A Low-Trust Society Is an Impoverished Society

By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

The sole remaining reservoirs of trust in American life are personal networks, local enterprises and local institutions.

It’s not exactly news that social trust has declined significantly in the United States. Surveys find that public trust in institutions and the professional classes that dominate those institutions has cratered. (see chart below) Social trust–our confidence that other people are trustworthy–has also fallen to multi-decade lows.

This was not the case in decades past. Americans maintained high levels of trust in their institutions, government and fellow citizens. The decline in social trust is across the entire spectrum: our trust in institutions, professional elites and our fellow Americans has declined precipitously.

The causes of this decay of social trust can be debated endlessly, but several factors are obvious:

1. Institutions forfeited the trust of the citizenry by withholding / editing realities to serve the interests of hidden agendas and insiders’ careers. The Vietnam War was pursued on fabrications, as was the second Gulf War to topple Saddam. Watergate eroded trust on multiple levels, as did the Church Committee’s investigation of America’s security agencies’ domestic spying / over-reach.

2. The managerial / professional elites at the top of the nation’s institutions no longer put the citizenry’s interests above their own. The public’s trust has eroded as institutions are primarily viewed as vehicles for self-enrichment and career advancement: healthcare CEOs pay themselves millions, higher education is bloated with layers of non-teaching administration, defense contractors and the Pentagon have greased the revolving door to the benefit of incumbents and insiders, and so on, in an endless parade of self-serving cloaked with smirking PR claims of “serving the public.”

The shift from a high-trust society to a low-trust society is consequential economically, politically and socially. Low-trust societies have stagnant economies, as nobody trusts anyone they don’t know personally or through personally trusted networks, and nobody trust institutions to function effectively or fulfill their stated mission to serve the public good.

Faced with incompetent, unaccountable, corrupt bureaucracies and a culture overflowing with scams, frauds, imposters and get-rich-quick schemes, people give up and drop out. Rather than start a business and accept all the risks just to get dumped on or ripped off, they don’t even try to start a business. Given the financial insecurity that is now the norm, they decide not to get married or have children.

The vast trading networks of the Roman Empire were based on personal trusted networks and trust in Rome’s functionaries / institutions. The owners of trading ships dealt with trusted captains and merchants, who then paid duties to Roman functionaries in Alexandria and other major trading ports.

In other words, tightly bound personal trusted networks work well as long as the state institutions that bind the entire economy are trusted as fair and reliable–not perfect, of course, but efficient and “good enough.”

But when public institutions are viewed as unfair, unreliable, corrupt or incompetent, the entire economy decays. Even personal trusted networks cannot survive in an economy of unfair, unreliable, corrupt or incompetent state bureaucracies and private institutions.

The American economy is now dominated by enormous privately owned and managed monopolies and cartels that are the private-sector equivalent of self-serving state bureaucracies. Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Big Ag, Big Finance, etc., are even worse than state bureaucracies because there are no legal requirements for transparency or recourse. Try getting a response from a Big Tech corporation when you’ve been shadow-banned or sent to Digital Siberia.

The sole remaining reservoirs of trust in American life are personal networks, local enterprises and local institutions. These are not guaranteed, of course; in many locales, even these reservoirs have been drained. But in other locales, enterprises and institutions such as the county water utility, the local newspaper, the local community college, etc. continue to earn the trust of the public by performing the services they exist to provide effectively and at a reasonable cost.

The larger the institution and the greater its wealth and power, the lower the social trust–for good reasons. The greater the influence of the managerial elites, the greater the disconnect from the everyday experiences of the citizenry and customers, and the more extreme the self-serving PR.

Sure, I trust Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Big Finance–to rip me off, profiteer, send me obfuscating bills, jack up junk fees, make it impossible to contact them, and send me to Digital Siberia if I complain.

The divide between the elites and the commoners should prompt us to examine the low-trust path we’re sliding down:

In a society in which everything is phony, low quality or fraudulent, you’re taking a chance trusting anyone you don’t know personally–and even that can be risky now that self-aggrandizing flim-flam is the last remaining path to financial security for non-elites.

A low-trust society is an impoverished society, economically stagnant and socially threadbare. That’s where we are now, and the more fragmented, greedy, self-serving, desperate and deranged we become, the lower the odds that we’ll find the means to rebuild trust.

Sadly, we already know that anyone claiming to “rebuild trust” is spouting PR designed to mask self-enrichment. We also know that the vast army of well-paid flacks, factotums, enforcers, happy-story apologists, lackeys, toadies and sell-out minions are declaring “everything’s great!”

Just mumble, “Uh, sure” and continue to Tune in (to degrowth), drop out (of hyper-consumerism and debt-serfdom) and turn on (to self-reliance and relocalizing capital and agency).

BANNING TIKTOK IS NOT ABOUT FIGHTING CHINA, IT’S ABOUT PROTECTING WESTERN NARRATIVES AND ISRAEL’S WAR CRIMES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

By Timothy Aleander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

The US government claims that TikTok is a national security threat because China can collect data on its users for “intelligence gathering.” Give me a break! The House of Representatives passed a bill to ban TikTok unless Byte Dance, the Chinese parent company “divests” from the app within six months or so, in other words, they are forcing Byte Dance to sell TikTok within a certain time period in order for it to operate in the US.  Former Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that he is putting together an investor group to supposedly buy TikTok. 

