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.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
How Much Are We Prepared To Sacrifice To Help The US Win A Propaganda War Against Putin?
April 16, 2022 12:54 - 10 minutes - 9.54 MBThe one argument you'll get, if you really press the issue, is that the United States is in a propaganda war with Russia, and it is in our society's interests for our media institutions to help the United States win that propaganda war. Cold wars are fought between nuclear powers because hot warfare would risk annihilating both nations, leaving only other forms of war like psychological warfare available. There's no argument that this new escalation in censorship saves lives or protects elect...
More Escalations In Online Censorship
April 15, 2022 12:38 - 10 minutes - 9.3 MBIt's not healthy to seek control over what people say and think. Free speech is important not because it makes people sad when they don't get to say what they want, but because the free exchange of ideas and information is how we collectively bring awareness to problems, change minds, stir the zeitgeist, and, if necessary, organize mass resistance. And that's exactly why the powerful work to prevent the free exchange of ideas and information. If people are permitted to stand at the center of...
The Assange Case Invalidates US Criticisms Of Russia
April 14, 2022 12:26 - 6 minutes - 5.53 MBWe're about to see a judge sign off on Julian Assange's extradition to the United States for exposing the empire's war crimes while that same empire blasts us all in the face with an unprecedented war propaganda campaign about rescuing Ukraine's freedom and democracy. "Russia must be held accountable for its war crimes," said the empire while imprisoning a journalist for trying to hold it accountable for war crimes. Just the fact that the US and UK are imprisoning a journalist for exposing ...
A Love Letter To All Draft Dodgers
April 13, 2022 13:15 - 4 minutes - 45.1 MBThe New York Times is naming and shaming Ukrainian men who've fled the country rather than stay and kill Russians for Washington, because it was illegal for men of military age to leave, and because their countrymen are angry at them, and because it's the New York Times. Reading by Tim Foley.
US Suddenly Pretends To Care About Rights Abuses In India
April 12, 2022 13:39 - 5 minutes - 5.36 MBNo, the US State Department does not care about human rights abuses. Blinken's remarks are just the latest in a series of shots across the bow that the US empire has been firing at New Delhi to warn it against moving into alignment with Moscow. Reading by Tim Foley.
If It Feels Like You're Being Manipulated, It's Because You Are
April 11, 2022 13:11 - 4 minutes - 4.15 MBIf you've got a gut feeling that your rulers are working to control your perception of the war in Ukraine, it is safe to trust that feeling. Reading by Tim Foley.
When You Lie It's Misinformation, When They Lie It's Cool
April 09, 2022 12:56 - 6 minutes - 5.63 MBCan't believe we've been watching people lose their social media accounts for posting "misinformation" this whole time only for US officials to come right out and admit that they've been running an active disinformation campaign where they knowingly circulate lies about Russia. Reading by Tim Foley.
Twitter IS "State-Affiliated Media"
April 08, 2022 11:49 - 8 minutes - 7.38 MBRegardless of whether you agree with Galloway's argument or not, this all overlooks the innate absurdity of a government-tied social media corporation like Twitter labeling other people "state-affiliated media". Twitter is state-affiliated media. It has been working in steadily increasing intimacy with the United States government since the US empire began pressuring Silicon Valley platforms to regulate content in support of establishment power structures following the 2016 election. In 2020...
US Officials Admit They're Literally Just Lying To The Public About Russia
April 07, 2022 13:26 - 9 minutes - 8.52 MBNBC News has a new report out citing multiple anonymous US officials, humorously titled "In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn't rock solid". The officials say the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out "intelligence" about Russia's plans in Ukraine that is "low-confidence" or "based more on analysis than hard evidence", or even just plain false, in order to fight an information war against Putin. The report says ...
The Real One-World Government Conspiracy Is US Unipolar Hegemony
April 06, 2022 11:43 - 8 minutes - 8.22 MBPeople lost their minds when President Biden uttered the phrase "new world order" last month and were quickly informed by mainstream "fact checkers" that this does not validate longstanding conspiracy theories about an elite agenda to create a one-world government. In reality, though, the real agenda to create a one-world government is not some hidden conspiracy involving secret societies and shadowy figures with Jewish surnames. The US empire is openly working to unite the planet under a sin...
US Interventionism Always Makes Things Worse
April 05, 2022 14:27 - 6 minutes - 6.3 MBUS military interventionism always makes things worse and never accomplishes what its proponents claim it will accomplish. It's stupid to have to keep saying this year after year. There's nothing wrong in Ukraine that direct US military intervention couldn't make much, much worse. Reading by Tim Foley.
