Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

President Biden accidentally referred to Putin's war in "Iraq" when answering questions from the press, a year after former president George W Bush made the same gaffe. Both men played crucial roles in the push to invade Iraq. Reading by Tim Foley.

In just a few years Democrats flipped from freaking out about Nazis, shrieking that Trump was going to start a nuclear war, and denying US election results to cheering for Nazis, demanding more nuclear brinkmanship, and accusing anyone who denies election results of treason. Reading by Tim Foley.

There's a frenzied rush by the Australian political/media class to both propagandise Australians as quickly as possible into supporting preparations for war with China, and to ram through legislation that facilitates the censorship of online speech. Reading by Tim Foley.

"The truth will set you free" is an aphorism we've all heard so many times it's lost a lot of its meaning and doesn't sound especially profound when we hear it again, but it really does contain the answer to humanity's most difficult problems. A truth-based relationship with reality is the only way to move into peace and harmony, whether you're talking about the inner peace and harmoniousness of an individual or the peace and harmony of our entire species. Reading by Tim Foley.

Voting in a western "democracy" is like that bit in the opening intro of The Simpsons when Marge is driving with the baby and the baby has a toy steering wheel. The baby thinks she's driving the car but it's just a fake toy to keep her busy and let her feel like she's participating. Reading by Tim Foley.

1. Why does nothing change no matter who we vote for?  2. Why does US foreign policy always continue along the same trajectory regardless of the president's party or platform?  3. What keeps our voting population split right down the middle into two political factions of equal size, with neither side ever gaining enough of a majority to democratically change society in any meaningful way?  4. Why does the stalemate described in #3 always seem to benefit the rich, the powerful, and the war-horny?  5. Why is it that the most consequential US government policies like plutocratic influence, privatization, globalization, ecocidal capitalism and nuclear brinkmanship are never on the ballot? Why do these things keep happening, against our interests, without our ever voting for them or electing anyone who campaigned on the pledge to enact them?  6. If our federal government's behavior never changes no matter who we elect, could it be that there are other bodies involved in government policy-setting whom we did not el

They sent the soldiers back after a crazy, stupid world war which was the sequel to another crazy, stupid world war, sent them back with demons in their minds, with twisted corpses in their minds, corpses missing their parts, corpses with their inside parts on the outside, corpses still screaming because they did not yet know that they were corpses, corpses who just moments before were not corpses but trusted friends. Sent them back from the war to live in the Levittowns,
giant suburban sprawls with clean white picket fences for clean white families with clean white faces, tidy little houses with enough space in between that a man can live like a man, can drink enough to temporarily bury the corpses in his mind, can beat his children and rape his wife without troubling the neighbors,
can comfortably scream PTSD screams from the depths of hell at night, can do some home repairs and work on his car on the weekend. The suburbs still scream those screams of unburied war corpses,
screams handed down from generat

Our civilization is sick because all its systems ensure that human behavior is driven by profit, and health isn't profitable. Nobody gets rich from everyone staying healthy all the time. The gears of capitalism will still keep turning if its populace is made shallow and dull by bad education and crappy art made for profit. Billionaires aren't made by leaving forests and oceans unmolested, consuming less, mining less, drilling less, using less energy. The economy doesn't soar when the world is at peace and nations are working together in harmony. Reading by Tim Foley.

Thank you for your service. I say this not to the employees of the war machine, who in truth serve nothing besides imperial domination and the profit margins of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. I say this to the peacemakers. To the truth-tellers. To the defiant ones. To those who’ve shone the light of truth upon the blood-spattered face of the empire against their own interests for the benefit of everyone. To those who’ve stared down the barrel of the most powerful military force ever assembled and said “Do your worst.” To the grandparents who’ve been dragged from nuclear weapons protests in handcuffs to create a safer world for their grandchildren. To the activists whose incurable disobedience has led them to disrupt empire managers at think tank conferences or paint NO WAR across the face of the Sydney Opera House. To the selfless martyrs who’ve exposed the abuses of the machine knowing full well that the scales of justice are weighted heavily against them. To the hero in Belmarsh. 
To the Pentagon Papers wh

In an interview shortly before his death Daniel Ellsberg said the US runs a "covert empire", which is a really good way of putting it. A giant globe-spanning cluster of nations consistently moves in alignment with the dictates of Washington, but they all keep their official flags and their official governments, so it doesn't look like an empire despite functioning as one in every meaningful way. Reading by Tim Foley.