The reality is that they are not going after TikTok because of China’s “intelligence gathering” on US citizens, it is because Western governments, Israel and their mainstream media networks are being exposed for their lies and propaganda more than ever before by various alternative media websites, blogs, social media, and video-sharing platforms such as TikTok.

China’s “Intelligence Gathering” vs. Israel’s War Crimes

It is most likely that the US congress is scapegoating China mainly to protect Israel’s reputation in the last bastion of its supporters in the United States were there are more than 170 million TikTok users.  In one way or another Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and beyond has been exposed on TikTok and it does not look good for the self-described “Jewish State.” 

Last January, the US-based TIME magazine reported on the reality of how the world views Israel and its actions in the Middle East, “New data shared with TIME magazine business intelligence company Morning Consult shows that support for Israel around the world has dropped significantly since the war in Gaza began.”  Morning Consult found that Israel’s standing in world opinion has dropped dramatically, “Net favorability—the percentage of people viewing Israel positively after subtracting the percentage viewing it negatively—dropped globally by an average of 18.5 percentage points between September and December, decreasing in 42 out of the 43 countries polled.”   

From China to South Korea, even in the UK and several countries in Latin America all had a somewhat positive view of Israel, but when the war on Gaza began, opinion polls on Israel’s favorability status collapsed:

China, South Africa, Brazil, and several other countries in Latin America all went from viewing Israel positively to negatively. And many rich countries that already had net negative views of Israel—including Japan, South Korea, and the U.K.—saw steep declines. Net favorability in Japan went from -39.9 to -62.0; in South Korea from-5.5 to -47.8; and in the U.K. from -17.1 to -29.8

Sonnet Frisbie, the deputy head of political intelligence at Morning Consult said that “the data shows just how tough of a road Israel has right now in the international community.”  Of course, the US population still holds a favorable opinion of Israel, “The U.S. remains the only rich country that still had net positive views of Israel. Net favorability dropped just 2.2 percentage points, from a net favorability of 18.2 to a net favorability of 16 from September to December” the report said. 

Al Jazeera‘Israel has lost the war of public opinion,’ by Imam Omar Suleiman published last year said that “In a new media landscape dominated not by Western media giants but by Instagram reels, TikTok videos and YouTube shorts, Israel’s ongoing war on the besieged Gaza Strip is more than televised.” 

Israel’s crimes have been exposed due to the internet including alternative media networks and various social media platforms since the Zionist controlled mainstream media failed to do its job which should not be a surprise to anyone. 

Platforms such as TikTok has more than 170 million users in the US which is a concern for both the US and Israeli governments who propagandize the US population on a daily basis on the situation of Palestine through their control of the mainstream media and Hollywood:

Audiences across the world, and especially young people, have been watching the devastation caused by Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of the Palestinian enclave on their preferred social media platforms, in real-time, for over a month. Anyone with internet access has seen countless videos of babies torn apart by bombs, women crushed under tonnes of concrete and mothers cradling the dead bodies of their children

Suleiman said that “Israel, of course, still continues with its usual efforts – and more – to control the narrative about its bloody wars and decades-old occupation.”  He pinpoints how Israel is losing the information war:

Yet, despite all these efforts, thanks largely to social media, Israel is no longer able to conceal the truth about its conduct in Palestine. It can no longer control the narratives and the public opinion on Palestine. As mainstream media loses its ability to single-handedly decide what Western and, to a certain extent, global audiences get to witness about the situation in Palestine, the brutality of Israel’s occupation has been laid out in the open for everyone to see

The Times of Israel published an article based on Israel’s obvious concerns regarding TikTok, Major US Jewish group backs bipartisan bill that could see TikTok banned’ said that “One of the most prominent Jewish groups in the country has thrown its support behind a fast-advancing bill that could lead to the massively popular video app TikTok being banned in the United States.” 

The world knows that both Democrats and Republicans in the US Capital are in the pockets of Jewish lobbying groups are moving forward in efforts to ban TikTok because its a “Chinese owned app” and it is collecting data on American citizens. 

In my opinion, why would China spy on US citizens since most people in the US are in debt or are too busy watching reality TV, celebrity news or sports, in fact, many could not even find China or any other Asian country on a map.  It’s a harsh statement, but it’s a fact.  Besides there are companies (some are based in the US including Amazon) who have been selling your data for some time now. It’s no secret.

The article states that “Politicians backing the bill, who include leaders from both parties, have centered their criticism of TikTok on national security concerns related to the app’s Chinese ownership and data collection practices.”  Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington said that “It is very important that it is targeted and specific to the national security threat” and that “This is not related to content. This is about the threat because of the data that has been collected.” So, the ban on TikTok is not related to the content? That’s pure nonsense.  The Times of Israel at least stated the facts on why the US and Israel is really interested in banning the platform:

Jewish Federations of North America, representing hundreds of organized Jewish communities, said its support for the bill is rooted in concerns about antisemitism on the platform. The Jewish Federations and the Anti-Defamation League have accused TikTok of allowing antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment to run rampant

The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) wrote a letter to the US Congress claiming that “The single most important issue to our Jewish communities today is the dramatic rise in antisemitism” and that “Our community understands that social media is a major driver of the drive-in antisemitism and that TikTok is the worst offender by far.” 

Banning TikTok is about censorship.  It is a fact that Israel’s war crimes and the destructive nature of the US war machine is getting exposed more than ever before. US lawmakers are giving Byte Dance which is managed by Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean citizen, about six months to divest US assets from the app, or they will face a ban.  If the ban of TikTok moves forward, then free speech in the US is completely dead.  But that does not mean all social media platforms or even websites will be in danger for the foreseeable future because there will be other apps and platforms that the US, EU, and Israeli political establishment won’t be able to control. 