Pundits Who Advocate Hot War With Russia Are Enemies Of Humanity
April 04, 2022 14:00 - 7 minutes - 6.78 MBUkraine is still accepting foreign volunteers. If these omnicidal war sluts are so horny for "direct military involvement" against Russia, I wish they would just get on a plane and go do it themselves without trying to drag all of humanity into it with them. You want direct military involvement? Fine. Go do it yourself. Be the direct military involvement you want to see in the world. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with relevant links: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/pundits-who-advo...
The US Empire's Ultimate Target Is Not Russia But China
March 31, 2022 00:25 - 7 minutes - 7.13 MBOn the empire's grand chessboard, Russia is the queen piece, but China is the king. Just as with chess it helps to take out your opponent's strongest piece to more easily pursue checkmate, the US empire would be well advised to try and topple China's nuclear superpower friend and, as Consortium News editor-in-chief Joe Lauria recently put it, "ultimately restore a Yeltsin-like puppet to Moscow." Reading by Tim Foley.
Sure, Ukraine Is The First War The US Hasn't Lied About
March 29, 2022 12:12 - 6 minutes - 5.71 MBFucking ridiculous that it's 2022 and it's still a shocking and controversial position to say your government and media are lying to you about a fucking war. You know you're living under an empire with the most sophisticated propaganda machine that's ever existed when it can lie about literally every war it's ever been involved in and then when you say they're lying about the latest war people still act like you're a paranoid lunatic. Reading by Tim Foley.
Yes It's A Proxy War: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
March 26, 2022 16:11 - 6 minutes - 5.94 MBPeople say "This is not a proxy war! How dare you call this a proxy war?" Pouring billions of dollars worth of weaponry into a foreign nation to be used by CIA-trained fighters with the direct ongoing assistance of US military intelligence is in fact the exact thing that a proxy war is. That is what those words mean. If the Ukraine war is not a proxy war, then there has never been a proxy war. Reading by Tim Foley.
More Evidence That The US Is Trying To Prolong This War
March 25, 2022 14:01 - 5 minutes - 4.94 MBSo the US government is continuing its established policy of refusing to attempt any high-level diplomatic resolutions to this war despite its public hand-wringing about the horrific violence that's being inflicted upon the people of Ukraine. This revelation fits nicely with a recent report by Bloomberg's Niall Ferguson that sources in the US and UK governments have told him the real goal of western powers in this conflict is not to negotiate peace or end the war quickly, but to prolong it in...
Being This Close To Nuclear War Should Change How We See Things`
March 24, 2022 13:48 - 13 minutes - 12.7 MBThe swelling likelihood of imminent armageddon draws everything into focus. Helps clarify your priorities. Helps you figure out how to live your life from moment to moment. And from where I'm sitting this clarity brings with it a sense of responsibility as a human being. A responsibility to really be here now. To truly live our lives with presence and appreciation. To drink deeply of the cup of human experience. Because the only thing worse than everything ending would be if it ended without...
They're Enslaving Our Minds And Driving Us Toward Destruction
March 24, 2022 01:50 - 7 minutes - 7.01 MBYou know you are being aggressively propagandized about Ukraine by the mass media and by Silicon Valley. You can feel it in your guts. Everyone can feel it, on some level. It feels gross. The split on this issue is between those who trust this gut feeling and those who choose to psychologically compartmentalize away from it. Because if you don't compartmentalize away from it, the implications of this are very frightening. It means pretty much everything you've been told your whole life abou...
Defending Ukrainian "Democracy"
March 22, 2022 01:17 - 6 minutes - 6.09 MBWe're risking a very fast, very radioactive third world war defending the "democracy" of a regime who just banned eleven opposition parties. Reading by Tim Foley.
The Only 'Agency' Ukraine Has Is The Central Intelligence Kind
March 21, 2022 02:10 - 9 minutes - 8.26 MB"You're denying the agency of Ukrainians!" This is a line you've probably had bleated at you by propagandized empire livestock if you've engaged in online debate about the role western powers have played in paving the way to this war. One of the many, many tricks that imperial spinmeisters have pulled out of their hats in their shockingly frenetic campaign to manage the narrative about what's happening in Ukraine is to insist that it's outrageous and disgusting to suggest that Ukraine is b...
