OGPotter

[Peter Morley @morethanmySLE]

I'm going to KEEP talking about how Florida Senator Rick Scott, the RICHEST man in all of Congress DEFRAUDED Medicare & is trying to CUT Social Security.

Will you join me?🤚

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

"Every time the Epstein affair resurfaces, bombs explode somewhere in the world and cause a distraction." Senator Claude Malhuret stood up in the French Senate this week and systematically torched every single member of Trump's cabinet.

Nobody was spared. Not one.

"A year ago, here in France, I compared Trump's presidency to Nero's Court. I was wrong. It's the miracle court," Malhuret began. Then he went through the roster.

"An anti-vaxxer, former heroin addict as Minister of Health." (That's RFK Jr)

"A climate-skeptic Minister of Economy." (That's Scott Bessent)

"An alcoholic TV host, Minister of the Armed Forces." (That's Pete Hegseth)

"An old Qatar agent, Minister of Justice." (That's Pam Bondi, whose former firm collected $115,000 a month lobbying for Qatar)

"A groupie of Putin, Minister of National Security." (That's Tulsi Gabbard)

Then he pulled back and went bigger.

"A Turkish proverb says: when a clown settles in a palace, he does not become king. It is the palace that becomes a circus."

Malhuret pointed out that since Trump created his so-called Board of Peace, he has launched more military strikes than Biden did in his entire term. He called out the Boeing jet Qatar gifted Trump worth $400 million.

He called out the stock market manipulation that only insiders benefit from. He called out the Gulf investment deals enriching Trump and his family.

"Any one of these conflicts of interest would have caused an immediate procedure of impeachment here," Malhuret said. "But we are not here. We are in MAGA's America where public business is conducted in favor of private interests."

Then came the line that cut deepest. "Every time the Epstein affair resurfaces, bombs explode somewhere in the world and cause a distraction."

This is how the world sees us now. Not through Fox News. Not through Truth Social. Through the cold, clear eyes of allied nations watching a great country be hollowed out by crooks.

Every American should hear this speech. Share it everywhere.

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

The DNC announced that it will not release its internal autopsy of the 2024 election (and what went wrong).

Well, I have some thoughts.

If Democrats ever want to take America back from Trump and his cronies, here are eight things they must do.

[Dave Kelley @DaveKelley6]

Trump pushes hatred in all directions… nationalism, tribalism, racism, discrimination… frankly, MAGA is a Russian op… cutting through the fabric of America… needs to be put to rest… with Trump back in office, MAGA hatred w/consume us…

Trump doesn’t have American values… he doesn’t have democratic values… he doesn’t have human values… he doesn’t respect the rule of law or the constitution… he wants authoritarian rule… he’ll use force against Americans… he doesn’t care who gets hurt, or how badly…

[wouldn’t you like to know @staycalm25]

@DonaldTrumpnq They are right…

[OGPotter @potter_og]

NO DEAL WiTH DICTATORS

[Jesus Freakin Congress @TheJFreakinC]

🚨 BREAKING NEWS OUT OF CHARLOTTE, NC:

Border Patrol is detaining a U.S. citizen and blocking him from speaking to a lawyer.

Yes… you read that correctly.

According to his attorney, CBP arrested him simply for warning the public that Border Patrol was in the area… which is NOT a crime, and they are now refusing him access to legal counsel.

This is a massive due-process violation and a chilling example of DHS abusing its power.

CBP has a long history of trying to interrogate people without lawyers present, and today we’re watching it play out in real time… against a U.S. citizen.

📢 Share this NOW.
People need to see how far DHS is willing to go when they think no one is watching.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Which sounds more likely: (A) that things are bad because the population keeps organically voting for policies which just so happen to hurt ordinary people while benefitting the rich and powerful, or (B) that things are bad because the rich and powerful want things this way?

Does it seem more likely to you that (A) the democratic process consistently leaves people unable to advance basic human interests because the population always organically splits itself into an exact 50–50 deadlock that leaves everyone unable to get anything done long term, and that this deadlock always just so happens to land on a status quo that serves the interests of the rich and powerful, or (B) that the rich and the powerful artificially created this status quo via manipulation?

