Propaganda and Censorship: How America Dominates Information War

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SL Kanthan
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In-depth analysis of regional & global events provided by Indian & foreign experts - from politics & economics to sci-tech & health.


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Propaganda and Censorship: How America Dominates Information War



Recently, US media have published several articles about India, accusing the Modi government of social media censorship, influence operations, stifling critics, and running troll farms. Western organizations have also downgraded India’s freedom of press this year – with a ranking of 161 out of 180, according to the World Press Freedom Index. Interestingly, such criticisms themselves are tools of the American Empire, whose propaganda machine is so sophisticated that most people don’t even see it. Understanding how the US wages information war and maintains its soft power is very critical. Let’s dive into it.
 

History of American Propaganda

For more than a century, the US has understood and fine-tuned mass psychology better than anyone else. It started with Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud. While Freud focused on individuals, Bernays pioneered the field of modern public relations – i.e., manufacturing consent, and manipulating the entire society. His seminal book, Propaganda starts off thus:
 

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of," the book read.

Bernays applied his principles equally to the corporate world, politics, and wars. For example, a cigarette company, Lucky Strikes, approached him in 1929 for help in expanding their business. Bernays organized a protest by wealthy women who marched while smoking in New York City. He reframed smoking as women’s liberation, and had the media describe it as “torches of freedom.” Within days, women all across the US were gathering to smoke in public.
 
Bernays used his techniques to help US Presidents win election and wage wars. An illustrative example is how Bernays helped the CIA stage a coup in Guatemala in the 1950s. Much of the land in Guatemala was owned by American firms like United Fruit Company, which ruthlessly exploited the workers. Thus, when a popular and democratically elected Guatemalan leader, Jacobo Árbenz, wanted to enact land reforms and improve the conditions of his people, he was targeted by the US.

Bernays helped the CIA launch a propaganda campaign, which accused Arbenz of being a communist who colluded with the Soviet Union and threatened America’s security. This helped drum up public support in the US for a regime change operation. The CIA even launched a radio station in Guatemala to spread fake news and foment an uprising. Soon, the US invaded Guatemala and installed a brutal dictator, who banned labor unions, committed mass murder, and sold off his country to American corporations.


FILE PHOTO: The logo of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is shown in the lobby of the CIA headquarters in La.. © Jason Reed


Brutality of American Empire

The Guatemalan playbook has been utilized many times in Latin America, where almost every country has been a victim of invasions or coups orchestrated by the USA. Shockingly, the USA even established the “School of Americas” to train Latin American soldiers and military generals on political oppression, police state, death squads, torture, psychological warfare, and other means to maintain totalitarian systems.

After WW2, the CIA even established ratlines for thousands of high-ranking Nazis to flee to South/Central America, where the Nazis played a key role in maintaining the Monroe Doctrine – i.e., US domination of the Western Hemisphere. An infamous Nazi in this role is Klaus Barbie – also known as the Butcher of Lyon – who established right-wing paramilitary groups such as the “Fiancés of Death” in Bolivia, staged coups to install US-friendly fascist leaders, killed “communists” who would impede profits of American corporations, and even helped the CIA with massive cocaine trafficking.

There are countless such stories in Africa and Asia as well. The US has armed, funded and supported a vast majority of dictators and fascists around the world. In an Orwellian manner, the only time a leader is guaranteed to be accused of a dictator is if he refuses to obey the diktats of the USA. Otherwise, the mainstream media ignores the sins of such leaders, who can even come to the White House for a photo op. More egregiously, the US gladly funds and arms violent militants, neo-Nazi mercenaries (like in Ukraine), Islamist jihadists, drug cartels etc. to overthrow governments around the world. Finally, the US also organizes color revolutions and soft coups to remove independent leaders and install puppet leaders.

So, the obvious question is how does the US get away with all this? More importantly, how does the US maintain its global brand as a country that fights for freedom and democracy? It is imperative that every person understand this highly sophisticated combination of capital, technology and psychology that underpins American propaganda.

Three Pillars of American Propaganda

While propaganda within a selected group or even a country is somewhat easy, global propaganda at scale requires a much bigger arsenal of diverse weapons. The three pillars of American propaganda are:
 

Dominance of tools. These include traditional mediums such as newspapers, magazines, books, academics, TV, movies, music and so on. Then there are modern tools such as social media, Wikipedia, and Google Search. This virtual monopoly allows the US to flood the world with American perspectives and drown out competition. The West gets to write the history and define truth.

 

Consistent Messaging. While the US media pretends to be independent, it’s an important branch of the US establishment. While the media criticize the politicians on different domestic issues, they are always in-sync with the imperialist side of the USA. During the illegal war on Iraq, the media shamelessly repeated all the lies from the US military and deep state. Perhaps 1 in 1000 mainstream media articles gently question the war propaganda of the military industrial complex. In the 1970s, the US Senate exposed Operation Mockingbird, which was the CIA’s scheme to have agents or collaborators in all the influential American media. That arrangement is still alive.

 

Targeted Censorship: Most people don’t see censorship in the US because the average person can go on Twitter or Facebook and post some rude things about the US or its leaders. However, what these people don’t realize is that if they are influential, they would be censored in numerous ways.