People Overestimate The US War Machine And Underestimate The US Propaganda Machine
March 20, 2022 03:19 - 7 minutes - 7.08 MBSo this is a media outlet funded by a government-run "NGO" being forcefully pushed in front of millions of western eyeballs by a major Silicon Valley corporation that people have come to rely on for getting information about the world. In the same way Silicon Valley facilitates government censorship by proxy, it also facilitates government propaganda by proxy. Article version: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/people-overestimate-the-us-war-machine?s=w Reading by Tim Foley.
Erasing History To Own Putin
March 19, 2022 14:33 - 7 minutes - 6.62 MBPutin is bad so Yuri Gagarin didn't go to space and Tchaikovsky wasn't a good composer and Dostoevsky was a lousy writer and Sputnik was designed by Lockheed Martin and Anton Chekhov was Welsh and Khabib Nurmagomedov was born in Minnesota. Reading by Tim Foley.
It's Not Okay For Grown Adults To Think This Way About Ukraine
March 18, 2022 13:40 - 4 minutes - 4.39 MBIt's not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe the US is pouring weapons into a foreign nation to defend freedom and democracy. It's not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe serious military conflicts consist of Good Guys fighting Bad Guys like a children's cartoon show. It's not okay to be a grown adult in 2022 and believe a war is being fought between an evil monster who is the same as Hitler and a virtuous sexy comedian of surpassing bravery and wisdom. Reading by Tim Foley.
The Awesome Power Of US Propaganda: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
March 18, 2022 01:23 - 4 minutes - 4.4 MBSometimes I can only stop and stare in awe at the power of the US propaganda machine. Almost the entire global north has been paced into perfect alignment with cold war agendas geared toward securing US unipolar dominance by an unprecedented propaganda and censorship campaign. There's nothing intrinsic in Russia's invasion of Ukraine which says the nation must be strangled to death by unheard-of levels of economic warfare from Washington-loyal governments. A huge international consensus need...
International Law Is A Meaningless Concept When It Only Applies To US Enemies
March 17, 2022 01:44 - 7 minutes - 6.5 MBAustralian whistleblower David McBride just made the following observation on Twitter: "I’ve been asked if I think the invasion of Ukraine is illegal. My answer is: If we don’t hold our own leaders to account, we can’t hold other leaders to account. If the law is not applied consistently, it is not the law. It is simply an excuse we use to target our enemies. We will pay a heavy price for our hubris of 2003 in the future. We didn’t just fail to punish Bush and Blair: we rewarded them. W...
The Huge Gap Between How Serious Nuclear War Is And How Seriously It's Being Taken
March 16, 2022 01:12 - 9 minutes - 8.66 MBSo I think we're seeing a broad lack of awareness among the general public of just how close to the precipice we are for the same reason nuclear winter theory has been suppressed: because if everyone deeply understood how dangerous these unipolarist grand chessboard power plays are, and how they deliver no real benefit to ordinary people, they wouldn't permit them to happen. A responsible news media would be educating the public about things like nuclear winter, and how easy it would be for ...
This Ain't Putin's Price Hike
March 13, 2022 13:59 - 9 minutes - 8.35 MBLet's be clear: you're not paying more for necessities to punish Putin and save Ukraine, you're paying more for necessities to fund an economic war of unprecedented scale geared toward collapsing Russia to help secure US unipolar domination of this planet. It's not "Putin's price hike". This was all orchestrated by the empire, from root to flower. The goal is to use economic warfare and a costly counterinsurgency against western-backed Ukrainians to either collapse and balkanize the Russian ...
The US And Ukraine Have Every Reason To Lie About The War
March 12, 2022 13:24 - 8 minutes - 7.73 MBUkraine's only chance at stopping Russia in the near term would be if it could persuade NATO powers to take a more direct role in combat, like setting up a no-fly zone as President Zelensky has persistently pleaded with them to do. One way to get around NATO's rational resistance to directly attacking the military forces of a nuclear superpower would be to appeal to emotion via atrocity propaganda. By circulating a narrative that Russia has done something heinous which cries out to the heaven...
Umm… Are We The Baddies?
March 11, 2022 13:12 - 6 minutes - 6.3 MBTwitter has also altered its rules against incitement and death threats in the case of Russian leaders and military personnel, as Ben Norton explains here for Multipolarista. Last month we also learned that Facebook is now allowing users to praise the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion because of the war, a move that is arguably the most liberal thing that has ever happened. Western institutions everywhere are rejecting all things Russia with such a savage degree of xenophobia it really ough...
