JOHNSTONE
1,117 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 7 hours ago - ★★★★★ - 99 ratingsReadings of all Caitlin Johnstone's articles, usually by her co-writer Tim Foley.
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Episodes
Owl Eyes
August 16, 2022 14:28 - 4 minutes - 4.19 MBCrawling on our hands and knees vomiting up life hearts which go bouncing across the floor like pennies, disgusted by the latest headline, the latest heartbreak, the latest bill, the latest bullshit. There is an owl sitting upon the arm of our sofa. We don't know how long it has been watching us and we are too nauseous to care. Something is scratching at the insides of our walls. "It's all fake and I can't take it," we cry from our depths with sobs of motherhood and milk. "The YouTube ads, ...
China Threatens The US Empire, Not The US Itself
August 15, 2022 02:27 - 7 minutes - 7.06 MBChina poses no threat to the United States of America, the country. What China poses a threat to is the US empire and the hegemonic unipolarist ambitions thereof. That's what various government agencies are talking about when they describe China as the number one "threat". Reading by Tim Foley.
Modern US Warmongering Is Scaring Henry Kissinger
August 14, 2022 03:44 - 6 minutes - 5.93 MBIn a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, immortal Hague fugitive Henry Kissinger says the US is acting in a crazy and irrational way that has brought it to the edge of war with Russia and China. Reading by Tim Foley.
All Our Systems Are Built To Elevate Viciousness
August 12, 2022 01:18 - 6 minutes - 5.69 MBThe world will never know peace as long as war is profitable. The world will never know health as long as sickness is profitable. The ecosystem will never thrive as long as ecocide is profitable. We will remain ruled by tyrants for as long as our systems elevate tyranny. Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.
CBS Wanted To Do Critical Reporting On Ukraine's Government But Ukraine's Government Said No
August 10, 2022 13:34 - 7 minutes - 6.81 MBFollowing objections from the Ukrainian government, CBS News has removed a short documentary which had reported concerns from numerous sources that a large amount of the supplies being sent to Ukraine aren't making it to the front lines. Reading by Tim Foley.
China Is Better Than The USA
August 09, 2022 02:10 - 8 minutes - 7.33 MBChina is better than the United States of America. Not because China is perfect, but because the US is quantifiably the single most destructive and murderous government on this planet by an extremely massive margin. Reading by Tim Foley.
When Will Foreign Leaders Start Asking To Speak To America's REAL Government?
August 08, 2022 03:44 - 8 minutes - 7.66 MBThe truth is westerners live in a giant empire loosely centralized around the United States whose operations they have literally no influence over, whose operators they don't even get to know, and whose mechanisms are entirely hidden. If you call that freedom, I call you a fool. We can see that the empire moves the same way on important matters regardless of who we elect by simple naked-eye observation of the empire's behaviors from year to year. We can also see it in the fact that the offic...
Westerners Think They Are Free-Thinking Individualists And It's Effing Adorable
August 07, 2022 03:50 - 5 minutes - 5.33 MBThe Times has published an article titled "Lady Gaga embodies everything China fears," subtitled "The singer’s uncompromising individuality makes her a serious threat to the mass imposition of cultural conformity through censorship," and its contents are exactly as horrifyingly idiotic as you would imagine. Reading by Tim Foley.
"Russian Propaganda" Just Means Disobedience
August 06, 2022 11:27 - 10 minutes - 9.48 MBEmpire apologists are raging at Amnesty International for pausing its aggressive facilitation of western imperialism to issue one brief criticism of the way Ukrainian forces have been endangering civilian lives with their warfare tactics against the Russian military. Reading by Tim Foley.
New Media Are As Intertwined With Imperial Power As Old Media
August 05, 2022 03:10 - 5 minutes - 4.67 MBAlan MacLeod has a new article out with Mintpress News showing how most of the supposedly independent "fact-checking" organizations which Facebook has partnered with to police the information people are allowed to see on the platform about the war in Ukraine are, in fact, funded by the United States government. Reading by Tim Foley.
The US Military Was Just Used To Help A Dementia Patient Try To Start WW3
August 03, 2022 14:15 - 4 minutes - 3.83 MBHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi has left Taiwan after a brief but diplomatically corrosive visit, the aftereffects from which may be felt for years to come. Toward the end of her speech alongside Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, Pelosi's brain underwent one of its increasingly common software glitches, causing her to begin babbling inarticulately. Reading by Tim Foley.
