JOHNSTONE

Crazy, unrealistic people believe all our systems are rigged for the benefit of the rich and powerful.

Rational, realistic people believe all our systems happen to benefit the rich and powerful by pure coincidence.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Wall Street Journal put an article out a few days back titled "In Defense of the Defense Industry" and subtitled "Populists of the right and left attack U.S. companies that make weapons. Who do they think protects us?" And it's exactly what it sounds like: the author defending war profiteers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin from critics of the military industrial complex.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The US Air Force is clearing out jungles in the Pacific and replacing them with airfields for its coming war with China,

because there exist people on this earth who look at a jungle and think, "This should be replaced with an airfield to prepare for a war with China."

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

Vladimir Putin said at the Eastern Economic Forum on Tuesday that he wouldn't expect any meaningful changes in US policy toward Russia if former president Donald Trump secures re-election next year.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Recent comments from a wealthy Australian property developer named Tim Gurner are going viral on social media right now for the unusual frankness with which he discusses the inherent conflicts of interest between the working class and employers, saying workers who've grown lazy and arrogant during Covid need to experience economic pain in the form of unemployment to rein them in and put them in their place.

Reading by Tim Foley.

You dive down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, searching for the man behind the curtain. You've seen enough to be convinced that everything you've been taught about the world is false, and now it's just a matter of finding out who's really responsible for making such a mess of things.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The world would be a much more healthy and harmonious place if the US really was the peace-loving, tyranny-opposing democracy that it and all its propaganda systems frame it as. But because the US government is actually the most tyrannical regime on earth and values nothing apart from its own ability to dominate as many members of the human species as possible, we live in a world of far greater peril and abuse than we otherwise would.

Reading by Tim Foley.

During an appearance on ABC's This Week with Jonathan Karl, Secretary of State Tony Blinken explicitly said that the US would not oppose Ukraine using US-supplied longer-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory, a move that Moscow has previously called a "red line" which would make the United States a direct party to the conflict.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Part of growing up is learning that laws do not exist to prevent wrongdoing, they exist to keep society moving in an orderly way for the benefit of the world's worst perpetrators of wrongdoing. None of the world's worst people are in prison. Most of them are quite wealthy and respected, because they benefit from the abusive status quo that laws are set up to protect.

Reading by Tim Foley.

They make up fictional horrors because they don't want you looking at the real ones. They don't want you looking at the suffering of the homeless on the street. At the working poor flailing in endless toil unable to get their heads above water and relax for a minute. At the families in nations like Venezuela, Syria, North Korea and Iran struggling to obtain food and medicine because of imperial economic warfare. At the emaciated bodies of Yemeni children. At the shredded corpses of drone bombing victims. At the inconvenient facts behind the horrors in Ukraine. At Julian Assange languishing in a maximum security prison for the crime of good journalism. At the indoctrinated masses marching blindly to the beat of the imperial drum while being trained to believe they are free. At the biosphere we depend on for survival being poisoned and fed into the machine of global capitalism. At the nuclear holocaust dangling over our heads by an increasingly tenuous thread.

Reading by Tim Foley.