Wednesday, May 4, 2022

The Most Joe Biden Thing Ever: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article:

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A hostile military alliance expanding to Russia’s borders isn’t a provocation, sending weapons to be used by CIA-trained fighters backed by US intelligence isn’t a proxy war, those Nazis aren’t Nazis, you’re being censored for your own good, trust the media, the government is your friend.

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It’s a good thing Trump lost because otherwise Roe v Wade would be on the chopping block and immigrants would still be getting mistreated and the Iran deal would still be dead and the military budget would keep inflating. That bastard would probably have us on the brink of World War 3 by now.

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Joe Biden doing a live infomercial for Javelin missiles while everyone who voted for him worries about women’s reproductive rights is the most Joe Biden thing that has ever happened.

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Once you see that both mainstream US parties are part of a single oligarchic power structure it stops looking like a battle between opposing parties and looks more like one giant bully standing in front of voters saying “Let me hit you with my left fist or I’ll hit you with my right.”

What is the correct response when that happens? What’s the correct response when a mainstream political party keeps communicating that they’ll never do anything to help you but you need to support them anyway or they’ll let their friends in the other mainstream political party take away your rights? Is it to say “Ah well the left fist won’t hurt as much so that’s clearly the lesser evil,” or is it to take on an oppositional relationship with the tyrant who keeps punching you with both fists year after year?

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Learning about what’s wrong with the world is like watching a marathon of shitty Scooby Doo episodes from the sixties, except it’s way more repetitive and predictable, and the villain under the mask is always the US empire.

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Western media keep shrieking about Russia’s nuclear threats as though it was some kind of secret that Russia will use nukes if it feels its existence is threatened, and as though western powers wouldn’t nuke Russia for the same reason.

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The only argument against the observation that the US/NATO/Ukraine power structure could easily have prevented this war with a few low-cost diplomatic concessions is “Actually Putin would have invaded anyway because he’s a cartoon supervillain who does evil things for no reason.”

War is all the worst things that can happen to a person multiplied by the population you target. When you refuse diplomacy, you are condemning whole cities to unimaginable suffering.

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Nobody actually believes “tankies” are dangerous, some people just have a deep psychological need for the US empire’s fiercest critics to be wrong because it’s more comfortable than considering the possibility that everything you’ve been taught about the world is a lie.

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There’s a lot in the news right now but none of it is as important as the fact that we’re being shoved toward nuclear war for no good reason by a few idiots who want to rule the world.

Again, the real risk of nuclear war is not that any side will deliberately start one but that the explicit agreement in “Mutually Assured Destruction” will be set into motion by a nuke being deployed by accident, miscommunication, miscalculation or malfunction as things escalate. During the last cold war such accidental nuclear exchanges came all too close to happening multiple times. The more tense the nuclear standoff gets, the greater the likelihood of such an event occurring:

We survived the last cold war not by skill or by competence, but by sheer dumb luck. There’s no logical reason to assume we’ll get lucky again.

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So yeah, just so we’re clear, the US empire is rapidly restructuring the systems people look to for information about the world in order to ensure iron-fisted control over our dominant narratives while it scrambles to subvert its rivals in cold war maneuverings and secure unipolar planetary hegemony.

The primary purpose of expanding censorship and propaganda on subjects like Ukraine, Russia, Covid, extremism etc is not to control the narrative about those subjects specifically, but to expand and normalize censorship and propaganda. Narrative control is an end in itself, and it’s the absolute highest priority because all the empire’s power is built upon it.

Few seem to understand that the oligarchic empire seeks narrative control as an end in itself. They’re not always necessarily increasing censorship and propaganda about a given topic because of that topic; it’s often mainly because they want to normalize and expand censorship and propaganda. Certainly there are narratives right here and now that the empire would rather we believe, but that’s of secondary strategic importance to ensuring ongoing and continually expanding control over all narratives around the world into the future.

Not all powerful people support the same narratives, but all powerful people seek narrative control. Narrative control is power. Any manipulator understands this, from the most powerful oligarchs right down to the narcissistic gossip queen at the office.

