CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—The time to turn away from the trajectory toward nuclear war is now, not later. It’s bizarre how many people I get telling me “Well if nuclear war happens it’ll be Putin’s fault,” like that will be any comfort to them as they hug their family close and wait for a horrific death. There’s just so much sloppy thinking about the actual end of the world. People aren’t looking directly at this thing and thinking rigorously about what it would mean. What it would entail. This is understandable; it’s a terrible thing to contemplate. But we do urgently need to.
LIFE UNDER CAPITALISM
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GLENN GREENWALD—I want to share a story about Cabo Daciolo. It has nothing to do with the election. Vote for whoever you want. David and Daciolo only met a few months ago, when they found themselves in the same party. A friendship quickly formed. David talked a lot about their bond. Since David was admitted to the ICU two months ago, Cabo Daciolo hasn’t stopped calling to ask about David, send prayers, give comfort. He went to David’s room in the ICU to pray with and for David – including just days before his election day. Few in Brazil’s political world have done as much. He did all this without seeking any attention. Indeed, he told me he didn’t want any media attention. He didn’t want any publicity.
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Mercenaries in Yemen: Nationalities, numbers & horrors
26 minutes readMONA ISSA—It’s the twenty-first century. Corporations have armies. With as little as a few ID papers and almost no governmental regulation, you can take up state-of-the-art arms and be sent to a war that’s not your war, not your battle, and kill people whose names you can barely pronounce. The trade offer? You receive some $10,000 a week. That’s $40,000 a month. That’s more than 30x the American minimum wage for some honest work. You need not read some Veronica Roth, because we’re already living in a dystopian novel.
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JIMMY DORE—During the first Gulf War journalist Jon Alpert evaded his government controllers and censors to smuggle evidence of civilian casualties out of Iraq to show the American public the truth about the war’s devastating consequences. His higher-ups at NBC News had different ideas, however, and fired him rather than show the shocking footage. And then CBS News fired a producer who tried to bring Alpert on. It’s an appalling story of self-censorship in favor of war propaganda in the US news media. Jimmy and Hard Lens Media’s Kit Cabello discuss the levers used by the corporate-military-government establishment to prevent the truth about war from escaping.
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Caity Johnstone’s Truth Bombs on Ukraine: Absolutely Must read.
41 minutes readCAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Empire apologists get upset when you talk about the fact that this war was provoked because a large amount of empire apologia in 2022 is built around pretending that provocation just isn’t a thing. By some trick of Orwellian doublethink, this concept we’ve all lived our entire lives knowing about and understanding is now suddenly a freakish and ridiculous invention of the Kremlin.