caitlin labels this assorted thoughts, and its an accurate title hitting multiple targets;


The problem isn’t just that we are ruled by tyrants, it’s that our minds are full of propaganda and cultural mind viruses which cause us to consent to it.

Russophobia and an uncritical emphasis on Trump has been used to scaremonger an annoyingly large percentage of American progressives from focusing on wanting change to focusing on wanting things to go back to how they used to be. Wanting things to go back to how they used to be is wanting the conditions which created Trump.

Patriotism is like the blue pill in The Matrix. You take it and you get to feel good about your country, but you don’t get to know the truth about it.

If everyone suddenly deeply understood on a gut level exactly how horrific war is, all military actions the US and its allies are currently engaged in would be forced to end due to popular revolt.

Under-discussed: secretive government agencies provide support to Silicon Valley corporations, support which they could easily have threatened to give to those corporations’ competitors instead if certain agreements weren’t made.

Anyone who says Russia is about to invade Ukraine or the Baltic states is either lying or ignorant. A nation with an economy the size of Spain which has been gutting its military budget is not gearing up for World War Three.

Russia’s military personality is a lot like the personality of the stereotypical Russian military veteran: stoic and reserved when left unprovoked, but willing and able to put you in a wheelchair if you invade his personal space. It should be treated accordingly.........https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/12/11/assorted-thoughts-on-politics-humanity-and-the-world/

you can occasionally find 'memes' that say a lot in few words;

alleged law enforcement officers who don't know the law proliferate, and here is another example among the many we have the opportunity to see daily if we know were to look but your tv won't usually be one of those sources;


Harnett County, NC — A disturbing video was shared with the Free Thought Project this week showing police officers slam and arrest a girl who is reportedly just 14-years-old and then do the same thing to her sister. According to the person who shared the video with TFTP, she was assaulted and arrested for the mere act of filming police.
The video shows the arrest of a young black man by two Harnett County deputies as two teenage girls film the arrest. In the video, the girl filming asks police why they are arresting the young man.  
“You said he’s being detained because he is jittery?” the girl asks.
Ignoring the girl’s question, the deputy then asks, “who lives here?”
“Him and his dad,” the girl filming replies.
“Is his dad home?” asks the deputy.
“No,” replies the girl. “He has a job.”
At this point, the deputy, who is holding a pill bottle, then turns his attention to the 14-year-old girl who is also filming.
Although it is briefly off camera, the deputy apparently tries to confiscate the girl’s phone.
“You cannot take my phone,” the girl states as the camera moves back toward her.
As the video shows, after the girl refused to hand over her phone, the deputy jumped on her back, placed her in a choke hold and slammed her to the ground.
“You’re under arrest!” the deputy yells..........https://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/cop-chokes-out-and-body-slams-14yo-girl-and-her-sister-for-allegedly-filming-them/237725

boris and natasha, those pesky russians are once again stirring up trouble and now its france they've targeted by making its citizens rise up and demand righteous treatment by 'their' rulers, and here you will be finding out more about that;

So it appears the privatization of France isn’t going quite as smoothly as planned. As I assume you are aware, for over a month now, the gilets jaunes (or “yellow vests”), a multiplicitous, leaderless, extremely pissed off, confederation of working class persons, have been conducting a series of lively protests in cities and towns throughout the country to express their displeasure with Emmanuel Macron and his efforts to transform their society into an American-style neo-feudal dystopia. Highways have been blocked, toll booths commandeered, luxury automobiles set on fire, and shopping on the Champs-Élysées disrupted. What began as a suburban tax revolt has morphed into a bona fide working class uprising.

It took a while for “the Golden Boy of Europe” to fully appreciate what was happening. In the tradition of his predecessor, Louis XVI, Macron initially responded to the gilets jaunes by inviting a delegation of Le Monde reporters to laud his renovation of the Elysée Palace, making the occasional condescending comment, and otherwise completely ignoring them. That was back in late November. Last Saturday, he locked down central Paris, mobilized a literal army of riot cops, “preventatively arrested” hundreds of citizens, including suspected “extremist students,” and sent in the armored military vehicles.

The English-language corporate media, after doing their best not to cover these protests (and, instead, to keep the American and British publics focused on imaginary Russians), have been forced to now begin the delicate process of delegitimizing the gilets jaunes without infuriating the the entire population of France and inciting the British and American proletariats to go out and start setting cars on fire. They got off to a bit of an awkward start........http://www.unz.com/chopkins/the-indiscreet-charm-of-the-gilets-jaunes/

this writer tends towards longer than usually posted on this endeavor but he always has lots of facts to make his point, and this one is no exception. you can find in this piece how the rule of law is vanishing and who is involved, plus what it may mean for you;