Any manipulator of any level spends an extraordinary amount of energy working to dominate the stories people tell about them and about others. This is because they know humans are storytelling creatures, and if you can control the stories they tell, you control the humans. This is most especially true of the globe-spanning power structure loosely centralized around the United States; its narrative control via corporate news media, Hollywood and Silicon Valley is completely unparalleled and historically unprecedented.

Censorship, propaganda, and Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation are just different aspects of narrative control. Nobody does this as well as the US-centralized empire and its managers. Nobody ever has.

_______________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. 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. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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“How Far We’ve Come”: Austin in the Streets Against Attacks on Abortion Access

Report on demonstration in support or reproductive freedom and autonomy in so-called Austin, Texas.

The memory of 2020 is still around and led to a pretty inspiring demo in Austin, TX. Crowds protesting the ascendance of patriarchal state denials of abortion access, have shown their boldness, and openness to creativity and confrontation. If the movement can produce new targets, confront the police, and disrupt the infrastructure of the anti-abortion movement, they may produce a crisis to which the State has to respond.

Attacks on abortion access have come early and often to Texas, but people have organized against state sanctions on abortion, with multiple abortion funds offering aid to people seeking them. A mass movement in 2013 shut down the state legislative session requiring centers offering abortions to jump through legal and medical loopholes to continue offering them. The legislation eventually passed, decimating service provision in the state but only after thousands of people were shoved out of the Capital Building by State Cops. Unfortunately, in 2013 outside demonstrators thanked the cops for “protecting” their “rights.” This evenings demo, in 2022, showed how far we’ve come in Austin.

After long marches from the Capital to the Federal Courthouse in downtown, Austin Police began to get more aggressive. Crowd members speculated that they were frustrated, having known of the march to the courthouse but not expecting people to continue their unpermitted march after that point. At the end of the march, heading back to the capital, APD was tailing, driving slow behind several demonstrators walking with canes. Eventually this put them more than a block behind the bulk of marchers, and they got frustrated, driving quickly around the marchers with canes and leaving them to fend off approaching traffic on their own.

Time for speeches again at the Capital, including a appeal to vote (receiving cheers and jeers from the crowd) and a lonely Maoist leading 30% of the crowd in a call for “revolution.” After the Maoist was chided for using “women” to the exclusion of trans people who are also being denied abortion care, the crowd took off south down Congress Ave.

This time, heading south, the crowd felt bold and took up all four lanes of traffic, two of those against traffic. This had become part of crowd intelligence during the George Floyd Uprising in 2020. The cops were frustrated that their access to the front of the march had been curtailed and a cop, came on the loudspeaker telling people to move to the side. This voice sounded like a woman’s, perhaps the only female cop doing crowd control. Folks with the megaphones started to tell the cops that the crowd was not taking orders from them, and middle fingers went up.

Cop cars then sped through where the crowd was thinnest, and approached the front. Two brutal arrests happened minutes later, with APD tackling several people and throwing them headfirst into the asphalt. Folks in the crowd surged forward, but were not able to make the un-arrest. A squad car that had been mostly surrounded, sped backwards to escape the crowd. Chants of “Fuck the Police” and “Let Them Go!” went up, and at least one water bottle went through the air at the remaining cops on foot. These cops retreated to their cars and continued following the march, blaring the dispersal order, but unable to enforce it.

Notably there were no bike cops at the march, notorious for surging and kettling to do crowd control. There did not seem to be any reinforcements waiting in the wings either, though after this a surveillance helicopter was spotted, circling overhead. The crowd kept going, in defiance of 20 minutes of dispersal order, blaring loudly behind us. The crowd seemed energized by this conflict and the tone changed towards FTP as people recognized that every struggle will have to go through the police. Attempted police barricades were ignored and people moved freely through them, in an assessment that the cops did not have the power to stop them.

