This is not democracy. This is plutocracy. This is oligarchy. We’re just indoctrinated into calling it democracy, by the very same mass-scale psychological manipulations they use to keep it from being a democracy.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Real Election Meddling Will Happen Right Out In The Open

Everything Israel has done since October 7 are things it was doing before October 7. Raping. Torturing. Stealing. Siege warfare. Killing kids with snipers. Murdering journalists and healthcare workers. Israel's actions before and since October 7 show you why October 7 happened.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Approaching A Year Of Genocide

Israel just turned thousands of Lebanese people into involuntary suicide bombers in the name of fighting terrorism.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Turning People Into Involuntary Suicide Bombers To Fight Terrorism

The death toll has risen to 12 from Israel's terror attack in Lebanon on Tuesday which detonated explosive materials hidden in thousands of pagers. Another 20 people were then killed in another attack on Wednesday with a second wave of explosions, this time using walkie talkies and home solar energy systems. 

The total death toll now sits at 32. Two children and four healthcare workers are among the dead. Thousands have been injured.

As you would expect, western empire managers are getting really squirmy about this. White House spokesman John Kirby adamantly refused to answer any questions involving Israel's responsibility for the attacks during a press conference on Wednesday, despite Israel being widely reported as the responsible party, with outlets like The New York Times citing US officials as their source.

Reading by Tim Foley.

On War Crimes And Western Hypocrisy

The US Navy chief has unveiled a plan to be ready for hot war with China by 2027 while the US deputy secretary of state calls China the "most significant challenge" the US has ever faced in its entire history, at the same time the EU's defense chief says Europe must prepare to fight a hot war with Russia in the next few years.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Europe Prepares For Hot War With Russia, US Readies For Hot War With China

The Wall Street Journal reports that senior US officials don't think the Biden administration will secure a ceasefire in Gaza before Biden's term is up. Anyone who told you that Biden or Harris were seriously working on a ceasefire lied to you.

I've seen some people calling this a "failure" on the part of the Biden administration, and that needs to stop. It's not a failure. You can only fail at something you tried to do. Biden and Harris didn't "fail" at anything, they SUCCEEDED at their goal of helping Israel destroy Gaza.

Biden could have ended this at any time by withholding weapons, or even by simply threatening to. He could have ended it with a phone call. The killing continued because he and his handlers wanted it to.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Biden Didn't "Fail" To Get A Ceasefire; He Never Tried

Rule 1: Recorded history began on October 7 2023. Maybe some things happened before that date, but nobody can remember.

Rule 2: Anything bad that Israel does is justified by Rule 1. This is true even if it does things that would be considered completely unjustifiable if it were done by a nation like Russia or Iran.

Rule 3: Israel has a right to defend itself, but nobody else does.

Reading by Tim Foley.

15 Rules For Discussing Israeli Warmongering

This is what happens when you don't prosecute your war criminals. Blinken lied to congress that Israel wasn't assessed to have been blocking aid when both USAID and the State Department's refugees bureau had indeed assessed that the Israeli government is doing precisely that, because he knew he'd never be jailed for lying in facilitation of horrific war crimes.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Blinken Lied To Congress About Israeli War Crimes Because He Knows He'll Get Away With It

It is obviously false to say the US seeks peace in the middle east, but it’s not really accurate to say it seeks war either. To me that would be like saying water seeks wetness or fire seeks heat. War is just what the US empire is made of. It’s the thing that it is.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The US Empire Does Not Seek Peace; Its Existence Depends On Endless War

The Israeli military says it’s preparing a ground offensive in Lebanon as it continues to hammer its neighbor to the north with bombs. Which of course means we’ll be hearing a lot of anxious hand-wringing from the western political-media class about “antisemitism” in the coming weeks.

We know we’ll be hearing a lot more about antisemitism because that’s what always happens whenever Israel does something profoundly evil. People start objecting to its atrocities and demanding that their government stop facilitating them, and the imperial spinmeisters start framing these objections as a frightening rise in anti-Jewish bigotry in order to delegitimize and silence them.

Reading by Tim Foley.

As Israel Gets Even More Murderous, We'll Be Hearing Even More About "Antisemitism"

How bizarre is it that our entire civilization is structured around values and priorities which are so fake and ridiculous that ingesting an ancient psychedelic potion causes even wealthy CEOs to quit their jobs and change their lives?

Reading by Tim Foley.

