Republic Watch | Truth to Power

Republic Watch
Holding power accountable.
Truth to Power. Defending Democracy.
Facts. Records. Action.

[Peter Daou @peterdaou]

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the U.S. can afford two wars at once.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

Democrats love to talk about democracy & Republicans love to talk about freedom but the truth is both parties rule over a capitalist oligarchy that suppresses democracy & freedom.

None of us are free here.

We are owned by banks, divided by politicians, and lied to by the media.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

70% of the country is living paycheck to paycheck, the poverty rate just doubled, yet Biden & the Democrats are bragging about an economy that’s not booming for anyone except the rich. This tells you everything you need to know about the Democrats and who they work for.

[Nina Turner @ninaturner]

Reminder:

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

The political cycle in the United States.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

Malcolm X warned Democrats use Black Americans as “pawns” to get power for themselves.

Debs warned both capitalist parties serve the rich & a vote for either is a betrayal of the poor & working class.

They warned us but folks STILL aren’t listening: Stop voting for the duopoly.

[Peter Daou @peterdaou]

A quarter of US adults are going hungry.

Please tell me how voting for Republicans or Democrats AGAIN is going to address that.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

There is nobody more propagandized in the U.S. than Democrats who think they are “saving democracy” by voting for a party that rigs its own primary elections and kicks third parties off the ballot.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

The purple line is the avg. wealth of the top 1%. Notice how decade after decade it just keeps going up, up, up. The blue and red lines are the avg. wealth of 90% of Americans. Notice how it never goes up. This is life under U.S. capitalism & what voting for the duopoly gets you.

[Nina Turner @ninaturner]

This IS NOT sustainable.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

Some Facts:

Homelessness has increased by 15%.

Food insecurity has increased by 25%.

Suicide rate just hit an all time high.

Rent, gas & grocery prices are all higher.

VOTING FOR BIDEN & DEMOCRATS MADE THINGS WORSE NOT BETTER.

IT’S TIME FOR A THIRD PARTY.

CORNEL WEST 2024!

[Peter Daou @peterdaou]

January 6, January 6, January 6, January 6, January 6, January 6, January 6, January 6, Orange man bad, Orange man bad, Orange man bad, Orange man bad, Putin, Putin, Putin, Putin, Putin, Putin...

This is the extent of Dem/liberal political analysis.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

Obama: “Back in the 80s I’d be considered a Republican.”

Biden: “We need a strong, principled Republican party.”

Pelosi: “Our country needs a strong Republican party.”

I love when the masks come off & Democrats tell you who they really are: REPUBLICANS. https://t.co/S1AxldpqCH

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

In A World Ruled By Propaganda, A Sane Worldview Will Necessarily Be A Fringe Worldview

One of the worst mistakes you can make when formulating your understanding of the world is to begin with the assumption that the truest and most accurate position must lie somewhere near the center of the two major political perspectives you see laid out all around you.

It’s a mistake not only because assuming that the center position must be the best one is a type of fallacious reasoning known as the middle ground fallacy (the correct position between “Drink a gallon of bleach daily for good health” and “Drink zero bleach daily for good health” is not “Drink half a gallon of bleach daily for good health”); it’s also a mistake because the entire framing arises from a situation that has been artificially engineered by the powerful.

It’s a well-documented fact that the rich and powerful pour vast fortunes into manipulating the political and media landscape in ways that serve their interests. Their control over the news media and Silicon Valley tech platforms is used to set the agenda and influence public perception by determining what issues will receive attention and which won’t in ways that preserve the political status quo they’ve built their empire upon, thereby shrinking the Overton window of acceptable debate down to a very narrow spectrum whose outcomes can’t threaten their interests in any way.

We just discussed this dynamic with regard to US aggressions against Russia and China; the Overton window is being narrowed to a debate between which US enemy should be the target of the most imperial aggressions, with voices who advocate detente with both countries finding no platform in mainstream politics or media. This is what Noam Chomsky was talking about when he said “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

People assume there must be truth in the mainstream worldview because so many others are invested in the mainstream worldview, when really the only reason that worldview is mainstream in the first place is because so much wealth and influence has gone into making it mainstream. In reality the assumption that the truth exists anywhere in either of the two mainstream political viewpoints promoted by the managers of the western empire is an example of the bandwagon effect, which describes the cognitive bias in which humans tend to take on beliefs, behaviors, styles and attitudes solely because that’s what the people around them are doing.

