Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

I will never get used to living in a world where our rulers will openly imprison a journalist for telling the truth and then self-righteously pontificate about the need to stop authoritarian regimes from persecuting journalists. Reading by Tim Foley.

"I can't imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this." Can you imagine not being able to imagine a US intelligence official being wrong? This would be an unacceptable position for any educated adult to hold, much less a journalist, still less an editor, and still less an editor of one of the most influential news agencies on earth. These are the people who publish the news reports we read to find out what's happening in the world. This is the baby-brained level of thinking these people are serving the public interest with. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's still funny that the entire US-controlled world has been raging at Russia all year for doing something the US does routinely. Reading by Tim Foley.

Un-banning a few famous people will drum up a lot of headlines and online chatter and make it look like you're really doing something, but in the end all you've done is reinstate a handful of Twitter accounts. You haven't done anything to meaningfully scale back the speech restrictions on your platform. Reading by Tim Foley.

Euthanizing the poor is just capitalism finally being honest about itself. After all these years of falsely pretending to have real solutions to the problems it creates, it finally presents a solution entirely in alignment with its values that actually works.Capitalism's answer to "What about the poor?" has always been "They should work harder," and its answer to "What about those who can't work?" has always been "They should die quickly." But until now it's always been spoken wordlessly in the policies enacted and the societal structures put in place. Now it's just right there, completely undisguised. It's refreshingly honest. Reading by Tim Foley.

I met a fox last night who was carrying a dead possum. Foxes, unlike possums, are not native to Australia, but neither are white people so no judgement. I got here the same way she did. Her ancestors came here because rich Englishmen wanted to have fox hunts in the bush, mine came here because rich Englishmen wanted a distant prison colony. We are all where we are on this planet because of the dances our ancestors did with rich Englishmen and native possums. I walk on stolen land under a sun that burns my pale skin, ripping the dead ideas of dead men out from my skull like thorns. If you ever need to find me just look for the trail of rosary beads and communion wafers, of Murdoch papers and nice guy rapists. If I am dead when you find me please weave fairy lights through my bones and leave a sign that reads HERE LIES EMPTINESS. Maybe lizards and frogs will play in this ribcage. Maybe native flowers will grow in this skull. I don't know what any of this is or where any of it is going. I'm blown through this

A surprisingly frank article by The New York Times titled "Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons" describes how the imperial war machine is capitalising on the US proxy war to test its weapons for future use.  Reading by Tim Foley.

Two false news reports have gone viral in recent hours due to sloppy sourcing and journalistic malpractice. As usual they both featured bogus claims about US-targeted nations, in this case Russia and Iran. Reading by Tim Foley.

I wonder if my own government is being truthful about its actions in that part of the world? I wonder if my own government is in the wrong on this issue? I wonder if the news media are telling the truth right now? I wonder if the news media tell the truth about things generally? I wonder if the "Evil Dictators versus Virtuous Liberal Democracies" framework I've been taught by teachers, pundits and politicians is the most accurate lens through which to view world events? Could I have been deceived about the way my government operates, at home and abroad?  Is it possible that my beliefs about my society, my government and my world are completely wrong? What if the teachers, preachers and parents who helped form my worldview were relying on inaccurate information? Who has benefitted from the beliefs that are in my head? Is it possible that those beliefs were placed there, directly or indirectly, from people who have benefitted from my having them? Are there any power-serving falsehoods that I believe be

Westerners are taught that evil foreign "regimes" don't let their people criticize their government, meanwhile westerners themselves are trained to never criticize their government. They're trained instead to criticize decoy dichotomies — false partisan nonsense — not the real power. Westerners are trained to criticize the actions of the other party or the beliefs of the other ideological faction, never the foreign or domestic policies which are fully supported by both parties. The power structure which maintains 99.9% of the same policies regardless of which party is officially in charge is the real government, but westerners are trained never to look there. They're instead trained to fixate on a false two-handed puppet show diversion. Reading by Tim Foley.

The Atlantic, which is owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs and run by neoconservative war propagandist Jeffrey Goldberg, has published a pair of articles that are appalling even by its own standards. Reading by Tim Foley.

War criminal George W Bush and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be appearing at an event next week at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, in partnership with US government-funded narrative management operations Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy. The goal of the presentation will reportedly be to address the completely fictional and imaginary concern that congressional Republicans won't continue supporting US proxy war efforts in Ukraine. Reading by Tim Foley.

Democracy of the vote without democracy of information is not democracy. It doesn't matter if people are able to vote as long as the media-owning class are able to manipulate how they vote. "One person, one vote" is meaningless if influence and control of information is highly concentrated in an elite few. And it is. Reading by Tim Foley.

The largest religion on earth is not Christianity or Islam: it's the widespread, faith-based belief system which holds that humans are separate from each other and from the world.  Humanity is becoming less religious as awareness expands that religions are nothing but a collection of unhelpful and unevidenced belief systems. In the same way, and for the same reason, humanity may one day do the same with the belief systems about self and separateness to which nearly everyone on earth is presently a devout adherent. Reading by Tim Foley.

The commander of the US nuclear arsenal has stated unequivocally that the war in Ukraine is just a warmup exercise for a much larger conflict that's already in the mail. Reading by Tim Foley.

There is no such thing as unbiased journalism. If someone tells you they are unbiased they are either knowingly lying, or they are so lacking in self-awareness that you should not listen to them anyway.  The divide is not between biased journalists and unbiased journalists, it's between journalists who are honest and transparent about their biases and journalists who are not. There are no unbiased journalists. There are no unbiased people. You're either honest about this or you're not. Reading by Tim Foley.

A system which perpetuates and exacerbates itself while pretending to solve the problems it creates is often called a self-licking ice cream cone. Because that type of system is promoted by those serving the most powerful and belligerent power structure on earth, one might call US militarism a self-licking boot. Reading by Tim Foley.

"Those most touched by the war, namely the internally displaced, were more likely to prioritise saving lives. Other research reveals that those farthest from the battlefields have the most hawkish attitudes." Those two simple sentences sum up so much of the attitude we are seeing toward this war, and it applies as much to those cheerleading continual escalation and bloodshed from the comfort of their homes on the other side of the world. Reading by Tim Foley.

2022 is an insane year to be a critic of the empire. People are being censored for disputing official narratives about a war. Those who aren't censored are being mobbed by astroturf trolling operations. A frenetic propaganda push is turning our friends, family, coworkers and acquaintances into brainwashed empire automatons who despise our heretical rejection of official imperial doctrine about Russia and Ukraine. And this is just a quick note to say thank you for holding the line anyway, and to note that your opposition to nuclear brinkmanship, US warmongering and propaganda makes a difference. Reading by Tim Foley.

Pointing out the various flaws in historical attempts at communism does not address the problem that if we don't move from competition-based models to collaboration-based ones we're going to destroy all life on this planet in short order. We've still got to find a way to change. Reading by Tim Foley.