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Caitlin Johnstone
@caitoz
100% reader-funded writer. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Patreon: bit.ly/3Lb4SOe Paypal: bit.ly/3LcUSnx
Australiacaitlinjohnstone.comJoined February 2009

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The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back The western empire has established a policy of escalating every time Russia doesn't react forcefully to a previous escalation, which means Russia is being incentivized to react forcefully to those escalations.
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"As of February 2022 we’re all meant to pretend that the concept of provocation is not a commonplace idea that everyone understands and learns about as children, but that 'provocation' is rather a nonsensical propaganda word that was invented by Putin..."
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According to @SecBlinken, the Nord Stream pipeline bombing "offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come." Too bad that this tremendous opportunity for DC bureaucrats will come at the expense of everyone else, especially this coming winter.
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Blinken says the Nord Stream bombing "offers tremendous strategic opportunity" and Nuland says it's good and awesome that Nord Stream 2 was destroyed, so obviously the only possible culprit in the Nord Stream bombing is Vladimir Putin.
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At a Senate hearing, top US diplomat Victoria Nuland celebrated the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bombing: "Senator Cruz, like you, I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea."
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This is a good thread on class interests and status quo systems with lots of thoughtful comments from the ever zestful
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It's impossible to overstate how much our society is shaped by the fact that those who are given the most influence and the largest platforms will experience our status quo systems as working very nicely and have a vested interest in preserving those systems which benefit them.
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"Nope, nope, gotta add a fourth omnicidal neocon. Otherwise people will say we don't provide enough of that hot omnicidal neocon perspective everyone's always asking for."
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Washington Post already has regular columns by neocon war sluts Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin and Josh Rogin, and now it's publishing John Bolton's militarist erotica. Why does it need a fourth war propagandist? Is it a Horsemen of the Apocalypse thing?
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WaPo yet again publishes the usual (can’t we recite these now by heart?) fire-breathing piece on China, this time by one-trick pony John Bolton. For him, the solution to all problems is always the same: forget diplomacy n unleash America’s supposedly…1/ washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/
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« When even the myopic empire simps at The NYT are acknowledging that western powers are escalating aggressions in a very dangerous direction, you should probably sit up and pay attention. » A little bit too true for comfort 🤦🏻‍♂️
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The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back The western empire has established a policy of escalating every time Russia doesn't react forcefully to a previous escalation, which means Russia is being incentivized to react forcefully to those escalations. caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-west-is-
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Seriously, not a one. "We need to criticize BOTH" is just some noise that propaganda-addled leftish people make without ever really understanding or examining why they make it. If they did they'd be able to defend it articulately, but they literally never can.
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Nobody has ever once been able to provide me with a logically coherent answer for why I should spend any time whatsoever criticizing a government all western institutions criticize 24/7/365 while those institutions totally ignore US imperial criminality.
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We can and should actually do both. Because it's not mutually exclusive, but mutually reinforcing. It makes the case against empire better, not weaker twitter.com/caitoz/status/
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"Why don't you criticize RUSSIA'S warmongering??" Why don't you go watch TV? If you've got some desperate, aching need to hear one more westerner offer one more criticism of Russia's warmongering, simply switch on the nearest television to any channel and wait a few minutes.
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"Why don't you criticize RUSSIA'S warmongering??" Someone focusing their criticisms on the world's most powerful and destructive government only looks odd to you because you've been conditioned by propaganda to see criticism of Russia as normal and criticism of the US as weird.
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"Why don't you criticize RUSSIA'S warmongering??" The only reason it even occurs to you to ask that is because you are surrounded all day by voices who spend all their time criticizing Russia's warmongering and no time criticizing US warmongering. It's what you're accustomed to.
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"Why don't you criticize RUSSIA'S warmongering??" Focusing one's criticisms on the world's most powerful and destructive government is actually the only normal and sane thing to do. It's not strange and suspicious that I do it, it's strange and suspicious that more people don't.
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"Why don't you criticize RUSSIA'S warmongering??" Why don't I instead spend all my time criticizing the most powerful and destructive government on earth, whose crimes are always either ignored or supported by the political and media institutions of the English-speaking world?
