Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

(My sources are logic, common sense, and public statements by US government officials.) Reading by Tim Foley.

Days after the war in Ukraine began it was reported by The New York Times that "President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has asked the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, to mediate negotiations in Jerusalem between Ukraine and Russia." In a recent interview, Bennett made some very interesting comments about what happened during those negotiations in the early days of the war.  Reading by Tim Foley.

Being labeled a Russian propagandist all day every day for criticizing US foreign policy is really weird, but one advantage it comes with is a useful perspective on what people have really been talking about all these years when they warn of the dangers of "Russian propaganda". Reading by Tim Foley.

The US empire has been surrounding China with military bases and war machinery for many years, in ways Washington would never tolerate China doing in the nations and waters surrounding the United States. There is no question that the US is the aggressor in this increasingly hostile standoff between major powers. Yet we're all meant to be freaking out about a balloon. Reading by Tim Foley.

Don't let the fraudulence of this civilization eclipse the supernova of authenticity hidden just beneath that thin membrane. Don't let the vapid artificiality of mainstream culture cause you to miss the weird magic of life as it actually is. Don't let the barrage of advertisements screaming "THIS IS NEVER ENOUGH" distract from the symphony of joy in your cells at simply being alive. Don't let the nonstop corporate messaging that you are ugly conceal from you your radiant beauty. Don't let the Valentine's Day products from Hallmark steal the spotlight from our wide open hearts and our roaring passion. Don't let the authoritative dronings of the imperial pundits mask the fact that they are babies made of mysteries and stardust. Don't let the feigned confidence of the people around you trick you into thinking that any of us really knows anything. Don't let all the buildings and billboards make you forget that no matter where you go you are always in the thick of nature. Don't let the deluge of lies and p

People have a fairly easy time accepting that things are fucked because we are ruled by corrupt assholes. They have a much harder time accepting that we are ruled by corrupt assholes because our corrupt asshole systems will always necessarily elevate corrupt assholes to the top. It's easier to blame our problems on oligarchs or the Deep State or a cabal of satanic pedophiles than it is to blame them on systems that we ourselves participate in and have lived our entire lives intertwined with and which have been continuously normalized within our culture. If the problem is just a few corrupt assholes then it's not a very daunting problem, because all you have to do is remove those corrupt assholes and everything's golden. If the problem is the systems around which our entire civilization is structured, it's far more daunting. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's impossible to overstate how much our society is shaped by the fact that those who are given the most influence and the largest platforms will experience our status quo systems as working very nicely and have a vested interest in preserving those systems which benefit them. The media-owning, culture-manufacturing class of the super-wealthy elevates people to wealth and celebrity who look like they will be good protectors of their class interests. Those people will necessarily speak fondly of the status quo political systems which let them be rich. Reading by Tim Foley.

"Why don't you ever criticize RUSSIA'S warmongering?" is a question I am often asked with great indignation. People cannot comprehend why I would spend all my time criticizing the warmongering of the power structure I live under without spending any time criticizing the government they're used to hearing criticisms of. It's a question born of delusion and propaganda brainwashing, and it has several good answers. Here are some of my favorites. Reading by Tim Foley.

The other day I stumbled across a 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian titled "It's not Russia that's pushed Ukraine to the brink of war" by Seumas Milne, who the following year would go on to become the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn. I bring this up because the perspectives you'll find in that article are jarring in how severely they deviate from anything you'll see published in the mainstream press about Ukraine in 2023. It places the brunt of the blame for the violence and tensions in that nation at that time squarely at Washington's feet, opening with a warning that the "threat of war in Ukraine is growing" and saying there's an "unelected government in Kiev," and it only gets naughtier from there. Reading by Tim Foley.

The western alliance has established a policy of continually escalating every time Russia doesn't react forcefully to a previous western escalation, which necessarily means Russia is being actively incentivized to react forcefully to those escalations. Reading by Tim Foley.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its symbolic Doomsday Clock to ninety seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been set since its founding after the second world war. Chief among their reasons for doing so is the increasingly dangerous war in Ukraine. Reading by Tim Foley.

US-led provocations and escalations against China are becoming a regular occurrence, both from the US itself and from its imperial assets like Australia and Taiwan. Yet according to the western political/media class, the urgent threat of our day is "Chinese aggression". Reading by Tim Foley.