Globalists’ tyranny and censorship: EU threatens Elon Musk with fines of up to 6% of the annual revenue of not only X but ALL of Elon’s companies — like Tesla and SpaceX ! Why? For failing to tackle "illegal content and disinformation” — i.e., inconvenient truths.

- SL Kanthan

Read on Substack

Let’s analyze each one of them in more details.

Domination of mainstream narrative around the world by the US and its allies is astounding. Reuters and AP provide the foreign news to most countries, who lack the capacity to have worldwide journalists. The US also has hundreds of influential magazines and newspapers, which mold the perceptions of people on economics, geopolitics, social values, and virtually all topics. Wherever you travel, you can find CNN on TV screens at hotels and airport. In India, the #1 English TV channel is CNN.

Of course, Hollywood plays as big a role as the news media when it comes to manipulating the masses. The Pentagon and the CIA work closely with Hollywood to insert inconspicuous propaganda into movies and TV shows to portray the US as the freedom-loving hero and geopolitical rivals as bad – compare Superman, Spiderman and James Bond to the countless villains with Russian accent.
 
The US government and corporations – especially the military contractors – also fund numerous think tanks in the US and around the world to shape the opinions of influencers, academics, bureaucrats, and the educated class. Moreover, ruling classes from around the world send their children to study in the US/UK, thus indoctrinating the future generation with a narrow and distorted view of the world.
The US also spends a lot of money on fake NGOs that train journalists and activists, who will unsurprisingly turn out to be pro-US.
The West also controls, in indirect ways, textbooks and curriculum around the world. Whether it’s Germany or India, you will not find a high-school or college course on “American Imperialism.” A shocking example of this brainwashing is Hong Kong’s young generation, which grew up worshipping the British and never learning about the true nature of British colonialism and apartheid in Hong Kong. Sadly, these kids were also taught to hate mainland Chinese people.

Finally, all this American “wisdom” is magnified through American technology and propaganda tools such as Google Search and Wikipedia.

To summarize, the US floods the world with their propaganda through every channel possible. A person needs to be really dedicated to sift through the flood of disinformation to seek the truth. Vast majority of people don’t have the time, money or patience to go beyond the headlines, mainstream talking points, or the second page of Google Search results.

Next is consistency. Incredibly, all the channels we discussed above stick to the US establishment propaganda. This happens in a supposedly land of free speech and free press. As Noam Chomsky said, “Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.”

There are three more characteristics to American propaganda, which makes it very effective:
  • They are simple.
  • They are emotional.
  • They are repeated endlessly.
 
American propaganda is the same whether they are selling Nike or politicians or neoliberal economics or wars. They are summarized in catchy slogans: “Just do it” … “free market and small government” … “Make America Great Again” … “spreading freedom and democracy.”
They are also emotional. Whether the lie is about Syrian President Assad using chemical weapons or China brutally killing people in the Tiananmen Square, the narrative is so emotional that people cannot think objectively.

Propaganda is just marketing. Every good commercial has an emotional aspect to it. Thus, while marketers use sexy women to sell Coca Cola, warmongers evoke fear and/or anger to sell war. Thus, portraying Putin as taking over Europe or Xi Jinping taking over Asia are effective in creating fight-or-flight reactions. Americans have also been trained to have Pavlovian response to words such as “dictator” and “Hitler,” which are used against every leader that the US targets. Such simplistic messages are effective, because one can see people on social media mindlessly repeating them like robots.

Look at the favorable view of China in the US. It fell from 53% in 2018 to just 15% in 2023. Think about it. What has China done differently in the last five years? Nothing. All the trade wars and tech wars were started by the US, not by China.

Also, China didn’t build military bases around the US or call the US an adversary. However, suddenly everyone in the US establishment started calling China the “greatest enemy” and “biggest threat.” And people believed it.


United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that US-China ties are now on a firmer footing than a year earlier in 2023. (A huge lie). PHOTO: REUTERS


That’s the power of American propaganda. It's really stupid, emotional and childish, but works impressively to manufacture consent for wars. 

Finally, the American censorship is very clever and takes on numerous forms – for example: demonetization of YouTube accounts, throttling of Twitter accounts (reducing the views), outright ban for thoughtcrimes  (which has increased exponentially after the Trump phenomenon in 2016), firing people from jobs (the CEO of a tech company was recently fired for retweeting a satire article about Israel bombing Gaza) and so on.

As a personal anectdote, I got permanently banned from Medium for simply writing a factual article that questioned the outrageous U.S. allegations of Uyghur genocide by China. When the UN Human Rights group – led by Michelle Bachelet, former President of Chile – went to Xinjiang and later published a report that said nothing about genocide, US politicians went berserk and attacked her viciously. Soon, she amended the report to add one line that crimes against humanity “may” have occurred. Then, she resigned.

Similarly, when the ICC wanted to look into American war crimes, the US threatened to arrest the ICC judges. Later, the US bullied the ICC to get rid of the chief judge, installed a puppet, and then indicted Russian President Putin on fake charges. The hypocrisy and duplicity are astonishing. By the way, the US did the same with the UN inspectors when they said that Iraq had no nuclear weapons two decades ago.
 