The Anti-China Brainwashing Is Working
August 02, 2022 02:34 - 6 minutes - 6.13 MBThe western propaganda campaign against China is succeeding, even among many who consider themselves anti-war or critical of establishment power. Whatever sick future agendas they're manufacturing consent for, they'll be able to roll right on out. People's brains are turning to soup. Reading by Tim Foley.
Trapped In The Slaughterhouse
August 01, 2022 02:51 - 3 minutes - 2.86 MBWestern civilization is a story of full bellies and starving hearts. Of a feast of information and a famine of truth. Of conveyor belts churning out processed food, conformity-enforcing media and power-serving culture. Enough food to stay alive but not enough sustenance to live. Reading by Tim Foley.
In The US You Can't Witness An Execution If Your Skirt Is Too Revealing
July 31, 2022 00:48 - 4 minutes - 4.25 MBJoe Nathan James Jr was executed by lethal injection on Thursday, against the wishes of his victim's family. He was the eighth person to be put to death in the United States so far this year, and the second from Alabama. In the moments leading up to his gruesome murder by the state, a news reporter was forced to change her outfit by the Alabama Department of Corrections, because her skirt and her open-toe high-heeled shoes were considered too revealing. Yes, while a man was being strapped d...
For Warmongers It's Always 1938
July 29, 2022 11:54 - 5 minutes - 4.98 MBHawks always say our geopolitical situation resembles that of 1938 so that any call for de-escalation, diplomacy or detente can be portrayed as "appeasement". It's never 1919, when the conditions which would give rise to World War Two were put in place, or any of the early 20th century years when the trajectory toward World War One could have easily been turned away from. Reading by Tim Foley.
China Is Issuing The Same "Red Line" Warnings About Taiwan That Russia Issued About Ukraine
July 28, 2022 14:37 - 5 minutes - 5.15 MBFailing to learn from history is one thing; failing to learn even from the last five months is quite another. Pelosi and whoever's orchestrating her trip should abort those plans immediately, because the dangers that are being toyed with here are not worth the moral victory of being able to say that China didn't make you swerve in the stupidest game of "chicken" that has ever been played. Reading by Tim Foley.
The Phoniest, Most PR-Intensive War Of All Time
July 27, 2022 14:10 - 4 minutes - 3.82 MBThe president and first lady of Ukraine have posed for a romantic photoshoot with Vogue magazine, wherein President Volodimyr Zelensky waxes poetical about his love for his darling wife. Now, I know what you're thinking: how is Zelensky making time for a Vogue photoshoot amidst his busy schedule of PR appearances for other major western institutions? I mean this is after all the same Volodimyr Zelensky who has been so busy making video appearances for the Grammy Awards, the Cannes Film Fes...
Warmongering Republicans Have Throbbing Hard-Ons For Pelosi's Taiwan Trip
July 26, 2022 02:20 - 6 minutes - 5.81 MBPelosi's insane escalation is finding support from some of the worst people on this planet, many of them from the other side of America's illusory political divide. Reading by Tim Foley.
We've Been Lied To Our Whole Lives About Everything That Matters
July 25, 2022 01:18 - 6 minutes - 6.31 MBThis civilization is the set of the Truman Show, and we are all Truman. Reading by Tim Foley.
When They Announce WW3 Let's Just Say 'Nah'
July 24, 2022 02:25 - 4 minutes - 4.23 MBAll of human civilization is being organized around a "great power competition" between the US-centralized empire and the China/Russia/Iran bloc, and that "competition" stands to benefit ordinary humans in no way, shape or form. It will hurt all of us and help none of us. There's no valid reason why powerful nations can't simply work together toward their mutual benefit. But it would mean the US empire giving up its plans of total global domination, so it's not even being considered. This c...
Our Challenge Is To Transcend Our Evolutionary Ape Heritage
July 20, 2022 06:32 - 8 minutes - 7.59 MBIt is possible that our descendents will look back on humanity's existence on this planet from prehistoric times up until this crucial present moment as a kind of bridge between animal life and a new terrestrial expression that isn't driven by the unconscious conditioning patterns that have driven the movements of every species on this planet from the very first single-celled organisms onward. That what we're experiencing right now at this critical juncture is what it looks like before the em...
