JOHNSTONE

"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.

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.

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.

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.

The Biden administration is now pushing Ukraine to lower its minimum draft age from 25 to 18 in order to provide more cannon fodder for the war against Russia. Polls say that both Ukrainians and Americans want this US proxy war to end, but instead of ending it Washington is pressuring Kyiv to throw teenagers into the threshing machine of an unwinnable conflict. And we were told this war was all about protecting democracy. Reading by Tim Foley.

Every so often I like to write out a basic explanation of who I am and what I'm trying to do here. As an entirely reader-funded writer I think it's important to periodically lay out exactly what I'm about so that any patrons or would-be patrons can assess if this weird little project here is something they want to support. Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

If you stand for truth, peace and justice in this world then it’s important not to make your happiness dependent on large-scale wins. Reading by Tim Foley.

Conventional wisdom about the outgoing Biden administration’s reckless escalations in Ukraine these past few days is that things will cool down once Donald Trump takes office, but Trump’s cabinet picks aren’t really selling this idea. Reading by Tim Foley.

What we all want, deep down, is a truth-based relationship with reality. We might not be aware that this is what we are seeking from life, but it is. And everything in our society is stacked against our ever getting it. Reading by Tim Foley.

We live in a civilization built of lies and abuse, powered by lies and abuse, and defended using lies and abuse. Even the most kindhearted and well-intentioned among us struggle to bring about positive change, because the very fabric of our society is stacked against truth and kindness. Reading by Tim Foley.

The International Criminal Court has formally issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. No such arrest warrants were issued for President Biden or any of the other western officials who’ve been backing Israel’s genocidal atrocities, which is a bit like a judge issuing a warrant for a mass murderer but not for the guy who gave him the gun and stood next to him handing him ammunition and drove the getaway car and lied to the police to cover up the crime. Reading by Tim Foley.

One of the very few good things coming out of the relentless nightmare happening in Gaza is that at long last the western world is getting a clear look at Israel. The real Israel. Reading by Tim Foley.

It’s so fun how the Biden administration is using its lame duck months to skyrocket hostilities between nuclear superpowers and we don’t even know who’s really making these decisions because the president’s brain is cottage cheese. Reading by Tim Foley.

Marco Rubio will be joining a long list of psychopaths as the next US secretary of state. A few of Trump’s cabinet picks might have a hard time getting past the Senate, but not Rubio. He’s the exact type of blood-guzzling swamp leech those creatures on Capitol Hill adore. Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Obama continued and expanded Bush's most evil policies. Trump continued and expanded Obama's most evil policies. Biden continued and expanded Trump's most evil policies. Now Trump is preparing to keep the streak going. The face at the front desk changes, but the corporation stays the same. Reading by Tim Foley.

They do not hate each other. They do not see one another as an existential threat to the nation. They are not enemies. They’re barely even opponents. When the show is over they hug and kiss like boxers after weeks of phony trash talk made solely to sell pay-per-views. Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Being pro-Israel is being pro-war, because the state of Israel cannot exist in its present iteration without nonstop US-backed military violence. Supporting Israel necessarily means supporting endless western military interventionism in the middle east. Trump supporters keep lying to themselves about this. Reading by Tim Foley.

Biden’s legacy is genocide, war, and nuclear brinkmanship. That’s all anyone should talk about when this psychopath finally dies. Anything positive he may have accomplished in his political career is a drop in the ocean compared to the significance of these mass-scale abuses. Reading by Tim Foley.

Israel is really struggling with how difficult its present circumstances make playing the victim. It keeps having to invent new abuses to be victimized by like the imaginary Amsterdam “pogrom” and the fake mass rape narrative that surfaced months after October 7, because it can’t sit comfortably in the role of victimizer while on trial for genocide in international courts. Reading by Tim Foley.

The only thing I like about Trump is exactly what so many empire managers hate about him: he gives the game away. He says the quiet parts out loud. He’s the only president who’ll openly boast that US troops are in Syria to keep the oil or lament that they failed to take the oil from Venezuela, or just come right out and tell everyone he’s bought and owned by Zionist oligarchs. Trump is the opposite of Obama, who was very skillful at putting a pretty face on the evil empire. Trump puts a very ugly face on a very ugly thing. He is a much more honest face to have on the empire. A crude, stupid plutocrat who is owned by other plutocrats is the perfect representative of that tyrannical power structure. Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Trump supporters are George W Bush supporters LARPing as Ron Paul supporters. They act like they're backing some anti-war figure who's taking a meaningful stand against the machine, when they're really backing a guy who spent four years rolling out longstanding neocon agendas. Reading by Tim Foley.

Democrats are sitting on a mountain of hundreds of thousands of human corpses they helped kill by mass military slaughter in the last four years, weeping and lamenting that now bad things are going to start happening. Reading by Tim Foley.

Turns out campaigning on the promise of continuing a genocide while courting endorsements from war criminals like Dick Cheney is not a great way to get progressives to vote for you. Reading by Tim Foley.

Some days it’s hard to say which is more horrific: the Gaza genocide itself, or the moral decay throughout our society which makes it possible. Reading by Tim Foley.

You really see this illustrated in US presidential election season, when debates will feature five or six minutes on “foreign policy” with the remaining two hours dedicated to “domestic policy” and culture war wedge issues despite the the White House’s relationship with foreign countries having orders of magnitude more significant real-world consequences. Reading by Tim Foley.

My one and only position on how Americans should vote is that they should do whatever makes them feel nice, since that’s all US presidential elections are: an emotional pacifier to let the masses feel like they have some meaningful control over their country. It’s about feelings and nothing else. Reading by Tim Foley.

It’s not hope that keeps me going, it’s love. Love for this beautiful planet and all the weird little critters scuttling around on it, especially the fingery ape monsters walking about on their hind legs making mouth noises about their mind noises. I love this whole chaotic wondermess so very, very much, and I want it to keep going. Reading by Tim Foley.

South Africa's legal team has submitted hundreds of documents containing what it calls "undeniable evidence" as part of its ongoing genocide case against the state of Israel, with the South African representative to The Hague telling Al Jazeera that "The problem we have is that we have too much evidence." Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

In addition to everything else this genocide has been, it’s been a colossal insult to our intelligence. Reading by Tim Foley.

Both Trump and Harris are auditioning for a role that will necessarily entail the creation of mountains of human corpses by US-sponsored violence, as has every viable US presidential candidate throughout our lives. This is because the US empire is deeply evil. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's the sense of powerlessness that gets to you. Watching all these people being slaughtered and tormented in Gaza and in Lebanon with the full support of your own government and its allies, but being unable to stop it. Reading by Tim Foley.

Lying Western Press Scramble To Frame Israel's Attack On Iran As Self - Defense by Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley