Conspiracies, the struggle for power, and controlling citizens' minds are as old as civilization.
A conspiracy occurs when two or more people agree to commit an illegal act and coordinate efforts to carry it out.
Conspiracy is a way of secretly organizing a crime to alter an existing political, economic, social, or advance hidden agendas.
The basic idea of conspiracy is to surprise the target, which can sometimes be the entire population of a country.
Currently, conspiracy theory is the favorite label applied to narratives that challenge the official version of a disruptive event. The objective is to ridicule and denigrate anyone who advances hypotheses or conspiracy theories to distance the audience from what is supposed to be perceived as disinformation.
The official owners of the truth like to use examples of incongruous conspiracy theories to discredit anyone who questions the official “truth.”
It is obvious that many conspiracy theories go too far and contribute to discrediting conspiratorial hypotheses that could lead to conspiratorial facts buried under the rubble of official propaganda.
False flag operations, secret experiments on people, as in the case of the MK-Ultra operation, and manipulation of microorganisms carried out in secret laboratories to develop biological weapons are examples of conspiratorial facts; many will never be known to the general public.
The secret services are experts in conspiratorial operations par excellence.
It is essential to follow the trail of veiled information to discover the truth about operations and events that smell fishy. When the evidence is kept secret, it is legitimate to resort to conspiratorial hypotheses as an investigative tool.
Official conspiracy theories presented as absolute truth are designed to deceive an entire population using false “evidence” to cover up the factual truth.
This happens when a government, institution, or entity intends to manipulate the population to obtain political, social, economic, or military support or consent that would otherwise be rejected.
We cannot rule out conspiratorial hypotheses because the struggle for power and imperialist hegemony resorts to any means to achieve the desired ends. Anyone who believes that the ruling elites are not capable of committing heinous crimes against the well-being and lives of their fellow citizens lives in a parallel universe.
Decent citizens who follow the rules and obey the law sometimes have difficulty accepting that the ruling elites can be downright evil. When this is the case, remember that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Shock and awe are generally described as a military strategy to overwhelm the enemy with an impressive display of military might.
The same tactic is used to break public resistance against unpopular decisions or pass laws that roll back civil and legal rights, as well as social, labor, and human rights.
If we reject everything labeled conspiracy theory, we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We shouldn't get carried away by every conspiracy theory, but when the events that give rise to them have serious consequences for the lives of millions of people, we have an obligation to be skeptical and not take the official truth at face value.
Anyone who is systematically attacked as a propagator of conspiracy theories may well be on the right track.
When someone is vilified and ridiculed rather than ignored, it is because the powers that be fear that the public will find them credible.
Suppose we are really motivated to discover the truth. In that case, we should not be ashamed to broaden the scope of our research to information classified as conspiracy theories because it can help us find missing links or hidden agendas.
Logical skepticism must be complemented by intuitive skepticism because human discernment is more than just following logical axioms.
Variables that, despite not fitting a particular paradigm, should be accepted if they improve the critical analysis of the case under study.
Cultivating an open attitude and stepping out of our comfort zone helps us see what apparently wasn't there. We are never in possession of all the information available, and our prejudices always affect our judgment. The more aware we are of these limitations, the closer we are to making correct assessments.
For example, the tragic event of 9/11 had terrible consequences. First, the death of innocent civilians; second, the overwhelming approval of the US Patriot Act; and third, it was used as justification for invading Iraq based on false allegations because President George W. Bush was obsessed with Saddam Hussein and deliberately misled the Americans into holding him responsible for the 9/11 attack.
The BBC announced the fall of ”Building 7” almost half an hour before it happened. Jane Standley reported that the tower had collapsed while it was standing in the background. The fall of Building 7 was obviously a controlled demolition.
In the PBS report "Rebuilding America's Defenses," Larry Silverstein, developer and lessee of the World Trade Center towers, admitted: "I remember getting a call from the fire chief telling me that they weren't sure if would be able to contain the fire... and I said, 'Well, you know, we've had a terrible loss of life... maybe the smartest thing to do is to 'pull'... and they made the decision to 'pull '...uh, and we watched the building collapse." The term "building pull" is used by the industry to begin demolition of the building.
https://www.austinchronicle.com/feedback/2007-07-06/499808/
Is it legitimate to ask what led to the destruction of Iraq when it is clear that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the conspiracy that led to 9/11?
Prejudices are preexisting notions in the form of implicit memories derived from individual experiences as part of socialization.
Conscious and subconscious reasoning uses preconceived ideas and notions to compose new thinking. Any form of cognitive, creative activity is always based on preexisting concepts, ideas, and notions psycho-affectively “charged” as individualized bio-sociocultural experiences.
We cannot help but use preexisting concepts, ideas, and notions while interpreting and evaluating the information that comes through the sensory organs, especially regarding narratives composed with symbolic language.
As long as humanity exists, prejudice will exist. Changing sociocultural, political, and economic conditions make some prejudices anachronistic and socially condemnable. Yet, for every prejudice marginalized, another prejudice is normalized.
Prejudices are meant to be understood because we have to live with them. Understanding what something is and how it works is the path to true freedom.
Prejudices can be constructive, destructive, or even neutral; sociocultural circumstances determine which ones will be dominant.
The conscious will does not control subconscious thoughts. It is crucial to understand how relevant the sociocultural environment, the political system, the political economy model, and national and international institutions are to the architecture of the ideological-cultural narratives that colonize our minds and condition the psycho-cognitive-affective and behavioral responses.
Pre-judgment can never be avoided entirely, especially when we are under psycho-emotional stress or shock.
To deal with this reality, we need to implement a culture of tolerance that allows us to explain or retract inappropriate or insulting reactions.
Destructive criticism and summary condemnation replace the sense of justice because tolerance, compassion, and empathy are marginal in the dominant culture.
The world is full of vigilantes hungry for punishment due to a societal system lacking a justice-based culture.
The dominant sociocultural parameters shape collective behavior. Based on individual awareness, we have the freedom to make choices and change attitudes, habits, and behaviors, but without structural changes that place tolerance, solidarity, and fraternity at the heart of society's fabric, a true justice-based culture cannot become a reality.
The separation of powers, supposedly the guarantor of representative democracy, is a farce because whoever executes these powers is conditioned by rules and commands dictated by those in charge of the under reality (the deep state) with the power to determine the decisions taken by the public side of the institutional iceberg.
Individuals, movements, organizations, and governments that only focus on cosmetic reforms are not interested in promoting structural changes.
Human reasoning and behavior follow logical principles. Logical thinking takes us from point A to point B based on axioms, ideas, and notions that we accept as valid, which is different from being true.
Discernment is the attempt to use the cognitive faculties as comprehensively as possible to arrive at factual truth.
Propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation are tools used by power to deceive and control the Demos.
Currently, the state apparatus has been transformed into a public-private partnership. This hybrid project does not aim to empty the State of power but to place its powers at the service of private interests.
When we are told that it is essential to cut the fat of the State, what they mean is that the State must hand over to the private sector all the functions that were traditionally natural monopolies of the State.
The “natural” function of the State is to protect the entrepreneurial class while impoverishing the population with austerity policies.
The State is being parasitized by the plutoligarchy, and the democratic façade is no longer capable of hiding the process of its fascization.
Far-right parties are assuming the role of vigilantes, apparently determined to drain the political, economic, social, and cultural swamp. In reality, they have no intention whatsoever of democratizing the State, which should be the priority.
Those who describe the State as if it were the origin of evil in the world accept and praise the liberalizing role of capitalism and imperialism without realizing the centrality of the State's role as the enabler of private entrepreneurship.
The State is the guarantor of any public or private achievements. Allowing the State to be transformed into a public-private partnership means dividing the State's obligations into two main responsibilities: implementing socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.
This is the situation we find ourselves in and the point we should focus on because society and the State are being fascistized in boil-a-frog mode, meaning we will be irreparably finished before we realize what is happening to us.
The State is not the problem; it is the solution. The state is the guarantor of national unity; only those who live in a state of total delusion do not realize that a country cannot exist without a State. It is imperative to defascize and decorporatize the State and return it to Demos.
A complex society can never function without the set of structural institutions that form what we call the State.
The question is always who controls power and wealth.
The concentration of wealth and the centralization of power always result in the same thing: fascization of the State and socioeconomic subjugation.
The state's function is to create the conditions for the flourishing of participatory democracy and to implement a social and ecological political economy capable of nurturing a fair society.
Conspiracy theory labeling aims to discredit information and authors that do not conform to official narratives.
In a world flooded with information, many of us follow sources more by instinct and ideological-cultural affinity than by their factuality.
It turns out that many of the sources we believe to be trustworthy and reputable spread disinformation and misinformation paid for and owned by ruling elites.
Those who spread wild conspiracy theories target a public ready to believe in the most outlandish hypothesis. They demand the same type of blind trust as those who impose the official explanation as irrefutable truth to cover up crimes and promote hidden agendas incompatible with the revelation of factual truth.
Every citizen who is willing to put his reputation, career, or life at risk to defend hypotheses or theories that will be labeled conspiratorial because he is dissatisfied and outraged with the official narrative, knowing that he will be attacked, slandered, ostracised, or even fired, but is still determined to pursue the truth deserve the respect of his fellow citizens.
If we don't put forward conspiratorial hypotheses, how will we uncover poorly explained or covered-up events?
Be skeptical of all messages that imply blind trust seeking to keep us under its authority-based sphere of influence.
Governments, corporations, and vested interests label everything that challenges the official narratives as conspiracy theories.
The ruling elites know that the majority of the population does not have the time, mental energy, or intellectual curiosity to investigate complex issues and events. Most people will buy into the official narrative because they trust mainstream opinion makers, news anchors, and talk show hosts.