The Biggest Lie The Hawks Ever Sold
July 19, 2022 02:39 - 5 minutes - 4.68 MBThe biggest lie the hawks ever sold was that their militaristic policies prevent the problems they actually create. Militarizing against Russia caused this war. The war on terror created terror groups. Continuing the encirclement of China will likely lead to a nasty confrontation there. Etc. Reading by Tim Foley.
It Is True That This Civilization Is Made Of Lies
July 18, 2022 15:05 - 4 minutes - 3.91 MBIt is true that this civilization is made of lies, was grown by lies, is powered by lies, is controlled by lies. And it is true that this civilization is woven from violence, was birthed by violence, is sustained by violence, is preserved through violence. And it is true that this civilization is built on exploitation, is run on exploitation, exists to facilitate exploitation, is the product and the producer of exploitation. And it is true that this civilization is flying facefirst toward ...
The Fistbump Heard Round The World
July 16, 2022 02:30 - 3 minutes - 2.91 MBTwo powerful leaders met beneath the hot Jeddah sun to discuss oil and killing and friendship. One of the leaders rules a tyrannical regime which funds terrorists, murders journalists, suppresses civil rights and commits war crimes. The other, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is no better. They greeted not with the traditional handshake, nor with a stern finger wag from the American for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, but with the most epic fistbump in the history of civilization. S...
This Proxy War Has No Exit Strategy
July 14, 2022 16:10 - 7 minutes - 6.66 MBIn short, there is no exit strategy to this proxy war. There are no plans in place to deliver Putin a swift defeat, and the Biden administration remains steadfastly dismissive of even the slightest gestures toward diplomacy with Moscow. Boris Johnson has reportedly been buzzing around admonishing Ukraine's President Zelensky, France's President Macron and who knows who else not to work toward peace in Ukraine. The doors to ending this war quickly by either winning it or negotiating a peace se...
The Empire Is Showing More And More Of Its True Face
July 14, 2022 03:39 - 6 minutes - 5.82 MBGenocide walrus John Bolton outright admitted to planning foreign coups with the US government in conversation with CNN's Jake Tapper on Wednesday. That's coups, plural. Reading by Tim Foley.
Three Illuminating Quotes About The War In Ukraine
July 12, 2022 14:09 - 6 minutes - 6.22 MBNoam Chomsky, John Pilger, and Chris Hedges have lent their expertise to the subject of the war in Ukraine with some recent comments that help bring some much-needed clarity to an often confusing and always contentious issue. Reading by Tim Foley.
Political False Dichotomies: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
July 12, 2022 02:34 - 6 minutes - 5.94 MBYou may vote and debate freely on any issue which does not affect the functioning of the empire. When it comes to how money, weapons and resources move around the world, however, you suddenly find that your votes don't matter and your position has no mainstream representation. They'll let you argue until you're blue in the face over whether or not you can have an abortion or whether minorities should have civil rights; they'll even let you vote on it. But things like military expansionism and...
Humanity Is Learning That The Rules Are All Made Up And Can Be Re-Written At Any Time
July 10, 2022 02:37 - 7 minutes - 6.54 MBAnd what's interesting is that underneath all the babbling propaganda stories about what's happening in our world, humanity is indeed showing signs that we are collectively slipping out of our old relationship with mental narrative. It's happening in the usual sloppy, awkward, two-steps-forward-one-step-back shamble which has always marked all of human progress, but it's happening. It's happening in the way people are moving away from religion as we collectively discover that those ancient n...
Our Entire Civilization Is Structured Around Keeping Us From Realizing We Can Do This
July 09, 2022 11:03 - 4 minutes - 4.32 MBThe video footage coming out of Sri Lanka right now has been the recurring nightmare of every ruler throughout history. Thousands of protesters outraged by the deteriorating material conditions of the nation's economic meltdown have stormed the presidential palace of Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and I guarantee you the aerial footage as they poured into the building en masse has made every government leader and plutocrat a little uncomfortable today. Reading by Tim Foley. Link...
The Forgotten Ones
July 08, 2022 02:26 - 1 minute - 1.81 MBAnd then one day we just couldn't anymore. Couldn't keep up the maintenance on our shouldn'ts and shoulds. Couldn't pay the contractors to keep building our skyscrapers of spin. Could no longer hold up the weight of a world made of lies and so we let it splatter on the floor and sprout night orchids. And that was when the Forgotten Ones rushed in. No longer staved off by propaganda and pain, no longer contained by our cages made of mind, they set to work with sharp claws and great mandibles ...
