Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

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.

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.

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.

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.

Now that Israel has ramped up its attacks on Lebanon, the IDF is saying that Hezbollah are hiding missiles in civilian homes. So I guess we’re doing this again. If you liked “All the civilian buildings are Khamas,” you’ll love Israel’s new hit “All the civilian buildings are Khezbollah.” Reading by Tim Foley.

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.

"It’s to experience all the footage of shredded bodies in Gaza with a visceral understanding that these are real things happening to real people whose lives mattered just as much as your own." Reading by Tim Foley.

Israel keeps attacking Al Jazeera, assassinating journalists and bombing press offices for the same reason the mafia kills witnesses. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with supporting links: https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-hates-truth

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I don’t care how you vote. Vote for Harris or for Trump if that’s what you feel like doing. But I do think if you vote for either of those monsters, you should at least have the decency to feel gross about it. Like you did something very dirty and shameful in order to get by. Reading by Tim Foley.

According to Trump supporters the Deep State is simultaneously (A) a supremely powerful entity capable of enslaving the world in a neo-Marxist bug-eating vaccine mandate woke dystopia and (B) somehow incapable of successfully assassinating one 78 year-old man despite multiple attempts. Reading by Tim Foley.

Everything was going fine until Grandma brought out the roast Palestinian child for dinner. Reading by Tim Foley.

It’s not enough to win, you’ve got to do good things with your win. Democrats do not do good things when they win, they do profoundly, shockingly evil things when they win. Reading by Tim Foley.

The moral degeneracy of this civilization looks like living lives of relative comfort built on the backs of workers in the global south whose labor and resources are extracted from their nations at profoundly exploitative rates, while raining military explosives on impoverished populations who dare to disobey the dictates of our government, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, and acting like this is all fine and normal. Reading by Tim Foley.

While attention is justifiably focused on the present horrors in Gaza and the imminent possibility that it could spark another war in the middle east, the world's power structures are once again dividing themselves up into two increasingly intimate alliance groups with an increasingly hostile and militaristic posture toward each other. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with supporting links: https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/genocide-in-the-foreground-world