Sympathizing with specific news anchors, talk show hosts, or media celebrities leads us to easily trust their messages, and that is a problem; many of them are nothing else but well-paid liars.
The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, was a traumatic event for the American people.
The nation expects an honest and fact-based explanation from the government that defends the country's interests.
Which may not be the case. The official truth about what happened on 9/11 is inconsistent, to say the least, which in itself should be highlighted as a red flag.
Official authorities and their acolytes attack those who question the official version, calling them unpatriotic, as in the case of those who raise the possibility that it was an inside job or that it was intentionally allowed based on doubts about the way the towers collapsed, especially Building 7.
The official explanation for the collapse of Building 7 is absolutely ridiculous.
Any civil engineer or demolition professional who does not know in advance that the building is related to 9/11 will say that it is a classic example of controlled demolition.
A substantial chunk of the population does not trust governments or official authorities, but in the case of 9/11, very few people publicly admit that the official explanations stink.
The political dishonesty of mainstream politicians (liberals, democratic socialists, social democrats, and christian democrats) is not enough to break the TINA (there is no alternative) spell.
The growth of the populist and fascist far-right is the response intended by the ruling elites, who are aware that the days of so-called liberal democracies are numbered. The fascization of the State is the only way that allows them to keep controlling power and wealth.
Most right-wing populist parties have no intention of shaking up vested interests; they are part of the problem, claiming to be the solution.
There is a fine line between popularity and authority, that is, when someone reaches a certain level of popularity, they attract more audiences and begin to be implicitly recognized as an authority by their followers.
Entertainment, information, and marketing have long since merged into a single reality, while we, the citizenry, as spectators/consumers who believe in our ability to discern between fiction and fact, are led astray by the sophistication of those who design and produce narratives for mass consumption.
The PR industry knows how to combine and recombine facts and fiction using marketing techniques to blur the boundaries between information and entertainment for ideological-cultural indoctrination to depoliticize and polarize society around petty or politically irrelevant issues, inhibiting the growth of class consciousness as the basis for understanding the roots of most social unnecessary suffering.
Speaking to an audience is nothing new, but the difference is that in the past, there were bonds of interdependence and co-responsibility between speaker and audience, and the roles were interchangeable.
The idea of dividing society into classes, groups, categories, and specializations creates roles and functions in which a minority assumes the leadership of the majority, placing authorities and “influencers” on one side and followers on the other.
On one side, we have those who teach, inform, entertain, and lead, and on the other, those who have the duty to listen, follow, and obey.
Apparently, the public wants to be entertained, accepts being indoctrinated, and expects to be led because this is the natural order of life.
For an authority to be credible, it must have a target audience that believes and trusts the information disclosed.
The ideological-cultural tribalization of society divides and polarizes it, making social and political dialogue difficult. The factual truth is turned into a casualty because each group believes it owns the truth instead of being open to discovering it.
Throwing every alternative hypothesis and theory in the same bag means that the general public loses interest in exploring conspiracy hypotheses that could lead to conspiratorial facts. For many people, it becomes a taboo subject because they do not want to be associated with conspiracy theories.
This is done intentionally when the ruling elites need to keep their agendas hidden.
What could be the agenda of those who expose themselves to ridicule and slander, having more to lose than gain like the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth https://www.ae911truth.org/ besides wanting the factual truth to be revealed?
The ruling elites and the legacy media misinform, deceive, and lie in order to maintain power and control society.
In the case of September 11, the authorities ordered the removal of evidence from the crime site, making any independent investigation, such as the analysis of residue to confirm the existence of traces of explosives, unfeasible. Many people suggested that the visible molten metal could indicate the use of nano-thermite.
Questioning the official version should be expected because those representing us owe us explanations. If there are doubts, even if they seem absurd, they should not be dismissed, and whoever raises them should not be ridiculed or defamed.
However, those who have doubts are marginalized, while those who insult the intelligence of their fellow citizens are supposed to be taken as honest by decree.
When the evidence is removed from the crime scene, it is legitimate to use any available material, such as existing images, testimonials from people, and leaked documentation, to hypothesize what really happened.
Despite having occurred on American soil, September 11th had global consequences, which should oblige the US to be accountable to the international community.
Under the so-called rules-based international order, the Western ruling elite, in addition to getting away with the crimes they commit, are paid handsomely to give lectures and continue to be invited by the mainstream media to opinionate on the ongoing crisis: Hilary Clinton, George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and many more.
Watch Dr. Daniele Ganser (Swiss historian) WTC7 was destroyed by controlled demolition (Zurich, September 11, 2019)
People cling to the official version, denying what their eyes see because the state of denial prevents them from questioning the political-ideological and intellectual-cultural edifice that shapes their psycho-sociocultural identity.
The perception of how the world works comes from the dominant narratives existing in our cognitive-affective system in the form of implicit memories. The dominant narratives only become weaker when we consciously become aware that they are wrong, misleading, or fictitious; meanwhile, they continue dictating and shaping the way we interpret reality.
Narratives become dominant through repetition and mimicry, social habits, media consumption, social media and infotainment, family and social influence, group dynamics, societal trends and styles, and socio-cultural and ideological-political identities.
We are often attracted to what makes us feel good and comfortable rather than to what is right.
We are factually easy to manipulate, believing that we are making "rational" choices.
Society must be organized around two principles: truth and justice. Truth is essential to do justice, and justice is crucial to value truth.
Relativizing truth and justice weakens the social ability to hold the powerful accountable. It is no coincidence that the ruling elite and the affluent class seek to control the narratives and influence how the law is codified.
Lies and injustices cause unnecessary suffering to society through the imposition of artificial scarcity, austerity, uncertainty, marginalization, and destitution, being equally responsible for the massacre of innocent lives and destruction of nations under the pretext of liberating and democratizing them.
The substance of freedom and democracy is truth and justice; it is not the vigilantism (political bait) spread by nowadays far-right fake populism.
Truth and justice must become part of everyday life because that’s how they become ingrained in our psycho-cognitive-effective processes and behaviors.
Naturalizing, normalizing, and codifying into law specific packages of values, norms, and ideas as a means of conditioning habits and behaviors is how we organize societal systems. Society is a cultural creation that becomes our natural element.
A society becomes fair by valuing and rewarding honesty and factual truth.
Laws must be designed to ensure that lies and injustice do not go unpunished.
The same principle must be applied to the rules that regulate the economy and the laws that protect property rights, profit, and excessive enrichment (when wealth acquires the power to influence or distort the law and buy political favors).
The exploitation of people, the plundering of natural resources, and the destruction of habitats and ecosystems are forms of injustice tolerated by the legitimization of the commodification of literally everything that can be profitable.
In the space of two generations, the State's natural monopolies and universal basic services have been consecutively privatized, granted, or transmuted into public-private partnerships based on the assumption that the private sector is a better manager. Which is only a half-truth. There are many examples of mismanagement, fraud, and corruption in the private sector.
The third sector, charities, and social enterprises should never be used to replace the State in provisioning universal basic services because their function is not to serve the entire population without exception.
Infrastructures, such as roads, ports, airports, railways, schools, hospitals, and dams, are part of the State's natural monopoly and should remain public utilities.
In the past, no one asked where the money came from. Apparently, people understood better than they do today that the State had the monopoly on creating sovereign currency.
The National Treasury does not need to go into debt; it can create money to invest directly in the economy.
The newly created money enters the economy to pay for materials, salaries, and the provision of services adjudicated to the private sector.
The money invested by the State in the real economy is not inflationary, but if necessary, the money can be destroyed with fiscal measures.
Money created for speculative purposes, such as purchasing existing assets and appealing to the consumption of imported goods, is obviously inflationary.
Money is never the problem. How it is applied is the problem.
Recognizing the importance of the precautionary principle would easily make society more fair and honest.
Honesty plays a much more critical role than the commodified society attributes to it; legal contracts do not seek to be honest and fair but to legally bind people.
Too many things are systematically poorly explained in this world, yet we accept this reality as a fait accompli.
Too many people feel attracted to and are influenced by weird stories; often sold as nonfiction.
Those who tend to believe in stories that are impossible to prove never feel the need to double-check.
Many conspiracy theories are nothing more than odd stories that attract the kind of audience ready to believe anything.
The problem is that these baseless stories undermine the work of those who strive to expose the facts that ruling elites want to keep hidden as false-flag operations.
The dominant ideological-cultural narratives are not woven to help us better understand how society really works but to condition us to accept it without resistance.
The role of dominant narratives is to implicitly indoctrinate the public into perceiving the institutions, systems, and subsystems that constitute society as if there is no alternative to them.
Where do we think the notions we believe to be true come from?
How we perceive the economy, sovereign currency, the banking and financial system, public and private debt, economic growth, public and private property, public and private services, the tax system, legal system, austerity, inflation, deflation and stagflation, market freedom, financial instruments, financialization of the economy, neoliberalism, derivatives market, CDS, buybacks, etc.
The opinions that we believe to be our own reproduce ideas that are disseminated through cultural-ideological narratives to which we are exposed. What this means is that we cannot escape the influence of the sociocultural environment in which we move.
Too many people only have a superficial and misleading understanding of how society works.
Society is a multilevel and multidimensional system; the knowledge and intellectual tools that would allow us to decode one level may not even help us discover the existence of other levels, let alone decode them.
In fact, most of us will never fully understand society or how it works, not because we are stupid but because the ruling elites will invest whatever it takes to ensure that we continue to live under the TINA effect.
We live in a reality managed by culturally and ideologically framed dominant narratives. We adapt to rules, imitate behaviors, and comply with systemic linearity.