Julian Assange, of course, is the ultimate example of US censorship. All Wikileaks did was to publish 100% authentic documents, which exposed how the world works. However, the US empire went berserk, framed him with false rape allegations, trapped him in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years, had the UK psychologically torture him in prison, and even tried to kill him. And he is not even an American.


Wikileaks founder Julian Assange leaves in a prison van after appearing at Westminster Magistrates Court, for an administrative hearing in London, Monday, Jan. 13, 2020 © AP Photo / Alberto Pezzali


Conclusion

“Perception is reality” is a famous American saying. When applied excessively, this principle would lead to an insane society detached from reality. And, in a way, that is exactly what is happening in the US.
 
Americans do not realize that they live in an oligarchic and kleptocratic system where politicians are bought and paid for by large corporations. Thus, Americans keep falling for fake elections and staged drama, even though the life of an average American has gotten worse consistently over the last five decades. Similarly, Americans keep supporting perpetual wars and a vast empire of 800 international military bases, because they naively believe the recycled war propaganda.
There is definitely more awakening in the rest of the world, especially in the Global South. People are starting to see through American propaganda and disinformation, as evidenced in the world’s recent support for Russia and Palestinians. However, more people need to wake up, especially Europeans. The next decade will be dangerous for the world, since the rulers of the US will try every imperialist trick to destroy their geopolitical competitors and prolong the American unipolar hegemony. Be prepared for intense propaganda wars.


Russophobic presstitute MSNBC Rachel Maddow has done her best to stoke the fires of enmity between two nuclear-armed superpowers. She is now a multimilionaire. It pays to sing the establishment's tune.


Lili News 029
  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.


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How America Rules the World – The Secrets of Neo-Colonialism

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S.L. Kanthan
SPUTNIK INDIA


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How America Rules the World – The Secrets of Neo-Colonialism

 
The lack of understanding of the true nature of the American Empire is a testimony to the extraordinary sophistication of the empire’s operations and propaganda. Unlike the European empires of the past, the US does not directly rule countries around the world. Instead, the neo-colonialist tentacles take the form of finance, media, technology and so on; and when everything fails, the imperialist military comes knocking on the doors to spread “freedom and democracy.” Let’s take a deep dive into the secrets of the full-spectrum dominance of the largest and smartest empire in human history.
 

Evolution of Colonialism

When people think of colonialism, they think of one country invading and defeating another country, deposing the leader, installing a leader from the invading nation, and ruthlessly exploiting the new colony. The old form of colonialism was blatant and visible. However, it was also limited in its efficiency, since it required immense resources. For example, to colonize what’s now the Americas, more than 60 million Europeans had to relocate between 1492 to 1930.

Such a brute form of colonialism was not sustainable, so smarter techniques were invented. In India, for example, it took only 100,000 British to rule the colony. By the time the Europeans got to China, they had run out of manpower, and thus had to devise a new strategy of a European coalition controlling just a handful of cities, but ensuring that the Chinese emperor stayed subservient and the entire country could be exploited.

Since the end of WW2, the American Empire has taken over the role of the European empires, and has further transformed the practice of neo-colonialism into a fine art and science. While the foundation of American primacy consists mainly of banking and military, there are many more critical pillars to support this imperial edifice.


Attack on Pearl Harbor

In this Dec. 7, 1941 file photo, smoke rises from the battleship USS Arizona as it sinks during a Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii


 

Big Picture – The Tools of Modern Imperialism

Here are the eight crucial tools of American imperialism:
  •  

    Money (dollar’s privileged status, central banks, sanctions, Wall Street)

  •  

    Corporations (to control the economy)

  •  

    Technology (lifeblood of modern nations)

  •  

    Media (includes internet, social media, education, think tanks, entertainment etc.)

  •  

    Military (wars, proxy wars, selling weapons)

  •  

    Intelligence (spying)

  •  

    Geopolitics (various strategies including elite capture and divide-and-rule)

  •  

    Subversions (coups, color revolutions, assassinations etc.)



The US empire offers carrots and sticks. If a country follows all the commands of the US and Western institutions, the country will usually do okay and will be left alone. Of course, at times, it may be called upon to sacrifice itself on behalf of the American empire – for example, Ukrainians are forced to fight Russia.

 

Money

Let’s start with Money or King Dollar. The fact that the dollar is the dominant global currency – in trade as well as foreign exchange reserves – gives the US enormous power and exorbitant privilege.  All the commodities in the world markets are denominated in USD, which means countries need the dollar to trade with one another – this is slowly changing due to dedollarization efforts.

So, how do these countries get hold of US dollars? By selling goods and services to the US. This arrangement gives the US overwhelming advantage in negotiations. For example, India cannot grow without importing oil, gas and many other goods. However, other countries will not usually accept Indian rupees as payment. Thus, India needs to go to the US – figuratively speaking – for billions of dollars every year. Then, the US will say, “Do tech support and write software for American corporations for low wages.”
You can see how this situation can be extrapolated around the world.
 
People in developing nations must sell natural resources, goods, labor and other services at low costs. This exploitation is very similar to European colonialism, except that Americans do not directly rule any country.
And when a country runs out of US dollars, the IMF – which is based out of Washington DC – will come as a savior and lend money. However, the IMF will demand a pound of flesh in the form of privatization “reforms,” which is a euphemism for letting Western corporations buy everything for pennies on the dollar. This shock doctrine has been applied to developing nations all over the world.


