lipman. “Neither do they report on the closure of schools. Most Israeli kids have missed some school every day since Covid. Are the media even aware of the fear of the elderly in Israel?”

Absolutely incredible. She writes as though Israelis are the only people on earth whose country is being bombed. Only Zionists could drop bombs on neighboring populations every single day for years and then go “nobody in the world can imagine what it’s like to live in fear of airstrikes!”

Western news reporters face so much pressure to pad Israel’s image and advance Israeli information interests that the Associated Press just ran an editorial titled “AP is calling Israel’s attack on Lebanon an invasion. What does that mean and why does it matter?” justifying its decision to call what is self-evidently and indisputably an invasion the thing that it is. 

You never saw them do this with Ukraine. You never saw the media holding long internal deliberations about what to label it and then publishing editorials going “We’re going to call this a Russian invasion, we’re pretty sure that’s what this is called, please don’t be mad at us!” That’s how cowed they are by Israel’s supporters, and how much pressure they feel to toe the imperial line no matter what.

At the same time in the Israeli press we’re seeing op-eds like The Jerusalem Post’s “Long-term deradicalization in Gaza faces major hurdles,” which argues explicitly for the total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territory.

The article’s author Martin Sherman dismisses claims that the people of Gaza can be “deradicalized” -  as though the radicalization of Palestinians is the problem, and not the radical political ideology of the people who’ve been waging an extermination campaign upon them. Instead, Sherman argues, everyone must accept the “harsh reality” that only annexation and ethnic cleansing can lead to a lasting peace in the Gaza Strip.

“The only way Israel can ensure how the Gaza Strip will be governed, and who will govern it, is to govern it itself,” writes Sherman. “Moreover, the only way Israel can govern the Gaza Strip without becoming an external oppressor of ‘another people’ is to remove ‘the other people’ from the confines of the Gaza Strip itself.”

“This is not radical right-wing radicalism. It is merely sound and sober political science,” Sherman writes.

If it isn’t right-wing radicalism to advocate the mass purge of a colonized indigenous population from their homeland for being the wrong ethnicity, then right-wing radicalism does not exist. That’s pretty much as right-wing extremist as it gets.

And this is an entirely mainstream Israeli publication.

If anyone on earth needs to be deradicalized, it’s the Israelis and their supporters.

Texter av Catelina Johnstone

Från avdelningen för Politics-kategorin på Contents-sidan, alltså sidan med klickbara rubriker på inlägg med enbart, huvudsakligen eller till väsentlig del mitt eget skrivande, och liksom där med de senaste först eller högst upp:

Trotskijs Stalin

Polska högernationalister förbjuder konservativa partiet

Örebropartiet

Ylva Vinberg och RKP

Mer konservativ revolution

Kapitalismen, fascismen och nationen

Revolutionära Konservativa Internationalen?

Ukraina, Israel och atlantväst

Tradcons

Dissidentpodden

Att offra och förstöra Europa

By Caitlin Johnstone

The US-Israel alliance exists to fix the problems created by its existence.

The US and Israel have sown death and destruction throughout the middle east for generations, creating generation after generation of survivors who hate them and want them gone, and then it cites the existence of people who hate them and want them gone as the reason why the US needs to keep supporting Israel.

The US needs to help Israel harm people or else the people who are mad about being harmed might harm Israelis. It’s circular reasoning all the way through.

Ask an American Israel supporter why it benefits the US to defend Israel, and they’ll tell you it advances American interests in the middle east.

Ask them what American interests it helps advance in the middle east and they’ll tell you it counters the malign influence of Iran and terrorist groups.

Ask them to describe exactly what Iran and the terrorist groups are doing which directly harms American interests, and they’ll tell you they threaten American troops in the region.

Ask them why American troops can’t just leave the region to remove the threat, and they’ll tell you they can’t because that would be abandoning Israel.

Ask them why the US can’t simply abandon Israel, and they’ll tell you it’s an important US ally.

Ask them to explain why Israel is an important US ally, and they’ll tell you it’s because it advances American interests in the middle east.

The official narrative about the importance of the US-Israel alliance is self-justifying circular logic the whole way through, no matter what point you start examining it from.

They’ll tell you the west needs to support the poor innocent nation of Israel because it gets attacked by evildoers who want to destroy it for no reason. In reality Israel is despised by middle eastern populations because the west dropped a brand new ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization and has forced it into being through continuous brute military force ever since, and that violence is all Israel’s opponents are ever responding to. The west created the violence it claims to be countering.