You don’t need to know anything at all about politics or parapolitics to see that (B) is the most likely explanation for why things keep getting worse for everyone besides the rich and powerful. Your own basic reasoning and understanding of human behavior will tell you that there’s no way democracy is working as advertised if things keep getting worse and worse for ordinary voters while billionaires and empire managers keep getting everything they want.

Things are shitty because we are ruled by people who want things to be shitty. Once you awaken to this undeniable reality, you will inevitably find yourself growing more and more radicalized.

Our rulers want nonstop war and genocide. Our rulers want obscene levels of inequality. Our rulers want the public to be poor and struggling. Our rulers want people to be getting dumber, sicker, and more miserable. Our rulers want the unrestricted industry that’s killing earth’s biosphere. Our rulers want us to have vapid, unedifying mainstream culture. This dystopia looks more or less exactly how they want it to look.

Our rulers want war, militarism and genocide to be the norm because military force is one of the critical ways by which they dominate the planet, control resources and trade routes, and prevent foreign states from trying different systems and establishing a different world order. Waging and preparing to wage war has the added bonus of also being extremely profitable.

The plutocrats want inequality to continue because it’s what allows them to live as modern-day monarchs. When money is power and power is relative, you’re going to see the people with the money making sure they have as much as possible while everyone else has as little as possible, because if everyone is king then nobody is. They want the public to have just enough spending money to keep the wheels of capitalism turning, without having enough money to do things like fund political campaigns or buy up media influence. The poorer everyone else is, the more powerful they are.

Our rulers want us to be stupid, misinformed, distracted, sick, struggling and suffering, because if we all had enough time, information and mental acuity to form an understanding what’s going on in our world, things would get mighty guillotiney real quick. They have a vested existential interest in keeping us all in a mental fog of propaganda, diversion, ignorance, illiteracy, and psychological dysfunction.

Our rulers want companies to be free to destroy our planet’s ecosystem, because offloading the costs of industry onto the environment is the only way to steadily increase profits. So long as they’re free to fill the air with pollutants, fill the oceans with plastic, clear the rainforests, incinerate biodiversity and poison people’s drinking water at the expense of other people and other organisms, corporations can continue to grow and to maximize value for shareholders.

An alliance of corporate and state power has emerged to advance these agendas in service of the few people who benefit from them, while the rest of humanity flounders in suffering and toil. They use mass media propaganda, campaign donations, lobbying and other influence operations to ensure that this remains the case. The more you learn to spot the signs of these dynamics and the more clearly you perceive them, the more urgently you see the need to end this way of being.

Truth and clarity paves the way to real revolutionary change. That’s why our rulers spend so much energy trying to obfuscate truth and clarity via propaganda, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, mainstream culture, AI, garbage education systems, and other forms of perception management. They’re doing everything they can to stop us from following the strings of our society’s ailments to the hands up above that are pulling them.

They want us to be stupid, so we need to get smarter.

They want us to be ignorant, so we need to inform ourselves.

They want us to be uncaring, so we need to become more compassionate.

They want us to be compliant, so we need to become disobedient.

The world is a mess because our rulers want it to be a mess. So we need everything in us to be pushing in the exact opposite direction.

[Jason Bassler @JasonBassler1]

-Extrajudicial killings at sea
-Backroom deals with Pfizer
-Sending $40B to Argentina
-Covering up the Epstein files
-Increasing consumer prices via tariffs
-Turning ICE into a domestic policing arm
-Bankrolling Palantir to spy on Americans

DOES. NOT. MAKE. AMERICA. GREAT.

[Jason Bassler @JasonBassler1]

Steve Bannon once said:

"The real opposition is the media. The way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit. Every day, we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done."

This isn’t just a quote. It’s a blueprint.
It's called: "Flooding the zone."

Overwhelm the public.
Distract, distort, and desensitize.

While we chase headlines, they pass laws.
While we argue over noise, they consolidate power.

While we scroll and squabble over culture war bait, they codify authoritarianism and tighten the noose.

The strategy:
Weaponize chaos.
Exploit attention.
Ram through control.

The solution:
Stay focused.
Track the legislation.
Follow the money.
Don’t let the noise become the narrative.

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: Donald Trump gets confronted in the Oval Office about his demand for $230 million in taxpayer dollars and admits that it's "awfully strange" but he's going to be "paying myself" with our money.

Our felon president is looting the treasury right in the open...

"The New York Times is reporting that your legal team is seeking $230 million from your own Justice Department now in response to the investigations into you," said CNN's Kaitlan Collins.

