Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

The Good Guys are building concentration camps in Rafah and massacring civilians trying to obtain food. The Good Guys are circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and telling us we're not allowed to oppose genocide. Yesterday I saw a little girl playing and I thought how nice it is that she has all her limbs and that she is not lying still covered in gray dust while her father screams and cries and calls out to God while trying to kiss her back to life. The world is changed now. The moon is covered with powdered buildings. The pigeons are weeping and the wind sounds like drones. Sometimes I cough and gray dust comes out. Sometimes it's a child's shoe. There's a dead donkey lying in my backyard that nobody wants to talk about. The Australians chat about real estate investments and how you can knock down one house and replace it with two houses and then make believe that neither house smells like corpses. The news man tells us the corporations are just dumping the products directly into the Pacific now while clinging tightly to the edge of the screen so the black hole doesn't pull him in. Everything's fine, the news man yells, and the system is working perfectly. We are the Good Guys after all. We are, after all, the Good Guys. Reading by Tim Foley.

If you want to really live an awake and inspired life, you've got to blaze your own trail. You've got to unlearn everything you've been told about what a life properly lived would look like, and write your own rules. Because the rules everyone else has been playing by were written by madmen. Reading by Tim Foley.

It really is nuts how a young person can fly to Israel and go play genocide games in Gaza for a while and then just fly back to their own country and expect to be treated like a normal member of society like it's some kind of genocide summer camp. Reading by Tim Foley.

As Australia's dear friend Israel announces its plan to move Gaza's entire population into concentration camps to prepare them for deportation and murder them if they refuse, the Australian government is laser-focused on tackling the problem of  — you guessed it  — antisemitism. Reading by Tim Foley.

The US has imposed sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for using her position to oppose the most thoroughly documented genocide in history. At the same time, the US has removed Syria's Al Qaeda franchise HTS from its list of designated terrorist organizations, because its leader successfully carried out the regime change in Damascus that the western empire had been chasing for years. At the same time, the UK has added nonviolent anti-genocide activism group Palestine Action to its list of banned terrorist organizations for opposing the Gaza holocaust. At the same time, the Israeli prime minister who is carrying out that holocaust has nominated the American president who is helping him perpetrate genocidal atrocities for a Nobel Peace Prize. At the same time, Israel has continued its ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza, while also arresting the Israeli journalist who helped expose the IDF officials who cooked up fake atrocity propaganda about burnt babies on October 7. At the same time, the Trump administration has enraged its MAGA base by concluding that Jeffrey Epstein had no client list for any kind of sexual blackmail operation and definitely committed suicide. The western empire is one nonstop insult to our intelligence. The peace advocates are terrorists, the genocide architects deserve peace prizes, the journalists are dangerous, and Epstein was just a wealthy socialite who made a few mistakes. Reading by Tim Foley.

Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok has gone full Nazi after changes were made to its programming to give it a heavier right wing bias, sparking international headlines with its tweets praising Adolf Hitler's treatment of Jews and babbling about Jewish conspiracies to spread anti-white hate. Reading by Tim Foley.

The US has removed Syria's Al Qaeda franchise from its list of designated terrorist organizations just days after the UK added nonviolent activist group Palestine Action to its own list of banned terrorist groups. Reading by Tim Foley.

Welcome to the empire, where peace activists are called terrorists, where hospitals are called military bases, where facts are called blood libel, where people opposing genocide are called hateful Nazis, where genocidal soldiers are a protected group and chanting for their death is a hate crime. Reading by Tim Foley.

Everyone's still talking about Bob Vylan, and rightly so. A crowd full of westerners happily being led through a chant of “Death, death to the IDF” at the 2025 Glastonbury Festival was a historical landmark moment for the 21st century, and the group's persecution at the hands of western governments is once again highlighting the way our society's purported values of free thought and free expression go right out the window wherever Israel is concerned. But one thing that's not getting enough attention is the fact that many, many other acts also spoke out in support of Palestine at that same festival, and that the crowd was full of attendees waving Palestinian flags. Supporting Palestine and opposing Israel's genocidal atrocities is just what's cool now. This is a massive cultural development, because it means we are seeing the emergence of actual, meaningful rebellion in western counterculture for the first time arguably since the Vietnam War. The artists and their fans aren't just talking the talk of sticking it to the establishment anymore. Reading by Tim Foley.