The crowd eventually wound up back at the Capital and there was a brief speakout before the lonely Maoist started yelling at the crowd about revolution again (whatever that meant to them). The crowd seemed like they still had some energy, but the main folks with the megaphones weened, ready to pack it in.

Another target circulated, a “crisis pregnancy center” located in the heart of the University neighborhood of West Campus. The Trotter House at 2717 Rio Grande takes advantage of desperate college youth, directing them explicitly away from abortion access and offering propaganda to dissuade them from seeking healthcare elsewhere. The remaining crowd was receptive to this as a destination, and were hopeful that we would be able to pick up more youth as we marched through the student neighborhood to get there. A sizeable chunk left to head to Trotter House and after some more dispersal orders and supportive cheers from student bars, we arrived.

The gate around the property was open, and the crowd filtered onto the property, their banner was removed and replaced with signs from the march, a box of chalk appeared, and we left the property adorned with slogans. Perhaps a small group of more prepared people can take things to the next level, or a community group could call for a protest during open hours. As the marchers said, “We Don’t Get Justice, They Don’t Get Peace.”

Overall the crowd, particularly during the latter half of the evening, seemed open to experimentation and confrontation. Debates on the police, which have kept years of street movements circling the drain, appeared to have been blown through in the aftermath of the 2020 uprising. Youth were encouraging others to take up all lanes of traffic and faced no push-back. It helped that there was little to no established NGO presence, or that those that attended were not interested in guiding the march. This may change in coming days as the rallies become less spontaneous and managed, but if the youth who have come up in recent years can stay savvy and creative, they may keep the initiative and continue the drive to open confrontation with the State.


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Why Fascists, Authoritarians, and Theocrats Are the Enemies of Reproductive Freedom

Both a report from an autonomous intervention and mobilization in so-called Asheville, North Carolina and a copy of a text that was distributed.

On the evening of Tuesday, May 3rd, hundreds of community members in so-called Asheville, NC turned out for an emergency rally in response to the US Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision to overturn Roe v Wade. Mainstream media coverage of the rally can be found here.

News from Asheville: On Authoritarians & Abortions

Promotional materials for the event, organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), featured almost identical language to other party events taking place across the country. The trans-exclusionary framing of a “war on women” immediately generated objections on the local chapter’s social media, and during a public exchange on Instagram, one PSL organizer suggested that trans people are “collateral damage” and cautioned that being “inclusive” would “come at the expense of de-centering women from their struggle” (an alarmingly ill-informed assertion that reflects a lack of engagement with the theory or practice of reproductive justice). The comments were later removed, but in response, a trans-inclusive group of local organizations—including Mountain Area Abortion Doula Collective, We Keep Us Safe, OYE Collective, Asheville for Justice, Asheville Socialist Rifle Association, Hellbender, and Firestorm Books—chose to organize their own “Abortion Resource & Info Popup.” This popup took place in parallel to the PSL rally in downtown Asheville’s Pritchard Park.

The size of the crowd ultimately made the two events indistinguishable and popup participants took the rally mic multiple times without incident. But a growing number of Asheville activists are expressing frustration with the space taken up by PSL and the organization’s history of asserting leadership in areas where it has no expertise and doesn’t do community organizing. To educate rally attendees about the PSL, anarchists distributed a flyer titled “Why Fascists, Authoritarians, and Theocrats Are the Enemies of Reproductive Freedom.” During and after the event we were able to hand materials directly to individuals who were being recruited, individuals who likely had no idea PSL is a Stalinist organization that operates in ways antithetical to liberation.

As we distributed our fliers we asked rally attendees if they were aware that Stalin had banned abortion—most were not. Asked the same question, one PSL member replied simply, “that’s unfortunate.”

Why Fascists, Authoritarians, and Theocrats Are the Enemies of Reproductive Freedom

Within hours of the publication of a US Supreme Court decision overturning constitutional protections for abortion, protests were announced in cities across the so-called United States. Many of these calls to action were issued by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a neo-Stalinist political organization infamous for both its abhorrent positions and its attempts to hijack grassroots social movements.* So what is the relationship between authoritarianism and reproductive freedom?