Banning TikTok will Only Motivate Us to Create Other Platforms    

Social Media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter (although owned by Elon Musk) have been completely hijacked by the government censorship regime.  The Western political establishment, Globalist bankers, Zionists, Multi-national corporations such as Big Oil and Big Pharma and others around the world are facing an information war that they are clearly losing. 

The internet has given us the tools to fight the mainstream media and their lies.  Several social media platforms have grown to be a vital tool to challenge government and corporate propaganda such as TikTok, but there are also other various types of online-video platforms such as RumbleBit ChuteOdysee (part of LBRY, a blockchain based file-sharing and payment network) and we must include instant messaging services such as Telegram and VK where you can post articles and videos as well. 

The point here is that regardless of how certain governments such as the US and the European Union who have banned foreign media companies such as Russia’s RT News and Iran’s Press TV, they also have plans to ban social media platforms, but it won’t work.      

They believe that banning TikTok will prevent people from getting the truth especially to what is happening in Palestine, but they are wrong, it will only help motivate people to create new platforms and other ideas, they will create new channels of information that would get out to the public.  Whether they ban TikTok or not, the genie is out of the bottle, the truth can never be suppressed.   

The American Explanation for the Moscow Terror Attack Doesn’t Add Up

By Dmitry Trenin

Source: Covert Geopolitics

Russian foreign policy could change significantly, depending on the results of the investigation into the atrocity.

The heinous act of terrorism at the Crocus City Hall concert venue just outside Moscow on Friday night – which is confirmed to have killed more than 130 people at the time of writing – has perhaps shaken Russia more than anything since a similar attack on a theater in the capital in 2002.

This latest atrocity will certainly have a major impact on the Russian people’s consciousness and the nation’s public security. It could also lead to serious changes in Moscow’s foreign policy, depending on the results of the investigation into the source of the attack and its masterminds. Considering the enormously high stakes involved in its findings and conclusions, there is no doubt that the investigation will have to be incredibly thorough.

The US government’s version of an Islamic State connection to the attack has been met with skepticism by Russian officials and commentators. Firstly, they were surprised by how quickly – virtually within minutes – Washington pointed the finger at the group. What also drew the attention of Russian observers was the US reference to an IS-linked news site which had claimed responsibility for the crime.

Normally, all such sources are subjected to thorough checks. But not this time. Figures in Russia have also noted that American spokesmen immediately, and without prompting, declared that Ukraine was in no way linked to the act of terror.

Other criticisms of the American version include the style of the attack (no political statements or demands were made); the admission by one of the captured attackers that he had shot innocent people for money; and the fact that this was not planned as a suicide operation. Many experts have pointed out that IS is far from its prime, and that Russian forces defeated its core elements in Syria years ago. This has allowed speculation to grow about a false flag attack.

Ukraine, true to form, and alone among the nations of the world, has suggested that the Crocus City atrocity was an operation carried out by Russia’s own secret services, launched to facilitate a further tightening of the political regime and a new wave of mobilization. Clearly nonsensical, this interpretation invoked in many Russian minds the old proverb, “liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his five-minute address to the nation on Saturday, refrained from rolling out the Kremlin’s own version. His words and his demeanor were calm, but the style of his remarks was stern. Those behind the attack “will be punished whoever they are and wherever they may be,” the president declared.

The direction of Putin’s thinking was revealed by the two facts – not conjectures – he raised: that the terrorists, having fled the scene of the assault, had been apprehended not far (100km or so) from the Ukrainian border, and that “information” had been obtained that they intended to cross the border into Ukraine, where “they had contacts.”

At this point, nothing is firmly established. The results of the Russian investigation will be enormously important. If Moscow concludes that the attack was conceived, planned, and organized by the Ukrainians – say, the military intelligence agency GUR – Putin’s public warning would logically mean that the agency’s leaders will not just be “legitimate” targets, but priority ones for Russia.

Since an attack of such gravity would almost certainly have required the approval of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, the “guarantee” that Putin informally gave to foreign leaders (including Israel’s then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett) that Russia would not target Zelensky personally, would presumably be lifted. If so, Moscow would be removing one of its most important self-imposed constraints – not to touch Kiev’s senior leadership.

The Crocus City terrorist attack seemingly fits into a pattern. It has come against the background of Ukraine’s intensification of artillery and drone strikes against the civilian population in Russian regions on the shared border, as well as attempts (all thwarted, thus far) to raid Russian villages.

As a result, scores of Russian civilians have been killed or wounded, and thousands of children evacuated to safety. The conclusion reached by many analysts is that Ukraine, by focusing on “soft” civilian targets, had been seeking to undermine the Russian population’s morale in the run-up to the presidential elections in mid-March, and to strain the country’s internal stability after them.

Regarding the concert hall massacre, there is another aspect at play: the US version of IS complicity and the use of Tajik citizens to carry out the attack may be intended to stoke inter-ethnic tensions within Russia between the Slavic majority and the Muslim minority population, both local and immigrant. 

Taken together, all of this strengthens the argument of those inside Russia who have long insisted that Ukraine – under its present ultranationalist leadership – is a terrorist state, and that Russia simply cannot tolerate such a regime on its borders. They believe that any talk of a ceasefire or negotiations should stop.

