JOHNSTONE

The Pentagon should feature centrally on the US flag. It should be on the coins and on all the bills, and it should appear next to the name of every American in the Olympics. When anyone sees a five-sided polygon, they should immediately think "United States of America".

Reading by Tim Foley.

To be clear, when I talk about how both mainstream political parties are used to advance the same agendas I am not saying that they are the same. I like to compare them to the jab and the cross in boxing; they're two different punches thrown from different hands, and they're used in completely different ways. But they're both being used by the same boxer, and they're both being used to knock you on your ass.

The cross, which happens to come from the right hand for an orthodox fighter, is a damaging knockout punch. But in boxing it's generally worthless on its own; it might be useful in a pub brawl, but against a skilled boxer you need to set it up with the jab.

The jab — the left hand for an orthodox fighter — is a swift, stunning blow. You don't see many knockouts with it, but you see it land with great frequency because it's thrown by the hand that's closest to the other fighter. And the beauty of the jab is that it can be used to set up the cross — the famed "one-two", the most common combination in boxing.

That's how the two mainstream parties work together to knock the public on their ass. The "left" party sets them up, and then comes the crushing knockout blow. Democrats fight off all efforts to move the US to the left when they're in power, then Republicans come in and move it even further to the right. Democrats refuse to codify Roe V Wade, and Republicans come in to kill it. Democrats "reluctantly" give Bush war powers, he uses it to invade Iraq. Democrats inch up the brinkmanship against China, Republicans do whatever horrifying thing they're going to do when they take power.

Reading by Tim Foley.

In a recent CNN interview of US presidential candidate Cornel West, former CIA intern Anderson Cooper argued that the US invasion of Iraq was morally superior to the Russian attack on the city of Grozny.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Most propaganda isn't of the Yeonmi Park "communists are so poor that they have to eat mud and get out of the train and push it because there's no electricity" variety. It's subtle. It's these tiny little adjustments where US allies are reported on more sympathetically than US enemies, claims made by unaligned governments are reported with much more scrutiny and skepticism than aligned governments, and the sins which take place within the US-centralized power structure are overlooked while those outside it are amplified and condemned.

Reading by Tim Foley.

"Let the market decide" really means let the manipulators decide, because the markets are dominated by those who excel at manipulating. We're taught that letting the market decide means letting supply and demand take its natural course, as though we're talking about ocean tides or seasons or something, but in reality both supply and demand are manipulated constantly with extreme aggression. Manipulating the supply of diamonds. Manipulating the supply of housing. Manipulating the supply of oil. Manipulating people into wanting things they'd never thought to want before through advertising. Manipulating women into feeling bad about their bodies so they'll buy your beauty products. Manipulating people into paying $2000 for a $20 bag using branding. Manipulating people into buying Listerine by inventing the word "halitosis" and convincing them to be worried about it. Manipulating people into believing Beanie Babies were prized collectors items when they were just standard stuffed toys.

Capitalism gives us a civilization that is dominated by trickery. Those who get to the top are those who succeed in tricking as many people as possible. Tricking them into paying more. Tricking them into buying your product and not someone else's. Tricking people who actually produce something of value into making you their middle man who gets paid despite producing nothing. Tricking competitors into making the wrong move. Tricking people into asking their doctor about your extremely lucrative pharmaceutical product. Tricking people into buying or selling certain stocks or cryptocurrencies or NFTs. Tricking people by using the legal system and your team of lawyers who understand it better than normal people do. Tricking people into letting you privatize their own drinking water and then selling it back to them in bottles.

It's a scam competition. Whoever scams the best wins. How can you save the planet from destruction by human behavior when all of human behavior is driven by a bizarre scam competition? And the biggest scam of all is the narrative that this system is totally working and is entirely sustainable. That's the overarching scam holding all the other scams together.

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

Julian Assange is a journalist who's been imprisoned for doing journalism on war crimes, by an empire that claims to defend journalists and oppose war crimes.

Assange and his persecution expose the giant plot holes in every story the western power structure tells about itself. About its love of free speech and the free press. About its opposition to tyranny. About its wars and why it wages them.

Reading by Tim Foley.

I saw a video clip of Julian Assange speaking in London in 2010 where he made an important observation while explaining the philosophy behind his work with WikiLeaks. He said that all our political theories are to some extent "bankrupt" in our current situation, because our institutions are so shrouded in secrecy that we can't even know what's really going on in the world.

"We can all write about our political issues, we can all push for particular things we believe in, we can all have particular brands of politics, but I say actually it's all bankrupt," Assange said. "And the reason it's all bankrupt, and all current political theories are bankrupt and particular lines of political thought, is because actually we don't know what the hell is going on. And until we know the basic structures of our institutions — how they operate in practice, these titanic organizations, how they behave inside, not just through stories but through vast amounts of internal documentations — until we know that, how can we possibly make a diagnosis? How can we set the direction to go until we know where we are? We don't even have a map of where we are. So our first task is to build up a sort of intellectual heritage that describes where we are. And once we know where we are, then we have a hope of setting course for a different direction. Until then, I think all political theories — to greater and lesser extents of course — are bankrupt."

Reading by Tim Foley.

Our entire civilization is driven by the pursuit of profit, and to keep turning large profits your corporation needs to continually grow, and your corporation can't continually grow unless you're manufacturing a crappy product that needs to be continually replaced or supplemented, and you can't manufacture those replacements and supplementations without harvesting them from the flesh of a dying world.

Reading by Tim Foley.

And it really is interesting how almost everyone seems to be pretty much okay with corporations in the media and Silicon Valley interfering in a US election like this. Everyone shrieked their lungs out about the (now wholly discredited) narrative that Russian bots had influenced the US election with tweets and Facebook memes, but immensely wealthy corporations with universes more influence manipulating the way people think and vote is perfectly fine?

Reading by Tim Foley.

The US won WW2 and then immediately plunged into the Cold War. The US won the Cold War and then immediately set to work destroying the Middle East. The US destroyed the Middle East and then immediately started another cold war in preparation for another world war. The US is war.

A normal country wages war with the goal of getting back to peacetime. The US wages war with the goal of getting to the next war.

Reading by Tim Foley.