Capitalism Is Driven By Mental Illness

You can see that the Biden administration is a willing participant in all this bloodshed by simply ignoring their words and their narrative spin and watching their actions instead. While the mass media publish White House press releases disguised as news stories about the president's feelings and celebrity progressives assure us that this administration is "working tirelessly for a ceasefire," the Israeli Defense Ministry is announcing that it has secured another $8.7 billion in military aid from the US.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Article with supporting links: https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/ignore-their-words-watch-their-actions

Ignore Their Words; Watch Their Actions

Israel isn’t killing all these people because it was attacked, Israel is killing all these people because it was given an excuse. Israel has always wanted to grab more land and eliminate the populations who oppose it. It’s using the political moment that October 7 gave it to roll out agendas it has wanted to roll out for generations. Israel has been squeezing and squeezing and squeezing its targets for generation after generation waiting for them to push back sufficiently to hand them an excuse.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Israel Isn't Attacking Because It Was Attacked, It's Attacking Because It Got An Excuse

"Good westerners don’t start off hating Israel, but, if they are truly good, they end up hating Israel. A sincere dedication to truth, justice and kindness can only lead one to view the Zionist project with complete revulsion after learning the facts about what it really is, what it really does, and why our western governments really support it."

Reading by Tim Foley.

Good Westerners Don't Start Off Hating Israel, But Truth Eventually Leads Them There

As Israel begins another invasion of Lebanon, Australian officials from both sides of the imaginary partisan divide have been falling all over themselves to get Australians punished for speech crimes about the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Australian Officials Push Authoritarian Crackdown On Pro - Hezbollah Speech

I hate when people say “Bah the middle east has always been at war, it’s just how they are.” No you asshole, it’s been at war because of western interventionism and Israel. Sure it was at war before Israel, but so was the entirety of Europe throughout its entire history. The only reason the rest of the world got to cool down a bit after the world wars while the middle east remained embroiled in violence and chaos was because the west inserted this alien splinter of settler-colonialism into the region while constantly deliberately fomenting war and unrest.

There’s nothing freakish or unusual about the middle east or Islam that makes its people violent, it just happens to be where a lot of the oil is, so the west keeps poking and prodding it to ensure that it’s always divided against itself and dominated by western-friendly dictators. That’s all we’ve been looking at there.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Middle East Is Always At War Because The West Keeps Pushing It That Way

“Israeli warmongering isn’t getting worse and worse because the Biden administration can’t control Israel, it’s getting worse and worse because the Biden administration knowingly refuses to make use of the control that it has.”

Reading by Tim Foley.

These Are US Wars. These Are Biden's Wars

Our real enemies are not in Iran.

Our real enemies are not in Lebanon.

Our real enemies are not in Gaza or the West Bank.

Our real enemies are not in Yemen, Syria, or Iraq.

Our real enemies are in Washington and London and Tel Aviv. In Berlin and Paris and Canberra. In secretive government agencies in the state of Virginia, and in imperial propaganda institutions in New York and Hollywood.

Our real enemies are not the Arabs and the Iranians, they’re the managers of empire who are ruining our world, destroying our biosphere, siphoning our wealth and our resources, threatening us with nuclear brinkmanship, and making sure we stay too poor, sick, busy and brainwashed to figure out what’s going on and take a stand against them.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Never Let Your Government Tell You Who Your Enemies Are

I am at risk of getting banned from both Instagram and Facebook as both Meta-owned platforms keep censoring my criticisms of Israel’s US-backed atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon, placing strikes on my accounts in the process.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Article version: https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/meta-is-aggressively-censoring-criticism

Meta Is Aggressively Censoring Criticism Of US - Israeli Warmongering

On this day in particular, I would like to express my deepest sympathies for the victims of Israeli murderousness over the past year.

Reading by Tim Foley.

On This Day In Particular

Things are so, so bad in the middle east right now, and from the looks of things they’re about to get a whole lot worse. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

It's So, So Bad, And It's About To Get A Whole Lot Worse

“I say this because living in the west during a western-backed genocide can make you feel like you’re going insane.”

Reading by Tim Foley.

You're Not Crazy. This Genocidal Dystopia Is Crazy

British "counterterrorism" police raided the home of Electronic Intifada editor Asa Winstanley on Thursday morning, seizing multiple electronic devices on suspicion that the journalist violated the UK's 2006 Terrorism Act with his social media activity.

Reading by Tim Foley.

More Authoritarian Crackdowns On Speech That's Critical Of Israel

Israeli forces found and killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by accident while they were just randomly destroying parts of Gaza, and then they methodically targeted and killed four water engineers on purpose. These two facts alone tell you everything you need to know about what Israel is really doing in Gaza.

Reading by Tim Foley.

This Mass Atrocity Is Made Possible By The Systematic Dehumanization Of Palestinians

We Really Are The Bad Guys And This Really Is The Evil Empire

"It can be nice to live in the western world, but the western world is not nice. Ours is the most savage and thuggish civilization on this planet, and it’s not even close."

