9-11 - The day America stepped through the looking glass

Anniversaries are for remembering. And what I remember about 911 was that it was the day the US public lost its mind. It is dizzying to look back at all the lies the public has been presented with, and largely swallowed, over the last 17 years. It is disheartening to read polls showing that, most of the time, most of the public buys these lies. I thought it would be simple to just list all the lies. But, when I tried, the list got so long I had to get picky.

Starting at the beginning

I never bought the 911 story. The supposed perpetrators looked pretty incompetent (not to mention being connected to intel ops). Their identification too quick and precise. The cellphone "Let's roll." heroism seemed technically dubious. The ground level approach path of the jet that hit the Pentagon required an experienced multi-engined jet pilot, not some amateur. Surveillance camera footage at the Pentagon raised more questions than it answered. Saudis were whisked out of the country when all flights were grounded. Finally, the collapse of the three WTC buildings into their footprints was unprecedented. Despite that, the WTC wreckage was instantly shipped to China for scrap instead of being examined; some bullshit explanation was offered years later by NIST.

But, the real kicker for someone who had lived through the three assassinations of the 1960s was the coordinated attempt to push the "official" story and to actively smear and discredit anyone with questions. Eyewitnesses were ignored (like the ones who saw the "devout" terrorists boozing it up in a strip club). Fire department radio conversations disappeared. A "convenient" (and never repeated) anthrax attack spooked Congress into passing the police-state enabling Patriot Act. A Congressional committee report on 911 censored the part which pointed the finger in the direction of KSA. Architects were immediately suspicious - see Architects for 911 Truth - and their evidence can withstand any "magic bullet", ala the JFK coverup. But these thousands of licensed professionals with massive amounts of evidence are somehow "conspiracy theorists".

Then they went to work on the media. Given the level of media concentration (six corporations), it wasn't that hard. Bill Maher was slapped, but not fired. Phil Donohue was fired. The Dixie Chicks were smeared. The media got the message, so that by the time of the Feb. 15. 2002 anti-war marches, the NYT couldn't be bothered to report on 500,000 people marching practically underneath their office windows. By the time of "shock and awe", the media was a cheerleader for the military, not a free press.

Off to the secret races

The first thing that happened after 911 was the massive build out of the security state. Dozens of secure buildings sprung up around DC to house massive numbers of contractors. The intel community not only bought billions of dollars of internet snooping equipment from the Israelis. They also adopted wholesale their policing model: the citizens are potential terrorists; treat them like threats, not citizens. This has proliferated, with military surplus weaponry being given to your local cops. They also use the Stingray cellphone interception technology without a warrant, which is finally beginning to be shut down by the courts as illegal search. Despite such small progress, "parallel construction" tactics make a mockery of law enforcement actually having to obey the law.

Thanks to Ed Snowden, we have some idea of the scale of domestic surveillance; and it is frightening. Every last bit of the internet scooped up and stored in Utah. Literally one million folks with security clearances - and dog knows how many of them using that access (ala Nellie Ohr) to run their own fiddles on the side.

An incomplete list of today's lies

I think that remembering the world before the wall-to-wall lying started is the most important use of today's anniversary. Its important to remember when the media and the government hadn't completely fused into the Ministry of Information. But, I need to follow through on my original goal of listing at least the most salient lies of the Soviet-level agitprop that backstops our worldwide warmongering and our domestic corruption.

Active foreign lies

1. The Syrians are going to use chemical weapons, because stupid.
1A. The US does not fund or train or protect ISIS and al Qaida.
1B. The White Helmets are legitimate.
1C. All Moslems (except KSA beheaders) are to be feared, because Islam is a violent religion.
2. The Russians poisoned the Skripals (don't ask for evidence) and must be sanctioned.
3. We are making progress in Afghanistan.
4. The Russians are threatening tiny, depopulating Lithuania.
5. Julian Assange must be surrendered to the US, but not the papers who published him, because people died. (see Lie #11)
6. Libya, the richest country in Africa, had to be destroyed (and its gold reserves looted) to be saved.
7. Iraq had WMDs and was somehow responsible for 911.

Passive foreign lies (we will not mention that)

8. Opium production in Afghanistan is at all time highs, and US troops are busy protecting it.
9. Israel has officially declared itself to be an apartheid state.
9A. KSA is a medieval theocracy, with an inbred, corrupt royal family.
9B. Mohammad bin Salman is committing genocide in Yemen and torturing his relatives at home.
10. Lithuania and Ukraine have apartheid rules for their Russians.
11. Hillary's server was hacked by the Chinese, which got 20 spies executed.
12. The Ukranians are neo-Nazis.
13. The Saudis were involved in 911.
13A. US foreign policy is nothing but threats and violence. Funding and running terrorists, lobbing bombs and missiles, imposing sanctions, supporting coups. We don't do diplomacy anymore.

