LARRY JOHNSON—Lots to cover with respect to Friday’s mercenary terrorist attack in Moscow. Why do I call it “mercenary”? Because it appears that the perps had no ideological axe to grind and were hired for a relatively paltry sum and carried out indiscriminate killing at a public gathering of civilians. Based on the video evidence released so far in the public domain the planning for this op was not the work of skilled professionals — e.g., they used the same vehicle to travel to and from the attack site, their movements inside the building demonstrated unsophisticated Close Quarter Battle skills and they had poor muzzle discipline, which means they had minimal rifle training.
US EXCEPTIONALISM
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The Empire Doesn’t Hide Its Worst Deeds, It Just Manipulates How People Think About Them
15 minutes readCAITLIN JOHNSTONE—The US-centralized globe-spanning power structure therefore relies heavily on its historically unprecedented ability to psychologically manipulate global populations when carrying out such atrocities. The empire has invested more heavily in soft power than any empire or government in human history, and the science of modern propaganda has been advancing under this investment at least as rapidly as military technology has been.
That’s why you can have the most damning information imaginable about the people who rule over us sitting right out in the open, and you won’t see anywhere remotely close to the public outrage and backlash you ought to see.
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CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Highlighting the depravity and murderousness of the empire. Use any and all media and forums you find to be effective.
Everything you do on this front makes a difference, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. The propaganda machine is the linchpin of their power. It’s what holds the empire together. Without the ability to manipulate the public at mass scale, our rulers cannot rule.
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EDITOR—The panel discusses the outstanding aspects of Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview, what it signifies in the context of US imperial propaganda in an age of challenges and decline, whether the format of the interview itself—one of unusual depth and length—will help or harm the ultimate aim of educating Westerners, especially Americans, about the realities of the world so that peace can be secured, warmongers defeated once and for all, and a nuclear war can be averted.
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IAN KUMMER—The most important question is also the most difficult one. What will be the short and long term impacts of the interview? I do not think this will have any impact on opposing camps in the US political establishment who have already made up their minds on the Ukraine issue. But this will influence public opinion. For millions of American citizens, this is the first time in their lives they’ve heard the unadulterated Russian perspective, and that is in of itself significant. The interview has over 100 million views (and the exact number is hard to count because it has been shared so far and wide), and is already being translated into other languages and broken up into digestible sound bytes for people not interested in watching the whole video. And this is part of the reason I think it was good for Putin to focus on such broad historical topics because that makes the video evergreen, it will still be relevant in 5 years even if the conflict in Ukraine has already ended.