Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

I will never, ever express sympathy for Israelis. Ever. Under any circumstances. To do so would be irresponsible, because Israel always weaponizes sympathy and then uses that weapon to commit mass atrocities. If the world gives Israel sympathy for civilians injured by an Iranian airstrike over the weekend in a war Israel started, by Friday they'll be using that sympathy to justify nuking Tehran. Reading by Tim Foley.

These assholes really thought they could commit a genocide in full view of the entire world for years and then expect everyone cheer for them to win. Reading by Tim Foley.

Trump's former national security advisor John Bolton has a tweet that's got me absolutely fuming right now. "In 2018–2019, I made the case for regime change in Iran as often as I could. Voices in Trump's orbit often cited Iran's capacity to close the Strait of Hormuz as a reason against regime change. Trump has been fully aware this is a possibility, and yet did not prepare," Bolton posted. Can you believe this shit? Dude's like "Hey, Trump should have known this war would be hard because people tried to warn him not to listen to me!" Reading by Tim Foley.

Westerners are about to start paying a lot more attention to the war in Iran as massive US-Israeli escalations point to a coming energy crisis set to impact the whole world. Reading by Tim Foley.

This is what it looks like when you give Zionists everything they want. This is Zionism put into practice. The wars. The massacres. The bombed-out schools and hospitals. The millions of displaced individuals. The invasion of Lebanon The explosions carpeting Tehran. The hollowed-out moonscape of Gaza. The horrific pogroms in the West Bank. Reading by Tim Foley.

My enemies are not in Iran. My enemies are in Washington and Tel Aviv. In London and Canberra. My enemies are the western oligarchs and empire managers who are poisoning my society and making everything awful while slaughtering human beings with the help of my tax dollars. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's so obnoxious how genocide apologists like Greenblatt make a living actively telling everyone that Jews and Judaism are inseparable from the acts of the Israeli government, but whenever there's an extremist attack by someone who doesn't distinguish between western Jews and the state of Israel it gets blamed on the pro-Palestine left. Reading by Tim Foley.

Remember all the hasbarists and empire apologists who said it was a misfired Iranian missile that hit the school. Remember how aggressively and uniformly they all pushed this lie, including the president of the United States. Then understand that they're going to keep lying like this throughout the entire war. Reading by Tim Foley.

"You grew up wanting so bad to be Luke Skywalker, but you realize that you were basically a Stormtrooper.” ~ Daniel Crimmins

Don't lean out the window of the Empire of Perpetual Bloodlust to wag your finger at empire-targeted countries in the global south. It's obnoxious. Reading by Tim Foley.

Watching Amazon Prime while the Iranians burn. Stuffing our mouths with cheesysugarbacon while the sky turns black over Tehran. Laughing without smiling. Laughing with full mouths and empty eyes while their water mixes with oil and blood. "Hoho this will hurt Trump in the midterms" the liberal chortles, masturbating furiously while ruined parents pull ruined schoolbags out of ruined schools. Frolicking on lawns with hamburgers in both fists doing patchouli tai chi in clothes made by slaves as black rain waters gardens of severed limbs and blown-out eyeballs. This is our culture. This is our religion. Praying to Pornhub while children scream, telling ourselves it will all be worth it when Iranian women can do OnlyFans to pay for boob jobs and butt lifts and go to Capitalist Heaven when they die. Jizzing Taco Bells and bail bonds firms all over the global south, our bellies full of the flesh of children, our veins full of plastic and our mouths full of Lexapro, dancing at the ballroom covered in blood and brains, gyrating to AI-generated music cranked up to maximum volume to hide the sounds of the explosions and the gasps of our dying souls. Oh I'm sorry, am I bumming you out? Have a hamburger and a Xanax. Everything's fine. This is all normal. Let's pick the bits of skull and teeth from our hair and go party. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's not okay for grown adults to believe the United States wages wars to promote humanitarian interests and bring freedom and democracy to oppressed populations. It's not okay for grown adults to believe that US soldiers fight and die to protect their country and its citizens. It's not okay for grown adults to believe US military interventionism in the middle east has anything to do with women's rights or making life better for women. Reading by Tim Foley.

Those soldiers did not die for any noble reason. They died for money, for power, and for Israel. They wasted their lives, and they died for stupid, unworthy reasons. Don't let anyone claim otherwise. Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

This is the new George W Bush. Trump is what Bush metamorphoses into when it comes out of its red cocoon. The crazier the US empire gets, the more insane its managers are becoming. Reading by Tim Foley.