Russia must achieve a complete victory – otherwise it will constantly bleed at the hands of the terrorists in power next door, supported and protected by the country’s adversaries in the West. If the results of the investigation confirm that Ukraine was behind the Crocus City massacre, Russia’s war aims will need to be greatly expanded, and the conflict will significantly grow in intensity.

One thing that’s important to note” The war in Ukraine is not considered by Russians to be a war against Ukraine.

Rather, it is seen as a fight against the US-led West, which is using Ukraine as a battering ram to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. It is interesting that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov just last week publicly admitted for the first time that the “special military operation” was in fact now a war. It became so, he said, as a result of the West’s involvement in the conflict.

Thus, if Ukraine’s complicity in Friday’s terrorist attack is indeed established, it would also suggest, at a minimum, US knowledge and de facto approval of it. In this respect, various people have already highlighted the recent warnings by the GUR chief, Kirill Budanov, and outgoing US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland about “unpleasant surprises” awaiting Russia in the near future.    

Thus, Russia’s own warnings about striking airfields in NATO countries if they are used by the Ukrainian Air Force, and about wiping out French (or any other NATO) troop contingents if they are sent into Ukraine, are acquiring more credibility. Escalation of the conflict, which heretofore has mostly been driven by Western actions, each time raising the stakes a notch, and Russia (in)famously “exercising restraint,” will potentially lead to a head-on collision.

Unless, of course, Washington decides at some point that enough is enough, that what’s happening is too dangerous, and that, unlike for Russia, the battle in Ukraine is not existential for the US itself – or even for its dominant position in Europe.  

It’s War: The Real Meat Grinder Starts Now

By Pepe Escobar

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

No more shadow play. It’s now in the open. No holds barred. 

Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.

The money quote:

“Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it, not to mention the territory of new regions.”

Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.

Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.

Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes, this is a NATO force.

That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.

Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing, all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.

And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least five strikes.

Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan next October.

Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total political support from Beijing and Moscow.

The sponsors remain the same

Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers. A massive investigation is in progress.

The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing. On a Friday during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.

Let’s go pop. To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”. Oh no; it’s more like an all-American psy op. ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them.

That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in: ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the commando killers did not look like Slavs.

It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.

The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…

… Donald Trump.

Talk about a Deep State-pinpointed target.

ISIS spin-off or banderistas – the sponsors remain the same. The clownish secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, was dumb enough to virtually, indirectly confirm they did it, saying on Ukrainian TV, “we will give them [Russians] this kind of fun more often.”

But it was up to Sergei Goncharov, a veteran of the elite Russia Alpha anti-terrorism unit, to get closer to unwrapping the enigma: he told Sputnik the most feasible mastermind is Kyrylo Budanov – the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

The “spy chief” who happens to be the top CIA asset in Kiev.

It’s got to go till the last Ukrainian

The three exhibits above complement what the head of NATO’s

military committee, Rob Bauer, previously told a security forum in Kiev: “You need more than just grenades – you need people to replace the dead and wounded. And this means mobilization.”

Translation: NATO spelling out this is a war until the last Ukrainian.

And the “leadership” in Kiev still does not get it. Former Minister of Infrastructure Omelyan: “If we win, we will pay back with Russian oil, gas, diamonds and fur. If we lose, there will be no talk of money – the West will think about how to survive.”

In parallel, puny “garden-and jungle” Borrell admitted that it would be “difficult” for the EU to find an extra 50 billion euros for Kiev if Washington pulls the plug. The cocaine-fueled sweaty sweatshirt leadership actually believes that Washington is not “helping” in the form of loans, but in the form of free gifts. And the same applies for the EU.

The Theater of the Absurd is unmatchable. The German Liver Sausage Chancellor actually believes that proceeds from stolen Russian assets “do not belong to anyone”, so they can be used to finance extra Kiev weaponizing.

Everyone with a brain knows that using interest from “frozen”, actually stolen Russian assets to weaponize Ukraine is a dead end – unless they steal all of Russia’s assets, roughly $200 billion, mostly parked in Belgium and Switzerland: that would tank the Euro for good, and the whole EU economy for that matter.

Eurocrats better listen to Russian Central Bank major “disrupter” (American terminology) Elvira Nabiullina: The Bank of Russia will take “appropriate measures” if the EU does anything on the “frozen”/stolen Russian assets.

It goes without saying that the three exhibits above completely nullify the “La Cage aux Folles” circus promoted by the puny Petit Roi, now known across his French domains as Macronapoleon.

Virtually the whole planet, including the English-speaking Global North, had already been mocking the “exploits” of his Can Can Moulin Rouge Army.

So French, German and Polish soldiers, as part of NATO, are already in the south of Kiev. The most possible scenario is that they will stay far, far away from the frontlines – although traceable by Mr. Khinzal’s business activities.

Even before this new NATO batch arriving in the south of Kiev, Poland – which happens to serve as prime transit corridor for Kiev’s troops – had confirmed that Western troops are already on the ground.

So this is not about mercenaries anymore. France, by the way, is only 7th in terms of mercenaries on the ground, largely trailing Poland, the US and Georgia, for instance. The Russian Ministry of Defense has all the precise records.

In a nutshell: now war has morphed from Donetsk, Avdeyevka and Belgorod to Moscow. Further on down the road, it may not just stop in Kiev. It may only stop in Lviv. Mr. 87%, enjoying massive national near-unanimity,  now has the mandate to go all the way. Especially after Crocus.