The only argument Israel’s defenders in America make which does not rely on circular reasoning and dishonest obfuscation is “The Bible says we gotta give JDAMs to Benjamin Netanyahu.” But the argument that permanent war is justified because you think that some book of made-up stories commands you to give military support to a nation that’s younger than Dolly Parton does not deserve to be taken seriously.

If they were honest they’d just admit that it benefits the US empire’s ambitions of total global domination to have a ton of military bases and sympathetic partners in the middle east, which is rich in fossil fuels and critical trade routes. If you knew absolutely nothing about the middle east but understood global military conquest you’d be able to tell that west Asia would be a critical point of geostrategic control just by looking at a globe, since it’s the only region on our planet which joins three continents.

But they can’t admit that, because it would be admitting that all this violence and suffering isn’t about promoting the interests of Americans or defending Jews or fighting terrorism or spreading freedom and democracy, and is instead about advancing the interests of a few oligarchs and empire managers with the facilitation of crazy religious beliefs held by Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionists.

So they lie and make up stories about why it makes perfect sense for American soldiers to be headed to Iran right now, and why it was entirely reasonable for the US to send genocide weapons to Israel throughout the incineration of the Gaza Strip. It smells like bullshit because that’s what it is.

Texter av Catelina Johnstone

Katie Halper har hittat en till sån där mänsklig israel, Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, en för mig tidigare okänd professor som bl.a. undervisat vid SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) i London. De tre första av följande klipp är från en längre sändning från 1 mars och det fjärde från en annan sådan från 31 januari, som båda endast är tillgängliga genom Patreon.

Israeli Military Analyst: “Israel Is Chaos Agent of the West”

Israeli anti-Zionist scholar Haim Bresheeth-Zabner argues Israel’s actions go far beyond Gaza, laying out a broader strategy targeting Iran and reshaping the region.

00:00 Israel as the West’s “chaos engine” 01:41 A militarized “vampire nation” living on death 03:21 The Israeli plan to control Western Asia 04:51 Zionists want Iran removed completely 05:41 Cruelty is calculated to break morale 07:31 This isn’t just about Gaza 08:48 Why Zionism is today’s equivalent of Nazism 10:06 Why is Israel still in the UN? 11:27 Ending the normalization of state murder

Haim Bresheeth Zabnner was Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of East London and then a Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He is Filmmaker, photographer, film studies scholar, and historian. His films include “A State of Danger,” a documentary on the first Palestinian Intifada. His books include “An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Force Made a Nation.” Haim is the son of two Holocaust survivors and was raised in Israel. He is a member of Holocaust survivors and Descendents Against the Genocide and a founding member of Jewish Network for Palestine. On November 4, Haim was arrested over a speech he gave at a pro Palestine demonstration outside the residence of Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely in north London.

“Trump CONTROLLED By Israel’s Epstein Button” – Israeli Military Analyst

Israeli anti-Zionist scholar Haim Bresheeth-Zabner explains why he believe Israel’s survival is impossible as a society built on death and how the “Epstein button” gives Netanyahu leverage over Trump.

00:00 Israel can’t survive like this 00:58 Comparing modern Israel to the Nazi regime 02:21 Zionism vs the future of the planet 04:53 Israel built on death 06:04 What is Israel’s Epstein button exactly? 07:41 How Epstein trapped powerful people for leverage 08:34 Netanyahu giving orders to a reluctant Trump 09:16 Trump trapped inside Zionist system 10:51 The most democratic genocide in history 12:23 One nation united in war crimes

“Israel Will Regret War With Iran” – Israeli Military Expert

Israeli anti-Zionist scholar Haim Bresheeth-Zabner warns that a cornered Israel could be the most dangerous nuclear threat on the planet.

00:00 Haim predicted the Iran attack 00:51 Mourning and solidarity with Iran 01:16 Iran never attacked first 02:42 Is Israel prepared for this? 03:28 “Shameful” role of Arab countries as war space 05:32 Negotiations were just a cover for attack 06:13 Israel running out of ammunition 07:32 If Israel is cornered would it use the Samson option? 09:13 Dr. Marandi on the “Epstein button”

“Iran War will be VERY BAD for Israel” – Israeli Military Expert

Katie talks to Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos and historian Haim Bresheeth-Zabner about Iran, Israel, Holocaust Memorial Day about how the Holocaust is being used to justify the genocide in Gaza.

00:00 Israel and USA attacking Iran will be a disaster 02:02 Netanyahu and Trump think war with Iran will bring peace to the world 05:20 This will be very bad for Israel 06:29 Russia and China should have stopped the Palestinian genocide 09:27 Stephen Kapos expresses an optimistic take 10:26 Iran has never attacked a country without provocation 13:23 Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” project 14:36 The shame of the “great” American nation unable to control Israel