Iran is better than the United States. The United States is worse than Iran. This is true not because Iran is especially good, but because the United States is especially evil. Reading by Tim Foley.

Westerners are able to hold this compartmentalized video game mentality about war because war isn't something that happens to us. We've never had bombs dropped on our neighborhoods. We've never had the experience of seeing a severed hand on the ground after an explosion and trying to figure out who it belonged to. We've never had the experience of seeing our child's shredded body after a blast and thinking about how we'd carefully helped them dress that precious body for school just hours before. Reading by Tim Foley.

Only the United States could bomb a country, kill its leader, massacre its children, declare the intention to destroy its military and topple its government, and then call that country's retaliation against US military bases "unprovoked". Reading by Tim Foley.

I hate everyone who inflicted this nightmare upon my species. If you stand by this senseless US-Israeli act of depravity, then I consider you an enemy. And I will never stop reminding everyone of the psychotic agenda you supported. Reading by Tim Foley.

If any US troops die in the upcoming standoff, it will be Washington and Tel Aviv who killed them. Reading by Tim Foley.

No no, this is nothing like all those other times. This time military interventionism to topple an oil-rich government in west Asia will lead to peace and democracy. Our soldiers will be greeted as liberators! Reading by Tim Foley.

This is what US-imposed "democracy" looks like in practice: giving a nation the freedom to do what Washington tells them to do and elect the leaders that Washington allows them to elect. Reading by Tim Foley.

In a post-Iraq invasion world, these sorts of reports deserve nothing but a scoff and a dismissal. Reading by Tim Foley.

Whenever you say anything online opposing the way the US is preparing for war with Iran or strangling Cuba to death with siege warfare, you'll always get people whose family comes from the nation in question telling you to be silent and support the US war machine. Their family emigrated at some point because they didn't like the government, so now they spend their time on social media telling everyone to support US operations to topple that government. The correct response to such people is “Shut the fuck up.” Reading by Tim Foley.

You can weep for the dying oceans while marveling at the stars. You can rage for Gaza while reveling in the earth beneath your bare feet. Reading by Tim Foley.

Democratic Party leaders are doing nothing to oppose Trump's war plans for Iran because they support those plans. They just don't want to be the ones pulling the trigger. Reading by Tim Foley.

Israel's demands and Hamas' refusal are two diametrically opposed positions which put things on a collision course toward reigniting the Gaza holocaust at full scale. Reading by Tim Foley.

US empire managers have been making some surprisingly honest admissions in recent days, with Senator Lindsey Graham saying the wars of the future are being planned in Israel and Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for a return to old-school western colonialism. Reading by Tim Foley.

Our leaders are not wise or insightful. They're not even particularly intelligent. Our society is led by plutocrats who only know how to make more money, by unelected empire managers who only know how to dominate and control, and by elected politicians who only know how to say the right words and make the right bargains in order to get themselves elected. Reading by Tim Foley.

Australian authorities were fully aware that inviting Israel's president for a visit was going to ignite unrest and furious opposition. They invited him anyway, and sent in the police to assault the protesters. Reading by Tim Foley.

They launched a live-streamed genocide in full view of the entire world. They're openly targeting civilian populations with siege warfare in Iran and Cuba in full view of the entire world. They openly kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation in full view of the entire world. Reading by Tim Foley.

We are ruled by deeply wounded and dysfunctional emotional infants. The people who control our society are whipped about by primitive forces within themselves that they don't understand. Reading by Tim Foley.

Speaking before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explicitly stated that the US deliberately caused a financial crisis in Iran with the goal of fomenting civil unrest in the country. Reading by Tim Foley.

Political maturity is finally admitting to yourself that the angriest, most disconcerting communist you've ever met was pretty much right about everything. If you learn enough, stay humble enough, and pay close enough attention, eventually that's what happens. You realize that, generally speaking, the really high-octane commies have the most lucid understanding of the world out of any group out there, and the only reason this wasn't always obvious to you was because you live under a capitalist power structure which aggressively indoctrinates its populace from birth into believing that communism is No No Bad Bad. Reading by Tim Foley.

The power structure which birthed the Epstein abuses is not going to do anything about the Epstein abuses. The only thing that might possibly change is that some people may become radicalized against that power structure. Reading by Tim Foley.

This video is as close to a self-portrait of western civilization as it gets. This is who we are. This is where we're at. Might as well have giant letters with a big red arrow saying “YOU ARE HERE” overtop it. Reading by Tim Foley.