There’s every possibility the terror tactics by Kiev goons will finally drive Russia to return Ukraine to its original 17th century landlocked borders: Black Sea-deprived, and with Poland, Romania, and Hungary reclaiming their former territories.

Remaining Ukrainians will start to ask serious questions about what led them to fight – literally to their death – on behalf of the US Deep State, the military complex and BlackRock.

As it stands, the Highway to Hell meat grinder is bound to reach maximum velocity.

Why Journalism is Going Extinct

By Peter Van Buren

Source: We Meant Well

Is journalism going extinct? asks The Atlantic in an article of roughly the same name. The numbers are deadly: the grimmest news was from the Los Angeles Times, the biggest newspaper outside of the east coast. The paper announced it was cutting 115 people, more than 20 percent of its newsroom. In June of last year the Times previously dropped 74 people from its newsroom. Some 2,900 newspapers closed or merged since 2005. Sports Illustrated is in trouble. The Washington Post, NBC News, ABC News, CNN, NPR, ViceVox, and BuzzFeed, among others, have shed hundreds of journalists over the past year, including the author of the Atlantic article himself. Job losses among print, digital, and broadcast-news organizations grew by nearly 50 percent during 2023.

The reason for all this professional carnage according to the article? Something something the Internet something something digital advertising revenues blah blah social media.

One proposed solution calls for “direct and muscular government intervention” and legislation forcing Facebook and others to pay for “news” they feature off sources such as the New York Times. Yet, as journalist Glenn Greenwald asked rhetorically, “Will there ever come a moment when liberal journalists who work for corporate outlets, and who are being completely consumed by layoffs and financial failures and audience indifference, ask whether there’s anything they’ve done to contribute to the profession’s failure?”

The answer of course is no, no one is going to ask but Glenn. Somewhere along the way (we’ll tag it as the beginning of the first Trump campaign of the modern era) journalism lost all pretext of objectivity and decided to devote itself fully toward advocacy. It is clear now the public wants accurate reporting, not advocacy, but never you mind, the media elites on each coast know better what you need. As long as the MSM traffics in falsehoods people will disappear from their audiences.

Let’s look at one almost silly example: did Donald Trump says people should drink bleach to kill off Covid?

No, Donald Trump did not suggest that people should drink bleach to kill off Covid. However, during a White House briefing in April 2020, Trump did make comments about the potential use of disinfectants and ultraviolet light to treat the virus. His remarks were widely criticized because they seemed to suggest the possibility of injecting or ingesting disinfectants, which would be extremely harmful. The media, however, would not be stopped, making the bleach thing into a meme, handing it off to Late Night, then picking it up again throughout the 2020 presidential campaign.

Twelve months after the supposed statement, to keep things alive, Politico wrote “One year ago today, President Donald Trump took to the White House briefing room and encouraged his top health officials to study the injection of bleach into the human body as a means of fighting Covid. It was a watershed moment, soon to become iconic in the annals of presidential briefings. It arguably changed the course of political history.” “For me, it was the craziest and most surreal moment I had ever witnessed in a presidential press conference,” said ABC’s chief Washington correspondent.

A year after the “fact” it is bad enough the media could not accurately report what was said but how about some four years later, twice in recent New York Times articles, on January 24 and on January 29, 2024 (“oblivious or worse, peddling bleach as a quack cure.”)

The thing is Trump never said people should drink or inject bleach; knowing what he said is as easy as listening to what he said. Here it is in its entirety: “So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that, too. It sounds interesting. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.” It was obvious Trump was talking via example, hypothetically in that hyperbolic style of his. It takes a selfish media mind to roll all that into an admonishment to the suffering American people to drink a poisonous substance but that’s what happened. Even four years later.

There are so many other example which persist in the media as untruths, exaggerations, or something evil done by other presidents but uniquely ascribed to Trump. Think that he wrenched children from their parents at the border into concentration camps, that he denounced fallen soldiers as suckers, and that he incited a bloody insurrection to overturn an election, and still peddles the Big Lie to the point where he is supposedly Constitutionally ineligible to run for president.

Journalism is at a crossroads at best (it may have already crossed into the abyss.) The old models of reader -supported or advertising-supported media no longer are sturdy and seem still to apply only to a few giants like the New York Times. Americans’ trust in the mass media’s reporting matches its lowest point in Gallup’s trend line, largely because of Democrats’ decreased trust (the Republicans were lost an election or two ago, see Russiagate, though independents still lead the two parties in lost trust.) Just 7 percent of Americans have “a great deal” of trust and confidence in the media, and 27 percent have “a fair amount.”

Meanwhile, 28 percent of U.S. adults say they do not have very much confidence and 39 percent have none at all in newspapers, TV, and radio. Social media is still the least trustworthy sector, while simultaneously being one of the most read/seen. The declines for the MSM have been steady since peaking in 1977 at about 70 percent trust levels. It has gotten worse since Trump but you can’t blame it all on him. It’s the media’s own fault.

The loss of trust is because of a perception the MSM is biased. Some 78 percent of conservatives think the mass media is biased, as compared with 44 percent of liberals and 50 percent of moderates. Only about 36 percent view mass media reporting as “just about right”. A September 2014 Gallup poll found that a plurality of Americans believe the media is “too liberal.”

Half of Americans in a recent survey indicated they believe national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting. The survey goes beyond others that have shown a low level of trust in the media to the startling point where many believe there is an intent to deceive. Asked whether they agreed with the statement that national news organizations do not intend to mislead, 50 percent said they disagreed. Only 25 percent agreed.

