Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

People who still believe that the news media tell them the truth and that their nation and their world work pretty much the way they were taught in school are just as brainwashed and deluded as any QAnon cultist. The only difference is that their delusions are much more widely shared, and that the mechanisms used to brainwash them are much more high-budget and sophisticated. Reading by Tim Foley.

May I see the truth, especially the truth I don't want to see. Reading by Tim Foley.

Haaretz has a new report out showing that the IDF has seized more than a quarter of Gaza's territory, and is supporting moves by Israeli settlers to build on the areas that have been carved off from the Palestinian enclave. These areas are not just controlled by Israeli forces but have been completely demolished, with IDF military encampments constructed where Palestinian living spaces used to exist. Lately Haaretz has just been a stream of reports confirming that Palestine supporters have been right about everything all along; this same Israeli outlet recently confirmed that the IDF implemented the Hannibal Directive on October 7, opening fire on Israeli soldiers and civilians in numerous locations. Reading by Tim Foley.

"The most worthwhile spiritual teachings don't actually teach you any new knowledge. Rather, they direct your attention to aspects of your own experience that you'd previously overlooked or hadn't paid much attention to. They get you questioning your unquestioned assumptions about very fundamental components of your experience like your sense of self, your means of perception, and the workings of your own mind. The most skillful teachers therefore don't require you to trust them or take anything they say on faith, because you can immediately examine everything they're pointing your attention toward for yourself in your own experience." ~ Margaret Tetherwood

Western empire managers do not actually believe that there is anything "abhorrent" or "horrific" about attacking a hospital - at least not one which provides services to Palestinians or other populations who are not favored by the western empire. Reading by Tim Foley.

I want a free Palestine and a free mind, a free heart and a free world. I want the oceans teeming with life and the air full of plant sex and dragonflies. I want a society where nobody needs to work but most people want to, except for the occasional eccentric dude (and there will always be the occasional eccentric dude), but he will have a flute and a story to tell. I want to write essays that open eyes and poems that open hearts and fan the flames of a revolution that will open the iron fist of the empire. I want to make something so beautiful that people will want to destroy it, until they recognize it's just a mirror of the beauty that hides choked back within themselves. I want a fiftieth birthday party with a somber accordion player and his weeping wife who plays the saw, and I want everyone to drink ambrosia cocktails out of teapots and tell each other things they've never told anyone else before. I want to hand out unconditional flowers at Flinders Street station and be happy with however they're recei

A new report from the Israeli outlet Haaretz titled "IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive" confirms what independent outlets like The Grayzone and Electronic Intifada have been getting smeared as antisemitic conspiracy theorists for saying this entire time: that many of the Israeli deaths on October 7 were the result of an IDF policy of deliberately firing on their own people to prevent them from being taken hostage by Hamas. Reading by Tim Foley.

Saying democracy is in jeopardy in America is like saying beach front properties are in jeopardy in Wyoming. Your country is run by a few billionaires and government agencies. You don't get a real vote, and even if you did you're all propagandized anyway. It's not a real thing. Reading by Tim Foley.

Let's allow the cruelty of the world to break our hearts, kind friend. Let's weep together at the shredded and emaciated bodies in Gaza, and at their mocking, cackling tormenters. Reading by Tim Foley.

There is nothing natural about this. The way things are. The way we are living. If this was the natural and healthy way for human society to exist, it wouldn't require mountains of propaganda spin to keep it going. Reading by Tim Foley.

So much abusive bullshit hides behind the false modesty of "This issue is too complicated for me to understand." Reading by Tim Foley.

Everyone's acting shocked and outraged at the Supreme Court ruling that Donald Trump and other former presidents are largely immune from criminal prosecution, as though presidents getting prosecuted for their crimes is something that's been happening this entire time. Reading by Tim Foley.

Ehud Olmert: "The entire Israel Air Force relies completely on American aircraft: fighter planes, transport planes, refueler planes and helicopters. All of Israel's air power is based on the American commitment to defend Israel. We have no other reliable source for essential supplies of equipment, munitions and advanced weapons that Israel cannot manufacture on its own." Reading by Tim Foley.

This obvious genocide is not what it looks like, smirks the man behind the podium. Reading by Tim Foley.

I truly do not see how anyone can still give a fuck about this bullshit. It's so obvious at this point that the US is being run by unelected empire managers who throw up half-dead, half-brained presidential candidates to trick Americans into thinking they live in a democracy. Those empire managers are going to do whatever they want to you regardless of how you and your compatriots vote. Your electoral system is a fake plastic toy they give you to play with so you won't interfere with the gears of the imperial machine.  There are no answers in electoral politics. Start looking for answers elsewhere. Reading by Tim Foley.

If people really believed the president runs the country, they'd be freaking out that Biden in his demented haze might order an attack on the Soviet Union or nuke Libya to kill Muammar Gaddafi or something. They're not worried that this will happen because they know their government is actually being run by unelected empire managers from behind the scenes, and that Biden is just the official face on the operation. Reading by Tim Foley.

If you desire the sovereignty and self-determination of any group of people, your first and foremost task is to seek the dismantling of the US-centralized empire, because that's the power structure that is doing the most around the world to undermine this possibility. As long as a population is in any way intertwined with the agendas of a globe-dominating empire that's doing everything it can to bring everyone under its control, then there is no possibility of that population gaining any real self-determination. If they remain aligned with those agendas, all they can ever hope to be is subjects of the empire. Reading by Tim Foley.

The thing that stands out for me the most when watching the deeply moving footage of Julian Assange arriving home to Australia is how impossible this all felt until it happened. Reading by Tim Foley.

Justice would look like Assange being granted a full and unconditional pardon and receiving millions of dollars in compensation from the US government for the torment they put him through by his imprisonment in Belmarsh beginning in 2019, his de facto imprisonment in the Ecuadorian embassy beginning in 2012, and his jailing and house arrest beginning in 2010. Justice would look like the US making concrete legal and policy changes guaranteeing that Washington could never again use its globe-spanning power and influence to destroy the life of a foreign journalist for reporting inconvenient facts about it, and issuing a formal apology to Julian Assange and his family. Justice would look like the arrest and prosecution of the people whose war crimes Assange exposed, and the arrest and prosecution of everyone who helped ruin his life for exposing those crimes. This would include a whole host of government operatives and officials across numerous countries, and multiple US presidents. Reading by Tim Foley.

Listen deeply to the screaming mothers and the whirring of the drones. Listen deeply to the news man's lies and the crashing of the bulldozers. Listen deeply to the tanks and missiles as they are rolled into position. Listen deeply to the dying fish and the fruit bats dropping out of trees from the heat. Listen deeply to the gasping biosphere and the reverberating cries of the long-dead indigenous. Listen deeply to the vibrations all around you and to the vibrations deep within yourself. This is a holy place. This is a holy moment. It demands your reverence, even amid the smell of exhaust fumes and landfill and of rotting whales washing up on the shore and of rotting human corpses in Gaza. Even amid the blaring screens and the smirking lies of podium pontiffs and Pentagon propagandists. Even amid the dead-eyed dystopioids marching through life sedated by smartphones and sitcoms and sports and snacks and synthetics. So listen. Listen deeply. There are messages here. Buried in the code. Hidden in the me