This bias would have had evolutionary advantages early on in our development as a species. Back when our evolutionary ancestors were prey for prehistoric carnivores, it was a survival advantage to start running for your life if you saw other members of your tribe running, even if you personally didn’t see what they were running from. As primates whose survival depended on social cohesion, being rejected by the tribe would mean almost certain death by predation or starvation, so it was necessary to conform in whatever ways prevented that rejection from happening.

But we don’t live in prehistoric times anymore. We live in a civilization with a highly complex information environment that is being continually manipulated away from truth and accuracy and toward the advantage of powerful people who rule over us. If you go along with the herd, you’ll be deceived.

In truth the so-called “centrists” or “moderates” of our world are really violent extremists, because they support the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on our planet, and are only regarded as moderate because they sit in the mid-range of a completely artificially created spectrum. A perspective that is actually sane will be about as far away from their perspective as you can get.

Because the majority of people have been duped by propaganda into espousing mainstream political perspectives, those with an accurate read on things will necessarily be a small fringe minority until that dynamic changes. As long as your entire civilization is structured around deceit-based perspectives which serve the powerful, going along with the crowd will prevent you from forming a truth-based perspective that serves human interests.

So you’ll have to get comfortable rejecting mainstream orthodoxies, dismissing mainstream media, and shunning mainstream politics, because those things are all inseparably interwoven with the matrix of deceit by which our rulers have pulled the blindfold over this civilization. This won’t be a sign that you’re out of touch or a kooky crackpot or some snobby hipster who rejects all things mainstream out of a pathological need to be different, it will be a sign that you are seeing things clearly.

This can set you apart from your tribe at times; as Terence McKenna said, “The cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation.” But we can still find each other online, so we’re never really alone, and the cost is definitely worth it. The sincere pursuit of a truth-based perspective is ultimately the surest path not only toward a healthy society, but toward lasting happiness as an individual as well.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

The U.S. government is controlled by one party with two corporate wings [blue and red] who keep us divided on social issues while they transfer wealth upwards to their rich donors.

[Nina Turner @ninaturner]

$7,900 in 1955 is equivalent to $90,110 today.

$49.74 in 1955 is equivalent to $558 today.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

The main misconception about US presidents is that they are proactive leaders when they're really reactive facilitators. They're not proactively leading the government in accordance with their vision and ideology, they're responding to and facilitating the various needs of the empire from year to year. That's what the empire managers in their administrations are doing with their daily intelligence and national security briefings: explaining to them what the needs of the empire are on that day and what must be done to facilitate those needs, using whatever language will make a given president receptive.

The main difference between US presidents is the narratives that the empire managers who they surround themselves with will use to explain why they need to advance the interests of the empire. Progressive president? You need to kill Syrians to advance human rights. Conservative president? You need to kill Syrians to protect national security. Presidents surround themselves with empire managers who understand how to keep the gears of the globe-spanning empire turning, and those empire managers explain what needs to be done in ways that the president will listen to.

This is a big part of what keeps the empire moving the same way from administration to administration. Every president is being "advised" (read: directed) by DC swamp monsters who all went to the same universities and moved through the same revolving door employment circles of government agencies and think tanks and party politics and military-industrial complex advising/lobbying and media punditry, who all understand what's required of the US president to facilitate the perpetuation of US unipolar planetary hegemony.

These swamp monsters are part of the permanent government structure that stays in place regardless of the comings and goings of electoral politics, and they're always balls deep in literally every presidential administration, no matter how rebellious or anti-establishment that president pretends to be. That permanent government structure is why the large-scale movements of the empire don't change when a president is replaced by a new president of an opposing ideology; America's official elected government may have changed, but its real government did not.

[💎Practical Stocks🦍🚀 @Practicalstocks]

🚀 Positive Indicators Pointing Towards a Potential $AMC Short Squeeze! 🚀

Buckle up, because we’re about to break down the positive factors that have the potential to launch AMC into the stratosphere.

Whether you’re a seasoned ape or a baby monkey, this thread is your front-row ticket to understanding why the buzz around AMC’s short squeeze is heating up, and why you should hold onto your moon tickets to dear life.

📈 Sky-High Short Interest: The shorts are circling, and AMC’s short interest is through the roof. Self reported SI sitting well above 30%! This indicates a classic short squeeze scenario and we could potentially see fireworks soon.