UK To Swap Out Top Sociopath For A Different Sociopath
July 07, 2022 12:39 - 5 minutes - 4.7 MBBoris Johnson resigning would only be interesting in an alternate universe where there was some remote chance that he won't be replaced by another depraved sociopath. Reading by Tim Foley.
Democrats Love Saying That AR-15s Should Only Be Used On Foreigners
July 06, 2022 02:08 - 5 minutes - 4.96 MBEvery time there's a mass shooting in America with an AR-15, high-level Democrats line up to proclaim that those weapons should only ever be used to kill impoverished foreigners. The latest example of this ongoing phenomenon was Illinois Senator and Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth telling the press that a recording from the Highland Park shooting which killed seven people and wounded dozens more reminded her of her combat experience during that horrific invasion, saying the US needs to do b...
The US Government Hates Americans
July 05, 2022 02:10 - 5 minutes - 5.18 MBThe US government views the American people as an annoying distraction from its real job of managing a globe-spanning empire. They couldn't be more obvious about it. The only thing keeping Americans from seeing it are the media spinmeisters telling them daddy loves them all day. Reading by Tim Foley.
Information Anarchism
July 04, 2022 04:57 - 6 minutes - 6.32 MBOur civilization is built upon lies and obfuscation to such an extent that advocating for transparency and the democratization of information can be a complete political position, all by itself. Rather than claiming to know what's best for society (whether we should move left or right, whether we should espouse this model or that model), it is perfectly legitimate to simply support giving humanity the information tools necessary to know the truth about what's happening so that they can colle...
Tucker Carlson Is As Much A Propagandist As Anyone Else In MSM
July 02, 2022 04:21 - 7 minutes - 6.78 MBFox News's fabulously popular right wing pundit Tucker Carlson has ratcheted up his show's anti-China propaganda yet again, introducing his interview with Brazil's rightist president Jair Bolsonaro with a psychotic rant against Beijing that, were it about Moscow, would have looked perfectly at home among even the most demented mainstream liberal punditry at the height of Russiagate hysteria around 2018. Before attempting to help Bolsonaro reverse his abysmal polling against his left-wing opp...
Ukraine Is The Most Aggressively Trolled War Of All Time
July 01, 2022 02:28 - 6 minutes - 6.2 MBThe Ukraine war is the single most aggressively trolled issue I've ever witnessed. As soon as it started, Twitter was full of brand new accounts swarming anyone who uttered wrongthink about Ukraine, and now there are entire extremely coordinated troll factions working to scare people away from criticizing empire narratives about this war. It's plainly very inorganic, so it's good to recall what we know about the trolling operations of western militaries. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with l...
Mike Pompeo's Revealing Hudson Institute Speech
June 30, 2022 13:55 - 6 minutes - 6.01 MBFormer CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo gave a speech at the Hudson Institute last week that's probably worth taking a look at just because of how much it reveals about the nature of the US empire and the corrupt institutions which influence its policies. Reading by Tim Foley.
Empire To Expand NATO In Response To War Caused By NATO Expansion
June 29, 2022 02:53 - 5 minutes - 5.03 MBTurkey's President Erdoğan has officially withdrawn Ankara's objection to the addition of Finland and Sweden to NATO membership, with the three countries signing a trilateral memorandum at a NATO summit in Madrid. The removal of Erdoğan's objection was reportedly obtained via significant natsec concessions from the other two nations largely geared toward facilitating Turkey's ongoing conflict with regional Kurdish factions, and it removes the final obstacle to Finland and Sweden beginning th...
Holding Hands On The Precipice
June 28, 2022 13:42 - 2 minutes - 2.51 MBFrom our perch here on the edge of armageddon we are safe to gush out our love over everything, because we've got nothing left to save it for and nothing left to lose. I place slippery wet YES kisses on the black crows in your stomach and on the glowing red cardinal birds who fill the night sky. I hold your precious heart in my hands and my eyeballs grow vines into it and I weep round sloppy joy while telling you that you are perfect. There is great beauty to be found in the oceans choked w...