This is of course ridiculous. Epstein is a known intelligence operative for the state of Israel, not Russia. This is an established fact, and has been for some time. Reading by Tim Foley.

Smoke and sky spiders fill the air as missiles smash into Gaza and powerful men drive needles into the flesh of young girls. Turns out Chomsky partied with Epstein, so now I have to take up vaping and go fill a shoebox with polaroid photos of dead birds in car parks. I'll pretend I'm doing it ironically so no one mocks my prayer cards for a dying world. Sometimes the Buddha looks like the Buddha. Sometimes he looks like bleached coral reefs, or rapefinger plutocrats with pointy teeth. Sometimes he looks like a woman in her early fifties sobbing snot-nosed and red-faced at the cruelty of it all in pajama bottoms and a Pink Floyd t-shirt. The war drums are getting louder, and the bank boys are getting horny again, and the flesh of the innocent is so soft and so easy to digest, and the darkness hides so much, and the light makes so little difference. But we shine it anyway. We shine it anyway. Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

The United States is the very last government on earth who has any business engaging in humanitarian interventionism. Literally dead last. Reading by Tim Foley.

I don't know what to say today. We are ruled by abusive monsters. The US is preparing for war with Iran. They're going in for the kill shot on Cuba. The latest batch of Epstein emails looks horrifying. The US is full of protests because ICE keeps killing people. Israel is still massacring civilians in Gaza as Australia prepares to host its president for an extended visit. Reuters has confirmed that Biden officials actively obstructed the circulation of internal USAID reports that Gaza was being turned into a nightmarish hellscape in early 2024. There's so much cruelty. So much abuse. Reading by Tim Foley.

I don't criticize Iran because I do not want to feed into an imperial war propaganda campaign for a horrific agenda that I do not support. I want to focus my criticisms on the power structure under which I actually live, because that is what one does when one is not a groveling bootlicker, and because the power structure under which I live happens to be the most abusive tyrant on the world stage. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's just incredible how quickly and aggressively the US is advancing longstanding agendas of global conquest under the Trump administration. Now they're racing to take out Cuba. Reading by Tim Foley.

It is not okay to be a grown adult in the year 2026 and still believe US regime change interventionism in the middle east will lead to positive outcomes. Reading by Tim Foley.

The justifications for war with Iran keep changing. First it's nukes, then it's conventional missiles, then it's protesters, and now it's back to nukes again. Kinda seems like war with Iran is itself the objective, and they're just making up excuses to get there. Reading by Tim Foley.

We live in a civilization that was built on lies, is made of lies, and is sustained by lies. As soon as the lies stop, the whole thing comes tumbling down. Reading by Tim Foley.

Michael Parenti has passed away after a luminous life advancing powerful ideas and insights about the abusive dynamics of human civilization and how best to address them. He did not die a wealthy man. The mainstream papers did not report on his departure from our world. Only a relatively small percentage of the population is aware he ever lived. But everyone knows who Elon Musk is. Everyone knows who Jeff Bezos is. Who Bill Gates is. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's so disgusting how these freaks are telling us right to our faces "Yeah well you guys don't have any rights, so I'm going to silence you and oppress you and I make no apologies about that." Reading by Tim Foley.

There was a segment in last year's Louis Theroux documentary The Settlers that stuck with me where Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss refers to Zionism as a "magic system". Reading by Tim Foley.

Israeli president Isaac Herzog is expected to visit Australia at the invitation of the Australian government, with anonymous sources telling the Israeli press that he's scheduled to arrive on February 7, but so far Canberra itself has been very opaque about the time and nature of the visit. We can surmise from this that they're currently trying to come up with a strategy for how to sneak the president into the country without the spectacle of him getting confronted by throngs of anti-genocide protesters. Again: they're trying to sneak the president into the country for a visit to protect him from anti-genocide protesters. Really think about what that means, and what it says about Australia as a country. When you are doing things like this, you're on the wrong side of history. Reading by Tim Foley.

It is still legal to say "Fuck Israel, free Palestine." So we should say it loud and say it often, because we don't know how much longer we'll be allowed to do so without getting thrown into prison. Reading by Tim Foley.

For me the most illuminating insight into what these laws are actually designed to do came up in an ABC interview with Attorney-General Michelle Rowland on Tuesday. Over and over again throughout the interview Rowland was asked by ABC's David Speers to clarify whether the new laws could see activist groups banned for criticizing Israel and opposing its genocidal atrocities in a way that causes Jewish Australians to feel upset feelings, and she refused to rule out the possibility every single time. Reading by Tim Foley.