It’s Time

We Americans have collectively come to a point now where it’s safe to say that it’s no longer ok for us – for any of us – to be in the dark about a certain group of glaringly obvious, existentially relevant, facts. In this writer’s opinion, all of us have had more than enough time to do the minimal research necessary to correctly understand the details of these three following issues/situations.

No Ifs, Ands or Buts about This

Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. The actual number of Palestinians who have died in Israel’s illegal invasion is, conservatively, between 38,000 and 100,000, 75 percent of whom have been women and children. (1)

What’s rarely being discussed in Western corporate media is the fact that 800,000 “displaced” Palestinian Gazans are currently unaccounted for. (2) With the borders to neighboring countries sealed off, this means that the majority of those displaced are either dead or they’ve fled to the Sinai desert, where they will surely die of thirst and/or starvation. The total number of dead so far in this massacre could very well be near half a million people.

There are no ifs or ands or buts about this. It’s a genocide. Israel is committing genocide. Full stop.

One Thing Is For Sure Here

Russia is and has been destroying the Ukrainian army for the better part of the last two years. I’ve written twelve articles over the course of two and ½ years covering this war, aiming to help generate a movement big enough to pressure the US/NATO to stop forcing the fighting in Ukraine to continually escalate. Our point of view, aside from being firmly opposed to Russia’s invasion, has been to convey that this war could have (easily) been avoided and that it also could’ve been stopped very early on if there’d been any sort of real attempt at diplomacy coming from the Biden administration.

During the first twelve to sixteen months of this conflict there were fairly few mainstream western media outlets that would even entertain the idea that Ukraine wasn’t winning. By the end of 2023 though, it became clear even to reporters from legacy media publications like TIME Magazine, The Guardian, The Washington Post, etc., that Ukraine had little to no chance of achieving anything resembling victory. (3) In fact, barely 10% of Europeans currently believe that Ukraine has a chance to win against Russia. (4)

This issue identifies a key point about the end of the Grace period: Whatever your feelings are about what caused this war – whether you believe it was ten years and three billion dollars’ worth of US/NATO arming and meddling in Ukraine’s governmental and military affairs (on Russia’s border). or whether you think it was all Vladimir Putin’s fault -the only assured result of this war’s continuance is the loss of hundreds of thousands more human lives.

As Jeffrey Sachs and many other highly respected experts from the East and West have said, “The Biden administration and NATO have forced the destruction of Ukraine, more funding would be insane.” (5) (6) Again, one thing is for sure, Ukraine has absolutely no hope at this point of achieving anything except the suiciding of what’s left of its war eligible adult male population. Anyone, at this point, who claims anything different than this is either ignorant or they’re lying.

The US Is No Longer the Only Big Cheese on the Planet

I’ve written several articles about this phenomenon over the course of the last two years. It’s a very easy thing to understand, if one wishes to understand it. Over the course of the last twenty-five years, the neocon-led US government and military have used constant threats and economic and physical violence to punish nations that haven’t adhered to its dictates. (7)

By the end of 2023, when it became clear that Russia and China had outmaneuvered the US in its failed attempt to use Ukraine as a proxy battering ram against Russia, over forty new countries had applied for membership in the BRICS economic alliance that has been spearheaded primarily by China, Russia, and India, along with Brazil and South Africa. That total rose to fifty-eight countries by the beginning of July of 2024. This growing contingent of nations who no longer trust the US are already on their way to developing a powerful new global alliance and a basket currency.

These countries no longer wish to be plundered and bullied by the US and with this new, hugely powerful global alliance, they no longer have to. All of this has ushered in the start of a new multi-polar era.(8) The unipolar era is over. The multi-polar era is here. There is simply no way around it. The fact that the corporate Western media rarely if ever acknowledges these changes is of no consequence to the existence of this newly burgeoning era.

You Probably Know A Lot Less Than You Think You Do

What I’m about to say next here might be hard for some of you to accept. It sure wasn’t easy for me to process. After studying global socio-politics for almost four years now though, it’s become clear to me that if all the news someone is taking in is from Western legacy media (The NY Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Bloomberg News, TIME Magazine, Metro, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, etc.) that person, no matter how clever they are, will have a significantly limited idea of what’s really going on in the world, outside of a very narrowly curated Western rendering of events.

I’m speaking about a regionally ubiquitous Western narrative that has been crafted largely according to the needs and dictates of the Western corporate Military Industrial Complex and its financially connected institutions. This is a network that has been constantly enlarging its sphere of influence and its power over the course of the last half century. So much so that, at this point, a large swath of the Western population has little to no clue that there are other significantly different, legitimate ways of viewing events. This is how ensconced many of us are in the cocoon that is the Western neoliberal narrative.

Who Me? Yes You!

“Who me? Nah, I see through the bs when I watch the news! I’m a conscious person. I’m open-minded. I’ve always been someone who questions things. Believe me, I see through the parts of the corporate agenda and the overall narrative that aren’t true!” This was pretty much my attitude four years ago. Man, was I wrong.

 Unless you allow yourself to take in information from multiple types of news outlets, from multiple regional sources, your restricted media diet will determine the parameters within which you are able to reason and to draw conclusions.

At the bottom of the citations section below, I’ve included a small list of sources within a larger spectrum of alternative media that have helped me break out of the tiny realm of possibilities that I was stuck in for decades.

It might feel a little scary at first, I warn you. Don’t be afraid to take the plunge though. You’ll be fine. Keep in mind, I’m not saying here that you should dump your usual Western legacy media sources. Not at all. I still take in information from many of the sources I named above and much of it has been quite useful.  Just make sure to look at an equal number of alternative sources as well. This way you can compare and contrast your findings over time. Have faith in your instincts. Be brave. Trust yourself!

CITATIONS:

A SHORT LIST OF RELIABLE ALTERNATIVE SOURCES