Dollars & Euros

Dollars & Euros (TGP screenshot)


 
The common person around the world accepts this rigged system and assumes that there must be something special about America and its currency.
 

Corporations

In some sense, much of the world has “corporatocracy” – rule by corporations. The market capitalization of the top 5 American corporations is $12 trillion. One corporation, BlackRock manages $10 trillion of assets. These are stunning numbers, considering that the GDP of India, Japan and Germany are each less than $4.5 trillion.

The world is corporatized – banks, food supply chain, healthcare, education, utilities such as water and electricity, infrastructure technology, media etc. are all run by giant corporations. (China is an exception where many critical industries are run by state-owned enterprises. Russia also has a similar structure for oil and gas companies. This is one reason why the US hates China and Russia so much). More importantly, all these corporations are deeply interlinked in terms of the largest shareholders and boards of directors. Thus, there is a “swarm effect” and they all work in tandem, similar to how birds of a large flock fly in unison.

Consider the Indian tech startup companies, most of whom have American investors. This is colonialism from afar. Not only does the US get to reap profits from the Indian market and innovators, but is also able to control the future of the Indian economy. How about Indian banks? Looking at HDFC, the largest private bank in India, the two largest shareholders are… Morgan Stanley and Fidelity, both American! But how many Indians know this fact?
 
Similarly, giant corporations around the world are controlled by American investors. Take Samsung, the giant conglomerate of South Korea. It is controlled by major American shareholders and also infiltrated by US deep state – and this is why the US does not mind that Samsung smartphones are #1 in the world, while the US tried very hard to kill Chinese Huawei.
 

Technology

Without better technology – guns, ships, steel, industrial revolution etc. – Europeans would have never been able to colonize much of the world. The strategic importance of technology remains true today. Better technology means bigger market share, larger economy, better productivity, and more influence around the world.

Since WW2, the US has dominated technology, mainly because of stolen patents from Germany after the war, and the influx of the smartest minds from a war-devastated Europe. Later, when Japan became too successful, the US waged a geopolitical and economic war, forcing the Japanese to hand over their precious semiconductor technologies to the US.

Since the Great Financial Crisis that was orchestrated by Wall Street, Europe’s economy has stagnated. Taking advantage of this, the US has bought hundreds of extremely successful European startups. Note also how Europe has been left behind in the dust in the digital/internet revolution. There are no European counterparts for Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft etc. Europe has fallen behind in critical technologies such as cloud computing, e-commerce and AI. Of course, Germans are as smart as the Americans, but the US empire cleverly suffocated European tech sovereignty.
 
The US also greatly influences and controls the science behind modern medicine, which was really distorted and corrupted by the world’s first billionaire – John D. Rockefeller.

Thus, the broad strategy of the US is to never let anyone else have independent or better technology. Again, China is starting to beat the US in technology, patents, scientific papers, and innovation. Hence all the American sanctions and economic/tech wars to contain China.
 

Media (Mind Control)

By media, I am referring to all the tools involved in shaping people’s opinions – i.e., brainwashing. Yes, the biggest propagandist in the world is the USA. I wrote an entire article on it: Propaganda and Censorship: How America Dominates the Information War.

Edward Bernays is considered the father of modern mass propaganda. He was the nephew of Freud, who developed some quirky theories about individual psychology. Bernays, however, developed accurate theories and practices, which are still used effectively all over the world. Regarding how propaganda works, Bernays wrote:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
 
The US holds enormous control over information all over the world through mainstream media, social media, internet search engines, fake neutral sites like Wikipedia, apps for mobile phones, [global news agencies such as AP, Reuters], etc. Even education in schools and universities as well as think tanks around the world are [often set up], monitored and controlled by the US.

Of course, the US soft power ["weaponised culture"] is enormous, thanks to Hollywood, the music industry etc.

This is the main reason why billions of people around the world are clueless about how the American Empire works.
 

Military

The US empire used to work in traditional ways – waging wars of conquest. That’s how the modern USA was born and then expanded. In the beginning of the 20th century, the US even colonized the Philippines, claiming that the Filipinos were savages, and it was the “white man’s burden” to civilize them.
After WW2, the US was dealt two embarrassing defeats in Korea and Vietnam. After that, the US has resorted to only proxy wars – such as using Afghanistan against the USSR and Ukraine/Europe against Russiaor wars against truly weak countries such as Panama, Libya, and Iraq, which was weakened by a decade of severe sanctions. Using Islamist extremists and terrorists for proxy wars has been a go-to strategy for the US since the 1950s.

However, the US still has 800 military bases and “lily pads” in 140 countries, including all the strategic regions. While the US military is now unable to defeat even the Houthis, the US military played a significant role in its imperialist power for eight decades since WW2.
 
More consequential are the weapons sales, through which the US gains the trust and alliance of countries around the world. This also creates dependency, since the countries cannot even operate most American weapons - even during a crisis - without the approval of the Pentagon.