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”—Thomas Jefferson

We are approaching critical mass, the point at which all hell breaks loose.
The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis.
What makes the outlook so much bleaker is the utter ignorance of the American people—and those who represent them—about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate.
As Morris Berman points out in his book , “70 percent of American adults cannot name their senators or congressmen; more than half don’t know the actual number of senators, and nearly a quarter cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Sixty-three percent cannot name the three branches of government. Other studies reveal that uninformed or undecided voters often vote for the candidate whose name and packaging (e.g., logo) are the most powerful; color is apparently a major factor in their decision.”
More than government corruption and ineptitude, police brutality, terrorism, gun violence, drugs, illegal immigration or any other so-called “danger” that threatens our nation, civic illiteracy may be what finally pushes us over the edge.
As Thomas Jefferson warned, no nation can be both ignorant and free..........https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/12/john-w-whitehead/a-crisis-in-the-making-know-your-rights-or-you-will-lose-them/

voltaire said something like: if you want to know who rules you find out who you are not allowed to criticize. in this piece you can discover some additional evidence of that quote;

When George H.W. Bush died on November 30^th, America’s two self-proclaimed newspapers of record The Washington Post and The New York Times were both quick off the mark in publishing what appeared to be definitive obituaries of the former president and statesman that had clearly been prepared in advance. The obit by The Times and that by The Post differed little in substance but they had one curious omission, i.e. President G.H.W. Bush’s eighteen month confrontation with Israel and its powerful domestic lobby.
In 1991-1992 President Bush engaged in a series of sharp exchanges with Israel and its American lobby over the issue of $10 billion in loan guarantees to the Jewish state to pay for the resettlement of Russian Jews, who were beginning to arrive in both Israel and the West in large numbers. Bush correctly assumed that the loans would in fact also subsidize the expansions of illegal settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza, which the U.S. government opposed, so he said “no” to the loans. After a series of increasingly acrimonious exchanges back and forth, Bush, facing election, withdrew his objections and the loans were approved, but he was the only U.S. president since John F. Kennedy to confront the Israel Lobby in any serious way. Kennedy was, of course, assassinated and Bush was defeated for reelection.
Both G.H.W. Bush and many other observers of the campaign and election believed the loss to Bill Clinton in 1992 was at least in part attributable to the actions of Israel and its friends. The conflict between Bush and the Israeli government backed up by the Israel Lobby and a number of congressmen and media outlets began in the spring of 1991. By September, President Bush refused to approve the loan guarantees as he believed that withholding approval of the money would give the U.S. leverage in peace negotiations with the Arabs that were planned for the end of the year in Madrid. Bush felt that Israeli Prime Minister was not taking the U.S. seriously because he believed that he would get what was wanted from Congress in any event without stopping settlement construction or having to concede anything to the Palestinians. There was also a distinct possibility that the Israelis would not bother to participate in Madrid without some kind of possible financial inducement........https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/12/phil-giraldi/the-bowdlerized-bush-obituaries/

sometimes paul craig roberts can be very concise in which case, like this one, i can paste his entire article on this page. here he makes much sense describing how the empire is on the way down;

Washington Is Changing The World Order Against Its Own Interests
Paul Craig Roberts
Support your website. It keeps you from living in The Matrix. Donate now. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/pages/donate/
The hubris and arrogance of Washington have been at work since the Clinton regime to destroy the power and relevance of the United States.
This website has an international audience. The most asked question from this audience is the world order. There is a realization that Washington’s control might weaken, a development people abroad see as hopeful. They ask me for verification of their hope.
Here is my answer:
The world order has already changed.  China has a larger and more powerful industrial and manufacturing based economy than the US, and China’s potential domestic consumer market is four times larger than that of the US. As economies are consumer based, China’s potential is an economy four times larger than that of the US.
Russia has a far more capable military with weapon systems unmatched by the US. The US is drowning in debt, and the illegal and irresponsible sanctions that Washington tries to impose on others are driving the world’s largest countries away from the use of the US dollar as world reserve currency and away from Western clearance systems such as SWIFT.  The United States already has one foot in the grave.  Any country sufficiently stupid to ally with the US is allied with a dead man walking.
President Eisenhower, a five-star general, warned Americans 57 years ago to no effect that the military/security complex was already a threat to the American people’s ability to control their government. Today the military/security complex is the Government. As Udo Ulfkotte documented in his book, Journalists for Hire: How the CIA buys the News—no you can’t buy a copy unless you can find a used copy in German in a German book store, the CIA has seen to that—journalism independent of official explanations no longer exists in the Western world.
Much of the world does not understand this. Aside from the material interests of Russian and Chinese capitalists, a portion of the youth of both superpowers, and also even in Iran, have succumbed to brainwashing by American propaganda. Gullible beyond belief, they are more loyal to America than they are to their own countries.
The United States itself is extremely unsuccessful, but its propaganda still rules the world. The consequence is that, based on its propagandistic success, Washington thinks it still holds the balance of economic and military power. This is a delusion that is leading Washington to nuclear war.
Considering the hypersonic speed, trajectory changeability and massive power of Russian nuclear weapons, war with Russia will result in nothing whatsoever being left of the US and its vassals, who sold out European peoples for Washington’s money.........https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/12/11/washington-is-changing-the-world-order-against-its-own-interests/