I often hear talk of how depressing it is to learn the truth about what's really going on in our society and in our world, including in the comments sections of the places my own writings appear. I'm always being asked for advice on how to keep going on when everything seems so dismal. This blog has largely functioned as a space where I document the ongoing expansion of my own awareness and understanding of the world and all its ills, an education which I suspect will continue for as long as I have a functioning brain. But to be honest in the six plus years I've been working at this project I've never once experienced a moment of the despair and depression I hear people talking about, and it's never once occurred to me to give up or stop fighting. Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

The US empire is telling Moscow "I'm the craziest motherfucker around, I'll keep ramping up the brinkmanship looking you right in the eye and daring you to use nukes," while telling the rest of the world "I am the voice of sanity that you should all look to for leadership." One of the empire's faces is the virtuous upholder of freedom and democracy, while the other face puts on an intimidating show of viciousness like a prisoner biting off someone's cheek in the prison yard. At least one of those faces is necessarily lying. Reading by Tim Foley.

In times like these when nuclear warheads are being moved into position, when weapons manufacturers can't keep up with the demand, when the pundits are making everyone stupid and crazy, when it's hard to remember Assange's face but you can't turn on a screen without seeing Zelensky, when our culture is manufactured on conveyor belts in New York, Hollywood, Arlington and Langley, when everything's fake but the bombs and blockades, when it feels like we're rocketing toward armageddon next to Jeff Bezos in a space suit, when it feels like the angels have become smack addicts but have to settle for shitty Fentanyl fixes, when it feels like God got kicked out of the group home and has to sell his plasma and sperm for cash, when it feels like Heaven must be powered by smoggy nineteenth century London coal, when it feels like the angel and the demon on humanity's shoulders are double fucking our ear canals, when the bastards have sleeves full of bottomless aces while we're still trying to learn the rules, when annih

Decamp writes that "The lessening concern about Putin resorting to nukes appears to be based only on the fact that he hasn’t used any up to this point." But this is as logical as believing that it is safe and wise to jump even harder on the sleeping bear you've been jumping on just because the bear hasn't woken up yet. The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future is a type of fallacious reasoning known as normalcy bias. The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future, even though you keep doing things to make it increasingly likely, is just being a fucking idiot. It's like Wile E Coyote jumping up and down on the land mine until it explodes because it didn't explode when the Roadrunner ran over it. Reading by Tim Foley.

If the logic that "there are no innocent Russians" because the Russian people have a moral obligation to overthrow their warmongering government were evenly applied, it would also apply to Americans. Even more so, really, since their government is vastly more warlike than Moscow. Per the "there are no innocent Russians" argument, Americans should be banned from participating in international events. Americans should be kicked out of foreign universities. Cinemas should stop playing Hollywood movies. Hemingway should be banned from schools. Reading by Tim Foley.

I get funny reactions from people who are new to my work, often because I don't act like the other indie media figures they follow. I'm unrefined and swear a lot. I engage on social media with both followers and critics far more than most do. I talk about elite conspiracies to create a totalitarian dystopia, but I differ from other conspiracy analysts in that I assert that the dystopia is already here and has been for generations. One of the main things that sets me apart from other people whose names I often get mentioned alongside is that I don't just publish anti-establishment commentary on news and politics and polemics against the empire; I publish art, poetry, philosophical musings, and big-picture assessments of what's going on with humanity as a whole. In case anyone's curious, I have a number of reasons for doing this. Reading by Tim Foley.

There's a thread going around on Twitter by Columbia University's Sophie Fullerton advancing the claim that I have promoted crazy conspiracy theories about child "crisis actors" in Syrian war atrocities. Fullerton has me blocked on Twitter so I can't respond to her there, but in her thread she brings up one of the most egregious instances I've ever seen of US war propaganda in the mass media, so it's worth taking some time to unpack her claims here as a public service. The "interview": https://youtu.be/R7MRWhZzL5k Reading by Tim Foley.

One of the main differences between myself and other commentators who talk about an elite conspiracy to implement a totalitarian dystopia is that the others warn that we are being pushed toward this dystopia, while I insist that we're already there and have been for generations. Reading by Tim Foley.