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The IDF dramatically increased its bombing campaign in Lebanon on Tuesday in the hours preceding an expected ceasefire with Hezbollah.

Israel always does this, and it’s so gross. Normal people get a ceasefire agreement and think “Good, this means we can finally stop fighting.” Israel gets a ceasefire agreement and goes, “This means we have to hurry up and kill as many people as possible before it takes effect.”

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The Biden administration is now pushing Ukraine to lower its minimum draft age from 25 to 18 in order to provide more cannon fodder for the war against Russia.

Polls say that both Ukrainians and Americans want this US proxy war to end, but instead of ending it Washington is pressuring Kyiv to throw teenagers into the threshing machine of an unwinnable conflict.

And we were told this war was all about protecting democracy.

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Russia keeps getting hit by Ukraine with US-supplied long-range missiles and is now saying that “retaliatory actions are being prepared.” This happens as Trump appoints virulent Russia hawk Keith Kellogg as his envoy to the conflict, adding further weight to my concerns that these soaring tensions may continue to escalate after Trump gets into office.

I’ll say right now that if all this insane brinkmanship results in Russia hitting Ukraine with a tactical nuke or something I’ll be a lot more enraged at the western power structure I live under for giving rise to that horror than I’ll be at Vladimir Putin.

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Don’t side with the powerful. Don’t side with Israel against the Palestinians. Don’t side with the US empire against any nation it targets. Don’t side with cops against their victims. Don’t side with billionaires and politicians against the people. Don’t side with the powerful.

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Every four years Americans get to choose between the Republican Party and the party that consistently leaves them so disgusted that they then vote for the Republican Party.

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The way American liberals spent months trying to whip up support and enthusiasm for an administration that was committing an active genocide exposed the disdain western liberals have for non-western lives in ways that will be remembered for generations.

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Leftist indie media figures tend to drift to the right, either by shilling for liberal establishment politics or by promoting the faux populism of the Trump faction. This happens because when your business model is largely driven by clicks and views, you have an incentive to go where the mainstream numbers are. They don’t start off thinking “I can’t wait to sell out and covertly promote the interests of the power structures I claim to oppose,” they just see their virality go up when they talk one way compared to another and start putting out the kind of content that generates more.

Independent media does not exist in a vacuum, it exists in an information environment that’s saturated in empire propaganda which is designed to herd the public into two power-serving mainstream political factions. By changing their output to align with the mainstream liberal faction or the mainstream right wing faction, indie media creators are effectively surfing on the tide of these propaganda streams to carry them into fame and fortune.

This effect is further exacerbated by the fact that people tend to become more right wing the wealthier and more well-connected they become. The idea of fighting a class war against the ruling class is suddenly a lot less appealing when you’re a millionaire with a lot of rich celebrity friends and high-level political connections, so you’ll naturally find yourself pushing vapid culture war bullshit instead and restricting your criticisms of status quo politics to a much smaller zone. This happens to align perfectly with what the empire propagandists are doing, so you’ll still get plenty of clicks and views.

This doesn’t happen to you if you actually stand for something and get into indie media for principled reasons, but if you just got into it to have a cool job or whatever then you’re just going to do the job thing with it and do what makes you money. It’s pretty easy to see who lands where on this dynamic.

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If you’re interested in awakening and enlightenment, check out the work of Angelo DiLullo. Nobody in the English-speaking world is talking about the how-to of liberation so lucidly and skillfully and sharing helpful information so freely. He’s got an excellent YouTube channel with his videos categorized into playlists for whatever stage people are at on their awakening journey.

Original article: caitlinjohnstone