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
Humanity Is Still Trying To Be Born
November 29, 2021 02:07 - 6 minutes - 5.89 MBTo have a healthy world we're going to have to metamorphose into a species which is not driven by fear and greed and us-versus-them othering. Which doesn't see my own suffering as meaningfully separate from the suffering of my neighbor. Which doesn't see the struggles of a population on the other side of the planet as meaningfully separate from the struggles of the population on this side of the planet. Where we collaborate with each other and our ecosystem instead of competing and killing an...
A Sense Of Perspective, If You Please
November 28, 2021 01:24 - 5 minutes - 5.37 MBThe US is going to start a nuclear war with Russia or China and the online left will still be focused on the Leftist Heretic of the Day for several minutes after the first bombs hit. Reading by Tim Foley.
We're Sleepwalking Into Nuclear War
November 27, 2021 00:19 - 4 minutes - 4.33 MBThis is so dangerous. This whole two-front nuclear brinkmanship game is so very, very dangerous, and they keep finding ways to make it more dangerous. And hardly anyone notices it, because the news media outlets that people look to to understand the world aren't telling them it's dangerous. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with links referenced in recording: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/were-sleepwalking-into-nuclear-war
Impending Planetary Disaster Should Unite Us, Yet We Remain More Divided Than Ever
November 25, 2021 00:42 - 4 minutes - 4.3 MBCharles Bukowski has a quote: “We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” Terrorized and flattened by trivialities, eaten up by nothing. I think about this quote a lot not just as pertains to the inevitability of our individual deaths, but to the looming death of the entire world. Reading by Tim Foley.
Erm I Know You're Busy But Nuclear War Is Getting Increasingly Likely
November 23, 2021 02:11 - 8 minutes - 7.38 MBAnd I just keep tripping on how weird it is that so few people see the US empire's headlong charge into cold war conflict with two separate nuclear-armed nations as the single most urgent concern of our day. It probably doesn't even make most people's top ten. Very few people seem to believe the most pressing threat to humanity might be all those armageddon weapons we've been stockpiling and how increasingly irresponsibly our leaders are treating them. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with lin...
The US Has As Much Moral Authority As Saudi Arabia On The Legitimacy Of Elections
November 22, 2021 02:55 - 4 minutes - 4.35 MBThis level of intrusiveness into Venezuela's heavily internationally monitored democratic process is typical of what we've been seeing from the US political/media class with regard to electoral contests in empire-targeted Latin American nations like Bolivia and Nicaragua. Which is really silly, because the US has no more moral authority over the legitimacy of democratic processes than a totalitarian monarchy like Saudi Arabia. Reading by Tim Foley.
War, Vaccine Mandates, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
November 21, 2021 01:35 - 5 minutes - 4.97 MBPeople who defend US foreign policy are terrorist sympathizers. Reading by Tim Foley.
Nobody Who Says "You Can Criticize Washington AND Beijing" Actually Does
November 19, 2021 01:53 - 5 minutes - 4.7 MBPeople who suffer conniptions over someone's failure to adequately criticize China or any other empire-targeted nation universally embody this dynamic. They don't criticize the US empire, or if they do they don't do so in a way that reflects how worthy of criticism those power structures are. Washington is plainly far, far more worthy of criticism than Beijing, but those who bleat "You can criticize BOTH" are never far more critical of Washington than Beijing. Typically, they are considerably...
What If They Staged A Cuba Uprising And Nobody Came
November 18, 2021 01:02 - 4 minutes - 4.16 MBThe US staging a domestic uprising in Cuba and no one showing up for it reminds me of that old saying "What if they had a war, and nobody came?" Reading by Tim Foley.
Renting Sucks
November 17, 2021 12:25 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MBWell, it finally happened. We finally received our eviction notice on the crumbling rental we've been living in for the last twelve years. Reading by Tim Foley.
Australian War Propaganda Keeps Getting Crazier
November 16, 2021 02:28 - 6 minutes - 5.51 MB60 Minutes Australia has churned out yet another fearmongering war propaganda piece on China, this one so ham-fisted in its call to beef up ADF military spending that it goes so far as to run a brazen advertisement for an actual Australian weapons manufacturer disguised as news reporting. Reading by Tim Foley.