Anyone who has had the misfortune of knowing a manipulative narcissist has seen all these patterns before. The self-centeredness. The hypocrisy. The horrific abuse, followed by collapsing into blubbering victimhood the second the abuse is called out. The aggressive efforts to control the narrative and frame all critics and rivals as evil monsters. It's a very familiar playbook. Reading by Tim Foley.

Honestly at this point they should just get Netanyahu his own room in the White House and a desk in the Oval Office. The prime minister of Israel is taking his third trip to the White House in the five months since Trump has been back in office. I have immediate blood family members who I love with all my heart and visit less often than this. Reading by Tim Foley.

Do something every day to help undermine public perception of the empire. Draw attention to its abuses in places like Gaza. Get people laughing at its absurdities and hypocrisies. Spread distrust in the imperial propaganda services known as the western press by spotlighting their deceptions and manipulations. Help people to recognize all the ways their government is screwing them over for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Facilitate the collective dawning of the realization that everything westerners have been taught about their society and their world is a lie. Help people to understand that it really, truly does not need to be this way. Use every means at your disposal to help open up the next pair of eyelids to the ugly reality of the empire. Cultivate a habit of daily acts of sabotage against the imperial machine. There is always something you can do. You cannot defeat the machine by yourself, but you can do something every day to help tilt our society's collective consciousness toward tearing it down together. Reading by Tim Foley.

Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic Party primary in the New York City mayoral race after a frenetic smear campaign to portray him as an antisemite for his pro-Palestinian views, and now all the world's worst people are freaking out about it. Reading by Tim Foley.

The more exposed Israel's criminality becomes, the more absurd the arguments made in its defense are getting. Reading by Tim Foley.

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, its crazy lunatic government will flip out and nuke us all. Watch out for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, those guys are a bunch of maniacal antisemites who want to attack Israelis just because they're Jewish. Oh no, Putin is invading Ukraine completely unprovoked because he's a madman who hates freedom and won't stop until he's conquered all of Europe. China is building up its military because the megalomaniacal Xi Jinping wants to take over the world; all those US military bases surrounding China are just a defensive measure to contain Beijing's insanity. Assad just went nuts one day and started slaughtering his own people out of nowhere. Gaddafi is a sexual sadist who's giving Viagra to his troops to help them commit mass rapes in Libya. Saddam Hussein is so crazy and evil he's trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction to give Americans another 9/11. The North Koreans used to be far too insane to be allowed to have nuclear weapons because they'd nuke San Francisco immediately, but after they obtained nuclear weapons they were miraculously cured of this rare psychological disorder. The stories of the western empire ask us to believe that everyone who finds themselves in the imperial crosshairs is an irrational actor whose loony behavior can only be attributed to some uncontrollable defect within their own minds, or who will soon snap and do something nutty if they are not contained by force. Reading by Tim Foley.

There is nothing you can say to me that will make me stop opposing Israel's western-backed atrocities. Call me an antisemite or a Nazi or any name you want. The name-calling stopped having any effect a long time ago. Babble about October 7 and Hamas and hostages all you wish. I've stopped listening to you. Reading by Tim Foley.

The US empire and Israel both exist in a perpetual state of war and attack other countries constantly; Iran never invades other countries and avoids war like Melania Trump avoids missionary position. But we're meant to accept that it's fine for the US and Israel to have nukes and do anything necessary to prevent Iran from getting any? Reading by Tim Foley.

It's like this administration is doing everything it can to vindicate those who accuse it of being Israel First instead of America First. Reading by Tim Foley.

He's rolling out the George W Bush playbook for regime change war and playing it note for note, while still trying to ride the support he garnered with his populist messaging about draining the swamp and ending the wars. Reading by Tim Foley.

I am really not looking forward to all the melodramatic victim-LARPing if and when Iran kills US military personnel stationed in west Asia. The US is the only nation on earth that can rival Israel in its ability to play the victim when the ball they've thrown at the wall bounces back. Reading by Tim Foley.

Do Israel's supporters know it's over for them? Like, they know they're going to be despised for the rest of their lives, right? That they will never, ever live down the fact that they supported a live-streamed genocide? And that it will only get worse for them as history clarifies things? Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

War creates a waking nightmare which any sensible person would want to avoid except in the direst necessity. And yet we are ruled by people who actively seek it out. Reading by Tim Foley.