USS Ronald Reagan Sailors prepare jet for takeoff in the Arabian Gulf. Fitting that an attack ship used to bully weaker powers should be named after Reagan, a notorious imperialist.

Intelligence (Spying)

Spying is probably the most underestimated geopolitical tool. If you can listen in on all the phone calls and read all the emails of leaders around the world, you can control the world, since you know all their secrets, skeletons, and plans. Blackmailing is a powerful weapon.

This is why all the US software giants and hardware vendors work closely with the CIA and NSA. Edward Snowden revealed many shocking details, but countries are still putting up with the US empire, since there is no strong alternative yet.
 

Geopolitics

There are many geopolitical theories and strategies that are employed by the US empire.

First, the classic divide and rule. We can see that in numerous US-engineered conflicts: Europe v. Russia, Iran v. Iraq (1980s), Sunni v. Shiites, India v. Pakistan, and the attempts to turn many Asian countries against China.

The second major strategy involves creating geographical blocks that would impede a country’s trade and military. Examples include the attempt to block Russia’s access to the Black Sea, destabilizing Afghanistan to block China-Iran link, trying regime changes in Iraq and Syria to disrupt the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon crescent etc.
 

Subversion and Sabotage

This is another long topic that needs an entire article. The US engages in constant subversion and sabotage in all its rivals and some of its allies, if the latter is becoming too independent or prosperous.


SIDEBAR: Murdering a Democracy: the Case of Chile




The US staged a by now famous bloody coup against Chile's president Salvador Allende in 1973, the first (real) socialist (not a social democrat), with the assistance of the treacherous native comprador bourgeoisie. After the coup, the US and its local allies, supported by the "Western media", installed Gen. Augusto Pinochet in power. His 18-year rule, characterized by massive impoverishment for the working class, brutal torture and "disappearances" of thousands of dissidents, was aimed at destroying the economic and political sovereignty gains of the Allende government, and the establishment of a savage form of free market capitalism. Leading Chilean film-maker Patricio Guzman filmed these events as they developed, and eventually put together a 3-part documentary that is not just a moving and eloquent record of Chile's suffering under the Pinochet dictatorship, but a peerless anatomy lesson about the planning and execution of a coup d'etat against a popular anti-imperialist government. If you can, download this video(s) from YouTube before they too are "disappeared".



The arrows in this imperialist quiver include coups, assassinations, election interference, false flag attacks, color revolutions, fueling civil wars, and much more.
 
Later, the US shifted to using sleeper cell NGOs to create useful idiots in strategic countries. These NGOs can start massive protests against any leader who is not a puppet of the American empire. Of course, the foolish members of these NGOs believe that they are fighting for “freedom and democracy.”
 
What the US has been doing to destabilize China for decades is astonishing – for example, supporting separatists in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang. In South Asia, the US has supported Sikh separatists in India, staged a successful color revolution in Sri Lanka in 2022, and the current protests in Bangladesh [which culminated in a successful coup.—Ed]. In Pakistan, the US simply instructed the military and the parliament to stage a soft coup against Prime Minister Imran Khan, when he displayed too much independence.
 
In countries all around the world, the US has managed to fund opposition parties if a leader refuses to kowtow to American diktats.
 

Conclusion

It is a vital imperative for every person to understand how the American empire works not only in his/her country or the region but worldwide. The US empire deploys many of the same playbooks like a scripted Hollywood movie over and over in different countries. However, since people do not follow events around the world, they fall for the same tricks and harm their own countries.


ATTACKING LIBYA: Italy, which functions as practically a huge aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean for the Pentagon, facilitated NATO air bombing missions, too. In the Pentagonese lingo:
AVIANO AIR FORCE BASE, Italy (March 20, 2011) U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons return to Aviano Air Base after supporting Operation Odyssey Dawn. (sic) Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn is the U.S. Africa Command task force established to provide operational and tactical command and control of U.S. military forces supporting the international response to the unrest in Libya and enforcement of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Tierney P. Wilson/Released)

 
The good news is that the US empire’s tactics are starting to fail. People and nations are waking up and starting to rebel against the empire. This is the story of the emerging multipolar world and multilateral organizations like BRICS. There is hope in the air.


NOTE: This is an enhanced, expanded version of SL Kanthan's essay, whose original you can find here.


Appendix




The Battle of Chile, Part 5
Mar 21, 2024

This video is an extension of Patricio Guzmán’s four-part series The Battle of Chile (1974-96). This addition includes information from CIA documents and Washington DC statements declassified on September 10, 2021. This project is intended as educational material and it is both a new cut and a continuation of the original Battle of Chile. The declassified documents reveal that the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) cooperated with the CIA to overthrow Allende, and the film focuses on the ASIS’s presence in Chile from 1971-1973 when the agency conducted covert operations from a station in Santiago. From the station’s establishment until the coup, the ASIS acted as a liaison between Pinochet and CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The video begins in 1970 at the meeting of Richard Helms (director of CIA) with Nixon, Kissinger and the US Attorney General, John Mitchell. Here, Nixon orders a coup. Later scenes of the truck strikes will have the added context of Nixon’s heavy hand and Australia’s on-the-ground oversight, and the new chapter focuses on the role of the Chilean copper industry. Because of limited access to materials (footage and information) at the time of this video's conception, this fifth part is also an invitation for viewers to update and revise the presented narrative to better suit information released after 2021. As of now, the State Department still holds the majority of the material requested by the Church Committee.