Elizabeth Will Die Soon And Then We'll Have A "King" And It Will Be Hilarious
November 15, 2021 12:32 - 3 minutes - 3.33 MBWe are reminded that ol' Liz won't be around forever not just by the fact that her body is turning into Pringles chips but by the sudden uptick in the use of the phrase "future king" in news media references to Prince Charles, who will inherit the throne upon his mother's overdue demise. It will take a lot of prepping to get members of the British Commonwealth used to the idea that they are about to have a King, after all, because on its surface the very idea of it is so cartoonishly absurd. ...
US Coverup Of Syria Massacre Shows The Danger Of The Assange Precedent
November 15, 2021 02:07 - 5 minutes - 4.69 MBJulian Assange currently sits in Belmarsh Prison waiting to find out if British judges will overturn a lower court's ruling against his extradition to the United States to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for journalistic activity which exposed US war crimes. War crimes not unlike those that were just exposed by The New York Times in its reporting on the Baghuz massacre. The precedent the US government is trying to set with its persecution of Julian Assange will, if successful, cast a c...
Bloomberg CIA Apologia Accidentally Vindicates China's Strict Domestic Policies
November 11, 2021 01:28 - 5 minutes - 5.36 MBIn a new article promoting the CIA's new mission center focused on China and the need to pour more resources into countering Beijing, Bloomberg also accidentally makes the case that many of the Chinese government's controversial domestic policies are entirely justified and completely necessary. Reading by Tim Foley.
All US Elections Are Fraudulent; Shut Up About Nicaragua
November 09, 2021 02:15 - 5 minutes - 5.38 MBWestern media are blaring headlines today about a rigged election, not in the United States or any of the other powerful nations allied with it whose elections are consistently fraudulent from top to bottom, but in the small Central American nation of Nicaragua. Reading by Tim Foley.
Super Serious News Reporting
November 05, 2021 01:28 - 5 minutes - 5.2 MBHi I'm a very serious news reporter. The Russians are controlling our thoughts with Facebook memes and scrambling our brains with invisible ray gun attacks. In other news, capitalism is working fine and our wars defend freedom and democracy. The government never lies. Here's Bob with the weather. Reading by Tim Foley.
Mass Media Hasten To Help Pentagon Exonerate Itself In Afghan Airstrike
November 04, 2021 00:20 - 6 minutes - 5.79 MBThe world is dominated by opaque and unaccountable government agencies who are legitimized and normalized by the mass media. The Pentagon killed ten people, none of whom were combatants and seven of whom were children, tried to lie about it, got exposed, investigated itself and found that those who perpetrated the attack were not even guilty of so much as negligence, then classified the report and called it a day. And then the mass media legitimized this by calling it an "independent" investi...
It's Really Weird How Little We Talk About Humanity's Imminent Doom
November 03, 2021 01:26 - 7 minutes - 6.41 MBMeanwhile methane—a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon in the short term—has started hemorrhaging into the atmosphere from thawing arctic permafrost, and no one really knows what to do about it. This, like the albedo effect of polar ice loss and numerous other self-reinforcing warming effects that have been unlocking in recent years, can potentially cause the Earth to continue warming all on its own regardless of future human behavior. That's all on top of the western empire ramping ...
Billionaires Are Not Morally Qualified To Shape Human Civilization
October 31, 2021 12:02 - 5 minutes - 5.13 MBHuman civilization is being engineered in myriad ways by an unfathomably wealthy class who are so emotionally and psychologically stunted that they refuse to end world hunger despite having the ability to easily do so. Reading by Tim Foley.
Billionaire Reveals Virtual Reality Experience Called 'Mainstream Media'
October 30, 2021 12:51 - 3 minutes - 2.89 MBAt a hotly anticipated remote keynote presentation on Friday, billionaire Jeff Bezos revealed the details of an exciting new virtual reality experience which he says will allow consumers to log on to an artificial fantasy world completely unlike our existing reality. "We're calling it Mainstream Media, or MSM for short," Bezos told viewers. "MSM will allow users to interface with an alternate world of the imagination where capitalism is working fine for everyone, constant military expansioni...
From Press Freedom To Prison Systems, Everything Assange Touches Gets Illuminated
October 29, 2021 13:22 - 9 minutes - 8.79 MBAssange probably never set out on this journey with the goal of calling attention to the abuses of the US prison system as his foremost priority, but, as is so often the case with anything his journey touches, those abuses keep getting pulled into the light of public awareness anyway. His case is now no longer just about press freedom, US war crimes, corrupt governments collaborating to stomp out inconvenient truth tellers, and the malfeasance of US alphabet agencies, but about the abusive na...