Israel and its western allies are crying and rending their garments about an Israeli hospital that was damaged in an Iranian missile strike. Western media outlets like the BBC and New York Times have suddenly remembered how to write headlines which assign blame to the attacker after deciding that hospitals getting bombed is a newsworthy event again. The Iranian attack didn't even kill anybody, and the damage to the hospital was reportedly the result of a shockwave from a strike on a nearby Israeli military facility. That's right: the Israeli military was using the hospital for human shields. As always, every accusation is a confession. Israel, as we all know, bombs hospitals constantly. Israel bombed an Iranian hospital just the other day to almost no coverage from the western press. Israel has attacked healthcare workers and healthcare facilities in Gaza around 700 times according to the World Health Organisation, and the IDF has repeatedly been documented entering the hospitals it attacks to destroy individual pieces of medical equipment. Israel, unlike Iran, is deliberately targeting healthcare facilities to make Gaza unlivable. Israeli defense minister Israel Katz is now saying that because of the hospital strike, Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "cannot continue to exist." Knowing what we know about Israel's track record, saying that people who bomb hospitals should not be allowed to exist can only be interpreted as an extremely antisemitic statement. Reading by Tim Foley.

Nuclear weapons and doomsday cultism are poor bedfellows. Reading by Tim Foley.

There is absolutely no excuse for buying into the war propaganda about Iran after what we all saw with Iraq. "OMG nuclear weapons!" Shut up, idiot. If you're a grown adult with internet access still swallowing this load of bull spunk in the year 2025 you're either stupid or evil. Reading by Tim Foley.

President Trump is reportedly returning to Washington early from a G7 summit in Canada and has told his national security council to prepare for an urgent meeting in the situation room, apparently to discuss Iran. Reading by Tim Foley.

Do NOT join the US military. Do NOT join the militaries of any nation which normally participates in America's wars. If you are in those militaries, you should get out by any means necessary, as quickly as possible. If further on down the track there is a draft for a war with Iran, you should dodge the draft. Because otherwise you will be throwing yourself into a war with one of the world's most formidable militaries, for nothing. Reading by Tim Foley.

It says so much about how comfortable Israel is with lying and how eager the western media are to help promote those lies that Netanyahu could go on Fox News and just casually assert that Iran "tried to assassinate President Trump twice," only to have the Murdoch muppet host invite him to expound upon this assertion rather than challenging the Israeli prime minister's evidence-free claim. Reading by Tim Foley.

It was only by the most tenacious of efforts by the very worst people in the world that we wound up here. It is only by those same efforts by those same terrible people that we continue along this horrifying trajectory instead of taking the final off-ramp. Reading by Tim Foley.

Iran and Israel are at war, with the US already intimately involved and likely to become more so. Which of course means we'll be spending the foreseeable future getting bashed in the face with lies from the most powerful people in the world. Reading by Tim Foley.

This is what Israel chose to be. This is what a state full of Zionists looks like when you let the Zionists do everything they want to do. Reading by Tim Foley.