Our worldview is formed when we are young in the interests of our rulers, and from there cognitive biases take over which protect and reinforce that worldview, typically preserving them in more or less the same form for the rest of our lives. Reading by Tim Foley. Oatmeal comic: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

We are marching toward dystopia and oblivion, and we are doing it in ways that have no historical precedent. We're in completely uncharted waters, and things are only getting crazier and crazier. Reading by Tim Foley.

Anything you can do to help make humanity a little more aware of the abusive nature of the systems which drive the problems we now face makes a difference, even if it's a difference as small as making one single person a little bit more aware of one specific aspect of the tyranny we're being subjected to. It doesn't make a huge difference, but it does make a difference. And as long as it makes the slightest bit of difference, it is worth doing, because a lot of slight differences adds up to a massive difference. And there are a whole lot of people who have the ability to do this. Reading by Tim Foley.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: what is a Chinese navy vessel doing in the Taiwan Strait, right where US and Canadian warships are peacefully conducting routine navigation exercises? Reading by Tim Foley.

If you watch western news media with a critical eye you eventually notice how their reporting consistently aligns with the interests of the US-centralized empire, in almost the same way you'd expect them to if they were government-run propaganda outlets. The New York Times has reliably supported every war the US has waged. Western mass media focus overwhelmingly on foreign protests against governments the United States dislikes while paying far less attention to widespread protests against US-aligned governments. The only time Trump was universally showered with praise by the mass media was when he bombed Syria, while the only time Biden has been universally slammed by the mass media was when he withdrew from Afghanistan. US media did such a good job deceitfully marrying Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks in the minds of the public in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq that seven in ten Americans still believed he was connected to 9/11 months after the war began.  That this extreme bias occurs is s

Republican politicians have found a way to reconcile the fact that scrutinizing the behavior of the US war machine appeals to their base and wins votes with the fact that the Republican Party is built around facilitating war and militarism at every turn. Their solution? Pour mountains of energy into championing the case that the nation's military has gotten too "woke". Because everything in mainstream American politics is geared toward channeling the public's political attention down channels that pose no threat to the rich and powerful, and because the United States is the hub of a globe-spanning empire that is held together by mass military violence and the threat thereof, it was only a matter of time before we started seeing the war-weary sentiments harnessed so effectively in Trump's 2016 presidential run diverted into scrutinizing the military in ways that pose no obstacle to US warmongering. Reading by Tim Foley.

The biggest problem with the western left is that it doesn't exist. To look at leftist discourse you'd think the left's biggest problem is that some leftists have the wrong beliefs about this or that issue, or that the left pays too much or not enough attention to identity politics, or places too much or not enough emphasis on electoral politics, or is too sympathetic toward enemies of the US empire or not sympathetic enough, or that this or that faction gets it all wrong — but it's not. The biggest problem is that there aren't anywhere remotely close to enough leftists to get anything done in the west today. Reading by Tim Foley.

Donald Trump spent four years proving to everyone that he wasn't bad because he was similar to Hitler, he was bad because he was similar to Obama. He wasn't terrible because of the ways he differed from other presidents, but because of the ways he was the same. The tiny smattering of violence that occurred in the US because of Trump was microscopic compared to the death and destruction he inflicted upon the world outside the nation's borders. But the mainstream worldview can't acknowledge those actions, because the mainstream worldview is designed to support and facilitate those actions. Yes, Trump is evil. Yes, you should be alarmed that monsters like him exist. But not because he is a unique aberration and deviation from the US government's status quo; rather, you should be alarmed because he perfectly exemplifies and bolsters the US government's status quo.  Reading by Tim Foley.

Today in tyranny we've got three stories on the rapidly increasing authoritarian abuses in western "free democracies": 1. Grayzone reporter detained by British counter-terrorism police for doing journalism. 2. South Australia passes draconian anti-protest law. 3. State Department dismisses questions about Ukrainian imprisonment of US citizen for speech crimes. Reading by Tim Foley.

The biggest impediment to free speech is people's belief that they have it. Not censorship. Not refusal to platform critical voices. Not the war on journalism. It's the fact that most people are propagandized into saying what the powerful want them to say, and don't know it. Reading by Tim Foley.