JOHNSTONE
1,117 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 5 hours ago - ★★★★★ - 99 ratingsReadings of all Caitlin Johnstone's articles, usually by her co-writer Tim Foley.
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Episodes
NATO Chief Voices Fear Of War With Russia While US Greenlights Drone Strikes On Russian Territory
December 12, 2022 03:15 - 6 minutes - 5.74 MB"So Stoltenberg is correct to be afraid. There absolutely are too many things that can go horribly wrong in such a standoff, and there are simply too many unpredictable moving parts for anyone to feel confident that this will not happen. "And it's pretty crazy to hear Stoltenberg voice these concerns even while the Pentagon gives the go-ahead for Ukraine to begin launching long-range attacks on targets inside Russia in its war that is being backed by the United States, because those two posi...
The Biggest Obstacle To Real Freedom Is The Belief That We Already Have It
December 11, 2022 13:16 - 8 minutes - 7.92 MBIf you live in one of the so-called free democracies of the western world, the worst mistake you can make is to buy into the hype. To believe you are a free individual in a nation that respects and protects your freedom and individuality. Reading by Tim Foley.
The Season Finale Of The Hit Show 'Proxy War'
December 09, 2022 03:04 - 2 minutes - 2.67 MBEveryone's talking about the hit series Proxy War, an astronomically high-budget production based on an actual military conflict whose season finale is set to air this month. Reading by Tim Foley.
I Don't Want A Sci-Fi Future
December 07, 2022 07:32 - 8 minutes - 8.06 MBI don't desire a future for humanity like the ones imagined by our culturally designated future-imaginers. I don't want humans living in Elon Musk Mars colonies or Jeff Bezos space cylinders. I don't want us to fly out into the stars, to disappear into virtual reality universes, or to move away from our humanness by becoming cybernetic organisms. Not yet anyway. Not for a long time. Not until we've done what we need to do here first. Reading by Tim Foley. Image by Adobe Stock.
Robbing The Global South, Then Scorning Its Poverty
December 06, 2022 01:13 - 8 minutes - 7.33 MBMichael Parenti has said that "Poor countries are not 'under-developed', they are over-exploited." The west tends to look down on the rest of the world for reasons that either directly or indirectly relate to the poverty in those nations, which is silly because that poverty comes largely from western theft and exploitation. It's like mugging someone and then scorning them for their empty wallet. If you boil it right down and get real about it, most of the pride in western civilization is ult...
The Incremental Normalization Of Police Murderbots Probably Needs More Attention
December 03, 2022 02:05 - 5 minutes - 4.81 MBOne of the most under-discussed topics in the world right now is how governments have been incrementally pacing the public toward accepting the use of police robots that kill people. The city of San Francisco has voted to legalize the use of killbots in specific emergency situations like active shooters and suicide bombers, with high-ranking officers making the call as to whether their use is warranted. Reading by Tim Foley.
What My Little Project Here Is All About
December 02, 2022 03:50 - 6 minutes - 5.5 MBEvery year around my birthday I've been tapping out an explanation of where I stand and what I'm trying to accomplish in this humble little slice of the digital universe here. As a crowdfunded writer it seems important to be fully transparent about what I'm doing and where I'm coming from so that people can decide on their own if my strange operation is something they care to support, and since my readership has grown a fair bit over the last year I figure I should repeat the yearly tradition...
NATO Exists To Solve The Problems Created By NATO's Existence
December 01, 2022 03:00 - 10 minutes - 9.58 MBThe recent push to expand NATO in Ukraine along with nations like Finland and Sweden as justified by "Russian aggression" is a good example of what professor Richard Sakwa has called the “fateful geographical paradox: that NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.” As the late scholar on US-Russia relations Stephen Cohen explained years before the Ukraine crisis erupted in 2014, Moscow sees NATO as an "American sphere of influence," and the expansion of NATO and NATO influence...
The Guardian Could Help Assange By Retracting All The Lies It Published About Him
November 30, 2022 12:36 - 6 minutes - 6.2 MBThe Guardian has joined The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País in signing a letter from the five papers which collaborated with WikiLeaks twelve years ago in the publication of the Chelsea Manning leaks to call for the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange. The Guardian's participation in this letter is particularly noteworthy, given the leading role that publication has played in manufacturing public support for his persecution in the first place. I...