The pattern is pretty clear: as long as the MSM is a significant source of misinformation never mind out-and-out lies, the people’s trust in it will continue to fall. We’ve reached a breaking point where many people believe the media intends to deceive. That distrust is entirely a self-own by the media, and finds itself expressed in the most direct terms. People literally are not buying what the MSM is selling.

The Shameful Way that the American Empire Is Ending

By Eric Zuesse

Source: The Duran

The American empire — which is now the largest empire in history — is ending not only with defeats on every front, but with the historically profound stigma of being one of the two perpetrators (the other and more-publicized one being Israel) of the largest ethnic-cleansing operation (to remove all of the 2.3 million Gazans from Gaza) ever since Hitler’s ethnic-cleansing campaign ended.

That one ended after the Soviet Union defeated the Third Reich (or 3rd German empire) at the battle of Kursk on 23 August 1943 and so made inevitable the defeat of Hitler, and the end of his Third Reich, and the end of their organized extermination program against Jews, Gypsies, and other ‘non-Aryans’ — as well as made inevitablefrom that date forward, the ultimate defeat of the Japanese empire, which (from that date forward) was only a matter of when, and no longer of whether, Japan would surrender.

The atomic bombings in August 1945 didn’t determine that victory over Japan; Hitler’s defeat at Kursk in August 1943 did. But, of course, the U.S. regime and its colonies allege that the U.S. and UK defeated Germany, though only Soviet troops entered Berlin and drove Hitler to commit suicide on 30 April 1945, thus conquering Germany. Because FDR had died just 18 days prior to that, and his successor Truman was an unknown and Stalin wanted his relations with Truman to be like his relations with FDR had been — mutually beneficial — Stalin generously allowed U.S., UK, and French, forces in as-if they all had done it, defeated Germany, so as to continue the anti-nazi alliance into the post-WW2 era. That turned out to have been a catastrophic error on Stalin’s part, simply a gamble that turned out to have been wrong.

The U.S. regime now does mainly proxy wars, because its only military victory (with its own troops) in the 130+ military invasions it has carried out ever since WW2, was the small one, 46 years later, and 33 years ago, in America’s 1991 battle for Kuwait; and America’s biggest-ever proxy war is the one that’s been going on ever since 2014 to defeat Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine using mainly Ukrainian troops who are being supplied by the U.S. and its colonies, with weapons, intelligence, and training. And this proxy war, like all of America’s other ones, is now almost certainly going down to defeat, after the expenditures of over 600,000 dead already, and perhaps over a trillion dollars of taxpayer expenses ultimately, all in order for the U.S. Government to keep Ukraine, which it grabbed control over in a bloody and barbaric February 2014 coup that it and its allies called a ‘democratic revolution’ though it actually terminated Ukraine’s democracy and turned that nation into the U.S. regime’s springboard into the U.S. empire’s planned ultimate conquest of Russia.

The war in Ukraine culminates the U.S. regime’s plan ever since Russia ended the Cold War on its side in 1991 while America secretly continued its side of that war by expanding NATO right up to Russia’s borders, and especially into Ukraine itself because Ukraine is closer to The Kremlin than any other country is, barely 300 miles away, ideal for a blitz five-minute U.S. missile decapitation of Russia’s central command.

The U.S. regime started privately telling its stooges, first West Germany’s Helmut Kohl on 24 February 1990, but then later Francois Mitterrand and others, that though the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact mirror to America’s anti-Russian NATO military alliance — and the entire Russian side of the Cold War — all would soon end, the Cold War would secretly continue on the U.S.-and-allied side, until Russia itself will be conquered. Consequently, starting on 24 February 1990, America’s stooge regimes began to understand that though the prior excuse for the Cold War on America’s side was ‘anti-communism’, the reality was and is that on the American side, that war’s objective is — by whatever means (subversion, coup, proxy war, sanctions, or otherwise) — to win control over the entire world, and that Russia is America’s main target to grab control over, so as to culminate its empire.

Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Presidency until his death on 12 April 1945 just before WW2 ended, there was no Cold War, despite some U.S. officials, such as J. Edgar Hoover, who wanted it. President Roosevelt had no qualms about accepting the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as an ally so long as both countries would be committed to defeating Hitler: for FDR, no country has any right to interfere in any other country’s domestic affairs; and, so, the Soviet Union’s domestic affairs were irrelevant to U.S.-Soviet relations. U.S. Senator Harry Truman disagreed with FDR about that; and In 1944, the Democratic Party’s megadonors required President Roosevelt to accept Truman as his running-mate for Vice President. That decision by the Democratic Party’s megadonors produced the Cold War when President Truman, upon the advice from both his personal hero General Dwight Eisenhower and Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, decided on 25 July 1945 that America must conquer — no longer cooperate with — the Soviet Union. Within just two years, FDR’s entire Cabinet was replaced. Truman was the ultimate anti-FDR.

Today’s America is the one that Truman and his hero Eisenhower created, not the one that FDR had carefully started to plan in August 1941 until he died on 12 April 1945. Truman reversed FDR’s foreign policies. In order to understand how this happened, the reality of WW2 has to be truthfully understood.   