Ten Thoughts On Abortion
June 27, 2022 14:01 - 11 minutes - 10.6 MBOne It sure is mighty convenient timing for all political and electoral energy in the United States to suddenly get sucked up into a single issue which affects the powerful in no way, shape or form. I wouldn't have thought it would be possible for everyone's attention to get diverted away from inflation and the looming likelihood of wage reductions and soaring unemployment or the economic war with Russia that's making everything worse for everyone while pouring vast fortunes into the proxy w...
Western Officials Admit Ukraine Is Crawling With CIA Personnel
June 26, 2022 04:30 - 5 minutes - 5.3 MBThe New York Times reports that Ukraine is crawling with special forces and spies from the US and its allies, which would seem to contradict earlier reports that the US intelligence cartel is having trouble getting intel about what's happening on the ground in Ukraine. This would also, obviously, put the final nail in the coffin of the claim that this is not a US proxy war. Reading by Tim Foley.
The World Is Ruled By A Backwards Puritanical Regime
June 25, 2022 02:31 - 7 minutes - 6.64 MB"China is a strange, backwards nation ruled by tyrants," said the nation founded by Puritans who used to execute women for witchcraft and just killed reproductive rights protections because they think Jesus told them to. The world is dominated culturally, economically and militarily by a regime that just killed women's reproductive rights because they make Jesus mad. Reading by Tim Foley.
Imperial Narrative Control Has Five Distinct Elements
June 24, 2022 15:12 - 9 minutes - 9.11 MBAll of our world's worst problems are created by the powerful. The powerful will keep creating those problems until ordinary people use their superior numbers to make them stop. Ordinary people don't use their superior numbers to stop the powerful because the powerful are continuously manipulating people's understanding of what's going on. Humans are storytelling creatures. If you can control the stories humans are telling themselves about the world, you control the humans, and you control ...
People Don't Think Hard Enough About What Nuclear War Is And What It Would Mean
June 23, 2022 04:04 - 5 minutes - 4.81 MB"Because the Cold War is in the distant past, most people, especially younger people, haven't thought a lot about nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence, and they tend to be quite cavalier in their comments about nuclear weapons, and this makes me very nervous," Mearsheimer said. It makes me nervous too. Especially when we've got a steadily escalating proxy war which the standoff in Lithuania could easily see spin out into a direct hot war between Russia and NATO powers, and when we hear the...
Let's Fight WW3 Over Lithuania
June 22, 2022 01:54 - 6 minutes - 5.7 MBHey I've got a great idea, let's start World War Three over a NATO country that most Americans don't even know exists. Liberals learned the word "Lithuania" ten seconds ago and they're ready to nuke Moscow over it. Reading by Tim Foley.
Just For Fun
June 20, 2022 12:18 - 2 minutes - 1.93 MBJust for fun we all pretend to be strangers. Just for fun we pretend we don't know each other on the street, on the train, at the store, at the traffic light. Just for fun we pretend we aren't locked in ecstatic union and briefly ignore our intimate knowledge of the primordial secrets behind each other's eyes. We sit on the bus and try not to be the first to wink, or to burst out laughing at the silliness of our game, or to call out the goofy elephant in the room about how we're all pretendi...
The Guardian Churns Out Embarrassingly Awful Empire Propaganda
June 19, 2022 16:36 - 7 minutes - 6.81 MBThe Guardian has put out a smear piece on critics of the imperial Syria narrative that reads like propaganda made by seven year-olds without adult supervision. Reading by Tim Foley.
Assange Is Doing His Most Important Work Yet
June 18, 2022 02:31 - 6 minutes - 5.91 MBExtraditing a foreign journalist for exposing your war crimes is as tyrannical an agenda as you could possibly come up with. The US, UK and Australia colluding toward this end shows us that these are member states of a single empire whose only values are domination and control, and that all its posturing about human rights is pure facade. Assange keeps exposing the true face of power. There is in fact a strong argument to be made that even all these years after the 2010 leaks for which he is...
The Mainstream Worldview Is Self-Evidently Bullshit
June 17, 2022 02:13 - 6 minutes - 5.84 MBThe mainstream worldview is self-evidently bullshit. If our media and education systems were telling us the truth about the world and our "democratic" systems actually worked, our society would be arranged to serve the interests of the many rather than an elite few. You can tell the mainstream worldview is bullshit just by looking at its fruits. We're killing our ecosystem to serve an economic system that's creating greater and greater inequality while wars rage and nuclear brinkmanship thre...