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"Why don't you criticize RUSSIA'S warmongering??" This is going to blow your mind, but I don't actually have a Russian audience. I have an English-speaking audience which lives predominantly under the thumb of the western empire. That's where my voice can make a difference.
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"Why don't you criticize RUSSIA'S warmongering??" Why don't you show me a major western institution that gives an appropriate level of criticism to the warmongering empire I spend my time criticizing instead of spending 100% of its time criticizing foreign governments?
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“It really is spooky how much de-escalation & detente have been disappeared from public discourse about Russia. People genuinely don't seem to know it's an option. They really .. think the only option is continually escalating nuclear brinkmanship, &anything else is..appeasement”
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The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back The western empire has established a policy of escalating every time Russia doesn't react forcefully to a previous escalation, which means Russia is being incentivized to react forcefully to those escalations. caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-west-is-
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The failings of the status quo are hidden in mainstream culture, and people aren't permitted to consider the possibility that there might be a better way for things to be. People don't know, and they don't know that they don't know. They're kept in the dark about what's possible.
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If any media you turn on depicts people who are doing basically fine and content with the way things are while you're barely able to keep your head above water, the take-home message is that the problem is with you, not with our systems. That YOU are what needs to change.
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The way everyone's thinking about the world is so pervasively informed by perspectives favorable to the status quo prevents them from even noticing how bad things are for everyone else. It's widely assumed that if you're struggling in this mess it's because of your own failures.
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This dynamic plays such a massive role in hiding from mainstream attention the ways our status quo systems are exploiting, oppressing and abusing people while killing our biosphere and pushing us toward nuclear annihilation that it's hard to wrap your mind around how far it goes.
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But these are the people with the loudest voices in our society. Not just the loudest, but MANY orders of magnitude more amplified and influential than the voices of the ordinary people who are suffering under existing systems. They get to shape and direct mainstream culture.
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They're not going to be calling for a massive, sweeping overhaul of the systems which are crushing ordinary people to death and creating widespread misery; at most they're going to be telling you to vote Democrat or Republican and quibbling about minor disagreements on tax rates.
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A rich celebrity who makes millions of dollars a year in a fun, easy and egoically gratifying job is not going to be spotlighting all the lives who are being destroyed by the status quo systems which elevated them. They're not going to favor the revolutionary changes people need.
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These are the people who make all the shows, movies and music almost everyone consumes, thereby engineering mainstream culture to the benefit of the super wealthy. It shapes the way the people think, speak, act and vote. What they feel entitled to. What they think is possible.
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The media-owning, culture-manufacturing class of the super-wealthy elevates people to wealth and celebrity who look like they will be good protectors of their class interests. Those people will necessarily speak fondly of the status quo political systems which let them be rich.
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It's impossible to overstate how much our society is shaped by the fact that those who are given the most influence and the largest platforms will experience our status quo systems as working very nicely and have a vested interest in preserving those systems which benefit them.
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We’re relying on Russian restraint to not escalate this conflict into WWIII
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The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back The western empire has established a policy of escalating every time Russia doesn't react forcefully to a previous escalation, which means Russia is being incentivized to react forcefully to those escalations. caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-west-is-
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"Well the omnicidal war sluts won the debate over sending tanks to Ukraine, so now it's time to start arguing for sending F-16s." While media keeps on screaming about "Russia's illegal invasion" 🙄
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The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back The western empire has established a policy of escalating every time Russia doesn't react forcefully to a previous escalation, which means Russia is being incentivized to react forcefully to those escalations. caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-west-is-
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A must read piece by Caitlin Johnstone on the increasing risk of nuclear armageddon.
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The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back The western empire has established a policy of escalating every time Russia doesn't react forcefully to a previous escalation, which means Russia is being incentivized to react forcefully to those escalations. caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-west-is-
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The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back "Moscow keeps saying escalatory arms transfers are unacceptable and could mean wider war; US officials say since Moscow hasn’t acted on those threats, they can freely escalate." ~
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