Okay it's been a few months since the last war Israel started, so now that Iran's on the chopping block let's go over the rules once again. Rule 1: Israel is never the aggressor. If Israel attacks someone it's either a response to an aggression that happened in the past, or a preemptive attack to thwart an imminent aggression in the future. Rule 2: History automatically restarts at the date of the last act of aggression against Israel. If someone attacks Israel it was completely unprovoked, because nothing happened before the attack on Israel. Rule 3: Anything bad that Israel does is justified by Rule 2. This is true even if it does things that would be considered completely unjustifiable if it were done by a nation like Russia or China. Rule 4: Israel has a right to defend itself, but nobody else does. Rule 5: Israel never bombs civilians, it bombs Bad Guys. If shocking numbers of civilians die it's because they were actually Bad Guys, or because Bad Guys killed them, or because a Bad Guy stood too close to them. If none of those reasons apply then it's for some other mysterious reason we are still waiting for the IDF to investigate. Rule 6: Criticizing anything Israel does means you hate Jewish people. There is no other possible reason for anyone to oppose acts of mass military slaughter besides a seething, obsessive hatred for a small Abrahamic faith. Rule 7: Nothing Israel does is ever as bad as the hateful criticisms described in Rule 6. Criticisms of Israel's actions are always worse than Israel's actions themselves, because those critics hate Jews and wish to commit another Holocaust. Preventing this must consume 100 percent of our political energy and attention. Rule 8: Israelis are only ever the victims and never the victimizers. If Israelis kill Iranians, it's because the Iranians hate Jews. If Iranians kill Israelis, it's because the Iranians hate Jews. Israel is an innocent little lamb that just wants to mind its own business in peace. Rule 9: The fact that Israel is literally always in a state of war with its neighbors and with displaced indigenous populations must be interpreted as proof that Rule 8 is true instead of proof that Rule 8 is ridiculous nonsense. Rule 10: The lives of people in Muslim nations are much, much less important to us than western lives or Israeli lives. Nobody is allowed to think too hard about why this might be. Rule 11: The media always tell the truth about Israel and its various conflicts. If you doubt this then you are likely in violation of Rule 6. Rule 12: Unsubstantiated claims which portray Israel's enemies in a negative light may be reported as factual news stories without any fact checking or qualifications, while extensively evidenced records of Israeli criminality must be reported on with extreme skepticism and doubtful qualifiers like “Iran claims”, “Hezbollah says” or “according to the Hamas-run health ministry”. This is important to do because otherwise you might get accused of being a propagandist. Rule 13: Israel must continue to exist in its current iteration no matter what it costs or how many people need to die. There is no need to present any logically or morally grounded reasons why this is the case. If you dispute this then you are likely in violation of Rule 6. Rule 14: The US government has never lied about anything ever, and is always on the right side of every conflict. Rule 15: Israel is the last bastion of freedom and democracy in the middle east and therefore must be defended, no matter how many journalists it has to assassinate, no matter how many press institutions it needs to shut down, no matter how many protests its supporters need to dismantle, no matter how much free speech it needs to eliminate, no matter how many civil rights its western backers need to erase, and no matter how many elections its lobbyists need to buy. Reading by Tim Foley.

Future New York Times headlines: - Iranian strikes rock Israel in unprovoked attack. - Israeli families take shelter amid antisemitic terror bombing. - Israeli defense minister: U.S. campus protesters somehow knew about Iranian strikes in advance, indicating Tehran coordination. - Trump privately voices frustration with Netanyahu over Iran conflict the U.S. is just passively, innocently witnessing. - American Jews feeling anxious, unsupported amid spiraling wars in the Middle East. - Opinion: I feared for my life during airstrikes on Tel Aviv. Nobody in the world can possibly understand what this is like. - Opinion: Is the U.S. at risk of being drawn into another Middle Eastern war? - Opinion: Is the U.S. stumbling into another Middle Eastern war? - Opinion: Is the U.S. accidentally oopsie poopsie bungling into another Middle Eastern war? - Opinion: Is the U.S. being dragged kicking and screaming into a war in the Middle East, something it historically tries to avoid at all cost? - US launches strikes on Iran in preemptive attack. - Opinion: Is the U.S. being sucked into a third world war? - Opinion: Is the U.S. tumbling headlong into a nuclear exchange with Russia and China? - Opinion: The sky is darkening as nuclear radiation creeps across our land, so we must all come together and condemn Hamas. - Opinion: The earth is a barren wasteland. Nothing remains. Check on your Jewish friends. Reading by Tim Foley.

It has driven the Israelis mad that their global support is being eroded by Palestinians recording their own genocide and broadcasting the footage to the world. If they think they can get away with keeping Gaza in the dark they absolutely will do so, while continuing to seek out further ways to hide the truth from the world. Reading by Tim Foley.

Well it looks like the US is on the precipice of war with Iran again. US officials are telling the press that they anticipate an impending Israeli attack on Iran while the family members of US military personnel are being assisted with evacuation from bases in the region. Reading by Tim Foley.

At the beginning of this month, Israel and its apologists ferociously denied claims that IDF troops had fired upon civilians seeking aid at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) site, killing 31 people. On the second of June, Israeli forces again opened fire on civilians seeking aid in Gaza, killing three people and injuring more than 30. On June 3, Israeli forces again opened fire on civilians seeking aid, reportedly killing at least 27 people. The US/Israeli-backed GHF temporarily suspended operations after this spate of mass shootings. On June 8, Israeli forces again fired upon civilians seeking aid at two separate distribution points in Gaza, killing twelve. On June 9, Israel and Israeli-backed forces opened fire on a crowd at an aid site in Gaza, killing 14. And on June 10, at least 36 people were reported killed and 208 wounded when Israeli forces again fired on crowds seeking aid in Gaza. Reading by Tim Foley.