The Assange Persecution Is Western Savagery At Its Most Transparent
October 28, 2021 01:08 - 6 minutes - 5.86 MBThe first day of the US appeal of the Julian Assange extradition case saw grown adults arguing in a court of law that the US government could guarantee that it would not treat the WikiLeaks founder as cruelly as it treats its other prisoners. I wish I was kidding. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-assange-persecution-is-western
Capitalism Is Violence
October 26, 2021 00:21 - 6 minutes - 6.14 MBA system which financially coerces those who have nothing to sell but their labor to work for companies for a fraction of the value they generate is violent. It is aggression. It is simply legalized theft. The only reason this isn't obvious to everyone is centuries of capitalist propaganda, and if people ever manage to free their minds from that indoctrination and begin moving to redistribute the wealth the capitalist class has stolen, guess what will happen? Armed forces will be deployed to ...
The Boy And The Starfish And The Yawning Chasm Of Infinity
October 24, 2021 11:56 - 8 minutes - 8.07 MBThe boy listened politely, then picked up another starfish and tossed it into the surf. "Made a difference to that one," he said to the man. "I mean that's a cute answer and all," said the man. "It would fit nicely in a Facebook meme shared by your religious aunty, or a motivational speech from the early nineties. But in the grand scheme of things you must surely understand that saving that one starfish is of no real significance? The tide will go out again tomorrow, and this beach will onc...
Cool "Afghanistan Withdrawal", Bro
October 24, 2021 00:16 - 3 minutes - 3.3 MBThe US government is reportedly close to securing a deal with Pakistan that will ensure its ability to continue military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan, the nation where the Biden administration proudly "ended" a decades-long war. Reading by Tim Foley.
We Are Ruled By Apes With PR Firms
October 23, 2021 00:08 - 9 minutes - 8.58 MBThe behavior of global oligarchic power structures makes a lot more sense when you see that it's not as much a lucid elite conspiracy as it is a few barely-conscious humans compulsively acting out psychological dynamics within themselves that they don't really understand. Elite conspiracies happen to be sure, but what's ultimately driving them is not a complete and coherent vision for the future which takes all things into account but rather the simple egoic impulses of barely-evolved primate...
Hackers, Havana Syndrome, And Other Invisible Russian Aggressions That Only The CIA Can See
October 21, 2021 01:49 - 6 minutes - 5.97 MBIt's just so interesting how Russia keeps attacking America in unverifiable and invisible ways that only the US intelligence community can see. First it was plot hole-riddled claims that Russian hackers attacked American democracy in 2016, and now it's invisible microwave beams from secret Kremlin ray guns. Someday soon we may turn on the news to see footage of an empty Capitol Building while a reporter solemnly tells us that it has just been stormed by GRU agents injected with invisibility s...
The Drivers Of Empire Want To Rule As Greek Gods
October 20, 2021 00:35 - 5 minutes - 4.96 MBThe imperial oligarchs wish to rule our world as Greek gods from Mount Olympus. If any population on earth disobeys them, they want to be able to cause sweeping famines in that nation, or rain down fire upon them from on high. They want to be able to control not just how all humans behave, but how they think as well. And, for the most part, they absolutely can do this. The drivers of empire can inflict famines upon entire populations by imposing starvation sanctions upon them using their con...
Refreshingly Honest Billionaire Says Media Purchase Will Be Used For Propaganda
October 18, 2021 00:45 - 4 minutes - 4.34 MBThe billionaire CEO of the multibillion-dollar corporation that recently purchased the news media outlet Politico has said that its newly acquired employees will be required to support Israel and the capitalist world order. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the German publisher Axel Springer, said that Politico staffers will be required to adhere to a set of principles which include "support for a united Europe, Israel’s right to exist and a free-mar...
The US Has Placed Itself In Charge Over Which Nations Get To Eat
October 17, 2021 13:25 - 10 minutes - 9.41 MBThe globally influential propaganda multiplier news agencies AP and AFP have both informed their readers that a "fugitive" has been extradited to the United States. "Fugitive businessman close to Venezuela's Maduro extradited to US," reads the AFP headline. "Alex Saab, a top fugitive close to Venezuela's socialist government, has been put on a plane to the U.S. to face money laundering charges," AP announced on Twitter. You'd be forgiven for wondering what specifically makes this man a "fu...