Lili News 029
  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.


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Reddit
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The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License • 
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS




How to MAGA

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


S.L. Kanthan

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As usual, we largely agree with the author on his diagnosis of what ails America. But on his therapeutic formula, we emphatically disagree with his recommendation that Americans should go back for more helpings of Christianity.  The US is already a country historically poisoned by high levels of fanatical religiosity—mostly of the Judeo-Christian variety. Deeply embedded in the country's DNA, official US Christendom —both Catholic and Protestant—has endorsed virtually all US wars, no matter how sanguinary and perfidious. Further, these faiths' visceral anti-communism has wrecked even mild efforts to give the country a foundation of economic justice and political civility. Thus, the US is still the only major "first world" nation without universal healthcare, saddled with a stunningly devious ruling-class that has naturally evolved into a scandalous form of thinly veiled totalitarian oligarchy. If anything, Americans need to detach themselves from so much smug religiosity of one kind or another—especially the fundamentalist know-nothing kind that has now even given us Christofascism—and start thinking for themselves. As for "saviours", we desperately need less Trumps, and less Obamas, and more Carl Sagans in our culture. And one more thing: the world hardly needs to see "America great" again. That's a supremacist/exceptionalist/imperialist meme that hardly belongs in a prescription to morally rescue a country like America, with a horrid and depraved imperialist history that needs atoning for instead of exuberant celebration. Leave that for the charlatans in our culture, which of course, abound.

Transcript:

How to make America great again? The phrase MAGA implicitly admits that America is NOT great anymore. Okay, that’s a good start, because you cannot solve a problem if you live in denial.

There are two ways to make America great: (1) To DO certain things, and (2) To STOP doing certain things.

It’s like if you want to lose weight, you should eat lots of whole foods, but you should also avoid junk food.

So, in this short video, let me explain four ideologies that America should get rid of to become great:

Neoliberalism, Imperialism, Globalism and Wokeism.

Neoliberalism is unrestrained and unregulated capitalism. This led to the de-industrialization of the economy over the last 40+ years. Manufacturing was shipped abroad and replaced by money-printing, debt and a giant casino known as Wall Street.

Next: Imperialism. Stop the perpetual wars. Defang the military industrial complex. And create a new diplomatic architecture for a multipolar world by working with China, Russia, Iran etc.

Then, disavow globalism, which destroys sovereignty, culture and identity of nations. Globalism is also about mind control through censorship and propaganda. So, stop the blob.

Finally, reverse much of the wokeism that has poisoned American society since the 1950s. Go back to Christianity, family values, and traditions.

S.L. Kanthan

 


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  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
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Mao: Tyrant or Great Leader?

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


S.L. Kanthan


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Mao: Tyrant or Great Leader? • Debunking American lies about the Great Leap Forward and the "Great Famine"
Mao Tse‐tung, who began as an obscure peasant, died one of history's great revolutionary figures. In Chinese terms, he ranked with the first Emperor who unified China in 200 B.C.

A Chinese patriot, a combative revolutionary, a fervent evangelist, a Marxist theorist, a soldier, a statesman and poet, above all Mao was a moralist who deeply believed, as have Chinese since Confucius, that man's goodness must come ahead of his mere economic progress.

China achieved enormous economic progress under Mao. He transformed China into a modern, industrialized socialist state."

Unlike many great leaders, Mao never exercised, or sought, absolute control over day‐to‐day affairs.”

Who would write such blatant communist propaganda?

It was the New York Times in 1976!

 

This year is the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. After winning the long Chinese civil war, Mao Zedong spoke before a large crowd in Beijing in 1949 and proclaimed, “The Chinese people have stood up.” Thus, was born the PRC.


Mao inaugurating the Chinese Communist Republic

Beijing, 1949: “The Chinese people have stood up.” Thus, was born the PRC.


Chairman Mao laid the foundation from which contemporary China took off like a rocket over the last 40 years, especially in the last 20 years.

And the Chinese are still standing up against imperialism, which is desperately trying to contain the Middle Kingdom through trade wars, tech wars, geopolitical wars and propaganda wars.

The quote you heard in the beginning of this podcast about Mao sounds shocking, only because the US and the UK have engaged in profound revisionism of history since the 1990s. It all started when the CIA’s color revolution in China failed in 1989 – yeah, we are talking about the Tiananmen Square protests. The globalists really wanted to end communism all over the world when the USSR collapsed.


Chinese students and workers protesting in 1989, the Tienanmen Square crisis, a color revolution instigated by the US.


However, when China continued to cling on to its core ideology, Americans decided to rewrite history and demonize Mao as an incompetent or evil tyrant who killed tens of millions of people. But you can go back and look at US media and even the CIA reports for four decades, from 1950 until 1989, and you will mostly find neutral or positive reports. You will not find a single report on the Great Famine or millions of people dying. I will share a lot of stunning statistics and some CIA reports later in this article.

This is not to say that Mao was flawless. Obviously, nobody is perfect. Even the Chinese Communist Party acknowledges that Mao made mistakes, especially during the cultural revolution. But I will show you what Mao accomplished and what the Western lies are about his record.