While the Waymos burn While the air over LA fills with smoke and teargas and Reaper drones While Israelis hand each other trophies for not murdering Greta Thunberg While Palantir stocks soar and insect populations plummet While the news man writes headlines with increasingly creative phrasing While people with nothing to lose sharpen guillotine blades While the bank boys ask why the robot armies aren't ready yet While keffiyeh-clad heroes march to Gaza While secret saints work secret miracles in the margins While a sleeping giant stirs within our depths While the flames dance in Buddha's eyes While my peacock feather heart opens like a fuchsia bud While the tears roll down my cheeks for the dead and the dying While the firelight dances on my walls and the rebels dance in the fire I open my strange palms to our strange future and welcome it Come what may. Reading by Tim Foley.

Shortly before the IDF raided the Madleen, Sky News host Jonathan Samuels strongly implied that the ship deserved to be attacked because it is full of antisemites and Hamas supporters. Reading by Tim Foley.

I can't believe it's 2025 and people are still worried about offending Zionists. Oh gosh I'd better issue an apology, I've upset the people who are cheerleading an active genocide. Better be careful how I word this or I might seem insensitive to people who think it's fine to bomb hospitals and burn children alive. Oh no I can't say that because if I do I'll be in hot water with the "intentionally starving civilians is good" crowd. Reading by Tim Foley.

Ultimately it comes down to courage. Being brave enough to stare squarely at the horrors of Gaza. To face the harsh reality that we are ruled by monsters and our civilization is diseased. To bring our own inner darkness into the light of consciousness where it can be healed. Reading by Tim Foley.

There's no reason to take seriously anything Elon Musk says during a textbook case of narcissistic collapse, but for the record if anyone in Washington is likely to have been blackmailed by Epstein it's Donald John Trump. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's amazing how creative these freaks get when they need to publicly exonerate Israel and its western allies of their crimes. The IDF commits a war crime and suddenly these stuffy mass media editors who've never created any art in their lives transform into poets, bending and twisting the English language to come up with lines that read more like Zen koans than reporting on an important news event. Reading by Tim Foley.

All those dead kids on your social media feed are the fruit of a tree whose seed was planted after the second world war. That tree has been bearing more and more fruit, and it will continue to for as long as it remains standing. Because that's just the kind of tree it is. The only kind of tree it ever could have been. Reading by Tim Foley.

US Senator Lindsay Graham has just tweeted an article titled “Greta Thunberg sets sail with Gaza flotilla that aims to break Israeli naval blockade,” adding the comment, “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” Australian Zionist think tanker Arsen Ostrovsky somehow outdid Graham, tweeting “Oh look, the little jihadi Greta Thunberg is trying to get into Gaza, to show solidarity with Hamas. It would be so sad if something were to happen to her flotilla…” There's not a lot that can shock me about Israel and its supporters these days. But if you'd traveled back in time a few years ago it would be hard to explain to someone how we got to a timeline that includes Israel supporters openly advocating the assassination of Greta Thunberg. Reading by Tim Foley.

We've seen multiple reports from doctors documenting Israeli forces actually entering hospitals they've attacked and destroying all the individual pieces of medical equipment in those facilities, one by one. Reading by Tim Foley.

If what we are seeing in Gaza is what it means for Israel to exist, then it shouldn't. People scream bloody murder when you say this, but it shouldn't be a controversial position. I'm not saying Jews shouldn't exist, I'm saying a genocidal apartheid state should not exist. A state is an artificial construct of the human mind, held together by human actions. If the actions we are witnessing in Gaza are the product of the artificial construct of the Israeli state, then that artificial construct should be dismantled, and those actions should cease. Reading by Tim Foley.

srael is burning children alive in Gaza. And call me an antisemitic Jew-hating Nazi terrorist lover if you must, but I happen to believe that's wrong. Reading by Tim Foley.

It takes a lot of education to make us this stupid. Our minds require a whole lot of training to accept this horrific dystopia as the baseline norm. That's why the empire we live under has the most sophisticated domestic propaganda machine that has ever existed. Reading by Tim Foley.

Anyone who says Gaza will be at peace if Hamas just surrenders and releases the hostages is either knowingly sowing disinformation or ignorantly sowing misinformation. We need to make sure everyone's clear on this so no one can say they didn't know after history unpacks this one. Reading by Tim Foley.

There's been a frenetic push from the pro-Israel crowd in using the slain embassy staffers to argue that pro-Palestine protesters need to be shut down, and it's just so ridiculous. Nobody should grant it even one second of serious consideration. Reading by Tim Foley.