💸 Explosive Borrowing Costs: Borrowing AMC shares is now running at an eye-popping 350% to 400%! Short sellers are certainly feeling the heat as the cost to borrow skyrockets.

📊 OBV On Fire: With a jaw-dropping OBV of 12 billion, AMC’s buzz is attracting bulls like moths to a flame. The buying volume is on another level, and it’s been consistently high for the last 2 years. Price will play catch up eventually.

💰 AMC’s Blockbuster Quarter: Profit after the pandemic? Nobody believed it could happen, certainly not shortly after the COVID pandemic. Short sellers were betting on AMC’s bankruptcy, what’s their excuse now? AMC’s financial success could be turning this into a fundamental play, attracting even more investors and money.

🆙 Historic Revenue Explosion: July 2023 rewrote AMC’s history books with record-breaking revenue. We are witnessing the “Barbenheimer effect” in action, and there’s only one safe conclusion here: movies are back.

⚖️ Lawsuit Cliffhanger: Judge Zurn’s decision could be the twist in the plot. Will it favor AMC and send shorts scrambling? Only time will tell, but if Zurn’s decision is in AMC’s favour, the company could raise so much capital that will take the bankruptcy risk off the table, once and for all.

🏦 Big Money’s Change of Heart: more and more banks and funds are flipping the script, selling puts and grabbing calls. Is this a sign that shorts might soon be outnumbered?

It’s clear to me that all of these elements (and probably more that I’ve missed) are the perfect recipe for disaster (if you’re a hedgie).

Perhaps I forgot to mention the strongest factor, in this play, of them all. Apes.

If the last 3 years have proved something, is that apes are a fucking resilient bunch, and resiliency always wins.

This post is no financial advice, and I’m no financial advisor. I’m just a humble chimpanzee 🦍

-Post creator/credits to: Abstergo1817

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

We talk about US presidents all the time — Obama did this, Trump did that, blah blah blah. But really it's never the president doing those things, it's the empire. The president is just the face of the operation, the name they put on the door that they change every few years to create the illusion that the US government is responsive to the will of the electorate.

Really if you look solely at the raw data of the US power structure around the world (where the weapons are going, where the resources are going, where the money is and isn't going, where the diplomats are and aren't going, etc), you can't tell from year to year when the White House is changing hands. You can't tell from that raw data what political party the current president belongs to or what platform he campaigned on, and you can't tell when he's replaced by someone from the other party with another platform. The raw data of the empire keeps moving in basically the same way without any meaningful interruption.

So it's not really true to say that Obama did this or Trump did that, they're just the face that happened to be on the operation when it was time to kill Gaddafi or begin the Pivot to Asia or sanction Venezuela or start arming Ukraine or whatever. They're not leaders leading the US government in various directions based on what they think the best policies are, they're empire managers who are responding to whatever the needs of the empire happen to be each day, using whatever justifications or partisan leverage they can muster in that moment.

And Americans don't get to vote on any of that stuff. They don't get to vote on what will need to be done to facilitate the needs of a globe-spanning empire, or if there should be a globe-spanning empire at all. The behavior of the empire is never on the ballot. The only things that are ever on the ballot are issues which stand no possibility of ever interfering in the operation of the empire, like whether or not the president will appoint Supreme Court justices who oppose abortion or support gun control. And the voting populace is continually kept at a 50/50 split on as many of those issues as possible to keep both sides tugging on the rope as hard as possible so they don't look up and notice that the real large-scale behavior of their government is completely unaffected by the back and forth gains and losses of the tug-o-war game.

Really the only reason to talk about US presidents in terms of Obama did this and Trump did that is to highlight this point. To highlight the fact that Obama continued and expanded all the most malignant policies of his predecessor, and that Trump continued and expanded all the most malignant policies of his. To disrupt all the dopey partisan narratives about things getting better under Biden or worse under Trump or that Obama was a progressive or Trump was a peacemaker. By pointing out the horrible things that happened under each administration, regardless of party affiliation or platform, the illusion that Americans are controlling the behavior of their government using their votes can be worn away.

And then the possibility for real change opens up. The longer Americans are convinced that they can vote their way out of problems they never voted their way into in the first place, the longer they can be dissuaded from using the power of their numbers to force real material changes by real material means.

[Nina Turner @ninaturner]

Average PPP Loan amount: $107,000

Average federal student loan amount: $37,338

If we can cancel PPP Loans, we can cancel student debt.