China Keeps Aggressively Surrounding Itself With US Bases
November 29, 2022 03:49 - 11 minutes - 10.1 MBFacts: - There are Chinese people with real grievances against their government. - The US empire's propaganda machine will spin current protests in China to advance imperial agendas. - Western intelligence agencies will become more and more involved in these protests the longer they go on. Reading by Tim Foley.
US Officials Concern Troll About World Press Freedoms While Assaulting Them
November 24, 2022 04:01 - 5 minutes - 4.58 MBI will never get used to living in a world where our rulers will openly imprison a journalist for telling the truth and then self-righteously pontificate about the need to stop authoritarian regimes from persecuting journalists. Reading by Tim Foley.
AP Editor Said She "Can't Imagine" A US Intelligence Official Being Wrong
November 23, 2022 03:48 - 7 minutes - 7.03 MB"I can't imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this." Can you imagine not being able to imagine a US intelligence official being wrong? This would be an unacceptable position for any educated adult to hold, much less a journalist, still less an editor, and still less an editor of one of the most influential news agencies on earth. These are the people who publish the news reports we read to find out what's happening in the world. This is the baby-brained level of thinking the...
'Western Values' Are A Big Jerk-Off Fantasy
November 22, 2022 02:50 - 8 minutes - 7.79 MBIt's still funny that the entire US-controlled world has been raging at Russia all year for doing something the US does routinely. Reading by Tim Foley.
Musk's Free Speech Moves On Twitter Have So Far Been Unimpressive
November 21, 2022 13:53 - 6 minutes - 5.51 MBUn-banning a few famous people will drum up a lot of headlines and online chatter and make it look like you're really doing something, but in the end all you've done is reinstate a handful of Twitter accounts. You haven't done anything to meaningfully scale back the speech restrictions on your platform. Reading by Tim Foley.
Euthanizing The Poor Is Just Capitalism's True Face
November 19, 2022 03:31 - 5 minutes - 5.25 MBEuthanizing the poor is just capitalism finally being honest about itself. After all these years of falsely pretending to have real solutions to the problems it creates, it finally presents a solution entirely in alignment with its values that actually works.Capitalism's answer to "What about the poor?" has always been "They should work harder," and its answer to "What about those who can't work?" has always been "They should die quickly." But until now it's always been spoken wordlessly in t...
The Fox
November 18, 2022 12:38 - 2 minutes - 1.91 MBI met a fox last night who was carrying a dead possum. Foxes, unlike possums, are not native to Australia, but neither are white people so no judgement. I got here the same way she did. Her ancestors came here because rich Englishmen wanted to have fox hunts in the bush, mine came here because rich Englishmen wanted a distant prison colony. We are all where we are on this planet because of the dances our ancestors did with rich Englishmen and native possums. I walk on stolen land under a sun...
US Empire Views Ukrainians And Russians As Lab Rats For Weapons Testing
November 17, 2022 13:14 - 3 minutes - 3.62 MBA surprisingly frank article by The New York Times titled "Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons" describes how the imperial war machine is capitalising on the US proxy war to test its weapons for future use. Reading by Tim Foley.
Journalistic Responsibility Vanishes When Reporting On US-Targeted Nations
November 17, 2022 02:50 - 8 minutes - 7.93 MBTwo false news reports have gone viral in recent hours due to sloppy sourcing and journalistic malpractice. As usual they both featured bogus claims about US-targeted nations, in this case Russia and Iran. Reading by Tim Foley.
Thoughts That Should Probably Occur More Often
November 15, 2022 03:25 - 5 minutes - 4.97 MBI wonder if my own government is being truthful about its actions in that part of the world? I wonder if my own government is in the wrong on this issue? I wonder if the news media are telling the truth right now? I wonder if the news media tell the truth about things generally? I wonder if the "Evil Dictators versus Virtuous Liberal Democracies" framework I've been taught by teachers, pundits and politicians is the most accurate lens through which to view world events? Could I have been...
They Keep Us Focused On Decoy Dichotomies
November 14, 2022 03:06 - 8 minutes - 7.45 MBWesterners are taught that evil foreign "regimes" don't let their people criticize their government, meanwhile westerners themselves are trained to never criticize their government. They're trained instead to criticize decoy dichotomies — false partisan nonsense — not the real power. Westerners are trained to criticize the actions of the other party or the beliefs of the other ideological faction, never the foreign or domestic policies which are fully supported by both parties. The power str...
