JOHNSTONE

The Bill Kristol-led group "Republicans for Ukraine" has released a TV ad to help drum up GOP support for Washington's proxy war against Russia, and it's surprisingly honest about what this war is really about: advancing US strategic interests using Ukrainians as sacrificial pawns.

Reading by Tim Foley.

So while we members of the public were blindly speculating about whether or not Russia would attack Ukraine, the US intelligence cartel was fully aware that the US was taking actions ensuring that that would happen. That's the environment the US security state knew it was operating under when it continued to taunt the idea of adding Ukraine and Georgia to NATO right up until the final moments before the invasion.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Western officials and media pundits are now directly acknowledging that Ukraine's much-touted "spring counteroffensive" has been a catastrophic failure, but rather than seeing this as a reason to reconsider the mainstream political consensus on this war, they are instead telling everyone that the counteroffensive's failure means we must commit to the status quo of bloodshed and nuclear brinkmanship for years to come.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Whenever I talk about the rapidly increasing number of US military bases and operations surrounding China I get empire simps telling me "But the people in those countries WANT us there!" Okinawa shows it's always been a nonconsensual relationship disguised as a consensual one.

Reading by Tim Foley.

"War is good for business."

So reads a quote from an arms industry executive in a recent Reuters article titled "At London arms fair, global war fears are good for business" about Europe's biggest arms show, the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International. You will probably be unsurprised to learn that Reuters does not name the war profiteer whose quote inspired their headline.

Reading by Tim Foley.

During a Sunday appearance on Face the Nation to plug his new Zelensky movie, actor Sean Penn decried the "cowardice" of the US government in its caution around provoking a nuclear exchange with its proxy warfare in Ukraine.

Reading by Tim Foley.

A very confused and distressed young man wandered into our home on Sunday and began acting erratically. He was clearly suffering from a severe mental illness, probably schizophrenia, and from his nice clothes yet disheveled appearance I'm guessing he had a home somewhere but had been on the street for a few days.

Reading by Tim Foley.

It's so hard to live as an authentic human being in a civilization whose every molecule is wrapped around something as vapid and soulless as corporate profits.

It's what most of us pour most of our life force into. Most people work all day generating corporate profits to pay bills that go toward corporate profits and pay off loans from giant banks for their corporate profits or rent from real estate giants for their corporate profits. Then they come home, eat some products from giant megacorporations that they purchased at a supermarket chain, and unwind by watching entertainment created by corporations to draw as many eyeballs as possible or scrolling through social media platforms designed by corporations to be as addictive as possible. We do this while being surrounded all day by advertising designed to pull us into generating more corporate profits.

Reading by Tim Foley.

We must never let ourselves become desensitized to this. To any part of this.

We must never cease appreciating the sun on our skin and the wind in our hair, and we must never cease being shocked by the fact that there are people whose entire job is to push for more war.

We must never lose our sense of wonder at the birds in the air, and we must never lose our sense of horror at the fact that there are people who profit from war and militarism and lobby for more of it at every opportunity.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Twitter account of America's 44th president just casually shared some links to organizations providing relief to the victims of the terrible flooding in Libya, which as of this writing has already killed thousands of people.

And that would of course be a fine and normal thing for America's 44th president to do - had America's 44th president not personally played a massive role in paving the way to the devastation we're seeing in Libya today.

Reading by Tim Foley.