Active domestic lies

14. The Russians stole the election for Trump.
14A. The economy is doing great. So is the stock market. (See Lies #24A,B)
15. The FBI and Mueller are patriotic, dispassionate sifters of evidence.
16. The CIA is the people's friend. Sabotaging the president is just fine.
17. It is absolutely necessary that the FAANG actively censor, based on input from the Ukronazi "Atlantic Council"
18. Hillary Clinton and the DNC committed no crimes, despite the acknowledged-to-be-true Wikileaks emails.
19. The Clinton Foundation was not a massive, international influence peddling scheme, which included selling 20% of US uranium supplies to Russia.
20. Seth Rich was the victim of a mugging, not the source of the DNC leaks.

Passive domestic lies (we will not mention that)

21. Climate change is well underway, and probably irreversible.
22. Our military budget is obscene - equal to the rest of the world combined - and corrupt and wasteful.
23. Our privatized, guaranteed profit, prison system treats prisoners like animals.
24. Wall St. was bailed out in 2008 and went right back to biz as usual - which will blow up again soon.
24A. Most of Trump's tax cut is being spent on stock buybacks, which is all that keeps the stock market from collapsing.
24B. The job numbers are rigged, ignoring long term unemployed, underemployed, etc. Half the country doesn't have $500 for an emergency.
25. There is a war going on between factions of the Deep State. This war is the real "politics" of Corporate America.
26. The Steele Dossier is a complete piece of crap that probably has something to do with the Skripals.

Twenty-six (+9) lies without even trying. Feel free to add to the list (hopefully putting the lies into one of the four categories).

In conclusion

Today, we are living in that Bizarro World that lefties used as satire back in the early 2000s. Dick Cheney has won, and the "reality based community" is a joke. The media narrative is as fraudulent as the Stalinist history in which Leon Trotsky never existed.

The left completely underestimated the power of coordinated, institutionalized lying and censorship to bury the truth, to smear the truth tellers, and to sell complete, reality-contradicting fantasy as the truth. Large parts of the so-called left in this country remain clueless about the sellout to our corporatists masters by Democrat politicians, and they (the so-called left) cheer for the coup the Democrats are running with the Deep State.

I encourage others to remember what this country was like before it was Pearl Harbored/ Reichstag Fired into becoming a "shitty big state". You should use today to "witness" how this country was as recently as 20 years ago. What with Syria about to explode again, but maybe for real, and with the whole Mueller farce about to implode, this may be the last moment of relative calm into which one can speak.

I won't forget 911. It was the starting gun for the destruction of democracy in this country.

In four words:


Its the lying, stupid!

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American institutions. From the courts, to the White House, to the military, to the media, to our medicine, food, and press, a solid majority of Americans trust nothing this country does or says.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

arendt's picture

@dkmich

When institutions fail, the only trust people have is in their families. This has been the state of play in places like China forever. It leads to callousness and tribalism. It is the opposite of the way the US used to be.

We need a quote like

"the lights are going out all over Europe, and we will not see them lit again in our lifetime"

to describe today's America and its role in the world.

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I saw a headline in that lying NYT just today saying we are "fighting ISIS" in Syria....

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

lotlizard's picture

their own eyes and ears, not the media or officialdom. Likewise urging them to teach their children, and grandchildren to come, to do the same.

It’s become more evident than ever that all organs of the current German mainstream see it as their duty to uphold the same U.S. Deep State, Wall Street, Atlanticist, and Israel- and Saudi-friendly narratives the U.S. public is immersed in.

Dissemination of opinion outside the narrow spectrum represented by the “united front” of established political parties seems as unwelcome and taboo as mass communication of dissenting views was in Soviet-bloc East Germany and Eastern Europe.

https://www.dw.com/en/my-europe-eastern-promise-and-western-pretension/a...

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Pluto's Republic's picture

Just kidding. You've compiled these remarkable lists. People aren't letting go of their suspicions they are gaining new ones. Anybody you talk to will eventually change their tone and begin talking about these obvious lies, unacceptable coincidences, and lame explanations. It's a litany of grief that rips away the trust and confidence that folks once had in their government. We see them as they are, putrid with corruption and utterly compromised.

