JOHNSTONE

The buzz around Xiaohongshu and then DeepSeek has had an unusually high volume of westerners speaking positively about China for the last couple of weeks, which of course means we're also seeing many westerners falling all over themselves to say "Well actually China is actually quite bad actually" in response. Reading by Tim Foley.

Both Jordan and Egypt have put out statements rejecting President Trump's proposal to "clean out" Gaza and move its population to those nations. Reading by Tim Foley.

Well that didn't take long. President Trump has said he wants to "clean out" Gaza and relocate its population to US client states Egypt and Jordan, which would of course be a textbook case of ethnic cleansing. Reading by Tim Foley.

They killed a two year-old girl in the West Bank on Saturday. Laila al-Khatib was shot in the head by Israeli forces in Jenin, because I guess they needed one more dead Palestinian kid. One more dead Palestinian kid to add to the mountain. One more small Palestinian face raining down upon us in our nightmares like meteors on the dinosaurs in the prequel to this apocalypse. One more screaming, blood-spattered mother. One more grandfather with boulders for feet carrying the tiny shrouded form of someone who should have buried him. It’s one more dead Palestinian kid. One more snowflake in the blizzard. And yet here I sit, mouth agape, a mortally wounded polar bear in my chest and a cry of despair turning into a ghost and leaving me silent and slack-jawed like an imbecile. I want to crawl into my childhood crib and fall asleep forever. I want to turn into a crystal punch bowl and fall and shatter on a marble floor. The air is full of flapping, and there’s seaweed in my hair. There’s an angel with a mushroom cloud head in my doorway. They killed a two year-old girl in the West Bank on Saturday, because I guess they needed another one. I write her name on some paper and send it off into the wind, and stride back into the suburban ghost town with my body on fire. Reading by Tim Foley.

They've arrested another pro-Palestinian journalist, this time in Switzerland. The Electronic Intifada's executive director Ali Abunimah has reportedly been detained by Swiss police in Zurich, after having been interrogated for an hour and released the previous day when entering the country. Abunimah, who is Palestinian-American, has played a leading role in exposing and critiquing the apartheid abuses of Israel for many years. Reading by Tim Foley.

Here in the thick of it, our eyes full of pixels and our veins full of microplastics, out here with the child amputees in Gaza and the frightened street schizophrenics in Los Angeles and the pigs living their whole lives in metal crates the size of their bodies, our lives ruled by algorithms and wealthy world eaters as we pray for a miracle on knees made of miracles with clasped hands made of miracles in a world made of miracles, craning our necks to see past the giant flashing signs saying "YOU ARE LOVED, YOU ARE LOVE" in order to find Defects and Inadequacy. In the thick of it, up to our ears in it, cracked wide open, wide open to the screams of mothers clutching tiny broken bodies, to the screams of men on fire, to the screams of dying coral reefs and rainforests, to the screams inside all of us saying "Something is wrong, something has gone very, very wrong," wide open to the agony but also to the beauty, to the booming holiness of the earth and the sky, to the mysteries hiding in abandoned buildings, to the noble pigeons whose pristine minds know nothing of Elon Musk, to that place of tenderness within all of us which we cover with shields and armor and feigned toughness and pretend confidence, feeling it all, letting it all in, the pain and the exaltation and the weight and the exuberance and the rage and the orgasms and the darkness and the light and the Israeli stormtroopers and their victims and the bank boys and the savage saints and that song within all of us calling us home saying "It's here! It's here! Buddha nature is here!", and blessing it all, my darling, blessing it all. Here in the thick of it, our hearts sliced open like gutted fish, we breathe in the air, exhaust fumes and all, and we realize with slowly widening eyelids that this, this is paradise. There is no Heaven but That which sits before us and beats within our chests and grows the grass and spins the galaxies, right this very waking moment, closer to us than our own skeletons which will one day be laid to rest in the soil of a revolving ball in a universe we never once in our lives understood. Reading by Tim Foley.

Even if this ceasefire somehow manages to hold, some other nightmare will be unleashed by the US-centralized empire somewhere else in the world in the coming years. Reading by Tim Foley.

The world is ruled by religious fanatics with nukes. If a normal person says they're the second coming of Jesus Christ they get medicated and institutionalized. If you make equally insane religious claims on the Senate floor, they let you run an empire. Reading by Tim Foley.

During his inaugural address, the new president of the United States was refreshingly open about the fact that Washington is the hub of a continuously expanding empire which is ruled by billionaire plutocrats. Reading by Tim Foley.