"It could be, yeah," said Trump.

"Is that something you want your legal team to do?" asked Collins.

"I don't know what the numbers are, I don't even talk to them about it," replied Trump. "All I know is, uh, they would owe me a lot of money but I don't— I'm not looking for money I'd give it to charity or something. I would give it to charity, any money, but look what they did, they rigged the election."

The New York Times has reported that Trump is ordering the Justice Department — which is controlled by his corrupt MAGA Attorney General Pam Bondi — to fork over $230 million as "compensation" for the federal investigations into him. The odds of him actually giving the money to charity are zero to none. More likely, he'll take the cash, claim that he donated it, and pocket it. His gullible supporters will then brag about his generosity.

As always, it's worth pointing out that the election was not rigged and all of the probes into Trump's allegations turned up zero evidence. He invented a lie to justify his electoral loss and now he's exploiting that lie to rob our country blind. The Times has stated that there is "no parallel in American history" to this "situation." That's putting it lightly.

"And uh... As you know we had in one case '60 Minutes' had to pay us a lot of money, George Slopadopalis had to pay us a lot of money and they already paid you know?" Trump continued. "They paid me a lot of money because what they did was wrong and, you know, when somebody does what's wrong...

"Now, with the country it's interesting because I'm the one that makes the decision right? And uh... You know that decision would have to go across my desk and it's awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself," he went on. "In other words, did you ever have one of those cases where you have to decide how much you're paying yourself in damages, but I was damaged very greatly. And any money I would get I would give to charity."

"Interesting" and "strange" are certainly words to describe this behavior but "criminal" and "larcenous" would serve better. Trump has always been nothing but a two-bit conman and now that he's back in the White House he's determined to steal everything that isn't nailed down.

Meanwhile, he has gutted $1 trillion from Medicaid with his "big, beautiful bill" and is slashing crucial services all across the country. As America crumbles away to nothing, Trump is seated atop the ashes, pockets bulging with cash.

Please retweet and ❤️ to demand immediate impeachment!

[OGPotter @potter_og]

@astraiaintel .

[Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 @jurgen_nauditt]

Poland slaps russia in the face. WOW.

We know you don't care about international law and are incapable of living in peace with your neighbors. Your insane nationalism is a lust for domination that will not abate until you realize that the era of empires is over and yours cannot be restored," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told the russian representative at a UN Security Council meeting.

"And every drone strike by the heroes of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, may God bless them, brings that day closer.

No one supports your attempts to conquer Ukraine, and we will not be intimidated. If another missile or other object, intentionally or accidentally, flies into our space and is shot down, and the debris falls on NATO territory, don't come here to complain. You've been warned."

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: Mexico's superstar President Claudia Sheinbaum enrages MAGA world by demonstrating what a real leader can do by opening 31 hospitals and helping raise 13.4 million people out of poverty.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid and making the poor even poorer...

"This year we delivered 31 hospitals, 12 health centers and we are equipping 256 operating rooms. And we begin construction of 20 hospitals," Sheinbaum announced in a video touting her administration's numerous achievements. "We are delivering healthcare to every elderly and disabled person’s home."

Thanks to Trump's "big, beautiful bill," rural and local hospitals are closing in droves because they no longer have the funds to continue operating. Mexico is moving towards a brighter future while MAGA drags the United States into a new dark age.

And Mexico's successes aren't just limited to the opening of new hospitals and health clinics. Thanks to the policies of Sheinbaum's predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador (better known as Amlo), the poorest strata of society and the elderly now receive stipends and the minimum wage has tripled.

Sheinbaum is a member of the same party as Amlo, The National Regeneration Movement or Morena. As president, she has carried on his mission to lift up the poor and create a Mexico that works for everyone.

“When the minimum wage increases, other wages and incomes in the economy begin to rise – even in the informal economy – because there is a greater availability of resources,” economist Valeria Moy told The Guardian.

“There has never been a single six-year term in which poverty has been reduced or decreased so significantly. This is a watershed moment for the Mexican economy," said Viri Ríos, the director of Mexico Decoded.

When Amlo look power in 2018 Mexico had roughly 52 million people living below the poverty line. When he left office six years later, that number had decreased by about 26% or 13.4 million people. At the same time, extreme poverty dropped from roughly 9 million to 7 million. Sheinbaum has continued on his policies and the quality of life for all Mexicans continues to improve.