Reading by Tim Foley.

We Really Are The Bad Guys And This Really Is The Evil Empire

CNN says an IDF soldier has suffered trauma
because he had to run over too many Palestinians
with his D9 armored bulldozer.
Says he can’t eat meat anymore
because he had to drive over so much human meat
(he actually called it “meat”)
and it reminds him of all the blood and guts
and bones and tissue that would come squirting out
when he ran over them.

Reading by Tim Foley.

McGenocide

Both Trump and Harris are auditioning for a role that will necessarily entail the creation of mountains of human corpses by US-sponsored violence, as has every viable US presidential candidate throughout our lives. This is because the US empire is deeply evil.

Reading by Tim Foley.

You Can Only Support Trump Or Harris If You Don't See The US Empire For The Beast It Is

Turns out campaigning on the promise of continuing a genocide while courting endorsements from war criminals like Dick Cheney is not a great way to get progressives to vote for you. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Evil Warmongering Zionist Won (No Not That One, The Other One)

Trump supporters are George W Bush supporters LARPing as Ron Paul supporters. They act like they're backing some anti-war figure who's taking a meaningful stand against the machine, when they're really backing a guy who spent four years rolling out longstanding neocon agendas.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Donald Trump Is Not Your Friend

Biden’s legacy is genocide, war, and nuclear brinkmanship. That’s all anyone should talk about when this psychopath finally dies. Anything positive he may have accomplished in his political career is a drop in the ocean compared to the significance of these mass-scale abuses.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Biden's Legacy Is Genocide, War, And Nuclear Brinkmanship

Well it looks like the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is on its way out, likely to be replaced by one or more US puppet regimes depending on whether the nation maintains its current borders or is carved up into separate states. The empire notches another win.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Assad Is Out, Woke Al-Qaeda Is In

And now the imperial blob rolls on to absorb its next target, having grown one Syria-sized increment larger after spending years digesting that nation via proxy warfare, sanctions, relentless bombing campaigns from Israel, and a military occupation designed to steal its food and fuel.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Another Nation Absorbed Into The Blob Of The Empire

It’s pretty wild how the west went directly from “We need to occupy Afghanistan for two decades to prevent it from being taken over by the Taliban” to “Yay! Syria’s been taken over by al-Qaeda!”

Reading by Tim Foley.

Taliban In Afghanistan Bad, Al-Qaeda In Syria Good

The US government is simultaneously (A) justifying Israel’s land grab in Syria by saying the nation has been taken over by terrorists, and (B) talking about removing those same forces from its list of designated terrorist organizations.

Reading by Tim Foley.

"Terrorist Organization" Means Whatever The US Wants It To Mean

Only Israel could invade and occupy large stretches of a country, bomb it 480 times in 48 hours, destroy 80 percent of its military defenses, and then claim that it has no intention of interfering in that country’s internal affairs.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Netanyahu Hilariously Claims Israel Doesn't Seek To Intervene In Syria's Affairs

These last 14 months have shattered me.
Shattered me beyond the power of recollection.

But sometimes it’s good to be shattered.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Let Yourself Be Shattered By Gaza

For those who aren’t aware, since mid-November people have been sighting large drones all over the east coast of the United States, and what makes this so interesting is that the US government is claiming they don’t know anything about them. Don’t know who owns them, where they’re taking off from or where they’re landing.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Some Thoughts On The Mystery Drones

It’s funny the things that get to you when witnessing the nightmare in Gaza, out of all the horrors you’ll see there from day to day. Today I saw a video of a six year-old Palestinian boy whose legs had been amputated dragging himself through his tent camp with the help of a roller skate worn on one of his hands, and it just about destroyed me.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Meditations On A Six Year-Old Amputee Crawling Through Gaza With The Help Of A Roller Skate

"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be." 

This is a line by fantasy author PC Hodgell, though it's often misattributed to Carl Sagan.
I think about this quote a lot.

I think about it when reflecting on the way Israel is exterminating Palestinian journalists in Gaza while keeping western journalists out of the enclave to prevent the world from learning the truth about what the IDF is doing there.

Reading by Tim Foley.

That Which Can Be Destroyed By The Truth, Should Be

"The way he stumbled and stuttered when trying to answer the question gives a lot of insight into how terrified such people are of the public turning against them one day."

Reading by Tim Foley.

Peter Thiel Reveals How Scared Oligarchs Are Of The People

Readings of all Caitlin Johnstone's articles, usually by her co-writer Tim Foley.

Caitlin Johnstone

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