Let's Re-Learn The Word 'Detente': Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
March 10, 2022 13:12 - 5 minutes - 5.09 MBThe word "detente" has been deliberately scrubbed from the western lexicon. This has created a false dichotomy where everyone thinks the only choices are either escalate until we have a nuclear war or "OMG SO JUST GIVE PUTIN WHATEVER HE WANTS AND LET HIM TAKE OVER EUROPE???" Any time you oppose freakish world-threatening escalations that's the response you always get: "So just give into the bully and let him have everything?? That's appeasement!" They're sincerely unaware that there's a thir...
The US Chose This Conflict: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
March 09, 2022 01:14 - 11 minutes - 10.6 MBJust your regular reminder that the US empire (A) had solid intelligence that this war was coming, (B) knew they could prevent it by making very reasonable, low-cost concessions like promising not to add a nation to NATO that they didn't want to add anyway, and (C) chose not to. Reading by Tim Foley.
Australian Government Sanctions People For Sharing Unauthorized Thoughts
March 08, 2022 12:37 - 6 minutes - 6.26 MB"The Australian Government is sanctioning 10 people of strategic interest to Russia for their role in encouraging hostility towards Ukraine and promoting pro-Kremlin propaganda to legitimise Russia’s invasion," reads a new statement from Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne. "This includes driving and disseminating false narratives about the 'de-Nazification' of Ukraine, making erroneous allegations of genocide against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, and promoting the recognition of t...
We Ended It All Out Of Boredom
March 07, 2022 12:25 - 3 minutes - 2.78 MBIn the end we went the way of the dinosaur not because of any asteroid or apocalyptic disease, nor because we failed to adapt quickly enough to environmental changes, but because we got bored. We let the bastards (who were just as bored as the rest of us) wave their warheads around like dongs at a bachelorette party, even egging them on, calling for starvation sanctions and no-fly zones and endless escalations in brinkmanship, because there was nothing new on Hulu, because CNN needed the rat...
Ukraine Is A Sacrificial Pawn On The Imperial Chessboard
March 06, 2022 14:29 - 11 minutes - 11 MBThe war is not going well for Kyiv, and it would be unreasonable to expect that to change. As a vastly superior military force overwhelms the US client state, reality is in the process of crashing down hard in the face of western liberals who bought into the war propaganda that the brave, sexy comedian was leading an upset victory to kick Putin's ass out of Ukraine. Zelensky is now raging at NATO powers for refusing to intervene militarily against Russia, apparently having previously been gi...
Is This Russian Propaganda?
March 05, 2022 00:59 - 7 minutes - 6.52 MBIf they were telling us the truth about Russia they wouldn't be censoring Russian media. Reading by Tim Foley.
The Overton Window Is Being Shoved Toward Warmongering Extremism
March 04, 2022 02:14 - 7 minutes - 6.67 MBWhen you've got the hawks screaming that Putin is Hitler and calling for airstrikes on the Russian military while the doves are using extremely mitigated both-sides language and taking great pains to forcefully condemn Putin to avoid being shouted down and censored, what you wind up with is a spectrum of debate that has been pulled so far toward insanity that the "moderate" position becomes support for unprecedented acts of economic warfare and funding a brutal insurgency in Ukraine. Reading...
Spotify Purges Dissident Voices In Latest Censorship Escalation
March 03, 2022 15:01 - 8 minutes - 7.43 MBMultiple American podcasters who speak critically of the political status quo in their country are reporting that their channels have been shut down as the censorship campaign against Russia-backed media continues to escalate. These include Moment of Clarity with Lee Camp, The Politics of Survival with Tara Reade, and By Any Means Necessary on Radio Sputnik. Reading by Tim Foley.
Defending Freedom And Democracy Sure Requires An Awful Lot Of Censorship
March 02, 2022 02:15 - 5 minutes - 4.74 MBKremlin-backed media outlets have been banned throughout the European Union, both on television and on apps and online platforms. RT has lost its Sky TV slot in the UK, where the outlet is also blocked on YouTube. Australian TV providers SBS and Foxtel have dropped RT, and the federal government is putting pressure on social media platforms to block Russian media in Australia. In the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Latvia, speaking in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will get you yea...
Every US Enemy Is Hitler
March 01, 2022 13:08 - 9 minutes - 8.47 MBI am convinced that mainstream culture's fascination with World War II has made us all dumber. Everyone just lives in this dopey children's cartoon now where every US enemy is Hitler and they're the brave hero who is fighting Hitler. Reading by Tim Foley.