The most masterful summary of how WW2 ended is the 12 May 2015 article by Ronnie Kasrils, his “Op-Ed: Lest we forget the truth about World War Two”, which is 100% truthful and covers all of the historically important points, so that the reader can understand how much the U.S. regime and its post-WW2 colonies (or ‘allies’) lie about that history in order to ‘justify’ their decision (which was made on 25 July 1945) by U.S. President Truman to now go forward by creating and expanding ultimately throughout the world an American empire, the first target of which would be to conquer Russia — the very same country that had actually won WW2 for the Allies. Agents for the U.S. regime lie profusely about history in order to deceive the public that the U.S. and/or Britain was/were mainly responsible for the defeat of Hitler and the Allied victory in WW 2. We’re inundated with that propaganda.

So: the American empire, which began with a plethora of lies, is now ending with a campaign against the Gazans that might ultimately become remembered as being the second-worst genocide in history — #1 being, of course, the Holocaust by Hitler and his German Third Empire (which was carried out not by bombings and a siege like the Israel-U.S. one now is, but instead by search-and-destroy operations against its ‘racial’ targets, plus industrialized mass-murdering “concentration camps”). Though the means of carrying out the genocide aren’t identical, both of those campaigns rightfully earn the world’s contempt and disgust.

Yet the U.S. Government is a full partner with Israel’s Government in carrying out this ethnic cleansing or possibly even full genocide of the Gazans. Biden fully supports Israel’s ethnic cleansing or even genocide against the Gazans, though he speaks against it in order to fool enough voters so as to win a second term. Furthermore, the Washington Post reported on 18 March 2024 that ever since 27 October 2023, Biden has known that Israel’s saying they intending to kill only Hamas is a lie and that they’re bombing and sieging Gaza so as to exterminate or otherwise get rid of all of its residents. So, if Netanyahu gets convicted and hung for this genocide, then Biden ought to get hung too, because he is the person who authorizes all of the weapons, ammunition and guidance, in order for Israel to do it.

And there also are other ways in which the U.S. regime is shamefully behaving while its previously ever-expanding empire is starting to fall apart.

The only country that regularly and always votes in the U.N. General Assembly against Resolutions that condemn racism and bigotry in all of its forms including nazism and Holocaust-denial, is the United States, largely because ever since 1945 the U.S. has brought into this country so many elite Nazis and gave them sanctuary and hid their atrocities from the public. But in recent years, one of the main excuses it gives is that Ukraine is voting against it and so America must do likewise in order to reaffirm its support for Ukraine. (In fact, America’s U.N. Representative that year said the reason for America’s refusing to vote against nazism was America’s opposition to Russia and support for Ukraine. India’s Representative said that the fact that Russia had introduced the Resolution was irrelevant to whether it should be adopted.) The only other country that has often been joining with America’s and Ukraine’s pro-nazi votes at the U.N. has been Canada, which (like America) had brought in and provided sanctuary for many Ukrainian Nazis after WW II. In fact, as I headlined on 24 September 2023, “Canada’s Parliament Gives Standing Ovation to 98-Year-Old Nazi SS Ukrainian”. But, actually, America’s anti-Russian military alliance NATO is simply riddled with nazis. Lies cover this up. And America’s lie-based invasions of Iraq in 2003 and of Libya in 2011 and of Syria ever since 2013, are all nazistic and lie-based, too; so, the evidence that the post-WW-II U.S. Government is nazi is clear and undeniable. All of this comes from Truman, under the advice from both Eisenhower and Churchill.

Anyone who would call this a democracy would have to be either blind or crazy. The only way that the U.S. regime can keep it going is on the basis of lies. And now the empire that is based upon those lies is starting to fall apart. The key event will be when the first NATO member Government will either block a NATO action or else quit the NATO alliance. Or else, if neither of those happens, then the key event will be what will happen because neither of them did happen: WW3. Either the empire will collapse, or else the entire world will self-destruct as a result of the U.S. Government’s actions.

The fundamental crisis of the West

By Veniamin Popov

Source: New Eastern Outlook

A growing number of media outlets in America and in Europe have recently reached the conclusion that “rules-based international order” long espoused by the West has failed.

In essence, this means that the position of the Western powers in the world has weakened: they have failed to destroy the Russian economy by imposing sanctions, and the war in Gaza has demonstrated that the US and the Western European countries are far from all-powerful.

The media frequently claim that Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine has changed the international situation, in that it has made clear the limited capabilities of the West and deepened the rift between the West and the Global South.

The Ukrainian conflict and the war in Gaza have demonstrated to the whole world, and above all to ordinary people in the West, that their ruling elites are unable to grasp this reality, lack strategic vision and are generally guided by their own personal interests.

The ruling elites in the West have demonized Russia in every possible way and have come to believe the myth that Russia can be strategically defeated. This is a huge miscalculation and this conclusion will become obvious to all in the very near future. The present author is reminded of the junker Grushnitsky, in Lermontov’s “A Hero of Our Time,” a fantasist who plays the role of an unworldly romantic for so long that he begins to believe it himself.

As Vladimir Putin has aptly put it, “Russophobia, like any other ideology based on racism, national superiority and exclusivity, blinds the person who subscribes to it and deprives them of reason.”

The state of the “rules-based international order” is becoming increasingly alarming for many Western powers. According to an article published in the weekly journal the Economist on February 15, so-called national conservatives, who “suspect free markets of being rigged by the elites,” are gaining in influence in the US and Europe. They are also hostile to migration, despise pluralism, especially multiculturalism, and are obsessed with dismantling institutions they see as tainted by globalism.