The process of programming and domestication begins with education and continues with the hard work of building a successful career.
We can go through life without realizing that society is a multilevel system since we are conditioned to focus on our own problems and not on developing a comprehensive systemic view of reality.
Society is divided between the majority, who only have access to exoteric knowledge and are condemned to live in a reality of appearances, equivalent to the shadows of Plato's cave, while the esoteric knowledge is controlled by a minority of initiates to be shared within a community of “enlightened” people with deep pockets.
The division between exoteric and esoteric knowledge is essential to maintaining a vertically hierarchical society in which power and wealth are concentrated at the top of the pyramid.
Exoteric versions for mass consumption are disseminated without restriction, while esoteric knowledge is kept available only for initiates.
This is not a conspiracy theory; this is how perception is managed, ignorance is manufactured, and misleading ideas and narratives are disseminated to control the masses.
Sociocultural and political stigmatization in the era of the Internet and social media is the power to impose censorship and information control policies through the so-called community guidelines controlled by algorithms.
Disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, and PR operations must remain the much-deserved monopoly of the ruling elites. I emphasize the use of elites because I do not identify with the systematic demonization of the government and the State.
Governments can be filled with people who are part of, represent, or work on behalf of dominant elites, or they can be filled with people who govern on behalf of the collective good.
Governments can be filled with people who are part of, represent, or work on behalf of ruling elites, or they can be filled with people who govern on behalf of the collective good.
Calls for demonizing governments and the State should be viewed with skepticism.
Ordinary citizens have nothing to gain from minimalist or weak governments. First, even weak governments can use the State's monopoly on violence. Second, a small, large, weak, or strong government is always more easily influenced, manipulated, or corrupted by the hidden agendas of powerful domestic and foreign interests than by the masses, especially when the masses are as divided as these days.
Four decades of neoliberal policies, privatizations, financialization of the economy, and rentier capitalism (FIRE sector).
Four decades of propaganda: there is no alternative (TINA), with governments legitimized by popular vote functioning as representatives of the interests of the plutoligarchy, plundering the State and impoverishing a large part of those who continue to trust them with their vote.
The poly-crisis has exposed the rottenness of the system, and the disadvantaged citizens, that is, the majority of the population, are once again being deceived not only by narratives that demonize governments and the State but also by believing that salvation comes from the neo-fascist far right.
Clara E. Mattei https://www.claramattei.com/
"The Capital Order
How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism"
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html
We are not condemned to give our votes to irresponsive governments or neo-fascist parties. If the existing alternatives on the left are not convincing, this should not be a reason to give the vote to the extreme right but to feel the responsibility to create alternatives.
We have the imperative task to break TINA's spell because most people read and interpret reality through TINA's lens (there is no alternative). Governments alternate between center-left and center-right, but both are colonized by neoliberal ideologues and acolytes.
Socialism and communism continue to be described as an anachronistic failure, and ecosocialism is still not recognized as the alternative to liberal green capitalism.
The ideological-cultural conditioning on political economy matters leads most people to implicitly exclude the possibility of voting for parties categorized as anachronistic.
The triumph of neoliberal theology deified market fundamentalism, the rush to privatization, the financialization of the economy, the relocation of production to countries with cheap labor, and the deindustrialization of Western countries. None of these policies benefitted the little people but created the illusion that we all could aspire to be part of the rentier class.
Service economy and growth of the precariat, loss of labor rights, and decreased purchasing power. Labor flexibility and increased part-time work are sold as providing citizens with more choices when, in reality, many workers need to supplement their income by accumulating two or three jobs just to survive.
The State (that's all of us) is the victim of this process; it has been robbed of its natural monopolies, such as infrastructure, universal public services, and monetary sovereignty, as in the case of the Euro, controlled by the ECB.
The State is being used as a scapegoat while being abused by the elites who control the political, economic, financial, and military power.
According to market fundamentalist theologians, neoliberalism is free from ideology—the rules of supply and demand work without interference or manipulation by financial market actors!
The privatization and financialization of the economy are presented as an obvious reality that does not require ideological framing.
The socio-cultural and political naturalization of market fundamentalism and privatization of the economy means that we have been living for decades under a regime of market dictatorship sold as a non-ideologized liberal democracy.
Governments should ensure that the State is managed and administered to serve the collective good. If this does not happen, it is because governments are serving other agendas, which means that the State is under the control of private and vested interests.
Conspiratorial hypotheses should not be discarded or boasted; we should be skeptical, but we should also trust our intuition, whether in the case of 9/11, geoengineering https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/geoengineering, mRNA vaccines, etc.
Chemtrails are on the list of conspiracy theories, and obviously, much of the information on the subject is exaggerated or fantasized. However, we should not discard the hypothesis that there is something wrong going on in the sky.
It doesn't even take a very careful look to notice the existence of long stripes, which turn into a translucent, milky mantle that has nothing to do with any known type of cloud.
Those who argue that these are condensation trails left by planes should look more closely because, on clear days, we can see the normal trails left by planes, which are short and dissipate relatively quickly.
Silent authorities or denial does not mean that geoengineering and climate engineering experiments are not being carried out.
The COVID-19 pandemic was probably the most controversial topic of all time.
It polarized society, and, as in the case of 9/11, the authorities boycotted an open and honest public debate; they instead demonized the non-compliant citizens.
Who cares about the polarization of society? Those who demand the truth and want justice to be done or those who want to impose the truth by decree in a matter involving billion-dollar deals. Follow the money trail; it most probably leads you to the truth.
The MK-Ultra Project is yet another example of a factual set of experiments that could easily be identified as a conspiracy theory, like many other secret operations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra,
THE CIA'S WORLDWIDE KILL SQUADS
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84-00499R001000080001-7.pdf Operations to overthrow governments and coups d'état, political assassinations, etc. Heinous cases, when reported, are hard to believe and immediately officially denied.
Decades later, when the original documents are released, the perpetrators generally go unpunished.
Is there any doubt about who orchestrated John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., or Malcolm X's assassinations?
The CIA is a criminal organization with an intelligence gathering section.
The CIA is an instrument of the Deep State to silence domestic and foreign enemies. Usually, these are not enemies of the American people but politicians, activists, citizens, groups, organizations, or governments who are perceived as a threat to the interests of corporations, organizations, institutions, groups, and individuals - the American imperialist class that wants to impose the rules-based international hegemonic order to the world.
Secrecy is, by nature, undemocratic because it defends vested interests and covers up crimes perpetrated by powerful individuals and organizations in the name of the State when, in reality, the State has long been instrumentalized by the Deep State.
Many of the State's institutions, organizations, and agencies, such as the secret services and their respective cutouts, are supposed to exist to defend the national sovereignty and keep the Nation safe. In reality, they work for the imperialist plutoligarchy, putting at risk the security and well-being of the Republic to expand the Empire.
The secret of a truly democratic State is transparency and accountability.
Specific circumstances may require the use of state secrecy, but this governmental prerogative must be the exception and never be made the norm.
Democracy must not tolerate the use of state secrecy to cover up crimes, much less to protect their perpetrators.
The deep state is made up of a subversive network of power with temporal continuity that operates independently of political color and governmental leadership.
My point is that we either have democracy or we allow the deep state to rule. We can't have both.
Reducing unnecessary suffering to a minimum requires that justice and truth be the backbone of all national and international institutions responsible for maintaining peace and democracy.
Imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism (the supremacy of capital, private property, proprietary rights, class privileges, and entitlements over the dignity of life) are incompatible with implementing a fair social and ecological economy.
A class-based society can never be fair because social stratification normalizes and naturalizes the inferiorization of groups and layers of the population, justifying the gap between the haves and the have-nots with meritocratic rhetoric.
Merit has a place in society because it is a way to recognize and reward individual or collective effort and achievements. The problem is that merit, like everything else in society, can be attributed to people, activities, and behaviors for the wrong reasons and motivations.
Political and economic participatory democracy is essential for a trust-based social and ecological economy in which truth and justice permeate everyday life.
We are educated to become part of a class-based society. We accept delegating the management of society's structural institutions to professionals and specialists, assuming they are better prepared to do so than the rest of us.
We expect a civil engineer or a neurosurgeon to have the essential knowledge and experience so that we can trust our lives and safety in their hands. But we need to keep in mind that even the most respected professionals carry ideological prejudices and have material interests.
"Errare humanum est" to err is human, and "even the best fabric gets stained" Portuguese proverb.
Many of the best law firms specialize in private law, corporate law, banking and finance law, tax law, international law, and intellectual property law because it is much more profitable to defend the interests of wealthy oligarchs and megacorporations than to defend petty thieves. “It’s A Big Club, And You Ain’t In It.” George Carlin https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/964648-but-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason
Scientific-technological and academic credentials do not guarantee intellectual independence and moral honesty.
Firstly, economic interests, hidden agendas, and careerism easily override deontological ethics. Secondly, excessive faith in scientific knowledge and technofixism contributes to the overconfidence of many professionals, leading to technoscientism hubris.
Truth and justice are never guaranteed. Justice is the lubricant of democracy; ethics (What is Ethics? https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/what-is-ethics/) has to be embedded in the fabric of society.
It is a sociocultural imperative to implement a political economy that rewards ethical behaviors, attitudes, and habits. At the same time, we need to stop rewarding opportunism, plunder, economic-financial enslavement, and the supremacy of profit and private property. A social and ecological economy must operate on the basis of justice and truth.
The problem is that people wake up from their existential lethargy at different rhythms and with different perspectives, making the implementation of convergence synergies very difficult.
The legacy media spreads disinformation, fake news, half-truths, propaganda, and conspiracy theories as the megaphone for governments and the deep state to deceive, confuse, divide, and atomize the public.
