Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

As the 17th anniversary of the creation of WikiLeaks passes us by, it's probably worth taking a moment to reflect on Julian Assange and what his persecution means for us and our society. Reading by Tim Foley.

"Relish the gaps," said the old woman at the nursing home, grabbing at my hand as I walked past. "I'm sorry… do you need your nurse?" I said, reluctantly giving her my hand to hold.  Her bones felt frail. I wasn't there to see her. I didn't know this woman.  "Everyone lets life pass them by," she said urgently, ignoring my obvious discomfort. "They're always focused on attaining and accomplishing, meeting their goals, winning people's approval. Then before they know it they're sitting in a place like this, wondering where it all went." Reading by Tim Foley.

The New York Times has published another CIA press release disguised as news, this time aimed at whipping up paranoia toward anyone who criticizes the US proxy war in Ukraine. Reading by Tim Foley.

Last year liberals were calling their political opponents Nazis and comparing Putin to Hitler. This year they're defending Nazis and saying you can't hate someone just because he swore allegiance to Hitler. Reading by Tim Foley.

As opposition to funding the US proxy war in Ukraine increases on Capitol Hill, empire apologists have been frantically churning out think pieces about how much the war serves US strategic interests in order to manufacture support for its continued backing by Washington. Such arguments flatly contradict the propaganda messaging we were inundated with at the beginning of the war that this was an "unprovoked invasion", but empire managers don't seem particularly interested in defending that narrative anymore. Reading by Tim Foley.

"That's why I propose that the People's Liberation Army should begin militarily encircling the continental United States with Chinese war machinery as quickly as possible, in order to deter future US aggression around the world." Reading by Tim Foley.

There's been an astonishingly brazen propaganda push to normalize war profiteering in Ukraine as Kyiv coordinates with the arms industry and western governments to convert the war-ravaged nation into a major domestic weapons manufacturer, thereby turning Ukrainians into proxies of the military industrial complex as well as the Pentagon. Reading by Tim Foley.

That's the main tool in the empire apologist's toolbox these days: arguing with reality. If you point out the reality of where people are at in Moscow and Beijing with regard to western provocations on their nations' borders, their only answer is to say "Yeah well that's not how things should be so we're going to keep doing what we're doing."  It's like being warned that you'll get punched if you keep yelling ethnic slurs in public but doing it anyway because you believe people should respect free speech, and then melodramatically clutching your broken nose and yelling that what happened should not have happened. Reality doesn't care about your ideological shoulds and shouldn'ts; as far as reality is concerned, there's just what happens and what does not happen. If you actually want to avoid certain outcomes, you can't just heap a bunch of conceptual shoulds and shouldn't on concrete circumstances - you've got to actually conduct yourself in a way that steers clear of those outcomes. Reading by Tim Foley.

There's a heartbreaking graphic going around right now showing the almost microscopic changes that have occurred to the frontline of the war in Ukraine this year despite nonstop death and destruction of unfathomable horror the entire time. Reading by Tim Foley.

I don't mention it often but I actually have a degree in journalism. I graduated with distinction from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2003, and while it would be another 13 years before I'd ever put my degree to any use, the experience played a massive role in forming my opinions about the mainstream press. Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

So while I am talking about a future civilization that sounds utopian, I am also talking about the only kind of future civilization that can possibly exist. If there are future generations, they will necessarily be living in a society that functions in a completely different way than our current one does. Reading by Tim Foley.

The Bill Kristol-led group "Republicans for Ukraine" has released a TV ad to help drum up GOP support for Washington's proxy war against Russia, and it's surprisingly honest about what this war is really about: advancing US strategic interests using Ukrainians as sacrificial pawns. Reading by Tim Foley.

So while we members of the public were blindly speculating about whether or not Russia would attack Ukraine, the US intelligence cartel was fully aware that the US was taking actions ensuring that that would happen. That's the environment the US security state knew it was operating under when it continued to taunt the idea of adding Ukraine and Georgia to NATO right up until the final moments before the invasion. Reading by Tim Foley.

Western officials and media pundits are now directly acknowledging that Ukraine's much-touted "spring counteroffensive" has been a catastrophic failure, but rather than seeing this as a reason to reconsider the mainstream political consensus on this war, they are instead telling everyone that the counteroffensive's failure means we must commit to the status quo of bloodshed and nuclear brinkmanship for years to come. Reading by Tim Foley.

Whenever I talk about the rapidly increasing number of US military bases and operations surrounding China I get empire simps telling me "But the people in those countries WANT us there!" Okinawa shows it's always been a nonconsensual relationship disguised as a consensual one. Reading by Tim Foley.

"War is good for business." So reads a quote from an arms industry executive in a recent Reuters article titled "At London arms fair, global war fears are good for business" about Europe's biggest arms show, the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International. You will probably be unsurprised to learn that Reuters does not name the war profiteer whose quote inspired their headline. Reading by Tim Foley.

During a Sunday appearance on Face the Nation to plug his new Zelensky movie, actor Sean Penn decried the "cowardice" of the US government in its caution around provoking a nuclear exchange with its proxy warfare in Ukraine. Reading by Tim Foley.

A very confused and distressed young man wandered into our home on Sunday and began acting erratically. He was clearly suffering from a severe mental illness, probably schizophrenia, and from his nice clothes yet disheveled appearance I'm guessing he had a home somewhere but had been on the street for a few days. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's so hard to live as an authentic human being in a civilization whose every molecule is wrapped around something as vapid and soulless as corporate profits. It's what most of us pour most of our life force into. Most people work all day generating corporate profits to pay bills that go toward corporate profits and pay off loans from giant banks for their corporate profits or rent from real estate giants for their corporate profits. Then they come home, eat some products from giant megacorporations that they purchased at a supermarket chain, and unwind by watching entertainment created by corporations to draw as many eyeballs as possible or scrolling through social media platforms designed by corporations to be as addictive as possible. We do this while being surrounded all day by advertising designed to pull us into generating more corporate profits. Reading by Tim Foley.

We must never let ourselves become desensitized to this. To any part of this. We must never cease appreciating the sun on our skin and the wind in our hair, and we must never cease being shocked by the fact that there are people whose entire job is to push for more war. We must never lose our sense of wonder at the birds in the air, and we must never lose our sense of horror at the fact that there are people who profit from war and militarism and lobby for more of it at every opportunity. Reading by Tim Foley.