Although much of the “abortion debate” in the United States is framed around religiosity, legislative attempts to compel childbirth have always been driven by economics. Governments view pregnancy not as an individual choice but as the mechanism by which society produces future workers and taxpayers. When declining birth rates led Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to ban abortion in 1936, he was clear: compulsory motherhood was “a great and honorable duty” that was “not a private affair but one of great social importance.”

Such overt talk of individual sacrifice might not play well to a US audience, but anxiety over declining birth rates (and particularly white birth rates) is the quiet part that politicians occasionally say out loud. In the mid-1970s, as the birth rate began to drop, a new coalition emerged at the crossroads of white supremacy, patriarchy, and Christianity. Just as Soviet planners understood that the nation’s economic capacity was tied to population, capitalists saw a reduced and aging citizenry as a threat to their profits—and ability to pursue imperialist wars abroad. “Family values,” then, is not so much about morality as it is about the central role of the heterosexual family in reproducing a workforce and imprinting the values of the patriarchal state, be it capitalist or socialist.

The Fight for Reproductive Freedom is a Fight between our Desire for Bodily Autonomy and the State’s Desire for Control

Domestic abortion bans aim to promote the economic well-being of elites at the expense of survival for working-class people, particularly BIPOC women and trans people who have less access to wealth and greater vulnerability to legal consequences (consequences that are all but absent for elites themselves). Whether for private enrichment or national ambition, we must reject attacks on our most foundational freedom—the freedom to make choices about our own bodies.

Governments can’t grant us bodily autonomy, they can only take it away. No politician or party is qualified for leadership in this struggle, least of all an organization like PSL that has proven itself ready to ally with the most reactionary and patriarchal political elements. Like their fascist and theocratic counterparts, authoritarians on the Left are no friend to our freedom.

Despite Justice Alito’s claim that “abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions,” abortion care predates the settler-colonial state he serves and will persist long after it has crumbled. Effective action requires us to know this history, and differentiate between those embodying its legacy and those who seek to exploit it. Across the country, grassroots abortion funds and mutual aid organizations are already fighting back and creating infrastructure for a post-Roe reality. We hope you’ll join them!

Mountain Area Abortion Doula Collective – mtnabortiondoula.co
National Network of Abortion Funds – abortionfunds.org
Abortion Resource Kit – tinyurl.com/AbortionResourceKit
Abortion Pills Online – plancpills.org
Shout Your Abortion – shoutyourabortion.com

* The PSL consistently sides with “anti-imperialist” authoritarians against movements for workers’ power or democratic rights. In recent years, this has included support for Bashar al-Assad, Kim Jong-un, and Vladimir Putin. It is well documented that party leaders have engaged in genocide denial, collaborated with fascists, and conspired to cover up sexual abuse within their party.

Download PDF Flyer Here


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Protests Erupt Across the US As Supreme Court Moves to Overturn Roe vs Wade

photo: @VPS_Reports

Thousands rallied and hit the streets on Tuesday, after a draft report was leaked by Politico from the US Supreme Court stating, “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision . . . Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” This ruling is likely to be part of a larger attack on a slew of civil rights protected under the “right to privacy,” which includes everything from access to contraceptives, gay marriage, an end to so-called anti-sodomy laws, and the separation of church and State.

As one report wrote:

Beyond the right to an abortion, a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe will open the door for a frontal assault on a whole series of established democratic rights known as “unenumerated rights” because they were not explicitly mentioned in the text of the Constitution, which was ratified in 1788. Alito’s position, that there is no right to an abortion because it was not in the original Bill of Rights, can be applied just as well to every other right established over the course of the development of modern society, including the right to a public defender, the abolition of anti-miscegenation laws, bans on mandatory prayer in schools, and the right to gay marriage.