The legacy media houses "decent" journalists, news anchors, talk show hosts, and entertainers who are not willing to tarnish their reputations by spreading disinformation, lies, and conspiracy theories. (this is how we are supposed to perceive them)
It turns out that these professional communicators are well paid to provide a service to governments and the Deep State. There are those who are aware of it and those who believe in what they are reading on the teleprompter; either way, the damage is done.
Speaking truth to power is severely punished; Assange is a paradigmatic example of this crude reality, while lies and deceit are rewarded by the revolving doors system.
Legacy media use the slogans “official sources,” “research indicates,” etc., to support completely unsubstantiated statements and claims.
Sympathizing with a media personality should not be equivalent to trusting the message he or she conveys.
Many people trust media personalities more than members of their own family, which makes sense because they are invited daily into the family environment without the need to be there physically, which has a lot of advantages. The people we like but don't know personally always seem more virtuous.
What we know about most media personalities is the character they play. Before trusting them, we need first to become aware of their biases and potential hidden agendas.
Intellectual honesty and deontological ethics (moral integrity) should be the main reasons for admiring and respecting media personalities. Popularity can be deceiving and is not always deserved.
Reality is made up of several layers, and to understand it, we have to understand how the forces that emanate from the most elusive layers influence the stage layer where the representation takes place.
Stylistic or aesthetic preferences cannot be confused with substance.
I rarely agree 100% with what an author, analyst, academic, politician, intellectual, journalist, etc. Intellectual, ideological, and cultural complementarity is essential to comprehensively understand the complexity of reality.
It is true that we can quench our thirst from a single (fountain) source, but this cannot lead us to deny the importance and necessity of the existence of other sources, nor should it inhibit us from quenching our thirst from alternative sources.
It is not through linear and simplistic analyses that we are able to understand complex multidimensional and multilayer systems. Simplism and reductionism are the weapons of choice of ideological opportunists.
Trust must be rooted in verifiable facts. Politics without intellectual honesty is charlatanism.
The tendency to trust sources that represent formal, respected, or known authorities does not equate to accessing factual information.
Being respected, famous, or successful does not make anyone omniscient, nor does it inhibit the use of intentional falsehoods.
There is no shortage of reasons to lie for convenience in a commodified society.
“Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth,” attributed to Joseph Goebbels.
Lies and half-truths conveyed by respected sources or personalities are accepted as truth without resistance, and even when a family member, a friend, or a co-worker tries to call the person to reason, it is often unsuccessful because the weight of the authority tips the scales towards the supposedly respected source.
Our judgment is influenced by the dominant subconscious narratives and framed by a set of beliefs and prejudices that only change when the narratives that support them lose relevance in favor of other alternatives.
In a reality where money defines who has access to a better quality of life (less deprivation), it should not be a surprise that the manipulation of information and knowledge can be motivated by economic interests.
The ideological veil is often used to cover up economic interests and justify political decisions that harm society as a whole.
We don’t consume media; the media consumes and shapes who we become. The narratives to which we are voluntarily or involuntarily exposed are structured to describe versions of reality according to the interests of groups, organizations, and governments that design them or commission them from PR firms to disguise their hidden agendas.
The deep politics dictated by the deep state determine the political and legislative decisions, choices, and initiatives legitimized by circus politics.
The role of circus politics is to convince the public that fiscal, monetary, and macroeconomic policies are designed to benefit society as a whole.
We may believe that we can understand the complexity of our time by reading the headlines or trying to keep up with the dizzying flow of information on social media. Still, we are only fooling ourselves and making life easier for those who dictate the rules that govern our lives.
Assuming we know enough to form an opinion on a wide range of subjects is not the same as understanding the subjects. It is normal to trust our judgments because we believe in the axioms that support them. But if the axioms from which we start are false, incomplete, or distorted, by assuming them as true, we will form a flawed opinion with all the implications that this may have.
Logical fallacies contribute significantly to frequent errors in reasoning.
A logical fallacy is an argument that may seem convincing or true but is actually flawed. Logical fallacies are leaps of logic that lead to an unsupported conclusion. People can commit a logical fallacy unintentionally, due to poor reasoning, or intentionally to manipulate other people.
Everyone should study and try to understand these errors in reasoning to develop the ability to detect them in their own arguments and those of other people.
Ideological fanaticism can make dialogue impossible and democracy unfeasible.
Most people are convinced that political-ideological moderation is the correct choice compared to movements, groups, and parties labeled as radical or extremist.
Fanaticism may result from the inability to see value in any idea, narrative, or system other than one's own, or it may have to do with the non-negotiable nature of the structural principles of the system of governance in which one believes.
An ideological-political divide exists between a citizen who defends a minimalist State, for example, a market fundamentalist or an anarcho-capitalist, and a citizen who defends a socialist society based on universal public services and believes the State must control the natural monopolies so that private companies can concentrate in the development of productive activities useful to society.
The role of democracy is to ensure that ideas can be debated and clarified so that citizens fully understand the pros and cons, benefits, and risks of the different political and ideological options that are on the table.
Most citizens want a fairer, more balanced, social, and ecological society. The exercise of individual freedoms and protecting the collective good are not mutually exclusive; both are essential and interdependent.
The excess accumulation of wealth and power will always result in social inequality. Those who believe in social Darwinism consider this natural, as if natural laws rather than arbitrary rules regulate human societies.
Even for those who believe in “natural” hierarchy, it should be clear that a system that causes unnecessary suffering by imposing artificial scarcity (politically motivated austerity) as a way of subjugating their fellow citizens is a dysfunctional system.
A large part of the population lives tormented by unnecessary worries, including to meet basic needs.
Although there are material conditions that allow everyone to have a dignified life, the capitalist system uses intentionally manufactured scarcity to keep the population under permanent uncertainty and psychological stress.
Even the right to recreational leisure is commodified; little or nothing can be done for free.
The middle-upper class can afford to go on vacation to exotic locations, visit historical sites, go to spiritual retreats, etc. Most of these activities are part of the provision of services; even when people want to connect with telluric energies and visit places with spiritual significance or pristine nature, commodification follows the consumer/tourist.
People may live in a state of denial, but commodification is ubiquitous. In fact, we are so imbued by the entrepreneurial spirit that even our own intuition is tuned to look at the reality around us in search of business opportunities.
We should dedicate ourselves to activities out of passion or genuine interest because the aim of existence should be to have a life with meaning and purpose.
I support the universal basic income (UBI) because it would give people the freedom to live without being obsessed with money.
When a minimum level of survival is guaranteed, citizens who are more inclined to being than to having could focus on what they enjoy doing without having to live in permanent worry and fear or distort the original objectives of their projects to make them more appealing to the market.
We can never underestimate the temptation that money and power exert on us in an A-Z commodified society.
Commodifying all aspects of life transforms us into performers representing different personas. Being genuine, spontaneous, honest, and fair became the exception; in fact, it is seen by many as a weakness of character because success and public recognition have more to do with manipulating public perception through the creation of a facade resorting to PR campaigns than with substance and integrity.
After all, what really counts is what you do for a living, how much you make, and your market value.
The circus or spectacle politics, based on “charismatic” demagoguery and psycho-affective manipulation, must be unmasked and despised, while intellectual honesty must be rewarded.
The society of the spectacle is one layer of the commodified society, in which fiction replaces facts, and the structural principles of human dignity are inverted.
In a society where reality is created by PR campaigns crafted using sophisticated language and visual framing to induce conformity, ordinary citizens are responsible for separating the wheat from the chaff as if they possess the same level of intellectual sophistication and stamina to decode the various levels of entangled deception.
Political economy systems must be evaluated based on their present impact and their future consequences.
The economy aims to provide society with the goods and services that citizens need to have a dignified existence. Its outcome should be measured based on the collective well-being generated within the limits of the biosphere's regeneration capacity.
A hyper-technologized and commodified civilization where political performance is measured based on the ability to sell a political economy paradigm that is actually a weapon of mass destruction.
Spectacle politics is performed to win hearts and minds, not through the intrinsic value of policy proposals, but through the ability to manipulate perception, to induce a trance-like state, from which many citizens only wake up too late, if at all.
The ideological-political tribalization of society is part of the divide to control strategy.
Society's ideological-cultural tribalization is commodified. The citizen-consumer can exercise the freedom to choose the style or identity that best suits his/her needs or alleviates his/her existential anxieties. The political agency is replaced by cultural identity war games.
The creation of facades and personas with the capacity to shock, impress, attract attention, or attract followers takes on more relevance than looking for the political, social, economic, and cultural causes where the problems are rooted.
To a certain extent, we all live in a make-believe private bubble connected to society by commodification.
The city is not a natural environment, nor is intensive agriculture, livestock farming, or most of the economic activities we take for granted.
There are those who believe that technology can solve any problem, for example, feeding citizens using vertical hydroponic farming, ignoring that the majority of calories are provided by extensively cultivated crops such as cereals and oilseeds.
We are educated to live and adapt to artificial environments like today's megacities. These environments are designed and built to condition the way our lives are supposed to be lived from an early stage of our psycho-cognitive-affective development.
Trying to build a meaningful life in a dysfunctional society is nearly impossible for anyone living in the real world; that is, for those who have to leave home every day to earn just enough to survive.
The constant worry about money forces the working class to live, focused only on surviving.
Are we condemned to live this way? Are there other ways to organize the economy and society so that all citizens can lead more creative and meaningful lives?
Why do we have to tolerate a system designed in a way so that 1% of the population can accumulate obscene levels of wealth and concentrate intolerable levels of power?
The current system is not sustainable in the West or anywhere in the world. It is clear that there is an abysmal difference between the levels of consumption and pollution in rich countries compared to African countries, but even so, there is a need for a new civilizational model that works for everyone without privileges or exceptions.