The Atlantic Is A Shitty Propaganda Rag Run By Elitist Wankers
November 13, 2022 03:12 - 4 minutes - 4.34 MBThe Atlantic, which is owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs and run by neoconservative war propagandist Jeffrey Goldberg, has published a pair of articles that are appalling even by its own standards. Reading by Tim Foley.
Zelensky And Bush To Give Joint Pro-War Presentation
November 12, 2022 03:11 - 4 minutes - 4.29 MBWar criminal George W Bush and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be appearing at an event next week at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, in partnership with US government-funded narrative management operations Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy. The goal of the presentation will reportedly be to address the completely fictional and imaginary concern that congressional Republicans won't continue supporting US proxy war efforts in Ukraine. Reading by Tim Foley.
Real Democracy Means Democracy Of Information
November 11, 2022 02:40 - 5 minutes - 5.43 MBDemocracy of the vote without democracy of information is not democracy. It doesn't matter if people are able to vote as long as the media-owning class are able to manipulate how they vote. "One person, one vote" is meaningless if influence and control of information is highly concentrated in an elite few. And it is. Reading by Tim Foley.
Separation Is The Largest Religion In The World
November 10, 2022 04:29 - 7 minutes - 7.13 MBThe largest religion on earth is not Christianity or Islam: it's the widespread, faith-based belief system which holds that humans are separate from each other and from the world. Humanity is becoming less religious as awareness expands that religions are nothing but a collection of unhelpful and unevidenced belief systems. In the same way, and for the same reason, humanity may one day do the same with the belief systems about self and separateness to which nearly everyone on earth is prese...
Let's Be Clear: If WW3 Happens It Will Be The Result Of Choices Made By The US Empire
November 07, 2022 10:41 - 6 minutes - 5.9 MBThe commander of the US nuclear arsenal has stated unequivocally that the war in Ukraine is just a warmup exercise for a much larger conflict that's already in the mail. Reading by Tim Foley.
No Such Thing As An Objective Journalist
November 06, 2022 02:16 - 10 minutes - 9.2 MBThere is no such thing as unbiased journalism. If someone tells you they are unbiased they are either knowingly lying, or they are so lacking in self-awareness that you should not listen to them anyway. The divide is not between biased journalists and unbiased journalists, it's between journalists who are honest and transparent about their biases and journalists who are not. There are no unbiased journalists. There are no unbiased people. You're either honest about this or you're not. Read...
The Self-Licking Boot Of US Militarism
November 05, 2022 03:22 - 6 minutes - 6.34 MBA system which perpetuates and exacerbates itself while pretending to solve the problems it creates is often called a self-licking ice cream cone. Because that type of system is promoted by those serving the most powerful and belligerent power structure on earth, one might call US militarism a self-licking boot. Reading by Tim Foley.
The Farther People Are From The Fighting In Ukraine, The More They Oppose Peace Talks
November 04, 2022 02:59 - 6 minutes - 5.84 MB"Those most touched by the war, namely the internally displaced, were more likely to prioritise saving lives. Other research reveals that those farthest from the battlefields have the most hawkish attitudes." Those two simple sentences sum up so much of the attitude we are seeing toward this war, and it applies as much to those cheerleading continual escalation and bloodshed from the comfort of their homes on the other side of the world. Reading by Tim Foley.
You're Doing Great And Your Voice Makes A Difference
November 03, 2022 01:53 - 4 minutes - 4.18 MB2022 is an insane year to be a critic of the empire. People are being censored for disputing official narratives about a war. Those who aren't censored are being mobbed by astroturf trolling operations. A frenetic propaganda push is turning our friends, family, coworkers and acquaintances into brainwashed empire automatons who despise our heretical rejection of official imperial doctrine about Russia and Ukraine. And this is just a quick note to say thank you for holding the line anyway, and...
Capitalism Has Failed As Badly As Anything Can Fail
November 02, 2022 13:29 - 5 minutes - 5.31 MBPointing out the various flaws in historical attempts at communism does not address the problem that if we don't move from competition-based models to collaboration-based ones we're going to destroy all life on this planet in short order. We've still got to find a way to change. Reading by Tim Foley.
Destroying Western Values To Defend Western Values
November 01, 2022 14:07 - 9 minutes - 8.9 MBSo it turns out the US intelligence cartel has been working intimately with online platforms to regulate the "cognitive infrastructure" of the population. This is according to a new investigative report by The Intercept, based on documents obtained through leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, on the "retooling" of the Department of Homeland Security from an agency focused on counterterrorism to one increasingly focused on fighting "misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation" online. Reading...