The trust is gone. Thank god. But where does that leave us? With much of the population hopeless brainwashed or in denial, we are scattered to the winds. We have military police, swat teams, unspeakable cruelty and brutality, and dwindling rights. For many, Plan B is to keep a low profile.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
arendt's picture

@Pluto's Republic @Pluto's Republic

Certainly the corporate media is lying crap, consumed mostly by the over 55 set.

But now Facebook and Google have started active censorship and banning, so any pretense that their news feeds are honest or fair is gone.

Really, where can anyone get some unspun facts? I wind up going to places like The Saker or Global Research or (dog save me) Zero Hedge to try to get something that wasn't written by TPTB.

Of course, I am looking for news that speaks to my working hypothesis:

25. There is a war going on between factions of the Deep State. This war is the real "politics" of Corporate America.

By this hypothesis, I am a powerless serf. My fate is to be determined by this factional warfare, certainly not by voting or by influencing politicians. Politics is about money and fanaticism, not government.

If the globalists/ CIA win, jobs will continue to hemorrhage and neoliberal "trade" deals will destroy what little is left of government regulation. If the nationalists/ Pentagon win, jobs will become increasingly underpaid and gig-like, workplace regulations (along with any affordable healthcare) will disappear and oligarchs will rake in even more of the GDP than they currently do. Neither party will slow down the mad rush to put our children into debt slavery and to spend our entire budget on gold-plated, non-functional military hardware and/or the privatized prison cum slave labor economy.

Either way, I am screwed and powerless to stop it. So maybe I should just give up on the news, mow the lawn, and wait for either Armageddon or a Weimar Republic like economic meltdown.

Just sayin that reflecting on this 17-year pile of horse manure is depressing. Sorry.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@arendt

And that's a full-time job. You get good at trusting your instincts for news and become your own filter. I use the most radical sources and forums and take what rings of the truth and look for corroboration. For corporate news, Israel is good. They talk too much. Russia Today is very good so is Duran. The UK is now useless. You just have to know where everyone is coming from. I like money and trading news and that includes Zero Hedge. They're just doing the same thing that we are: trolling for stories. There's this clean spectrum on the Right with evidence-based news from sharp observers. You have to go all the way past the Left to the Anarchists to find the same quality. Some sites have exceptional readers comments that are highly informed and free with links.

Beyond that, I'm scrambling for a solid plan, too. I am not sustainable by a long shot and I need to get there. It's overwhelming sometimes. Most of the time. I can see things coming better than most, but that doesn't mean I'm ready. I don't have a community in place. Anyone who does has something to build on. A key advantage.

Money is a puzzle. It's probably a good idea to put some in gold and take possession of it. Put it in a wall or something. Cash can be suspended at any time. Or taken if it is in the bank. You live a lifetime with banks and its hard to let go of the security, but they are a dangerous place to store excess money. I used to like talking about it, but I don't anymore. That's probably not a good sign. The holy grail is passive income.

You left out AI and robotics from your scenario. Those will have a major impact soon. As a result, I think it's smart to find any government services you can qualify for, and get enrolled. benefits.gov is the place to go. There are a surprising number of programs.

This may not be what you're looking for, but it's what I'm seeing out there.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
arendt's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Beyond that, I'm scrambling for a solid plan, too. I am not sustainable by a long shot and I need to get there. It's overwhelming sometimes. Most of the time. I can see things coming better than most, but that doesn't mean I'm ready. I don't have a community in place...

I'm not sure how community works these days. How big does it have to be? Does it have to be survivalist-level self-sufficient, or does it merely mean that you are organized enough to pressure the local authorities to do their job intelligently instead of lining their own pockets?

Money is a puzzle. It's probably a good idea to put some in gold and take possession of it. Put it in a wall or something. Cash can be suspended at any time. Or taken if it is in the bank. ...The holy grail is passive income.

Oh, I agree that we are headed for some kind of major monetary hit soon. I sorta believe that it must be inflationary, because of all the money that has been printed - and then blown on useless shit (stock buybacks, fracking ((which is a big money loser)), billions invested in tech unicorns, obscene military spending). If I really didn't fear that TPTB could rig up a deflationary event, I would be investing like crazy in commodities like gold. Although, with money tied up in 401ks and IRAs, I don't know how to take possession of those commodities without triggering a massive tax bill. Yet, when TSHTF, paper is worthless and possession is everything.

----
The rest of the response is about robotics and AI. It gets very speculative.