Anyone who believes that China is developing a sustainable society does not understand the concept of overshoot.
On the other hand, we have the problem of imperialist militarism. The desire of the American deep state to impose a hegemonic global order dictated by Washington/Wall Street is at the origin of the war in Ukraine, which exposed the limits of the American hegemonic project and the threat it poses to global security, including the possibility of a nuclear holocaust.
The war in Ukraine should awaken the NATO countries' citizens, including the proud new members, to the reality that NATO is a US-led imperialist organization. Everybody knows it but apparently doesn't seem to understand what it means!
We can "choose" between believing that Putin decided to invade Ukraine because he is a monster or that this war was provoked by the machinations of the neocons, CIA, and the leadership of the US/UK/EU/NATO as part of the project to destabilize Russia.
The West was aware that Russia would not allow Ukraine to become a member of NATO.
All attempts made by the Russian leadership to implement The Minsk Agreements failed, and the avoidability of war became inevitable. The invasion could have been short-lived because the Russians were interested in negotiating, but the US was not; why?
Because the US/UK/EU were convinced that economic sanctions would be enough to destabilize Russia and create the conditions for a regime change operation.
Whatever the angle of analysis, it is easy to conclude that the war was provoked because the neocons believed that Russia only had two options: allow Ukraine to join NATO or start a war. In any case, Russia would be weakened or defeated and end up governed by a pro-Western puppet government.
And now?
Let's end the fantasy, or let's consent to the militarization of Europe to confront Russia!
Delusional hubris makes people believe that overextended empires can survive and thrive, but they don't; they die.
Instead of allowing ourselves to be persuaded by catchphrases and drawn into sterile discussions about who should be awarded the guilt prize, we should focus on historical, political, and ideological contextualization of events, crises, etc, to broaden our understanding and form informed, fact-based opinions.
The American imperialist project and the Era of Western colonialism must be put to sleep. The imperialist mentality must be replaced by the rule of justice and international economic cooperation.
The international community must create a democratic global order so that the largest, most populous, and most developed countries have no chance of becoming predators of weaker countries.
If imperialism, militarism, consumerism, capital accumulation, and the supremacy of private property do not cease to be the drivers of human behavior, the biosphere and humanity will end up completely destroyed.
The citizenry of the most powerful countries, in terms of territorial extension, population, development, and concentration of wealth, should be at the forefront of awareness of their responsibility to prevent power from being taken by sociopaths, belligerent psychopaths, and megalomaniacs.
Nationalist pride must be mitigated by the awareness that we all share a single planet and a common humanity. It is possible to defend a country's interests through cooperation with other countries, starting with neighbors.
People of all countries share common needs, even those who do not realize it: political stability, social justice, social and ecological economy, universal public services, international cooperation, and demilitarization.
Hegemony, imperialism, colonialism, militarism, excessive accumulation of wealth and power, predatory and parasitic financial capitalism, and mindless consumerism must be combated as they are putting the survival of humanity itself at risk in addition to causing irreversible changes in the atmosphere, biosphere, and geosphere.
Oligarchs and their acolytes seek opportunities to plunder nature and exploit people as resources to be used, abused, and discarded. On the other hand, the plutocratic rentier parasitic capitalism controlled by the FIRE sector plunders the real economy by virtual means. Society is being eviscerated by the plutoligarchy.
Investment in productive projects through public banking or direct investment by the national treasury to implement a social and ecological economy is the way forward to developing a genuinely sustainable economy at the national and international levels.
Democracy does not exist without justice and truth.
It is absolutely crucial to learn to identify logical fallacies disseminated by legacy media, social media, and all forms of communication for the sake of truth. These intentional or accidental reasoning errors are not exclusive to written or spoken narratives; they are also associated with visual symbols and images (film) to strengthen the deceptive effect.
When we learn how logical fallacies work, we become “experts” in unpacking reasoning tricks, just as when we realize how a magic trick works, the elusive power to deceive us vanishes.
Language framing in public relations operations and social and political communication is the way in which concepts, ideas, and values are aligned and mixed to convey a generic or specific vision about a problem, event, or crisis with the aim of manipulating public perception.
By passively accepting that we live in the Post-Truth Era, we are allowing factual truth to be relativized and diminished and be replaced by tribalized and weaponized pseudo-truths. Welcome to the neo-obscurantism.
Faced with a polycrisis, post-truth relativism means submission and surrender. Humanity has never had such a need to implement a culture of truth and justice to mitigate political-ideological antagonisms and give meaning to human existence, but apparently, most of us do not realize it.
In a nutshell, the capitalist system is the means of using capital to control land, resources, people, and literally everything with perceived or real value under the private control of a small group of people.
Capitalism cannot exist without the protection of the State because it is the State that guarantees legal protection and holds the monopoly on violence. Capitalism is an ideology for mass consumption and a system of power and control for the capitalist class.
The success of capitalism is mainly due to the enclosure of the commons. Private control of resources creates artificial scarcity, making citizens' survival dependent on the "goodwill" of private entrepreneurship.
The strategy of capitalist success involves infecting ordinary citizens with the capitalist virus. Capitalist doctrine preaches the possibility that everyone can aspire to be owners, the first step of the capitalist hierarchy.
Society doesn't exist; it’s fiction; what matters is individual initiative and the family (for obvious reasons). Capitalism devalues society because it needs to destroy the sense of communal interdependence and replace it with competition.
Ownership of property creates the illusion of equivalence and generates complicity.
Whenever a citizen or family owns a home or small business becomes part of the ownership class.
Many citizens who own property or small businesses support anti-social and anti-labor policies because they identify with a class to which they do not actually belong.
Just because they have moved up a step in the capitalist hierarchy does not mean they have the right to sit at the banquet table.
The capitalists at the top of the pyramid do not see them as equals; the fact that they own a house or a small business does not change their status as peasants in the eyes of the plutoligarchy, who will not think twice before throwing them under the bus.
Any citizen of the disadvantaged class (deprived of the means to live with dignity) who works hard to pay the mortgage on a humble house and everything he "owns is bought on credit, or as happens in the USA, where many young people enter adulthood carrying a burden of crippling student debt but are imbued in the capitalist theology will ultimately blame themselves and put the predatory system on the pedestal.
Many citizens try to redeem themselves from the feeling of guilt and shame by working hard to prove that they are up to their responsibilities and can also aspire to belong to the ownership class when, most likely, they will never free themselves from the shackles of the indebted class.
It is imperative to radically change course, perhaps resorting to a revolution.
What we understand as a society and what an economy is for cannot continue to be understood by the ideological-cultural framework and political parameters because we are sleepwalking toward collapse.
It is neither viable nor democratic to continue subjecting humanity to commodification; instead of liberation, we will have enslavement in the form of techno-fascist transhumanism.
We have to take a leap in civilizational awareness. Dichothymic thinking makes us unable to conceive that there is no separation between matter and essence, body and spirit; without the anima, there is no life, and without life, there is no anima. Relativizing or diminishing incarnated life has served to justify all forms of abuse and crimes against humanity and the biosphere.
Personal sacrifice out of love and dedication has nothing to do with the unnecessary suffering caused by systemic injustice in the form of manufactured scarcity.
The spiritual "cleansing" and liberation that humanity needs is to recognize the truth of life's inalienable dignity and commit to making justice the Anima of human civilization.
The only way to put truth and justice above the beliefs we hold dear and where we stand in the political-ideological compass is to learn to put our convictions in perspective and seek to understand the hidden agendas of those who try to influence how we perceive the world.
If the “truth” convenient to my political-ideological identity is not compatible with the factual truth, my obligation is to review my “truth” instead of attacking the character and integrity of the messengers (ad hominem logical fallacy) who shake my certainties.
September 11, 2001, is a paradigmatic example of the hardship of challenging the official narrative without being labeled an unpatriotic conspiracy theorist.
The official narrative was presented as truth (dogma), and the case was considered closed.
Could it be that the powers that sabotage public discussion and independent investigation and misinform and lie time and time again, as is happening with the war in Ukraine, could be paradoxically interested in showering the public with the naked truth?
Of course not! They are invested in managing public perception to manufacture consent.
"fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me"
Apparently, we are always ready to be deceived.
The hypothesis that September 11, 2001, was an inside job or was allowed to happen on purpose is completely nonsense. I don’t think so.
If cracks and inconsistencies are detected in the official narrative, wouldn't it be normal to demand an independent investigation?
The truth is yes, but the official answer is no! The "truth" has been proclaimed, and there is nothing else to discuss.
What should do those dissatisfied with the official truth? Advancing conspiratorial hypotheses, formulating conspiracy theories, and trying to uncover conspiratorial facts don’t seem nonsensical to me!
Given that 9/11 had consequences far beyond the borders of the US, the American authorities still owe a proper explanation to the international community, especially to the countries and citizens whose territory and lives were destroyed by the post-9/11 anti-terrorism militarist crusade.
Lies and injustice erode society's fabric, while truth and justice have the power to heal it. We shrug our shoulders at the problems' complexity and scope, but if we never face them, they will continue to grow and destroy what remains of society's fabric.
The complexity of the problems does not mean we accept being used, abused, and treated like disposable trash.
We can start by being more skeptical towards representatives of whatever form of authority: moral, intellectual, political, scientific, cultural, or any other.
We should not follow or idolize authorities, luminaries, or celebrities; instead, we must sift through the available information and knowledge that best helps us understand reality more accurately.
Overly fanciful conspiracy theories may not deserve our attention, but that should not lead us to reject everything labeled conspiracy theory.
If we believe we should only consider information from “certified” sources, we will deprive ourselves of essential knowledge.