Let’s start with the big picture. Mao was greatly admired by the regular Chinese people when he was alive. In fact, a CIA report in 1971 described as a semi-god!

Mao liberated China from the imperialists and their puppet, Chiang Kai-shek. And it was an improbable military achievement – Mao and his poorly armed peasants defeated the opponents who were heavily funded and armed by the US. Mao’s legendary Long March involved trekking for 6000 miles. This inspires the Chinese people even today while dealing with any extraordinary challenges as a nation.


The Long March was a heroic turning point in the Chinese—and human—revolution to rid themselves of imperialism.


China's high-tech infrastructure sets standards for the rest of the world, including the "developed West". 


Mao also liberated all the farmers from feudalism, for which the farmers were eternally grateful. Mao was also a feminist – he proclaimed that women hold up half the sky and established equal rights for women. This is why the poor people of China never once rose up against Mao even when the times were difficult. Even today, many villagers in China have Mao’s picture in their homes and public places. And, of course, Mao’s image is on all the denominations of Yuan, the currency. His photo will also stay in the Tiananmen Square forever. Yes, that’s me in the picture:


Mao is everywhere in China, and deservedly so. In the hearts of countless grateful compatriots.


More importantly, Mao turned China into an industrial powerhouse. This was beyond anyone’s expectations after the Soviet Union withdrew all its technical advisors and aid in 1960. But merely four years later, China exploded its first nuclear weapon.

China had such holistic success in so many areas that the US decided to befriend Mao. This is why Nixon flew to Beijing and spent a week with Mao, forging a new alliance.


Nixon in China—1972. China's "opening" to America served to create a fracture in the world socialist bloc, and deepen the ideological rift between China and the USSR.


China in 1949

What a lot of people don’t understand when criticizing Mao is the formidable challenge he faced when he came to power. In 1949, China was extremely poor and faced a myriad of serious problems after suffering through colonialism and the Century of Humiliation.

1.       There were only 10 countries in the world with GDP-per-capita smaller than that of China!

2.       More than 4 out 5 Chinese people could not read or write.

3.       More than 20 million Chinese were addicted to opium

4.       China was a primitive agricultural country with no industrial capacity. People outside the big cities did not even have electricity.

5.       Life expectancy was only 35 and healthcare was nonexistent in much of the country.

6.       Worse, the US was meddling in China’s internal affairs by establishing Taiwan and preposterously claiming it to be the real China. Consider that 0.2% of Chinese were in Taiwan and 99.8% lived in mainland China. That’s democracy with American characteristics.

Given all these, what Mao accomplished was quite astounding. Let’s take a quick look at the stats between 1949 and 1976, when Mao passed away:


 

First, life expectancy under Mao grew from merely 35 years to 64 years. In 1949, Chinese people lived 9 years less than the world average. By 1976, they lived three years longer than the world average.

Under Mao, infant mortality fell by a whopping 75%.

And China’s population grew by 400 million during the Mao era – from 540 million to 940 million. That’s a stunning number!

The Communist party of China also reduced youth illiteracy from close to 90% to 20% under Mao. The UN called it the “single greatest educational accomplishment in human history.” To be deemed literate, a person in rural China had to master 1500 Chinese characters!

Next: Under Mao, 1.4 million barefoot doctors became famous worldwide by delivering free basic medical services, prevention, and education on hygiene and nutrition to hundreds of millions of people.


The "barefot doctor" model could be adopted by many countries, including "developed nations" like the US or the UK ravaged by deep class divisions and oligarchic regimes.


The barefoot doctors integrated Chinese and Western medicine. Thanks to the Patriotic Health Campaigns and barefoot doctors, China eradicated or significantly controlled many diseases such as smallpox, plague, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, parasitic infections etc. This revolutionary program was so successful that the UN’s World Health Organization and UNICEF considered recommending it for all developing nations.

Mao was also a feminist who emancipated Chinese women from many societal injustices. He famously said that “women hold up half the sky.” Mao got rid of child marriage, arranged marriage, prostitution, and concubines, while ensuring that girls had equal access to education and women had not only the right to work but with equal pay. By the time Mao died, the female labor force participation rate in China was 80%.


 

So, 75% growth in population, 85% growth in life expectancy, 75% reduction in infant mortality, massive improvement in healthcare, and emancipation of women, but Western media have the chutzpah to lie about Mao being a mass murderer. That’s deranged propaganda. [Unfortunately, a huge number of people in the West, especially the USA, the most brainwashed nation in history, believe such malicious idiocies and stubbornly repeat them. Rightwingers in the US swallow these myths about China and much more, calling even dedicated servants of the oligarchy such as Kamala Harris or Barack Obama a "Marxist" or "communists". This is part because the mass media has never made any effort to correct such disinformation, and in fact, as China grew in world power, it has spread more lies about China in the last 25 years. —Ed]

Okay, now let’s take a look at the industrial and technological capabilities that improved under Mao. From the beginning, he understood the importance of transforming the nation into an industrial giant. For example, steel production from 1949 to 1976 grew a staggering 120-fold.