Disrupt The Cognitive Infrastructure
November 01, 2022 02:23 - 3 minutes - 3.01 MBLeaked documents reveal that the US intelligence cartel has been working intimately with online platforms to regulate the "cognitive infrastructure" of the population — the information systems people use to feed their minds and think their thoughts. If it is the job of the US intelligence cartel to regulate society's cognitive infrastructure, then it is the job of healthy human beings to disrupt the cognitive infrastructure. Reading by Tim Foley.
New Study Finds The Rest Of The World Supports China And Russia
October 31, 2022 12:00 - 10 minutes - 9.92 MBA recent Cambridge study found that this hostility toward China has been on the rise in recent years not just in Australia but throughout the "liberal democracies" of the US-centralized power alliance. But what's interesting is that public opinion is exactly reversed in the much larger remainder of the Earth's population, with people outside the US power cluster just as fond of China as those within that power cluster are hostile toward it. This relationship is largely mirrored with Russia as...
Love Like There's No Yesterday
October 30, 2022 12:16 - 2 minutes - 2.6 MBLove like there's no yesterday like you're the first to ever love like it's fresh and for the first time because it is fresh and for the first time and the illusion otherwise is just a trick of human perception Love like a hermit crab that said fuck it and cast aside its shell forever Love like a three year-old rides a tricycle Love like the nukes just started flying Love like two middle aged bloggers making out in the rain while Australia floods Love like cobwebs and calliopes Love like a ...
The Official Narrative On Ukraine
October 29, 2022 13:12 - 4 minutes - 4.31 MBThe official narrative promoted by the entire western political/media class is that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February of this year solely because he is evil and hates freedom. He wants to conquer as much of Europe as possible because he cannot stand free democracies, because he is another Adolf Hitler. The official narrative is that while Russia is in Ukraine solely because its leader is an evil monster like Hitler, the US is in Ukraine solely because its leaders are righteous. The ...
Advocating World War Three Is Just Mainstream Punditry Now
October 28, 2022 12:34 - 8 minutes - 7.72 MBMainstream punditry in the latter half of 2022 is rife with op-eds arguing that the US needs to vastly increase military spending because a world war is about to erupt, and they always frame it as though this would be something that happens to the US, as though its own actions would have nothing to do with it. As though it would not be the direct result of the US-centralized empire continually accelerating towards that horrific event while refusing every possible diplomatic off-ramp due to it...
The Boy Who Cried Hitler
October 27, 2022 13:59 - 9 minutes - 8.56 MBComparisons of Putin to Hitler only sound profound and relevant if you only just began paying attention to US foreign policy and are therefore unaware that literally every single US enemy is always copiously compared to Hitler. It's like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, except there is no wolf, and the boy just keeps crying "Wolf!" over and over again, and the villagers never learn their lesson and never stop believing him. Because mainstream westerners ignored all wars until Ukraine, they don't know...
Just Two Weeks
October 26, 2022 12:12 - 3 minutes - 3.15 MBI stand here before you in my mother's hand-me-downs, in this world where mothers must work like they don't have children and parent like they don't have jobs, keeping households running and bills paid while their hearts run around outside their bodies on tiny little legs that don't yet know where the wolves are, but don't you dare over-mother them, or under-mother them, or get anything wrong while treading laundry and kung fuing the kitchen and, oh yeah, if you could save the world from nucl...
Worthless House Progressives Retract Mild Peace Advocacy Under Pressure From Warmongers
October 26, 2022 04:49 - 6 minutes - 5.74 MBThe Congressional Progressive Caucus has retracted an extremely mild, toothless letter its members had written to President Biden politely asking him to consider adding a little diplomacy into the mix to help end the conflict in Ukraine. The retraction followed a deluge of public outrage against their slight deviation from the official imperial narrative. Reading by Tim Foley.
Always Opposing The Last War But Not The Current One
October 23, 2022 02:34 - 7 minutes - 6.86 MBWestern propaganda means people always oppose the last war but not the current war. The US provoking and sustaining its Ukraine proxy war is no more ethical than its invading of Iraq; it just looks that way due to propaganda. Ukraine isn't the good war, it's just the current war. It is only by the copious amounts of propaganda our civilization is being hammered with that this is not immediately obvious to everyone. In the future (assuming we don't annihilate ourselves first), the propaganda ...