Those who risk material security and even put their lives on the line to seek factual truth are not exempt from scrutiny, but the information they provide deserves our attention.
It is not necessary to have a doctorate to develop critical thinking, but it is essential to realize that our “natural” habitat is a swamp of lies and half-truths and act accordingly.
We more easily trust successful people and authorities with accredited training and socio-professional recognition than anonymous self-taught people with no academic or professional background and a CV without anything impressive to highlight.
Individually accumulated knowledge is always limited, flawed, and biased.
Wisdom is a collective experience; the flaws of some are filled by the knowledge of others. Details that escape some are evident to others, and in this way, we contribute to a broader individual and collective understanding.
This is valid for everything except for areas in which knowledge comes from practical experience and systematic training.
The most important thing about any bit and piece of information is not where it comes from but its substance and factuality.
We are adrift in a huge desert of propaganda and disinformation.
When we discover an oasis, the last thing we want to believe is that it may be contaminated.
But instead of believing in the purity of whatever source (I won't deny that it exists), the most important thing is to learn how to filter the information.
Hoping to find a genius, luminary, savior, that is, an oasis in the middle of a desert of deceit, is not the right attitude unless we are convinced that what gives meaning to our lives is looking for someone to guide and save us, because we consider ourselves incompetent and too stupid to understand reality by ourselves and build our life path.
Study and in-depth specialized knowledge are important, but they are not exempt from flaws, can be biased or based on incorrect premises, and the risk of causing damage should never be dismissed. The precautionary principle should be the main law of complex societies.
Reasoning and conceptual framing errors are common and easily passed off as true because they seem logical.
Misleading narratives can be intentional and fortuitous.
Commodified societies are under a constant barrage of deceptive and manipulative advertising and PR campaigns.
In a society where dissent and radical thought are marginalized and censored, lesser-known sources are likelier to be less polluted, although there are never absolute guarantees.
Everyone knows that appearances can be deceiving, but we follow the opposite pattern: we trust the information transmitted based on the reputation and popularity of authors and prestigious institutions. But institutions that in the past followed standards of rigor and independence may have been transformed into propaganda dissemination machines.
Credibility based on authority and popularity is never guaranteed.
The majority tends to side with authority or popularity, and that is why propaganda continues to have its intended effect.
More and more people consume media that the magic of algorithmic juggling chooses for them. Even the "work" of decision-making and choosing is being relocated!
The contradictions of a complex society explained in a simplistic, linear, biased, and weaponized way have disastrous consequences that we should take seriously. Democracy and freedom are nothing else, but empty vessels and neoliberal capitalism will “evolve” into technofascism. If the majority of us are fine with it, nothing needs to be done or changed.
Academics, scientists, and specialists provide society with essential knowledge based on detailed and in-depth systematic research.
Nevertheless, anonymous self-taught work is equally important, firstly because knowledge is not anyone's fiefdom; it is the product of collective experience, and secondly, those who work far from the contamination and competition of the academic environment and are not driven by careerism or financial interests, can contribute with original ideas to the collective discussion.
Knowledge is not the monopoly of any institution, creed, race, group, or person; knowledge is a collective experience to which any of us can contribute.
We are going through a critical phase of political-ideological weaponization of the systemic problems of a dysfunctional society with the aim of spreading the perception that we are dominated by the Marxization of education, society, politics, and the economy.
The purpose of this type of PR campaign is to demonize the left, mud the waters, and lead as many citizens as possible to hate everything labeled leftist, resorting to examples of capitalist politicians and neoliberal policies!
Neoliberalism has murdered social democracy, but many social democratic parties still use the same nomenclature. Therefore, we are supposed to believe that they continue to deliver social democratic policies. They don't, but for propaganda purposes, they are accused of implementing Marxist policies.
The reactionary right is winning this war because it knows how to take advantage of popular discontent by placing the origin of the problems in supposedly socialist policies implemented by politicians and governments committed to neoliberal capitalism!
Cultural wokeism is described as being one of the main flags of the left, skillfully associated with the degeneration of society by the reactionary right, extracting huge political dividends from an unnecessarily hyper-politicized subject.
The left, committed to defending the rights of minorities in the long term, should realize that cultural wokeism neither benefits the left nor does it benefit the minorities it is supposed to defend; it generates social and political cleavages that help the reactionary right to take power.
The production of knowledge to serve the capitalist system subverts knowledge's essence as a collective experience; proprietary rights over knowledge represent yet another form of enclosure of the commons as a collective good.
Individual, institutional, and corporate economic-financial interests contribute to intellectual dishonesty and scientific fraud.
The State and government are used as scapegoats for everything that is wrong with society.
As if the State and governments were not the mirror of society and vested interests.
The State and governments of most Western countries are infested with neoliberals and neocons, the legitimate representatives of the plutoligarchy and the parasitic financial capitalism (FIRE sector), but as governments "democratically" elected, they have the legitimacy to dictate the fate of the countries they misgovern.
The unsustainable situation helps the reactionary right, which is not interested in changing the economic-financial status quo nor in carrying out any social revolution; as soon as it takes power, it will align itself with the interests of the elites.
They skillfully use progressive liberal slogans and attach a leftist label to them to scare citizens, waving the threat of the social, cultural, ideological, and economic Marxization of society.
When everything boils down to interests, truth and justice are always neglected.
We are tempted to put ethical principles aside to protect private interests or guarantee survival. After all, we all have bills to pay and dreams to fulfill.
“Habit makes the monk,” and the system in place shapes our behavior and attitudes.
As domesticated animals that we are, it is not enough to be skeptical; It is essential to learn how the management of private interests interferes with judgment and how prejudices control the subconscious mind.
Michael Shermer, the https://michaelshermer.com/founding editor of Skeptic magazine, is what I call a reductionist skeptic. People like him and Sam Harris are recognized as brilliant intellectuals, but they often make ridiculous extrapolations in order to support meaningless assumptions.
The professional class of reductionist skeptics is so full of themselves that they cannot see their limitations and prejudices in perspective.
"Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but do not notice the plank in your own eye? Matthew 7:3-5
Michael Shermer's latest book, Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believes in the Irrational
https://michaelshermer.com/conspiracy-why-rational-believe-irrational/
Reductivist skepticism uses conceptual and ideological framing based on intellectual and cultural assumptions to counter the conspiracy theories that it seeks to debunk.
Those who want to be intellectually honest choose conspiracy theories based on conspiratorial hypotheses with substance to track potential conspiratorial facts.
Taking extravagant (wild) conspiracy theories to ridicule an existing problem in our societies is dishonest. Conspiracy is not a theory; conspiracy is a clandestine operation to commit a crime for political purposes, advance hidden agendas, or protect interests and people.
There is value in Shermer's work, but it is still too reductive.
Prejudices are part of bio-sociocultural identity; the functioning of the cognitive system is based on preexisting ideas and concepts, which are part of the dominant narratives that define what we believe we are at each stage of our lives.
The correct attitude is learning to understand how prejudices influence our reasoning and induce emotional (psycho-affective) states that trigger behavioral responses with or without conscious interference.
Prejudices lose or gain influence with sociocultural changes and changes in the state of individual consciousness. Existing prejudices, ideas, values, and narratives do not vanish; it is the acquisition of new knowledge and experiences that change how we see the world around us and change the narrative dynamics.
Some prejudices, ideas, values, and dominant narratives will lose influence in favor of others, and in this way, our opinions, attitudes, habits, and behaviors change, not necessarily for the better, because it depends on what type of information and experience we are voluntarily or involuntarily exposed to.
Changes for the better should be associated with more empathetic and humanized behaviors. If we become more cruel and narcissistic, the change cannot be considered positive.
Truth and justice are interrelated and inseparable.
“If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.” —Julian Assange.
The war in Ukraine can and must be ended by demanding the truth.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a fact, but to explain the war, we have to investigate its potential causes. It's plausible (but it's also unrealistic) to happen that a leader of a country decides to invade another country for no apparent reason, just because he is an evil monster.
If we take the version of the evil monster at face value, we support a potentially fatal historical lie.
As responsible citizens, we should study the recent history of relations between Russia and Ukraine and the US/NATO geopolitical and military strategy towards Eastern European countries, and the impact of these choices on the relations between the US/EU and Russia.
Our duty as citizens is not to let ourselves be carried away by initial emotional reactions triggered by how legacy media framed first impressions of the event.
Secondly, we should not feel obligated to pick a side, nor should we feel ashamed of choosing the side described as evil.
Demonizing and dehumanizing a people should raise a red flag; it may very well be part of the process of manipulating perception to manufacture compliance.
We must not allow the powers that be to manipulate our judgment through imposing an official version as the factual truth.
Europe's political strategy must change drastically.
The last thing European citizens should consent to is transforming the European economy into a war economy.
American imperialist hubris is the reason why we find ourselves on the brink of WWIII. We can spin it any way we want, but the truth will eventually come to light.
Russia has no plans to conquer Europe. Post-Soviet Russia focused on developing friendly relations with the West. Even after the disastrous economic system transition process under the "guidance" of the IMF, Russia continued to be interested in developing economic, diplomatic, and strategic cooperation with the West, with Germany, the so-called economic engine of Europe, being the main beneficiary.
The enlargement of NATO is consistent with the hegemonic strategy of American imperialism in this case, with the aim of putting Russia between a rock and a hard place, that is, between allowing ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads capable of reaching Moscow in less than ten minutes to be installed in Ukraine, and watch Crimea being transformed into a NATO naval base; or take a strong stance and go on the offensive and be faced with economic sanctions, asset seizures and banishment from the international payments system.
The Western leaders' dream of destroying Russia to control it and plunder its natural resources turned into a nightmare of shameful defeat and put the possibility of a direct war between NATO and Russia on the agenda.
Russia has no interest in this war, but it will not run away from it either, and if this scenario becomes reality, who knows how it will end? It will kill us all.
Europeans have more reason to fear the current Western leaders than the Russians. The insane neocons who control the corridors of power in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, London, and Washington are pregnant with imperialist hubris, making them incapable of accepting a multipolar and de-imperialized world.
What is the real reason why the USA needs around eight hundred military bases and installations spread across the world? What about black sites controlled by the CIA, secret labs, cutouts like the NED financing and training extremist groups, sponsoring color revolutions and regime change operations, and a network of media outlets like Radio Free Europe, spreading imperialist propaganda? I'll tell you why. Democracy and freedom, accumulation of wealth, and concentration of power for the few!
Pursuing the original objectives of destabilizing and destroying Russia is the real reason why the neocons want to transform the European economy into a war economy.
Ukrainians are being massacred in a proxy war that could have been avoided.
For European leaders, the logical choice is to militarize the European economy rather than negotiate an end to the war.
On September 2, 2025, 80 years will have passed since the end of the IIWW. The vivid memories of those who went through the experience are part of history's annals.
The new generations have a lot of experience in virtual warfare. Just like in childhood, it's all about pretending; you can die and be reborn, buy new lives with the points you earn, and so on.
Of course, we can understand the destructive power of war, but we do not consider war as a real possibility of disrupting the normal course of our lives.
We accept war as part of the series of things that only happen to others until the day it knocks on our door.
The fact that danger does not appear imminent is not sufficient reason to be optimistic; therefore, avoiding escalation is the only reasonable option; all other options will increase the risk of loss of control. Let us be realistic and demand peace negotiations.
For those who believe that the only solution is to defeat the evil Russians, war is a necessary evil, and the militarization of Germany and Europe is a priority. Europe has to prepare for war to be able to contain the Russians because if we let Ukraine fall, they will march to Lisbon or even to Ponta de Sagres (Promontorium Sacrum).
The patriotic duty of the European citizenry is to buy the official propaganda at face value or be labeled Putin's puppet.
Those who call for negotiations to end the war before it goes down a path of no return are painted as foolish or naive.
Nevertheless, as time passes, more people realize that, once again, we are being lied to. Perhaps in addition to being provoked, the war in Ukraine is a proxy war, and the Ukrainians are the cannon fodder.
An important point to consider is how the European vassals, with or without the blessing of the American lord, planned to defeat Russia.
Militarizing the European economy?!
For people to accept or even beg for the militarization of the European economy, it is necessary to spread fear (fearmongering), highlighting that the rearmament aims to make Europe safer and able to contain Russia.
The dehumanization and demonization of political leaders, heads of governments, and nations as a way of painting them as despicable enemies can easily lead to the situation where we too will be used as cannon fodder, and when we realize it, if we have the chance, it may be too late.
I believe that the majority of citizens want peace, so why only a minority call for negotiations?
Advertising has never been so overwhelming and omnipresent, which makes waking up to reality a slow and individual process that requires willpower to resist the sucking power of the black hole of ready-to-eat, easy-to-digest legacy media infotainment.
Trusting authorities, news anchors, talk show hosts, pundits, and analysts just because they are part of the mass media landscape is the best way to be misinformed.
Willfully exposing ourselves to deception and perception management to manufacture consent increases the risk of "choosing" the wrong side of history.
Believing and trusting the wrong people makes us vulnerable to being manipulated by them.
The point is not to be for or against. The point is that we should feel the responsibility to be fair, actively seeking factual information so that we are more likely to make informed and truthful judgments.
It is nothing new that heads of governments driven by hidden agendas, pressure, or even blackmail can push their own country or an alliance of countries into war for the wrong reasons. The citizenry, instead of lightly supporting any war, should be more "entrepreneurial" and "innovative" and "invest" in giving peace a chance. Diplomacy, negotiations, neutrality, and non-alignment.
Ideas have consequences.
How do ideas become relevant?
Inserting them into the narratives that are disseminated by the media, through books, films, sports, billboards, and PR campaigns designed for mass audiences.
Narratives are present in everything and everywhere.
A narrative is a form of symbolic language framing to transmit ideas, concepts, principles, and values in a logical and appealing way with the power to influence, modify, and reinforce perceptions, behaviors, habits, attitudes, choices, and worldviews.
Communication is the "science" of storytelling, and symbolic communication is the essence of the human condition. In complex societies, we have a diversity of professional storytellers whose function is to inform the general public or target audiences about any and every subject, event, theme, problem, etc., that are part of life in a society separated by groups, sectors, specializations, and interests.
Culture is neither more nor less than the human neurocognitive capacity to develop symbolic languages and use creative imagination to design symbolic representations of reality with the involuntary aim (when it is an organic process, which is not our case) of attributing meaning, purpose, and identity to a community of human beings.
Creative imagination is an individual experience influenced by and capable of influencing the collective experience resulting from the dynamic interaction between members of a community and the community with the surrounding environment, shaping a unique cultural identity and language.
The history of civilization is based on the monopolization of narrative creation that functions as structural ideological-cultural pillars of society in the hands of the ruling class.
From ancient cultures and empires to the present, narratives function as tools of power and control over the masses. This is why perception management to manufacture consent is vital in complex societies.
The ideological-cultural diversity made available by a commodified society gives the impression of providing consumers with the freedom to choose a sociocultural identity that best fits what each person believes to be his/her bio-sociocultural identity.
Style is confused with substance, performance with authenticity, regurgitation with spontaneity, and a facade hides the reality of petty and meaningless existences.
The shallowness of our understanding of how ideas shape self-perception and self-awareness at the subconscious level leads us to confuse style with identity.
The power of narratives is their ability to shape human psycho-sociocultural identity through the simple process of being exposed to them.
We are attracted to narratives for many reasons, many of which emanate from the subconscious level, the need for belonging, sharing, and psycho-affective comfort and relief.
The point to highlight is how crucial it is to know all the facets of this congenital vulnerability (cultural-ideological manipulation) to develop a culture and society that rewards behaviors, habits, and attitudes that reinforce the need for justice and truth instead of narcissistic and sociopathic opportunism.
Ideological-cultural and psycho-affective manipulation, exploitation, and enslavement are naturalized; for human beings, the sociocultural incorporation of ideas, principles, and values in the form of social rules and norms and behavior conditioning is what we will feel as natural through normalization.
If we want a sane mind in corpore sano, we must first become aware that we live in a representation of reality.
Learn to distinguish the three types of reality in which we live simultaneously. First, there is the tangible physical reality: people, animals, trees, rivers, mountains, and oceans; in short, the planet Earth's biogeophysical reality.
Second, the material reality built by man, infrastructures, cities, and roads, in short, the built heritage and the changes caused to the landscape and ecosystems, agriculture, mining, logging, etc.
Third, the ideological-cultural symbolic reality generated by the ingenuity of the conceptual and abstract creative power of the human mind used to describe, communicate, fictionalize, investigate, analyze, compare, and discover the laws that explain phenomena, imagine how the world works, produce art and technological artifacts, etc.
All societies, from the simplest to the hypercomplex, share this characteristic that should be understood as a curse because it allows us to justify the unjustifiable and find ways to garner support based on lies.
An indelible link exists between the centralization of power, the concentration of wealth, and the manipulation of the masses. The class-based society was not born organically; it was a conspiratorial endeavor perpetrated by opportunist sociopaths and megalomaniacal psychopaths.
When a group of citizens (or even a single one) realizes that they can use others as cannon fodder or workhorses, they create a narrative tailored to convince anyone willing to pay attention about the collective interest in supporting a project or proposed changes to societal rules, e.g., the division of society into classes or casts, an imperialist military campaign, the dehumanization and demonization of a people or leader to turn them into enemies, the belief in a god who promises eternal life, etc.
Deception as a tool of socio-cultural and ideological-political manipulation and control has been devastating for humanity, and anyone who believes that we are better off now is delusional because we continue to follow the same educational and societal paradigms.
People continue to be indoctrinated and instrumentalized to become workhorses.
The technologization of society and the commodification of life add infantilization and dependence on conveniences to human civilization.
Humanity is going backward, giving the impression that it is moving forward.
Not being able to live without sophisticated toys that supposedly represent a civilizational leap does not add more existential meaning to our lives, nor does it make us more resilient.
Although the excessive technologicalization of society brings negative consequences, the root of the problem is the existing civilizational paradigm. There are differences between Western civilization, Chinese civilization, Indian civilization, and others with greater or lesser relevance, but they all share a common dysfunctional organizational paradigm that has not changed for millennia. Adding more layers of complexity does not solve the underlying problem and can lead to the demise of humanity.
Semiotics is the study of how people create and interpret the meaning of signs and symbols, including how people communicate visually through metaphors, analogies, allegories, metonymy, symbolism, and other means of expression.
Symbolic communication developed from interpreting and giving meaning to phenomena, events, relations, and correlations experienced individually or in groups. Signs and symbols represent factual, fictional, or abstract reality with sociocultural significance for a specific community.
The development of civilization and the stratification of society into classes, roles, and functions brought professional specialization. Professional storytellers are spread across different sectors and subsectors of society, indoctrinating society under the guise of enlightening it.
To interpret and make sense of reality, human beings compose stories using diverse symbolic systems, such as oral and written language, visual language, drawings, paintings, sculptures, and other symbolic systems developed over time.
The language used to compose stories can be tangible, abstract, or a mixture of the two, which is most common.
A symbolic system is an organized collection of symbols and respective rules that carry meaning recognizable to the people who share it.