TikTok is back in the US after a brief shutdown, reportedly because Trump pledged to suspend the Biden administration's ban. A Gaza ceasefire has also finally emerged due to pressure from Trump after Biden stalled for 15 months, and NBC News is reporting that the Trump administration plans on pressuring the Israeli government throughout negotiations to establish a permanent peace beyond the 42 days scheduled for the first phase of the agreement. Remember this: it's not that Trump is good, it's that Democrats are just that bad. Biden's completely unconditional facilitation of Israeli atrocities has actually been the exception rather than the norm among US presidents, as Trita Parsi explained in Foreign Policy last April. From what we are seeing so far, Trump is just returning things to their horrible standard baseline. Trump will go on to do many evil things as president, just as he did during his first term, but none of this will reverse the fact that Biden just spent four years advancing genocide, nuclear brinkmanship and authoritarianism. The Democratic Party plays just as crucial a role in promoting the tyranny and abuse of the US empire as the Republican Party does, and it is nonsensical to think of either of them as a lesser evil. The empire itself must end. Reading by Tim Foley.

Together, a bunch of mostly powerless people can create a very, very powerful force. If a healthy world is to be born, it that is the force by which it will come into being. Reading by Tim Foley.

Two journalists were ejected from a State Department press conference on Thursday for asking inconvenient questions about Gaza. One of them, Sam Husseini, was physically carried out by security while demanding to know why Secretary of State Antony Blinken is not in The Hague for his war crimes. Reading by Tim Foley.

As usual, Israel appears to be ramping up its aggressions to kill as many people as possible before the fighting comes to an end. These next few days will be an especially terrifying time to be living in Gaza. Reading by Tim Foley.

Ever since the genocide in Gaza began it's been an open question whether the Biden administration's facilitation of the slaughter has just been standard US empire depravity, or an evil that would only have occurred under Biden. The fact that we're now closer to a ceasefire than ever before, reportedly due to pressures exerted by Trump, suggests that the latter could be the case. It suggests that these 15 months of human butchery could only have occurred under a dementia-addled lifelong Zionist surrounded by Zionist puppeteers. Reading by Tim Foley.

We are living in dystopia, but we don't need to be living in hell. Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

1. Support Trump and the Republicans 2. Support Democrats 3. Ignore Gaza 4. Talk about "antisemitism" like it's a major problem that needs to be urgently prioritized 5. Blame the world's problems on "the Jews" 6. Still buy into the "Hamas uses human shields" narrative in the year 2025 Reading by Tim Foley.

It’s not fair for us to shirk off the responsibility of ending the western empire onto foreigners in struggling nations who all have a lot more problems than we do. It is fully within our capability to awaken a revolutionary zeitgeist within our society so that we can use the power of our vast numbers to take down this machine and create a better world. Reading by Tim Foley.

Trump and Obama were seen happily chatting and laughing together at the funeral for Jimmy Carter. If these guys don't buy into the story that they are on opposite sides of a ferocious battle of existential importance between two wildly different ideologies, then why should you? Reading by Tim Foley.

Our society elevates the worst among us. The artists who are willing to sell their souls to the empire. The scientists who are willing to design killing machines for the military or invent some piece of future landfill manufactured by the toil and resources of the global south. The politicians who are willing to subvert the interests of ordinary people to the interests of plutocrats and power structures. The pundits, reporters and filmmakers who are willing to sell propaganda to deceive us into thinking this is all healthy and normal. Reading by Tim Foley.

The Biden administration, which has been intimately complicit in the genocidal atrocities being perpetrated in Gaza for the last 15 months, has just determined that a genocide is being committed in Sudan. Reading by Tim Foley.

There is no need to wait for the great revolution to begin fighting against our rulers. There is no need to wait for things to get better to experience this world as paradise. The time for both of these things is now. Reading by Tim Foley.

Awakening from the propaganda matrix is like being a conservative: you're frequently disgusted with society and where it appears to be headed. But unlike a conservative, you're disgusted by actual problems instead of imaginary nonsense. Reading by Tim Foley.

The new year has kicked off with some truly bizarre and highly suspicious major news events. A US military veteran killed 14 people when he drove a pickup truck into a crowd in New Orleans early New Year's Day and was then killed in a shootout with police. Hours later, another US military veteran reportedly blew himself up in a Tesla Cybertruck outside of the Trump International Hotel in Nevada. Reading by Tim Foley

Escaping from the matrix of the mainstream western worldview is like escaping from a cult: it starts with one tiny heresy. One small, secret thought that goes against all your indoctrination. Reading by Tim Foley.

The US empire is up to its elbows in the middle east working frenetically to manipulate what happens there, while in the United States itself homelessness has taken another record-shattering leap forward. Reading by Tim Foley.

We find ourselves in a mind-controlled dystopia where we think, speak, vote, work, shop, spend and behave in more or less exactly the ways the rich and powerful want us to, all while believing we are free - because the mechanisms of control are hidden from us. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's wrong to blame this whole thing on Jews because it lets the rest of us off the hook. Reading by Tim Foley.

We suffer because we erroneously believe we are separate. It’s why humans suffer as individuals, and it’s why humanity creates so much suffering as a collective. Reading by Tim Foley.

Just so we're all clear, it is a fully established fact that the IDF is directly, deliberately killing civilians in Gaza. There was a time in the early days of the genocide when this could be disputed, but that is no longer true. The facts are in and the case is closed. It's happening. Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

"Both Israel and the incoming Trump administration are reportedly eager to start bombing Iran ASAP now that Assad’s out of the way." Reading by Tim Foley.

"The way he stumbled and stuttered when trying to answer the question gives a lot of insight into how terrified such people are of the public turning against them one day." Reading by Tim Foley.

"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be." This is a line by fantasy author PC Hodgell, though it's often misattributed to Carl Sagan. I think about this quote a lot. I think about it when reflecting on the way Israel is exterminating Palestinian journalists in Gaza while keeping western journalists out of the enclave to prevent the world from learning the truth about what the IDF is doing there. Reading by Tim Foley.

It’s funny the things that get to you when witnessing the nightmare in Gaza, out of all the horrors you’ll see there from day to day. Today I saw a video of a six year-old Palestinian boy whose legs had been amputated dragging himself through his tent camp with the help of a roller skate worn on one of his hands, and it just about destroyed me. Reading by Tim Foley.

For those who aren’t aware, since mid-November people have been sighting large drones all over the east coast of the United States, and what makes this so interesting is that the US government is claiming they don’t know anything about them. Don’t know who owns them, where they’re taking off from or where they’re landing. Reading by Tim Foley.

These last 14 months have shattered me. Shattered me beyond the power of recollection. But sometimes it’s good to be shattered. Reading by Tim Foley.

Only Israel could invade and occupy large stretches of a country, bomb it 480 times in 48 hours, destroy 80 percent of its military defenses, and then claim that it has no intention of interfering in that country’s internal affairs. Reading by Tim Foley.

The US government is simultaneously (A) justifying Israel’s land grab in Syria by saying the nation has been taken over by terrorists, and (B) talking about removing those same forces from its list of designated terrorist organizations. Reading by Tim Foley.

It’s pretty wild how the west went directly from “We need to occupy Afghanistan for two decades to prevent it from being taken over by the Taliban” to “Yay! Syria’s been taken over by al-Qaeda!” Reading by Tim Foley.

And now the imperial blob rolls on to absorb its next target, having grown one Syria-sized increment larger after spending years digesting that nation via proxy warfare, sanctions, relentless bombing campaigns from Israel, and a military occupation designed to steal its food and fuel. Reading by Tim Foley.

Well it looks like the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is on its way out, likely to be replaced by one or more US puppet regimes depending on whether the nation maintains its current borders or is carved up into separate states. The empire notches another win. Reading by Tim Foley.

I have learned a few things in my time on this earth. Not many, but a few. I have learned that western regime change interventionism is reliably disastrous, and that men like John Bolton and Bill Kristol are always on the wrong side of history when it comes to such matters. I have learned that organizing human civilization around the pursuit of profit has had devastating consequences for our ecosystem, our health, our hearts, and our happiness. Reading by Tim Foley.

None of the world's worst people are in prison. Our society is fed a steady diet of movies and shows depicting heroic protagonists fighting villains who abuse and murder people in illegal ways, when in real life the actual villains of our society murder people in ways that are completely legal. None of their abuses are against the law. Reading by Tim Foley.

You won't see anyone in Tony Blinken's family headed to the frontlines in Ukraine. These freaks see the population of this planet as nothing more than pawns on their grand chessboard, and they will sacrifice them just as casually. Reading by Tim Foley.

If you have not spent the past 14 months watching all the footage of dead and mutilated children coming out of Gaza, then you have no business trying to defend Israel and its actions. If you are avoiding looking at the facts, then you have no business talking about them. Reading by Tim Foley.

One great challenge of our time is that while it's becoming common knowledge that western media is propaganda and western politics is a corrupt sham, fake solutions to these problems are being marketed to the mainstream by the same powers responsible for them. Donald Trump himself will tell you that the media are lying and the political establishment is run by swamp monsters, and then say that the solution is to support Republicans and trust right wing media. Elon Musk will go on Joe Rogan and say the same thing. In 2028 AOC will probably run for president campaigning on the Democratic Party version of the same faux-populist message, just as Bernie Sanders did. Reading by Tim Foley.

In less than a week of its supposed "ceasefire" agreement Israel has reportedly attacked targets in Lebanon around a hundred times, leading to a single retaliation from Hezbollah on Monday which resulted in zero casualties. As you might expect, Israel is now playing victim and shrieking bloody murder, vowing a major response against Hezbollah for daring to strike back while Israel violated its ceasefire agreement dozens of times. Apparently this was the kind of ceasefire where only one side has to actually cease firing. This is such a perfect example of everything Israel is. Reading by Tim Foley.

Syria is more complicated and harder to understand than Gaza, but if you look into it you'll find mountains of evidence that for many years the US and its allies and partners have been actively fomenting violence, chaos and destruction in that nation to effect regime change. Reading by Tim Foley.

This is a civilization made of deceitful thoughts, deceitful words, and deceitful deeds. Everything about it is fraudulent. Reading by Tim Foley.