Of course, you cannot grow a country without plentiful of electricity and energy. Thus, in coal production, China became #3 in the world by 1976, only next to the US and the USSR. In terms of electricity, China’s production increased 50-fold, from 4GWh to 200 GWh.

Although China does not have a lot of oil, the production grew 400-fold under Mao from 0.2 million tonnes to 80 million tonnes.

In the late 1950s, China even started manufacturing its own cars and tractors. The first Chinese car Hongqi was Mao’s favorite and it’s still a luxury car, especially for diplomats.



China today is a scientific powerhouse, leading the world in numerous categories.  


Given all these accomplishments, let’s quickly debunk the Western lies about the Great Leap Forward – from 1958 to 1962 -- when there was supposedly a Great Famine that killed 30-60 million people, and that was all due to Mao.

First, there was no mention of such a famine in the Western media for 40 years since it allegedly happened! The US had spies all over China from the moment PRC was born. Plus, the US had spy balloons and spy planes – such as Lockheed U2 – flying over China. Thus, the CIA knew exactly what was happening within China during the Great Leap Forward.

Thus, let’s see what the CIA reports from 1960, 1961 and 1962 say:


The "Great Famine", and Mao's hand in it were complete fabrications.


·         There was NO widespread famine.

·         The failures of Chinese agriculture have been “principally due to adverse weather conditions.”

·         Also, the Sino-Soviet split in 1960 certainly exacerbated the problems, as all Russian technical experts left China that year. The US sanctions on China also made it difficult for China to buy farm equipment, fertilizer etc.

·         The food grain production in 1960 – the worst year – was 180 million tons, which was the same three years earlier. So, not bad at all.



And during the five years of Great Leap Forward, Chinese people had 85 million children! Even during the worst year in this period, 12 million Chinese kids were born. Think about that for a minute.

85 million newborn children during the “Great Famine.” Hmm... sounds like the Great American Stupid Propaganda.



Also, ask yourself, why there have been no famines or severe droughts in China since 1960? After all, China has had periodic droughts and famines for centuries.

The answer is that Mao put an end to droughts and famines! That’s right, Mao should be associated with ENDING droughts and famines, and not causing one.

You see, the first thing to realize about China is that much of the agriculture happens in the North which has great soil, but does not get much rain and there are not enough rivers.


The Russo-Chinese alliance also assures robust and assured food inputs for China, as Russia's huge territory becomes warmer due to climate change.


In the South, the problem is reversed! The terrain is not so great, but it gets a lot of rain and there are many rivers. Actually, the South has a problem with too much water and flooding.

To address this issue, Mao built projects for water conservancy – in fact he built a staggering 90,000 hydro-power dams and reservoirs all across China. Most of them were small and medium, but there were some massive ones – like Xinfengjiang and Xinanjiang -  which still serve as the primary source of water for capitalist regions like Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.


China now has more dams than the US.


China now has more than half of all the dams in the world.

Mao also dreamed of the Three Gorges Dam and a North-South water diversion projects, which were eventually accomplished by his successors.

So, you can see what rubbish the West has been spreading about Mao. The biggest source of the atrocity propaganda came from the crazy Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, who is no doubt funded by the US deep state. In one of his books, he claimed that China’s prohibition of opium caused greater harm than the drug itself. This is, of course, to condone the opium trafficking by the British into China.

His book “Mao’s Great Famine” – written in 2010 – is the go-to source for all the anti-China loonies.


From the start of the communist era, the capitalists have been telling massive lies about the socialist system and its accomplishments. To defame capitalism/imperialism, all you have to do is just describe them truthfully.


When the book came out first, he could not find a single photo of a malnourished Chinese person from that era (1958-1962). So, Frank Dikotter used a photo of a child beggar from the 1930s, when China was plundered by the Europeans and Americans.

Later, when his literary deception was revealed, he simply re-published the book without the book on the cover. He won several awards for his silly book, because Western propaganda is rewarded with fame and money.

As for the tens of millions of people dying, consider that China’s population was 650 million in 1960. How many people die in a normal situation? Let’s use the mortality rate of 1.7% from the US in 1940. That translates to 11 million people dying in China. Multiply that by 5, you get 55 million. That’s normal.

To summarize, Frank Dikotter lied in four ways:

·         The severe drought lasted for one year and not for five

·         It had nothing to do with Mao or the Great Leap Forward, but was mainly due to nature and China’s unfortunate climate and geographic conditions. And Mao put an end to the droughts.

·         The number of deaths look sensational only because of China’s large population.

·         Also, by CIA’s own reports, China’s population kept GROWING during the Great Leap Forward years. And the GDP growths were also impressive: 18% in 1958, 12% in 1959 and 8% in 1960. These numbers are the opposite of “catastrophic times.”


The facts speak for themselves.


Conclusion

OK, hope you found this informative. As Mao liked to say, “Seek truths from facts.” But it takes a lot of time to explain facts, while fake news and lies are much easier and more seductive.

Mao was a great and visionary leader, who did what might have seemed impossible in those days. He laid the foundation, from which China went on to achieve greater things over the last 40 years. He was a man of the people, and was especially loved by the farmers, workers and women of China.

The end.

S.L. Kanthan

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Lili News 029
  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.


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The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License • 
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS