With censorship soaring and real reporting all but taboo, the major dailies have just one important function left: being a political signaling system The New Kremlinology: Reading the New York Times by Matt Taibbi Substack July 12, 2022 The New York Times has declared the President’s age acceptable for discussion. On Monday, the New York Times ran More
"If asked, Biden, Putin, Xi, and high-ranking officials everywhere would undoubtedly insist that addressing climate change remains an important concern. But let’s face it, their number-one priority is now to mobilize their societies for a long-term struggle against their geopolitical rivals."
"The insistence is upon the United States exercising global primacy of continuing to be number one, a position we've become accustomed to having ever since the end of World War II. I think that conviction remains and is taken seriously, so it's less about a mission to spread democracy [and] it's more about a conviction of history having chosen the United States uniquely to preside over the future of humankind."
"The Democratic Party’s hypocrisy and duplicity is the fertilizer for Christian fascism. Its exclusive focus on the culture wars and identity politics at the expense of economic, political, and social justice fueled a right-wing backlash and stoked the bigotry, racism, and sexism it sought to curtail."
"Whatever else is true, the claim with which we are bombarded by the corporate press — the two parties agree on nothing; they are constantly at each other's throats; they have radically different views of the world — is patently untrue, at least when it comes time for the U.S. to join in new wars. Typically, what we see in such situations is what we are seeing now: the establishment wings of both parties are in complete lockstep unity, always breathlessly supporting the new proposed U.S. role in any new war, eager to empty the coffers of the U.S. Treasury and transfer it to the weapons industry while their constituents suffer."
President Biden has asked the U.S. Congress to give $33 billion more. It will overwhelmingly go to military weapons, presumably, some humanitarian aid.
We talk about Orwell, Animal Farm, Newspeak and the ministry of information. How Orwell's writings are still relevant for today. Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent is accurate to this day. We briefly discuss the propaganda model and how the media is used in order to manufacture public consent for wars.
The war in Ukraine is intimately linked to the real existential crisis we face – the climate crisis. The latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warns that greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, and be nearly halved this decade, to thwart global catastrophe….Triggered by war in Ukraine, soaring energy prices have pushed the US and other countries to call on domestic oil producers to increase fossil fuel extraction and exacerbate the climate crisis. Oil and gas lobbyists are demanding the Biden administration lift prohibitions on offshore drilling and on federal lands.
"This noble effort to put ending poverty on the same high plane with prolonging and escalating war, risking nuclear apocalypse, and destroying any chance of global cooperation on climate or homelessness or disease or hunger rings false."
In the United States, we’re constantly told that there’s no money to implement any comprehensive measures for fighting the climate crisis. Public transportation, green infrastructure, solar energy, etc. are deemed “too expensive.” The truth is that the money for such projects exists, but it’s going to the Pentagon.
The convergence of a looming economic crisis, fear by a bankrupt ruling class that they will soon be banished from power, the growing ecological catastrophe and the inability to thwart self-destructive military adventurism against Russia and China, have set the stage for an American implosion.
"Wait a minute, you're getting this war wrong." "We have been betrayed by our ruling elites."