It Takes A Lot Of Education To Keep Us This Stupid
October 16, 2021 00:29 - 5 minutes - 4.77 MBThe fact that the propagandists have to work so hard to keep our society this insane means the natural gravitational pull is toward sanity. They have to educate us into crazier and crazier ways of thinking from the moment we go to school until we die, because otherwise we'll collectively awaken and shake off their shackles. It takes a lot of educating to keep us this stupid. You think you're struggling? You should see the people trying to manufacture consent for a status quo that is both pl...
Crypto Invalidates The Money Narrative
October 15, 2021 00:32 - 6 minutes - 6.39 MBThe financial elite hate crypto not because crypto itself poses a threat to their empire, but because its existence is destroying trust and belief in the "realness" narrative of money among regular people. Bitcoin is imaginary, but it's worth real money. Why? Because money is also imaginary. The complexity of the markets is absolutely essential in controlling the narrative around why a few live like kings while the rest work like slaves just to keep a roof over their heads. You, regular per...
Netflix To Launch WikiLeaks Smear Job Three Days Before Assange Court Date
October 14, 2021 00:51 - 3 minutes - 3.5 MBNetflix will begin streaming a brazen hatchet job on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for its American subscribers on October 24th, just three days prior to a significant court date in Assange's fight against extradition to the United States on October 27th. Reading by Tim Foley.
Let's Argue About Bisexual Superman
October 12, 2021 23:52 - 2 minutes - 2.54 MBLet's argue about bisexual Superman while the world burns, while they prepare us for war with China, while they take away our rights, while they steal more and more of our power and our wealth, while they rape our minds with advanced propaganda systems to shape us into pawns in a global chess game. Let's argue about bisexual Superman to avoid our fear of an unfathomable future, to compartmentalize away from how nothing makes sense anymore, to sedate the creeping sensation that everything we'...
Oh Great They're Putting Guns On Robodogs Now
October 12, 2021 13:20 - 5 minutes - 5.44 MBSo hey they've started mounting sniper rifles on robodogs, which is great news for anyone who was hoping they'd start mounting sniper rifles on robodogs. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/oh-great-theyre-putting-guns-on-robodogs Ghost Robotics video: https://youtu.be/3UBlQVB7vYI "Survival of the Richest" article: https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1
The Science Of Propaganda Is Still Being Developed And Advanced
October 11, 2021 00:45 - 8 minutes - 7.77 MBThink about how many technological advancements there have been in the military over the last century. Our rulers have been refining their methods of manipulating our sensemaking abilities to their advantage throughout that entire time, and only a small minority of us have even begun to realize that that manipulation is even happening. We're just learning to play checkers while they're mastering 3-D chess. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.subst...
Real Cancel Culture
October 10, 2021 00:04 - 5 minutes - 4.77 MBReal cancel culture is when the CIA plots to assassinate a journalist for publishing authentic documents in the public interest. Reading by Tim Foley.
Anyone Who'd Support Going To War Over Taiwan Is A Crazy Idiot
October 08, 2021 19:03 - 5 minutes - 5.29 MBA recent poll says that now more than half of Americans would support sending US troops to defend Taiwan from an invasion by the mainland, plainly the result of the aggressive propaganda campaign that has greatly escalated public hysteria about China. In Australia the mass media are cranking out unbelievably insane 60 Minutes episodes ridiculously pushing the idea that China may attack Australia and that Australians should be willing to go to war to protect Taiwan. I've been having many distu...
All Our Problems Are Built On Us-Vs-Them Propaganda
October 07, 2021 13:58 - 9 minutes - 8.61 MBHumanity's problems are made possible by mass-scale manipulation, and mass-scale manipulation is made possible by us-vs-them beliefs. If people weren't being aggressively manipulated into consenting to the status quo they would have used the power of their numbers to end the status quo a long time ago. Divide-and-conquer isn't just useful because it prevents people from unifying against their oppressors, it also pours rocket fuel on the oppressors' propaganda machine. Reading by Tim Foley. ...