If Roe v Wade is overturned or drastically attacked, poor and working-class people, especially in communities of color – people already impacted the most under the pandemic and the subsequent economic fallout, will be hurt the hardest. Such a reality will force many to seek out unsafe and potentially deadly methods such as many have been forced to do in the past. States, such as Texas, which have pushed for the criminalization of both those getting an abortion and providers, will create an increased atmosphere of potential far-Right violence, state repression, and overall fear over yet another aspect of daily life.

As Natasha Lennard wrote in The Intercept:

More women and pregnant people will suffer and die; poor people of color will be affected in disproportionate numbers…The blame lies squarely with the powerful Christian right, aided and abetted by cynical fascoid right-wingers, who have set their sights on pregnant peoples’ bodily autonomy for decades. They will not respond to our rage and protests. They will push on with their authoritarian agenda. Despite claims to states’ rights in the leaked opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, there is clear evidence that if Republicans retake Congress in November, they will seek to pass a federal abortion ban.

This leak comes hot on the heels of a flurry of anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion bills across the US that have attacked and criminalized reproductive freedom, healthcare, and the LGBTQ community. Democrats have predictably responded with calls to donate and vote in the 2022 midterms while also refusing to amend the filibuster and enshrine abortion rights into law. Moreover, as some states may potentially move to protect abortion access and those coming into the state to receive services while others push to criminalize them, we continue to hurdle towards a situation much like what existed before the civil war.

As Lennard wrote:

26 states are ready with laws to enact abortion bans when Roe is undone and are passing ever more elaborate ways to criminalize abortions. Over a dozen of these states recently passed bans in their legislatures; other laws predate Roe but remain on the books and could snap back into effect. At present, only 16 states and Washington, D.C., have laws that actively protect the right to abortion.

Major interstate court battles along these lines are set to erupt after Roe — from the policing of women and other pregnant peoples’ interstate travel, to the functioning of telehealth services that can prescribe abortion pills across state lines, to the criminalization of those who share resources and material support to aid abortions.

The push to criminalize reproductive health comes amidst a backdrop of a massive transfer of wealth and record breaking corporate profits following two years of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst rising inflation, skyrocketing rents, the ratcheting up of repression at home and a push to war abroad along with a growing climate crisis, the elites have doubled down on a push towards the Right by embracing a culture war which further demonizes a host of manufactured threats in an effort to distract the population from its real enemies.

And if and when Roe vs Wade is repealed, according to the Washington Post:

Leading antiabortion groups and their allies in Congress have been meeting behind the scenes to plan a national strategy that would kick in if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights this summer, including a push for a strict nationwide ban on the procedure if Republicans retake power in Washington.

The task ahead for those taking to the streets in defense of reproductive autonomy is several fold. First, we can’t allow the bureaucratic Left groups to march people in circles and into the ground – killing any chance of momentum, direct action, and self-organization generalizing and actually being able to confront power and capital. Second, we’re going to have to build, organize, and spread a grassroots culture and infrastructure of mutual aid and the sharing of resources in the face of crisis. Similar movements and projects in the recent past already point to what’s possible.

We must also work to not only point out the failure of the State to defend and protect freedom and autonomy, but also the pitfalls of both an electoral strategy in protecting gains made by mass movements and “resistance” led and contained by the non-profit industrial complex, directly tied to the Democratic Party. We must do this while also not losing faith in our own ability to resist state repression and self-organize to meet our own needs.

As CrimethInc. wrote:

This catastrophe compels us to confront the law itself as something hostile to us. If you are a person who might ever need an abortion—or if you care about a person who might—or if you believe that people deserve bodily self-determination, the state is your enemy. This system has given a handful of individuals, including at least two unrepentant sexual predators, the power to block abortion access to millions of people across the country. This is consistent with the explicitly misogynist and anti-trans agenda of the Republican Party and the systematic complicity of the Democratic Party.

What follows is a roundup of recent actions in defense of reproductive freedom and autonomy across the so-called US. Many cities saw some of the largest protests since the George Floyd rebellion. Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas saw rowdy demonstrations and Los Angeles, California saw police attacking demonstrators as de-arrests were made. On the University of North Texas campus, students successfully pushed out a group of Proud Boys who were acting as security for a group of self-described “Christian fascists.”

