JOHNSTONE

Normal people use language to communicate and connect, while manipulative people use language to control and extract.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Western politics is mostly just empire managers making up fake problems to fight so they don't have to address the real problems.

Can't stop waging wars or the western empire will collapse. So they make up fake threats from dictators and tyrants and take action to stop them.

Can't stop inflating the military budget and circling the planet with more and more war machinery or the military-industrial complex will stop reaping profits. So they tell you to be afraid of Muslims and "terrorists" and Russia and China and take action to protect you from them.

Can't stop polluting the world and destroying the biosphere or capitalism will perish. So they split us into two mainstream warring factions arguing about culture war wedge issues and promise to protect each faction from the other side.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Israel's mass atrocities in Gaza have always been about ethnic cleansing from the very beginning.

Reading by Tim Foley.

I hold out hope because people aren't buying the propaganda like they used to.

I hold out hope because trust in the imperial media is at an all-time low while our ability to attack and discredit the official narrative is at an all-time high.

I hold out hope because more and more people are realizing that capitalism simply does not work.

I hold out hope because empires don't last forever.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Israel was founded on the premise that the country’s previous inhabitants need to be eliminated in some way.

That’s all this has ever been about.

It was never about October 7.

It was never about Hamas.

It was never about hostages.

It was never about terrorism.

It was never about self-defense.

It was never about any of the countless excuses the hasbarists and imperial spinmeisters have offered up over the last three years to justify Israel’s monstrous abuses.

It was only ever about eliminating Palestinians because of their ethnicity and replacing them with Jews.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Ask why there's been so much violence in the middle east these last three years and you'll be told it's because of October 7.

Ask why October 7 happened and you'll be called an antisemite.

Ask what specifically transpired on that day and you'll be called a conspiracy theorist.

Reading by Tim Foley.

They're designing park benches

so that homeless people can't sleep on them

and placing metal spikes beneath overpasses

so they can't be used as shelter.

Jerry Seinfeld says Palestine doesn't exist

and that sometimes socks go missing in the dryer,

wocka wocka

ha ha ha

it's funny because it's a witty observation

about life's everyday little goofy goofs.

Fast food wrappers blow in the wind

like the leaves used to do.

Duct-taped gargoyles with garbage bag wings

peer down at the din of civilization

as we march over the sidewalk sleepers

to our Jobs,

stepping over dead bodies

while staring at our phones

and counting the minutes

til we can go home to our sofas

and watch wocka wocka comedians

and shovel SSRIs into our faces

from large plastic bowls

so the crushing beauty of our world

and the knowledge of our mortality

doesn't topple us like Jenga blocks

and make us weep like open fire hydrants.

In this din they don't want you to feel.

They don't want you to think.

They don't want you to hear.

They keep it all CLANG, CLANG, CLANG,

BUY, BUY, BUY,

WORK, WORK, WORK,

WOCKA, WOCKA, WOCKA,

so that you can't feel your body.

So that you can't hear the songs.

There's bird song

and whale song

and heart song

and lung song.

There's fire song

and sea song

and wind song

and tree song.

There's ancestor song

and mountain song

and sun song

and wolf song,

and lots of others I bet;

I can't hear any of them.

Oh, except thought song,

which blasts through my head

like a sonic homeless deterrent

in a shopping center alleyway,

and,

like them,

I have nowhere else to go.

____________

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

There are two types of racism in the west: the kind that's considered acceptable in polite liberal society, and the kind that's widely frowned upon.

The acceptable type of racism is the kind which considers it fine and normal to drop bombs on Muslim families overseas. The kind which sees starvation sanctions as a minor issue whose pros and cons are assessed solely on the basis of whether they will be successful or unsuccessful in achieving regime change. The kind which views imperialist extraction from the global south as the natural order of the world, with centrists and progressives squabbling only about how evenly that plunder should be distributed among westerners.

The unacceptable type of racism is the kind which affects other westerners. The kind whose consequences western liberals have to see.

Reading by Tim Foley.

There are plenty of reasons why we should all avoid using AI, but the push to offload all the responsibility for the ecological consequences of data centers onto individual users instead of just regulating AI companies is typical capitalist power-serving bullshit.

Reading by Tim Foley.

A spirituality that is uninterested in ending war, genocide, poverty and injustice is a dead spirituality. If you hold your time on the meditation cushion as something separate from the weeping mother clutching a small body in Lebanon, you're wasting your time.

Reading by Tim Foley.