The Single Most Important Question In The World Right Now
February 28, 2022 16:25 - 8 minutes - 8.23 MB"Is what the US and its allies are trying to accomplish in Ukraine worth continually risking nuclear armageddon for?" Reading by Tim Foley. Article with relevant links: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-single-most-important-question?utm_source=url
'Russian Propaganda' Is The Latest Excuse To Expand Censorship
February 27, 2022 16:33 - 8 minutes - 7.5 MB"I’m concerned about Russian disinformation spreading online, so today I wrote to the CEOs of major tech companies to ask them to restrict the spread of Russian propaganda," US Senator Mark Warner tweeted on Friday. Since then YouTube has announced that it has suppressed videos by Russian state media channels so that they'll be seen by fewer people in accordance with its openly acknowledged policy of algorithmically censoring unauthorized content, as well as de-monetizing all such videos on ...
Civilized Nations Kill With Sanctions And Proxy Armies
February 26, 2022 14:29 - 7 minutes - 6.74 MBIf the Kremlin wanted to kill large numbers of people it should have done so with starvation sanctions and proxy militias like a civilized government. Fashion has moved on since the early 2000s, you savages. Reading by Tim Foley.
Twelve Thoughts On Ukraine
February 24, 2022 17:02 - 7 minutes - 7.21 MBPutin has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the goal of which he claims is not to occupy the country but to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” it. We've no reason to put blind faith in any of those claims. Only time will tell. As of this writing dozens have reportedly been killed so far. All war is horrific. We can only hope that this one winds up being the least horrific a war can be. Reading by Tim Foley.
Perhaps The US Should Shut The Fuck Up About Respecting Other Countries' Sovereignty
February 22, 2022 02:06 - 5 minutes - 5.37 MBThe US empire criticizing Russia for violating another nation's sovereignty is like Jeffrey Dahmer criticizing someone else's eating habits. Reading by Tim Foley.
The Media's Odd Double Standard On Evidence Required For Claims Of An Impending Attack
February 21, 2022 14:03 - 6 minutes - 6.04 MBAfter weeks of uncritically passing along completely unevidenced claims about an endlessly imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, the mass media have suddenly remembered basic journalistic ethics when reporting on claims that Ukraine is plotting an attack on Russia-backed separatists. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with relevant links: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-medias-odd-double-standard-on?utm_source=url
The US Empire Is Evil And You Should Want It To Fail
February 20, 2022 14:32 - 5 minutes - 5.22 MBIt's not that the US elects incompetent leaders who make bad decisions that kill millions of people with warfare, it's that the global US empire is held together with military violence and the threat thereof. It's an intrinsically evil institution and you should always oppose it. It's not that the US government has done evil, it's that the US government is itself evil. The very way it has set itself up to operate in the world necessarily means it must exert endless violence and oppression to...
The Burden Of Proof Is Always On The Ones Making The Claim (Even If It's About Russia)
February 19, 2022 14:04 - 6 minutes - 5.75 MBThe onus is not on anyone else to prove that the US and UK governments are lying when they make these claims, the onus is on the US and UK governments to prove that they are telling the truth. At some point after Donald Trump's election it became a mainstream liberal doctrine that you can say whatever you want about Russia no matter how outrageous and suffer no professional consequences if it proved completely false, and nobody's really been pushing back on that. So many people built entire c...
The US Has Zero Moral Authority
February 18, 2022 01:33 - 6 minutes - 5.93 MBPost-Iraq the US has zero moral authority. The narrative managers aim to suck you in to arguing about the minutiae of the inner workings of the latest target of the empire, when in fact a simple "Shut the fuck up, it's none of your business" is all they deserve. Reading by Tim Foley.
Russian Invasion Prognosticators Are Like Cult Leaders Repeatedly Predicting The Apocalypse
February 17, 2022 01:47 - 6 minutes - 6.11 MBRadio evangelist Harold Camping famously predicted that the Apocalypse would occur on September 6, 1994, then again on September 29 of the same year, and then again on October 2. In 2005 he revised his claim and said the real Rapture was coming on May 21, 2011, and then when that failed to pan out he said it was happening on October 21 of that year. Whenever he got a prediction wrong he'd just do some more magic Bible math and move the date into the future. Camping was one of many exploitati...
"Russian Propaganda" Means Disputing US Propaganda
February 16, 2022 02:41 - 6 minutes - 6.06 MBThe Associated Press has published yet another article based on unevidenced assertions by anonymous government officials about the scary horrifying frightening Russian menace, this time to accuse another media outlet of promoting propaganda. Without a trace of irony. "U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken directi...