Did something go down in your town and want to report on it? Submit a report!

Pacific Northwest

SouthWest

Central

MidWest

SouthEast

NorthEast


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Tuesday, May 3, 2022

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)


Watch on YouTube here: Leaked U.S. Supreme Court Abortion Draft Decision Incites Protests
Via Christian Gasper
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A Weird, Stupid Dystopia

Listen to a reading of this article:

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The last few days in the United States have seen a parade of wealthy freaks fellating each other’s egos and preening for the cameras in outlandish garb while ordinary Americans suffer more and more.

The weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner saw a gaggle of media celebrities congregate to congratulate one another on what a great job they’ve been doing bravely telling the truth and holding the most powerful government on earth to account. The host, Trevor Noah of The Daily Show, gushed with enthusiasm about how much freedom the press have in America to say things the powerful don’t like.

“As we sit in this room tonight, people, I really hope you all remember what the real purpose of this evening is,” Noah said. “Yes, it’s fun. Yes, we dress nice. Yes, the people eat, they drink, we have fun. But the reason we’re here is to honor and celebrate the fourth estates and what you stand for — what you stand for — an additional check and balance that holds power to account and gives voice to those who otherwise wouldn’t have one.”

“And if you ever begin to doubt your responsibilities, if you ever begin to doubt how meaningful it is, look no further than what’s happening in Ukraine,” said Noah. “Look at what’s happening there. Journalists are risking and even losing their lives to show the world what’s really happening. You realize how amazing it is. In America, you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth even if it makes people in power uncomfortable, even if it makes your viewers or your readers uncomfortable. You understand how amazing that is? I stood here tonight and I made fun of the president of the United States, and I’m going to be fine. I am going to be fine, right? Do you really understand what a blessing it is?”

Of course there are people who’ve said things that US presidents don’t like who are not in fact fine. Julian Assange continues to waste away in Belmarsh Prison as the US government continues its efforts to extradite him to he can become the first publisher ever tried under the Espionage Act. Edward Snowden, an American, remains in exile because one US president after another continues to refuse to pardon his heroic whistleblowing about the sinister surveillance practices of the US intelligence cartel. Daniel Hale, also an American, sits in prison for exposing the depravity of America’s monstrous drone program.

Trevor Noah did not mention these people, or the many others who’ve been persecuted, silenced, imprisoned and killed for saying things the powerful individuals who govern the US don’t approve of, because as a member of the mainstream media his job is not to inform but to propagandize.

Far from providing “an additional check and balance that holds power to account and gives voice to those who otherwise wouldn’t have one” as Noah claims, the people in his audience on Saturday night are tasked with manipulating public thought in facilitation of the interests of the powerful. The mainstream news media in America, and throughout all the so-called free democracies of the western world, are propaganda institutions whose first and foremost job is to manufacture consent for oligarchy and empire.

Which is why the President of the United States, when he took the podium that night, had nothing but friendly words for the mainstream press.

“What’s clear, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, is that you, the free press, matter more than you ever did in the last century,” Biden said. “We’ve all seen the courage of Ukrainian people because of the courage of American reporters in this room, and your colleagues across the world who are on the ground taking their lives in their own hands.”

This past weekend also saw a friendly gathering of brave fourth estate truth warriors and political and government operatives of the US empire at a party hosted by the billionaire owner of the neocon war propaganda rag The Atlantic.

Politico reports:

David and Katherine Bradley and Laurene Powell Jobs hosted a dinner at the Bradleys’ home. SPOTTED: Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Cabinet Secretary Evan Ryan, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, CIA Director Bill Burns, press secretary Jen Psaki, Deputy A.G. Lisa Monaco, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-U.S. Virgin Islands), homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Jeffrey Goldberg, Nick Thompson, Peter Lattman, Anne Applebaum, Russell Berman, Franklin Foer, David Frum, Elaine Godfrey, Adam Harris, Mark Leibovich, Jeff Dufour, Heather Kuldell, Kevin Baron, José Andrés, Enes Kanter, Mitch Landrieu, Dafna Linzer, Rachel Martin, Judy Woodruff, Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer, Jonathan Capehart, Katty Kay, Steve and Jean Case, John Dickerson and Jen Palmieri.