You left out AI and robotics from your scenario. Those will have a major impact soon. As a result, I think it's smart to find any government services you can qualify for, and get enrolled. benefits.gov is the place to go. There are a surprising number of programs.

ON EDIT:

Why do you think government services are "smart". My experience is that they are stingy and come with huge amounts of paperwork, which assumes you are a crook to be watched. Besides, if inflation goes ballistic, all government programs, including SocSec, will become worthless. Not criticising you; just don't understand.

END EDIT

I can see that AI and robotics are going to make the employment situation even worse than it already is. AI is going to hit a lot of white collar folks in finance, the same way high-frequency looting trading has emptied the trading desks at stock brokerages.

Robotics is different. So many of the jobs it replaces have already been outsourced. However, the Nazi-like striving for efficiency of Jeff Bezos is already starting to replace warehouse workers - one of the last low-skill/low pay jobs on offer. So, yes, robotics has the potential to make a bad situation worse.

I do not buy the hype about driverless vehicles. Even if the algos did work and not induce massive slaughter on a daily basis, the cars would be hacked instantly - for sport, for personal revenge, for ransom, to screw ones competitors, to screw other countries.

My instinct is that some other big thing (nuclear war, unrecoverable stock market collapse, really destructive environmental catastrophe) will occur before AI and robotics becomes a political issue.

But, for the sake of argument, let's say it becomes an issue. My problem is that I can't decide if TPTB want to use robotics to basically make just about everyone surplus (as in "exterminatable": let them die in the dark as they fight each other for scraps) or whether they only want to make them all into serfs - the best ones becoming literal house slaves, the worse ones burning their lives out at some dirty demeaning job while being held afloat by an utterly stingy UBI. Either way is bad news for us proles (anyone not rich).

But the public is so clueless that it does not realize that, by the time robots/AI have replaced enough jobs to become a political issue, it will already be too late to stop them. To displace enough jobs to become an issue, the technology would have to be effective and widely deployed. By the point that say, 10% of jobs are automated, the corps could simply impose martial law while they quickly automate the remainging 90%, blaming the protests on "luddites" and "moochers" and "useless eaters".

The question is how realistic are any of these almost scifi-like scenarios? How implementable is the Digital Panopticon? How tiny of an elite can control everyone, given a locked down, encrypted internet plus global surveillance (complete with turning off your car, your phone, etc. if they think you are a threat) and a force of sociopathic mercenaries (you know, like the ones we recruited for ISIS)?

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@arendt

...new coming down the pike — the fruits of the technology revolution — would easily snap into place to yield a utopia. The wealth of the nation is well able to handle that if that was our national mindset. Some nations will go in that direction. Why not?

A community is 125 people, so I have read.

Here's the deal. Depopulation has been underway for a while. I think anyone who looks at the situation realizes the numbers don't work. We displaced 47 million people last year with our wars. We will displace even more this year and next year. Where can they go? Resources are scarce and there's a drought underway globally.

We didn't have to destroy all those cities, but we did. The terrorists who work for us go in and murder all the survivors who couldn't evacuate. Thus they clear the oil fields. The Neocons have extermination plans. (Those apples didn't fall far from the tree.) They have no qualms about using nuclear weapons to thin the herd. Especially against China, which poses the biggest existential threat to them and blocks their dream of Empire. They've been in this business for more than a century and they've worked it out.

This is what the people refuse to see. They will be in denial to the very end. All the opportunities to form a human alliance and bring our nazi rulers down will pass them by. That's one thing you know that they don't. Many who also know are quietly leaving. The less intelligent ones are hunkering down for a fight, so they are already doomed. You would only waste your resources trying to activate them. There will be peaceful communities that will do well, if they are not overrun.

What is alarming is watching China and Russia reel from the economic assault. They didn't think the US would suddenly become this savage monster that would aggressively try to exterminate them — economically and militarily. They don't know what to do. We are the Fourth Reich. I expected the world to rise as one and block the US economically. Isolate it. Bring it down so we could start over. Now I'm beginning to wonder.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
arendt's picture

@Pluto's Republic

I have the neocons and high tech in two different compartments. The neocons are extractors, asset strippers. Like Hitler, they will use the tech at hand; but they are too cheap to invest in really innovative tech. Still, the tech that's already here is scary enough. The somersauilting robot and the door-opening dogs from Boston Dynamics. The total surveillance programs at the NSA. So, I was thinking "what would Bezos or Gates do", not "what would the neocon gangsters do".

The Neocons have extermination plans. (Those apples didn't fall far from the tree.) They have no qualms about using nuclear weapons to thin the herd. Especially against China, which poses the biggest existential threat to them and blocks their dream of Empire. They've been in this business for more than a century and they've worked it out.

...Even China and Russia are reeling. They didn't think the US would become this savage monster that would try to exterminate them economically and militarily. We are the Fourth Reich.

I can believe that they have plans. Just one problem. The plans are suicidal. The Russians can and will respond. When you say we "would try", you don't say we would succeed. In the end, I think the Russians are quite capable of responding if we start WW3.

But that's an entirely different question than the effect of robotics and AI on our country.

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ggersh's picture

@Pluto's Republic Xi is a neolib from where I sit, only Putin
is standing up to them and the rest of the world is
slowly waking up to reality and that's thanks to the
great orange jello blob, amerika "the Fourth Reich"
is overplaying it's hand.

We are the Fourth Reich. I expected the world to rise as one and block the US economically. Isolate it. Bring it down so we could start over. Now I'm beginning to wonder.

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

WoodsDweller's picture

@arendt
When I was young I was a news junkie, reading two or more newspapers per day, watching the news on the Tube of Boobs, listening to NPR on the radio.
The internet has made my daily news fix much more efficient. Like-minded people scour the wasteland of lies for interesting tidbits. We don't see bold investigative reporting, we make do with video clips of McCain's funeral where we see who is making eye contact with whom.
I don't watch the news for comfort. There is no comfort to be had. As I've stated elsewhere, I live a post-hope existence. The more you understand the more bleak the situation becomes on all levels, personal, regional, national, planetary.
What I seek is not comfort, but understanding. Patterns of lies reveal glimpses of truth, if only "they seem to be protecting something over there, but who knows what it might be".
And the purpose of understanding is to navigate through grief to acceptance. For that is the only grace that remains to us.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

arendt's picture

@WoodsDweller

It seems that, while you are just as devoid of hope as I am, you have found a purpose in paying attention to all the insane nonsense that is walking our civilization to its death.

I live a post-hope existence. The more you understand the more bleak the situation becomes on all levels, personal, regional, national, planetary.

What I seek is not comfort, but understanding. Patterns of lies reveal glimpses of truth, if only "they seem to be protecting something over there, but who knows what it might be".
And the purpose of understanding is to navigate through grief to acceptance. For that is the only grace that remains to us.

Good words. I will think on them.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@WoodsDweller

...like the T-800:

"Anger is more useful than despair."

I despise the philosophy of "acceptance". When all else truly fails, the least anyone can do is SPITE. Anyone who has TRULY lost hope could at least have the decency to do the practical thing and go assassinate one of the many, yet few, people who everyone knows deserves it, yet have been demonstrated to be above the law. When the concentration of wealth and influence becomes as distorted as it is, intelligently-targeted homicide doesn't just become justifiable (and by this point, I think you could make a jaw-droppingly good legal case for "justifiable homicide" of many of the proper individuals and networks), it may well be that it becomes an indispensable component of the solution.

If anyone out there's REALLY resigned to going down, then FFS, they should crack open some hope for the rest of us and take some of the bastards with them. They all have names and addresses.

#HenryVSTom

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

For national security reasons brings into question a few definitions of 'national security' and 'for the good of the people' among others. It also encourages lawlessness.

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GreyWolf's picture

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dervish's picture

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

ggersh's picture

about those that died on that day and the
circumstances of how.

Not my fave but...

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxXcRztOB4]

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

@Fishtroller 02

the link didn't work for you. It does work on my computer, but I am using a browser that increasingly won't allow me to open sites that I really want to read or watch, so I can relate. I am a luddite about updating my software because when I have, I just get more commercials or other pointless pop-ups. So I've built a conundrum for myself.

The link is to a series of amateur and pro videos of the 2nd plane striking the WTC. Amazing footage, much of which I hadn't seen before.

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@Linda Wood

It is weird how the internet and computers have differing relationships. There are lots of videos like that on You Tube. If you look under Xendrius you can view several of them.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

Paul Greengrass' film, United 93, tonight. I think it's his best film.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

arendt's picture

@Fishtroller 02

The publisher decides how many copies to print. By deliberately underestimating the market and then refusing to print more copies, they can say the book was published and did not sell well.

The corporations have had a long time to set up this version of shadow banning.

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I trust Amy Goodman and Democracy Now.

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arendt's picture

@crescentmoon

She pulls her punches and avoids topics these days.

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