The 'Psychedelic Renaissance' Is Entirely About Corporate Greed
October 04, 2021 10:47 - 7 minutes - 7.14 MBIt's not about waking people up, it's about turning them from broken cogs into useful cogs. It's not to free them from the machine but to help them better serve it, while also serving the interests of clever pharmaceutical investors. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-psychedelic-renaissance-is-entirely
Let's Touch Antennae In The Madhouse
October 03, 2021 15:06 - 2 minutes - 1.9 MBLet's touch antennae in the madhouse, beneath the throes of a dying world and the growing drums of war, beneath the din of the cannibal Karens and Covid culture wars and the miserable late night comedians pushing jokes out through oceans of pain. Let's touch antennae in the madhouse, where there are more empty homes than homeless and more jails than universities, where there is so little scarcity that we have to artificially create it and so much excess that we ship our garbage overseas. Wh...
The Corporations Are The Government
October 02, 2021 11:40 - 6 minutes - 5.71 MBThe corporations are the government. If you didn't believe it before, believe it now that human rights lawyer Steven Donziger has effectively been sentenced to six months in prison by Chevron itself. Reading by Tim Foley.
Shitlibs Literally Think Jimmy Dore Is Causing The Apocalypse
October 01, 2021 13:18 - 6 minutes - 5.94 MBOh dear god please let this be the peak of Jimmy Dore Derangement Syndrome. Link to the Matt Orfalea video: https://youtu.be/IEUhvJdQjvc Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/shitlibs-literally-think-jimmy-dore Reading by Tim Foley.
Manufacturing Culture
September 30, 2021 11:39 - 3 minutes - 2.93 MBIn Hollywood the Pentagon rewrites scripts about the military to manufacture consent for a globe-spanning empire to make US soldiers look like good guys to make US wars look like good wars to ensure continued recruitments to ensure a steady supply of young bodies to feed into the engine of a giant mechanical dragon that is fueled by human blood. They pipe our heads full of John Bolton brainworms and Lockheed Martin dreams. Our minds are colonized by shock and awe invasions through a neighbor...
Pompeo Effectively Admits To Assange Allegations
September 30, 2021 02:23 - 5 minutes - 4.81 MBIf Pompeo had not been involved in plots to kidnap, rendition and assassinate Julian Assange, he would have just said so. He wouldn't have engaged in all kinds of verbal gymnastics to squirm his way out of a difficult question, and he certainly wouldn't be calling for the criminal prosecution of his accusers for "speaking about classified activity inside the Central Intelligence Agency.” Reading by Tim Foley.
There Is No 'Good' Form Of Capitalism
September 28, 2021 11:32 - 5 minutes - 5.07 MBQ: What is capitalism? A: Capitalism is a system of transferring blame for society's problems from the people who cause those problems onto the people who are hurt by them. Reading by Tim Foley.
How Is The CIA Still A Thing?
September 27, 2021 12:01 - 7 minutes - 6.46 MBI mean, is it not out-of-this-world bizarre that we just found out the CIA recently drew up plans to assassinate a journalist for journalistic activity, and yet we're not all unanimously demanding that the CIA be completely dismantled and flushed down the toilet forever? Reading by Tim Foley. Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/how-is-the-cia-still-a-thing
People Don't Understand How Unfree We Already Are
September 26, 2021 12:48 - 5 minutes - 5.2 MBThe biggest and most widespread blind spot among those who oppose totalitarian control by the powerful is the assumption that it has not already been achieved. We've been so busy watching out for the next overtly totalitarian dictatorship that wants to put the jackboot on our necks we never noticed the covert totalitarians sliding the shackles around our minds. Reading by Tim Foley. Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/people-dont-understand-how-unfree
Electoral Politics Does Not Work
September 24, 2021 12:19 - 6 minutes - 5.99 MBIt says a lot that AOC wasn't even able to vote against an Israeli apartheid measure that everyone already knew would pass regardless of her vote. I mean, how far gone is your progressive revolution if you're not even allowed to have a perfectly safe performative "no" vote? If even the illusion of opposition is banned? Reading by Tim Foley.
True Humility, True Forgiveness
September 23, 2021 11:54 - 5 minutes - 5.07 MBSome people think humility means thinking of yourself as lowly and inferior, but that's not right. Evangelical Christian author Rick Warren attempts to correct this misperception with the famous saying, “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” But that's not really it either. True humility is the realization that the very thing you've come to think of as your "self" is an entirely illusory construct. Reading by Tim Foley. Featured image by David...