Despite their differences, these national conservatives are united by their hostility to shared enemies, including migrants, especially Muslims, globalists and all their perceived enablers. Donald Trump is leading in the polls in America. The far right is expected to make gains in the European Parliament elections in June. In Germany last December, support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AFD) reached a record high of 23 percent, according to polls. Anticipating Rishi Sunak’s loss in the elections, the right wing of Britain’s Conservative Party are hoping to grab power in the party. In 2027, Marine Le Pen may well become president of France.

According to the Economist, the current authorities need to take people’s legitimate concerns seriously: the public in many Western countries see illegal migration as a source of unrest and a drain on the public purse. They worry that their children will grow up poorer than they are. They are concerned about losing their jobs to new technologies. They believe that institutions such as universities and the press have been hijacked by hostile, illiberal, left-wing elites. They view the globalists who have flourished over the last few decades as members of a self-serving, arrogant caste.

These complaints have real merit and mocking them only confirms how detached from reality the elites have become.

The position of Washington and its hangers-on in Europe in relation to Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza has added significantly to the public’s distrust of the West’s ruling elites. By openly supporting the actions of the Netanyahu government, the governments of the Western powers are convincing everyone, including their own populations, of their own policy of double standards: only the lives of Israelis are valued and massacres of Arabs are allowed.

As the Saudi newspaper Arab News reports, Arab and Muslim Americans, and 60 percent of all other Americans, have for months wanted President Joe Biden to pressure Israel into agreeing to an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The White House has, in effect, ignored these pleas.

In response to this stance, Muslim Americans in nine potentially wavering states met in Dearborn, Michigan, in December 2023 under the slogan “Abandon Biden, Truce Now.” They have vowed not to vote for Biden in the presidential election unless he changes the policies that are enabling Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip possible.

The US journal Foreign Affairs, in an article entitled “Gaza and the End of the Rules-Based Order” quotes one G7 diplomat: “We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South. All the work we did with the Global South (around Ukraine) was lost. … Forget the rules, forget the world order. They will never listen to us again.”

The economic recession, which has become a permanent situation for many European states, also provides little room for optimism. In the US, the high inflation and huge government debt are expected to worsen this spring and summer, according to some analysts. The most closely watched indicator of opinions about the economy, a monthly poll conducted by the University of Michigan, has reported that public confidence is at an exceptionally low ebb, about the same level as during the 2007-2009 global financial crisis.

With the presidential election just nine months away, this gloomy mood has become a serious problem for the Democrats. President Joe Biden is already facing a host of challenges to his bid for a second term, starting with concerns about his fitness for office as an 80-year-old man. Another major obstacle to his election bid is the opinion polls that give him low marks for his management of the economy.

The current economic problems are exacerbated by growing inequality, the worsening drug crisis and the proliferation of firearms. The promotion of non-traditional sexual orientation and the encouragement of same-sex couples have cause legitimate outrage to many conservative religious people.

In the European Union between June 6 and 9, more than 400 million voters in 27 countries will elect 720 MEPs to represent them for the next five years. Observers predict an increase in the influence of right-wing conservative parties. One major reason for the heightened interest in the upcoming election is the unprecedented corruption scandal that erupted in the European Parliament in December 2022, when the vice president and several other officials, including three MEPs, were accused of taking bribes. The investigation is ongoing, but it has already revealed instances of illegal activities and immoral behavior on the part of MEPs. Conservatives accuse the EU of being an opaque bureaucracy with vastly overpaid staff, which is disconnected from the reality experienced by ordinary residents of the EU member states, and which spends its vast budgets – totaling hundreds of trillions of euros – not for the common good but for the personal whims and fantasies of its leaders. Inflation and the cost of living are still rising in many European nations, while many blame EU bureaucrats in Brussels for policies such as the Green Deal that have made life more expensive for Europeans by raising the prices of fuel, food and most other essentials. In addition, anti-Russian sanctions, which have led to the rejection of cheap energy from Russia by a number of European countries, have had a negative impact on the well-being of ordinary citizens.

Over the past few weeks, thousands of farmers from across Europe, particularly from Germany, France, Poland, Spain, and Belgium, have taken to the streets to protest against additional spending on Ukraine and against new EU environmental policies that make farming unviable.

The short-sighted policy of the Western elites with regard to the crises in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip is leading to a loss of confidence in the ruling authorities on the part of ordinary citizens. It is easy to imagine their reaction in the event of any further military setbacks by Ukraine or any worsening of the situation within the country.

The position taken by many developing nations with regard to the current international processes is highly symptomatic. In an editorial for the Arabic international newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, Editor-in-Chief Grhassan Charbel writes: “Zelensky’s position reminded me of remarks by the late Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to former Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, that ‘the one who is covered by the Americans is naked.’ The same phrase could be said by Putin to Zelensky.

Putin has the right to be sarcastic. The leaders of the West did not accept that he could not lose… That he went to Ukraine to punish the entire West and to launch a major coup against a world that was born from the collapse of the (Berlin) Wall and the disappearance of the Soviet Union.”

It is no coincidence that the ruling circles of Western Europe are currently not hiding their anxiety about what they refer to as the “threat posed by Trump and Russia.”

In fact, everything we see happening testifies to the inadequacy of the current ruling elites in the West, who are unable to reasonably and rationally assess the emerging situation, guided as they are solely by short-term personal interests.

It is very possible that they will be swept away by a wave of new unexpected events, and new leaders will come to power.

It is therefore highly likely that 2024 will be a turning point in many respects.