Narrating is the attempt to describe an object or event that exists or occurs in a multidimensional and multirelational context; therefore, it is very difficult to make a definitive accurate description. Journalistic and scientific rigor is less rigorous than it is portrayed because it is impossible to avoid contaminations, distortions, inaccuracies, limitations, and ideological biases.
Scientific knowledge is always open to revision. The mathematical formulas that allow us to know how the laws that govern the different dimensions of reality work do not prevent human beings from living in a fictional reality.
Society is a manufactured reality governed by artificial rules and norms. These rules and norms have the power to condition human perception and behavior using structuring narratives that attribute meaning and purpose to society's organization.
Dominant narratives and models can be based on axioms and ideas dissociated from reality and continue to give meaning and purpose to a dysfunctional system because the conditioning of perception and behavior can naturalize the abnormal.
The tangible reality of concrete objects is relatively easy to interpret and understand, but the relational reality between the world of tangible objects and the palette of ideological and moral abstractions that can be attributed to them complicates the understanding of the reality of individual human experience in the context of a commodified society.
It is straightforward to fall victim to ideological-cultural manipulation, and when the abysmal asymmetry of power and influence between the haves and the have-nots is used to convert the have-nots into disposable cannon fodder and workhorses, it should be evident that we need a system change.
We shouldn't even have armies!
However, for most people, this is inconceivable. How would we defend ourselves?
Everything seems impossible before it is accomplished.
Imperialism has been painted over the centuries as an applauded and glorified civilizing force.
But if humanity wants to have a future, the best thing that can be done is to get rid of imperialism once and for all.
Humanity can choose to do nothing and let society and life be completely commodified and technologized.
The human being as we know it may be doomed to disappear and be replaced by a transhuman species that will better serve the demands of a hyper-technologized civilization dominated by AI.
A part of humanity will become redundant, and eugenic measures will probably be implemented to reduce the population.
I believe that the ruling elite will want to take advantage of technoscientific advances to live longer or perhaps become immortal but will avoid transhumanization for fear of losing control of the system.
How can we accept that the best for humanity is to live in a completely digitized and AI-controlled dystopia?!
If we manage to avoid the Third World War and the multipolar order becomes the new normal, the economic model based on growth will remain the same.
The economy will continue to produce superfluous goods and products at the expense of the overexploitation of natural and mineral resources and the devastation of natural habitats and ecosystems vital for the survival of thousands or millions of species.
The supremacy of capital and private property rights is the engine of the current system, which is preparing the transition to the next in order to stay in control.
Planet Earth will become unrecognizable for a dysfunctional system to build a technologized dystopia.
What will remain of pristine nature, if anything, will only be available to a privileged minority; the masses will live confined in megacities.
The relentless and insidious war for the conquest and colonization of our minds is not a conspiracy theory; it is a conspiracy fact.
Without propaganda and disinformation, imperialist wars would meet popular resistance, so the ruling elites have to resort to perception manipulation and psycho-affective “management” to manufacture consent.
The masses' perception of a foreign political leader, head of state, people, or ethnic group is manipulated by the way the domestic elites' mouthpieces portray them in the legacy media.
Human resources are the human equivalent of natural and mineral resources, which only have value when explored and commodified to produce profit.
Human resources are divided by sectors of activity and classified by categories. The unemployed and emigrants function as redundant reserves available for recruitment when there is an additional need for workers and to contain the rise in wages.
Imperialist entrepreneurship needs financial resources to organize and train a military army, raw materials to manufacture weapons, vehicles, and logistical materials, and to guarantee a constant supply of food, ammunition, and maintenance material.
This type of enterprise serves to enrich a small minority of private financiers, weapons producers, and their respective acolytes.
A war economy for the glorification of power and death.
A peace economy for the dignification of life.
If the resources allocated to the war economy were used to develop an economy of peace, justice, and truth, humanity could afford to avoid wars to resolve political differences.
War, concentration of power, and accumulation of wealth must be prevented rather than justified.
Imperialist wars, besides mass murder and material and environmental destruction caused, have the purpose of plundering, colonizing, and enslaving, all of this wrapped up and sold as a civilizing and liberating project.
Imperialist wars serve to waste lives and resources that could be channeled toward economic and social development; they encourage patriotic exacerbation and the glorification of power, which is exactly what we should avoid if we want justice and peace.
The spoils were used to build temples, palaces, and other pharaonic architectural projects, which can be visited in most of the main cities of former empires.
This "civilizational" paradigm is at least ten thousand years old and is based on a caste or class system dominated by a king or emperor with absolute power.
Then as now, violent repression and manufactured scarcity are used to maintain and reinforce power.
A class-based system is incompatible with the liberation and democratization of society because it is committed to protecting private property rights and capital accumulation. This perpetuates injustice and inequality, hence the need to manage public perception.
After the collapse of the USSR, imperialist capitalism imposed a new global economic-financial order based on Western financial and military hegemony.
Globalized financial capitalism is used as an instrument of economic colonization and political subjugation. Governments that refuse to collaborate are threatened with economic and financial sanctions. They can be overthrown and replaced by puppet governments willing to open the economy to Western investment, which is used to plunder natural resources and take over assets while leaving a trail of destruction and empty promises of socioeconomic development.
The main international financial institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, are the Pentagon and CIA equivalents using finance as an imperialist weapon.
The dollar has been the world's main reserve currency since the end of World War II and is the currency most used in international trade.
“A reserve currency is a foreign currency that a central bank or treasury holds as part of its country's formal foreign exchange reserves. Countries hold reserves for a variety of reasons, including to withstand economic shocks, pay for imports, pay debts and moderate the value of their own currencies. Many countries cannot borrow money or pay for foreign goods in their own currencies – as much international trade is still done in dollars – and therefore need to maintain reserves to ensure a steady supply of imports during a crisis and ensure to creditors that debt payments denominated in foreign currency dollars can be made.”
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/dollar-worlds-reserve-currency
The ever-growing US military budget, the imperialist wars, the CIA operations, such as coups d'état, overthrowing of governments, color revolutions, the financing and training of extremist groups and political opponents to create political instability, the enlargement of NATO are financed with resources from the issuance of debt by the US Department of the Treasury.
Countries like China or Japan are net exporters that need to invest part of the excess dollars they hold in US Treasury Bonds. In short, all governments that buy American T-bonds are financing the US government and paying (as in the case of China) to be encircled by American military bases.
Michael Hudson - Changes in Super Imperialism: The position of the US and China in our global economic system
We can say without lying that the world economy was impoverished for decades to finance the Pax Americana!
The US financial free lunch is an unbearable burden for most of humanity.
The IMF is the policeman of financial imperialism, using debt as a political weapon to colonize the economies of the Global South but also those of the so-called allies.
Anyone who justifies, excuses, or praises capitalist imperialism makes militarist escalation inevitable.
The neoconservatives' delusional hubris leads them to accept the end of the unipolar moment, and the decline of US financial and military hegemony is pushing the world towards militarism and a war economy.
The USA has made China and Russia its arch-enemies because these two countries are not willing to tolerate the dictates coming from Washington.
Washington neither tolerates competition nor respects sovereignty.
"Competition is a sin." John D. Rockefeller, like any self-respecting capitalist, was a monopolist.
The concept of sovereignty was erased from the vocabulary of the US Department of State (DOS).
The Global South is benefiting from China's Belt and Road Initiative. In the not-too-distant future, more countries besides the usual suspects, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea, will be added to the list of neocons' arch-enemies.
The gradual but systematic de-dollarization of part of the global economy will allow more and more countries to bypass the US-controlled banking and financial system.
The “BRICS+” Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) represent an unprecedented challenge to American hegemony. Besides what they represent in terms of GDP, they contribute to making many countries feel more confident in challenging the imperialist rule.
The Belt and Road Initiative is yet another intolerable affront to American hegemony.
It is evident that China is a worthy competitor to the USA, and that is why many neocons are not happy with the proxy war against Russia. It made the strategic alliance between Russia and China not only possible but inevitable.
For the neocons, the military war against China is inevitable because the economic and technological war is lost.
Exercise Talisman Saber 2023 was the largest combined training activity between the Australian Defense Force and the United States military.
More than 30,000 military personnel from 13 nations directly participated in TS23, with others attending the exercise as observers.
Fiji, France, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany were participants, while the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand were observers.
https://www.defence.gov.au/defence-activities/exercises/talisman-sabre.
It is impossible to know how this situation will unfold, but the specter of war is likely to last.
The arms race has already begun, and in the coming years, we may be surprised by new types of weapons that resemble those in science fiction films.
We live in depoliticized democracies; who remembers Bush telling people to go shopping in the aftermath of 9/11?
Politics must always be taken seriously, but in a transition phase like the one we are going through with the American empire, whose manifested destiny was to be an indefeasible hegemon, politics is an unavoidable responsibility.
To face the American imperialist threat, which every year adds more billions to the military budget, the main adversaries are forced to follow the same path.
At a point in history when the only sensible attitude would be to demilitarize the planet, we are going in the opposite way, and the only thing we are told is lies.
Demilitarizing the world cannot be done unilaterally, but it is feasible. Military forces could and should be reduced to a minimum because, besides being a menace, they are also a high pollutant and a waste of resources and energy, even in times of peace.
But without political awareness, the masses cannot realize that imperialism is not a civilizing force; it is a way to put the poor fighting each other to enrich a handful of oligarchs. Imperialist wars are always economic wars to control territory and plunder resources, to colonize and enslave, to exploit and destitute.
To become aware of how destructive imperialism and capitalism are, we have to go through a process of mental decolonization.
The dominant pro-imperialist propaganda holds us hostage to an anachronistic model of civilization that could lead us to total annihilation.
