Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

You know, everyone's always talking about how the US military is only ever used to kill foreigners for resource control and generate profits for the military-industrial complex, but that's not entirely true. Turns out the US military is also used for shooting down party balloons. Reading by Tim Foley.

There's this Pink Floyd line that's been rattling around in my head, "You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to." Because it's so true; you can't deceive people who don't trust you. Propaganda only works if people don't know it's happening — if they don't think of its source as untrustworthy. That's why it gives me hope that trust in the mass media is plunging to historic lows: if people sufficiently distrust those who lie to them, then those lies won't take root in their minds anymore. Without trust, the propaganda machine can't function.  All our world's troubles are ultimately due to propaganda; people only consent to status quo systems which hurt their interests because their consent is manufactured via propaganda. And that propaganda only works because of public trust in the messengers. We can fight this by working to exacerbate public distrust in the institutions that manufacture our consent, spreading public awareness of the fact that everything we've been taught to believe about our nati

The US government is permitted to have nuclear weapons in Australia. What's more, Australians are not permitted to know whether or not this is happening. What's more, not even Australia's elected senators are permitted to know whether this is happening. It's assumed to be none of Australia's business whether there are foreign nuclear weapons in Australia. This was clarified during a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday, when Greens senators were condescendingly admonished by the Australian foreign minister for the very normal and appropriate attempt to clarify the government's policy regarding the presence of US armageddon weapons on Australian soil. Reading by Tim Foley.

In the latest escalation in Australia's increasingly forceful campaign to manufacture consent for war with China, the Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia has aired a jaw-droppingly propagandistic hour-long special which advocates a dramatic increase in the nation's military spending. Reading by Tim Foley.

The Washington Post has a weird new article out citing multiple anonymous US officials saying that the Chinese "spy balloon" we've been hearing about for the last two weeks was never intended for a surveillance mission over North America at all. Reading by Tim Foley.

US war planes have shot down three unidentified objects in North American airspace over the last three days, which is entirely without precedent. On Sunday an octagon-shaped object was reportedly shot down over Lake Huron near the Canadian border after first being detected some 1,300 miles away over Montana on Saturday night. On Saturday a cylindrical object was reportedly shot down over Canada's Yukon territory by an American F-22, and on Friday an object "about the size of a small car" was reportedly shot down after being detected over Alaska. Reading by Tim Foley.

“We had people taking apart Russian propaganda and telling the true story on blogs,” WaPo was told by a source described as "a person in the Special Operations community." US special ops forces "employing Ukrainian operatives" to "take apart Russian propaganda" and "tell the true story on blogs" is just US special ops forces administering US propaganda online. Whether or not they actually see themselves as "telling the true story" or "taking apart Russian propaganda" does not change the fact that they are administering US government propaganda. A government circulating media which advances its information interests is precisely the thing that state propaganda is. Reading by Tim Foley.

(My sources are logic, common sense, and public statements by US government officials.) Reading by Tim Foley.

Days after the war in Ukraine began it was reported by The New York Times that "President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has asked the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, to mediate negotiations in Jerusalem between Ukraine and Russia." In a recent interview, Bennett made some very interesting comments about what happened during those negotiations in the early days of the war.  Reading by Tim Foley.

Being labeled a Russian propagandist all day every day for criticizing US foreign policy is really weird, but one advantage it comes with is a useful perspective on what people have really been talking about all these years when they warn of the dangers of "Russian propaganda". Reading by Tim Foley.

The US empire has been surrounding China with military bases and war machinery for many years, in ways Washington would never tolerate China doing in the nations and waters surrounding the United States. There is no question that the US is the aggressor in this increasingly hostile standoff between major powers. Yet we're all meant to be freaking out about a balloon. Reading by Tim Foley.

Don't let the fraudulence of this civilization eclipse the supernova of authenticity hidden just beneath that thin membrane. Don't let the vapid artificiality of mainstream culture cause you to miss the weird magic of life as it actually is. Don't let the barrage of advertisements screaming "THIS IS NEVER ENOUGH" distract from the symphony of joy in your cells at simply being alive. Don't let the nonstop corporate messaging that you are ugly conceal from you your radiant beauty. Don't let the Valentine's Day products from Hallmark steal the spotlight from our wide open hearts and our roaring passion. Don't let the authoritative dronings of the imperial pundits mask the fact that they are babies made of mysteries and stardust. Don't let the feigned confidence of the people around you trick you into thinking that any of us really knows anything. Don't let all the buildings and billboards make you forget that no matter where you go you are always in the thick of nature. Don't let the deluge of lies and p

People have a fairly easy time accepting that things are fucked because we are ruled by corrupt assholes. They have a much harder time accepting that we are ruled by corrupt assholes because our corrupt asshole systems will always necessarily elevate corrupt assholes to the top. It's easier to blame our problems on oligarchs or the Deep State or a cabal of satanic pedophiles than it is to blame them on systems that we ourselves participate in and have lived our entire lives intertwined with and which have been continuously normalized within our culture. If the problem is just a few corrupt assholes then it's not a very daunting problem, because all you have to do is remove those corrupt assholes and everything's golden. If the problem is the systems around which our entire civilization is structured, it's far more daunting. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's impossible to overstate how much our society is shaped by the fact that those who are given the most influence and the largest platforms will experience our status quo systems as working very nicely and have a vested interest in preserving those systems which benefit them. The media-owning, culture-manufacturing class of the super-wealthy elevates people to wealth and celebrity who look like they will be good protectors of their class interests. Those people will necessarily speak fondly of the status quo political systems which let them be rich. Reading by Tim Foley.

"Why don't you ever criticize RUSSIA'S warmongering?" is a question I am often asked with great indignation. People cannot comprehend why I would spend all my time criticizing the warmongering of the power structure I live under without spending any time criticizing the government they're used to hearing criticisms of. It's a question born of delusion and propaganda brainwashing, and it has several good answers. Here are some of my favorites. Reading by Tim Foley.

The other day I stumbled across a 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian titled "It's not Russia that's pushed Ukraine to the brink of war" by Seumas Milne, who the following year would go on to become the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn. I bring this up because the perspectives you'll find in that article are jarring in how severely they deviate from anything you'll see published in the mainstream press about Ukraine in 2023. It places the brunt of the blame for the violence and tensions in that nation at that time squarely at Washington's feet, opening with a warning that the "threat of war in Ukraine is growing" and saying there's an "unelected government in Kiev," and it only gets naughtier from there. Reading by Tim Foley.

The western alliance has established a policy of continually escalating every time Russia doesn't react forcefully to a previous western escalation, which necessarily means Russia is being actively incentivized to react forcefully to those escalations. Reading by Tim Foley.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its symbolic Doomsday Clock to ninety seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been set since its founding after the second world war. Chief among their reasons for doing so is the increasingly dangerous war in Ukraine. Reading by Tim Foley.

US-led provocations and escalations against China are becoming a regular occurrence, both from the US itself and from its imperial assets like Australia and Taiwan. Yet according to the western political/media class, the urgent threat of our day is "Chinese aggression". Reading by Tim Foley.

I often hear talk of how depressing it is to learn the truth about what's really going on in our society and in our world, including in the comments sections of the places my own writings appear. I'm always being asked for advice on how to keep going on when everything seems so dismal. This blog has largely functioned as a space where I document the ongoing expansion of my own awareness and understanding of the world and all its ills, an education which I suspect will continue for as long as I have a functioning brain. But to be honest in the six plus years I've been working at this project I've never once experienced a moment of the despair and depression I hear people talking about, and it's never once occurred to me to give up or stop fighting. Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.