Yep, when you see a shady basketball player/empire propagandist fraternizing with the CIA Director while surrounded by media celebrities and government insiders at a party hosted by a media-owning plutocrat, you know you’re in a country where power is held to account. Right, Trevor?

The orgy of embarrassment was capped off by the 2022 Met Gala, a big weird dystopian parade of rich freaks dressed like Hunger Games aristocracy and laughing in the face of everyone who can’t afford to live.

An honest Met Gala dress would have a corset made from the bones of Yemeni children, draped with a cloth of stolen gold and lithium spun by the tiny hands of child slaves, with a full-length train that leached oil and blood wherever it went.

This while ordinary Americans struggle just to survive. While American women appear to be on the precipice of losing their reproductive sovereignty. While money is poured into a proxy war which threatens to escalate into a conflict that could easily end all life on earth.

This is your dying empire, America. This is your end-stage capitalism. This is your dystopia, in all its weird, phony, stupid glory.

It is horrifying. The longer you look at it, the creepier it gets.

Breathe it all in, folks.

We’re in for a hell of a ride.

_____________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. 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. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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Lavkenche Mapuche Resistance Claims Sabotage Action in Wallmapu

Mapuche fighters of the Lavkenche Mapuche Resistance (RML) organization, claimed an action against the sector of Los Rios, leaving 33 vehicles destroyed. The original in Spanish was published by Radio Kurruf.

Lavkenche Mapuche Resistance declares:

As Lavkenche Mapuche Resistance (RML) we claim responsibility for the sabotage action in the sector of Los Ríos, district of Los Álamos, which left 33 vehicles destroyed by a column of 40 weichave (fighters) of our organization.

With this action, we vindicate our Mapuche political prisoners kidnapped in different prisons installed in Wallmapu.

This action is a response to the damage caused to the Trongol River by the company Tramsa, led by Juan Ramírez. The river’s waters have been affected for years by their capitalist machines, destroying the flora and fauna of this zone of Nahuelbuta, and irreversibly affecting Mapuche life and the poor Chilean people who live there.

Attacking this site meant attacking Forestal Arauco of the Angelinni group, whose company responds to this extractivist chain. Tramsa has always responded to the interests of Forestal Arauco, for years making roads for its operations and destroying our Mapu. It has dried up the tributaries of the rivers, changing the course of the water, and killing with it Mapuche itrovil mongen (biodiversity) and the life of the people who depend on the Trongol River.

To the Winka (white) government of Boric, we make it clear that capitalist development is not compatible with Mapuche life. The forestry companies have an end date in Wallmapu because we will continue expelling them. The rivers are free, as we are, the Mapuche.

We salute the different Mapuche sister organizations, the Lov and communities in resistance, that embrace the weichan. We invite them to embrace unity based in the Mapuche yamuwun (respect) and kelluwun (reciprocity), understanding our differences but capable of agreeing on ties and principles that permit us to advance in the recuperation of our territory and Mapuche national reconstruction.

We demand that the government immediately transfer Esteban Carrera and Yerko Maril to the Lebu prison.

We demand that all charges are dropped in Mapuche cases, and that all Mapuche political prisoners are freed.

We demand nullity, a fair trial, and freedom for the Mapuche political prisoners of Elicura.

We support the Mapuche communities in resistance of the Gulf of Arauco in their struggle against the wind farm that Forestal Arauco seeks to install in their territory.

Wallmapu advances toward liberation.

Lavkenche Mapuche Resistance (RML)

Lavkenmapu-Nahuelbuta

Franja Lavkenche

April 29, 2022


by IGD Worldwide via It's Going Down
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