The US Government Sees Silicon Valley As Part Of Its Propaganda Machine
October 22, 2022 03:38 - 6 minutes - 6.06 MBThe Biden administration is reportedly considering opening a national security review of Elon Musk's business ventures which could see the plutocrat's purchase of Twitter blocked by the White House, in part because Musk is perceived as having an "increasingly Russia-friendly stance." Reading by Tim Foley.
Pretending To Seek Peace In An Unwinnable Proxy War
October 21, 2022 02:29 - 6 minutes - 5.55 MBWe should probably talk more about the fact that the US empire is loudly promoting the goal of achieving peace in Ukraine by defeating Russia while quietly acknowledging that this goal is impossible. This is like accelerating toward a brick wall and pretending it's an open road. The narrative that Russia can be defeated by escalating against it makes sense if you believe Russia can be defeated, but the US empire does not believe that Russia can be defeated. It knows these escalations are onl...
Planting Angel Eggs On A Dying World
October 20, 2022 02:33 - 1 minute - 1.79 MBPlanting angel eggs on a dying world, at the feet of billboards, in the clearcut wastelands, by the rivers of tears from Yemeni mothers, under highway overpasses where defective gear-turners sleep, shambling from crater to crater on tree stump legs wailing whale songs and praying to unprofitable gods, planting them in the ashes whispering "May there be kindness, may there be seeing, may there be artist lovers who are each other's muse." Dancing a doomed dance, a dance of holy futility, the da...
The Most Powerful Weapon The West Gave Ukraine
October 19, 2022 02:28 - 6 minutes - 6.22 MBThe most powerful weapon the west has given Ukraine is not the HIMARS, it's the US propaganda machine. Reading by Tim Foley.
The Profoundly Stupid Narrative That Nuclear Brinkmanship Is Safety And De-Escalation Is Danger
October 18, 2022 03:40 - 7 minutes - 7.07 MBOf all the face-meltingly stupid narratives that have been circulated about the US proxy war in Ukraine, the dumbest so far has got to be the increasingly common claim that aggressively escalating nuclear brinkmanship is safety and de-escalation is danger. We see a prime example of this self-evidently idiotic narrative in a new Business Insider article titled "Putin's nuclear threats are pushing people like Trump and Elon Musk to press for a Ukraine peace deal. A nuclear expert warns that's ...
They're Recycling The Viagra Rape Atrocity Propaganda They Used On Libya
October 16, 2022 02:57 - 6 minutes - 5.87 MBThe west is advancing the claim that Putin is distributing Viagra to his soldiers so that they can more effectively rape Ukrainians, which was a ridiculous propaganda narrative the first time the west used it to manufacture consent for regime change in Libya. Reading by Tim Foley.
We're Being Pushed Toward Nuclear War On A Fiction
October 14, 2022 01:54 - 5 minutes - 5.14 MBWe're being driven toward nuclear war on the completely fictional claim that Putin is a Hitler-like megalomaniac who's just invading countries completely unprovoked, solely because he is evil and hates freedom, and won't stop invading and conquering until he's stopped by force. The news media aren't telling people about the western aggressions which led to this war. They're not telling people the US is keeping this war going with the stated goal of weakening Russia and is rejecting peace tal...
US Rejection Of Moscow's Offer For Peace Talks Is Utterly Inexcusable
October 12, 2022 04:24 - 7 minutes - 6.82 MBRussian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow was open to talks with the the US or with Turkey on ending the war in Ukraine, claiming that US officials are lying when they say Russia has been refusing peace talks. Lavrov's claim was given more weight when US State Department spokesman Ned Price dismissed the offer for peace talks shortly after it was extended, citing Russia's recent missile strikes on Kyiv. Reading by Tim Foley.
Evolving Big Brains Only To Go Extinct From Stupidity
October 11, 2022 02:19 - 4 minutes - 4.55 MBNormal person: I think it would be good if everyone didn't die in a nuclear holocaust. Crazy person: That means you love Vladimir Putin. Normal person: No I just think it would be a good idea to try to prevent the horrific death of literally everyone. Crazy person: How much is the Kremlin paying you to say that? Fucking lunatics. Resisting nuclear armageddon is the least partisan position that anyone could possibly have. The least one-sided. The least "campist". It's just being a normal ...