“It’s something extraordinary, historic, the reduction [of poverty],” said Sheinbaum. “‘For the good of all – first the poor’ is not just a slogan, but a reality in Mexico.”

To the north, Donald Trump continues to grind his boot into the neck of the poorest segment of the American economy. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has revealed that the "big, beautiful bill" will boost the top 10% of earners annual income by $13,600 while the bottom 10% will suffer an annual decrease of $1,200. It's naked class warfare designed to funnel even more wealth to the rich.

Sheinbaum is also putting Trump to shame in the diplomatic sphere. Whereas Trump has shredded our relationships with our closest allies and continues to extort them with destructive tariffs that hurt Americans and foreigners in equal measure, Sheinbaum is hammering out mutually beneficial deals for her people.

Yesterday it was announced that Mexico and Brazil will be signing a complementary trade deal in which Mexico imports more Brazilian beef while Brazil implements "traceability" for its livestock. They will also be collaborating on biofuels — including the production of ethanol in Mexico — and will work together to manufacture electric-vehicle batteries. This is what it looks like when countries cooperate for the betterment of their people.

Imagine what we could accomplish in the United States if we had a leader like Sheinbaum instead of a petty, sexual predator reality TV star who cares only about enriching himself and his family.

Please retweet and ❤️ if you wish that America had someone like Claudia Sheinbaum as president!

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

Here is the full theory in article form. It’s taken me a long time to figure this out. Please consider subscribing.
https://t.co/0Mg7O9Ltty

[OGPotter @potter_og]

@JohnCassidy @delong John, your X bio misspells the subtitle of your book as “It’s” (sic)

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

This is really scary, but it explains a lot!

July 1987, Moscow, USSR — Trump, 41 years old, flies to Moscow at the invitation of Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., Yuri Dubinin.

1/n

[Angry Staffer @Angry_Staffer]

This is the most important story of the day.

A Tulsi aide ordered a senior analyst to redo an assessment of the relationship between Venezuela’s government and a gang after intelligence findings undercut the WH justification for deporting migrants.

https://t.co/ylXQqPZHcL

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

The worst mistake you can make when reading the news is to assume there’s a good reason why the mass media report on something in the way they do. That there’s a good reason why Israel-Palestine gets framed as a complex and morally ambiguous issue with no clear path forward, even though it all looks pretty self-evident to you. That there must be a valid and legitimate reason why one story gets more coverage than a seemingly far more important story, like how the release of one Israeli-American hostage is currently getting far more news media coverage than the deliberate starvation of an entire enclave full of civilians.

In reality there is no valid and legitimate reason why such things are covered the way they are. The coverage happens in the way that it happens because it serves the information interests of Israel and the western empire, and for no other reason.

So much western ignorance is facilitated by the manipulative way the imperial media report on what’s going on in the world. People assume that because they’re not hearing about a given issue all the time or in a particularly urgent tone of reporting, it must not be an especially important matter that needs their attention. They assume that if one side of a conflict isn’t framed as being clearly in the wrong, then it must not be.

Westerners assume that if the world were experiencing another Holocaust, another Transatlantic Slave Trade, another Cuban Missile Crisis, they would hear about it in the news at an appropriate level of urgency. But that simply isn’t how it works. The only reason the western public is ever told about anything bad that happens at a high level of frequency and urgency is when it is convenient for the western empire, like when Russia invaded Ukraine. When that happened it was the main story in every western outlet for ages, and Russia was clearly framed as the evil aggressor, with all the NATO aggressions which provoked the invasion going completely unmentioned.

When people hear the word “propaganda” they tend to think it means the same thing as “lies”, but that’s not accurate. The domestic propaganda that westerners are fed by the powerful does not typically consist of whole-cloth fabrications, but rather of distortions, half-truths, manipulated emphasis, and lies by omission.

Most of the worst things the US and its allies are doing in the world are reported accurately by the western press at certain times and in certain publications, but they simply are not given any emphasis and amplification after those brief mentions. If you look at the hyperlinks I cite in my articles to describe the criminality of the empire it’s usually either straight out of the mainstream press or some other independent author who’s citing mainstream news reporting. The difference is that I regularly spotlight those admissions, while the imperial media will mention them once halfway down an article somewhere and then let the daily news churn carry it away down the memory hole.

Western propaganda doesn’t consist so much of manipulating WHAT gets reported but HOW it gets reported. How often something gets mentioned. How often the perpetrator of an abuse is explicitly named. The type of language used to describe a given offense. These adjustments might sound insignificant when they are described, but when put into practice across the board they are extremely effective at shaping public perception of world affairs.

The only way to get around this is to maintain an acute awareness of what’s being reported while ignoring distorting factors like frequency, emphasis and tone. You have to just focus on the raw data of what’s being reported about what the empire is up to from day to day without allowing your perception to be colored by the way in which that data is reported. If you come across a key piece of information about the empire’s criminality you’ve got to hold onto it and remember its significance for yourself, because the imperial press sure aren’t going to remind you. They’re going to be acting like it never happened by next week.

It’s bizarre once you start noticing how much of a disconnect there is between reality and the mass media’s reporting on world events. They’ll occasionally mention actual important things, but there’s no accurate sense of proportionality to any of it. It’s like if you were at a restaurant with a friend and a waiter’s uniform caught fire, and your friend just casually mentioned “Oh that guy’s on fire” before going back to talking about the meal for the rest of the conversation while the guy burned to death at the other end of the room. It is utterly surreal.

So one of the most important things you need to do to maintain a truth-based worldview is to take complete control over your own understanding of the importance of the pieces of information which come across your field of vision. You can’t rely on others to tell you how important they are, because all the most amplified and influential voices in our society are working to manipulate your understanding of their importance, and most ordinary people you’ll interact with are being manipulated by those voices to some extent. Public political discourse is overwhelmingly dominated by these distortions.

You’ve got to interpret the urgency and importance of information for yourself. By standing on your own two feet and looking at the raw data with fresh eyes before it gets jumbled around by the imperial spin machine, you make your mind much harder to bend to the will of the empire.

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: Democratic Senator Chris Murphy blows the lid off of Donald Trump's apocalyptic tariffs by unveiling a disturbing "theory" that exposes the corrupt real reason behind them.

This just makes too much sense to be ignored...

"These guys are the Keystone Cops. You saw it last week with SignalGate. You're seeing it now with tariffs. These guys don't know how to run a country," Murphy said on MeidasTouch. "They don't know how to run an economy."

"This is going to be an absolute disaster for consumers," he continued. "Prices are going to go sky high. The jobs are not going to show up. You know the fact of the matter is, yeah, there's a world in which tariffs can help restart American jobs but you have to pair the tariffs with domestic industrial policy, incentives for companies to locate here. They're not doing that so the only people who are going to feel pain are consumers."

"But you know, I've got a little different theory, the case on this, and then obviously then I'd love to hear [fellow guest Senator Tim Kaine] on it but this is also a political tool for Trump," said Murphy.

"You see what he’s doing with these universities, with these law firms, penalizing them and making them come to him to pledge loyalty," he continued. "I think it’s likely the same thing could happen with the tariffs..."

"...that each big company or each big industry is going to have to come to Trump, get some tariff relief in exchange for political loyalty, in exchange for a commitment to buy Trump cryptocoin, or a commitment to make sure their workers and employees don’t speak out against Trump," he went on.

"I think, you know, he’s trying to destroy democracy and the reason that these tariffs may not make any sense when you sort of look at the design is because maybe they’re not actually economic or trade policy," said Murphy.

"Maybe it's actually political policy," he continued. "So once again, just an absolute disaster for regular working people out and maybe a big threat to our democracy."

The senator hit the nail right on the head. Trump is wielding unilateral power with these tariffs so that companies and countries come to him, hat in hand, to beg for tariff relief in exchange for bribes or favors. This is all about making Trump and his family personally richer and more powerful. In the meantime, the rest of us will suffer.

MAGA has turned America into a gangster dystopia. If Congress doesn't take action immediately, we could lose our democracy forever.

Please retweet and ❤️ to demand a Congressional investigation into these tariffs — and consider joining the growing exodus to Tribel, a new pro-democracy social network that is exploding in popularity because Twitter and Facebook are trying to stop its growth — which is only making Tribel grow even faster. Please follow us on Tribel to get all of our breaking news alerts sent straight to your phone or computer by clicking the following link: https://t.co/HnJzSKjCwX