JOHNSTONE

"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.

The US empire is telling Moscow "I'm the craziest motherfucker around, I'll keep ramping up the brinkmanship looking you right in the eye and daring you to use nukes," while telling the rest of the world "I am the voice of sanity that you should all look to for leadership."

One of the empire's faces is the virtuous upholder of freedom and democracy, while the other face puts on an intimidating show of viciousness like a prisoner biting off someone's cheek in the prison yard. At least one of those faces is necessarily lying.

Reading by Tim Foley.

In times like these

when nuclear warheads are being moved into position,

when weapons manufacturers can't keep up with the demand,

when the pundits are making everyone stupid and crazy,

when it's hard to remember Assange's face but you can't turn on a screen without seeing Zelensky,

when our culture is manufactured on conveyor belts in New York, Hollywood, Arlington and Langley,

when everything's fake but the bombs and blockades,

when it feels like we're rocketing toward armageddon next to Jeff Bezos in a space suit,

when it feels like the angels have become smack addicts but have to settle for shitty Fentanyl fixes,

when it feels like God got kicked out of the group home and has to sell his plasma and sperm for cash,

when it feels like Heaven must be powered by smoggy nineteenth century London coal,

when it feels like the angel and the demon on humanity's shoulders are double fucking our ear canals,

when the bastards have sleeves full of bottomless aces while we're still trying to learn the rules,

when annihilation feels like a certainty and transcendence like a fairy tale,

it helps to have somewhere solid to take your stand.

In times like these

when everyone's so alienated they have to consume chemical intoxicants together just to share affection with each other,

when everyone's so lonely they trap animals in their homes with them so at least they have something that can't leave,

when everyone's so afraid of their own vulnerabilities they preemptively attack anyone who lowers their guard,

when everyone's pouring their lives into generating profits for miserable employers who will never have enough,

when everyone's being driven mad by the pointlessness of a civilization built around wealth extraction,

when everyone's allowing themselves to be sedated into a coma so they can't experience their own despondency,

when the radiant authenticity of nature is paved over to build cinemas to watch CGI creatures in CGI worlds,

when the sacred song of the heart is getting drowned out by desperation for dopamine hits from strangers on apps,

when the causeless joy of being keeps getting lost to fear and insecurity,

it helps to have some grounding in the changeless.

In times like these

truth can sneak in

like a thief,

like a ray of light through the smallest crack,

like a children's cereal mascot finally nicking a bowl of that delicious sugary starch

(oh my god it's got marshmallows and turns the milk neon colors oh fuck oh god I'm cumming),

like a ninja,

like Batman,

truth can sneak in and bonk you on the head

leaving you unable to see anything but the primal oneness,

unable to remember how you ever got things so mixed up,

like Gilligan when he got hit with the coconut

(except good).

In times like these

no matter how fucked up you are

you can sometimes catch Buddha winking at you in the mirror.

In times like these

everything is so tenuous

that satori can come crashing in at any moment.

In times like these

Shiva can just get tired of putting on the act

and take off the you-mask and break character.

In times like these

anyone's petty and irrelevant natterings

can be interrupted by the hatching of their heart.

We are such weird, mascara-streaked, runny-nosed ape mutants.

We are sharp-toothed blood-splashing murder monkeys.

We are honey-hearted giants with galaxies in our eyes.

I really hope you know how beautiful you are,

no matter how hard things are

and no matter how hard things get.

You contain vast universes,

and I wish I could make full-length Broadway musicals out of all of them.

No matter what happens I will love you through and through

until the heat death of the universe

and beyond.

And we just might get our miracle after all,

beautiful ape mutant.

We just might get our miracle after all.

In times like these, anything is possible.

In times like these, anything can be.

In times like these, we've all got nothing to lose,

which means we've got nothing to lose

by leaping.

___________________

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

Decamp writes that "The lessening concern about Putin resorting to nukes appears to be based only on the fact that he hasn’t used any up to this point." But this is as logical as believing that it is safe and wise to jump even harder on the sleeping bear you've been jumping on just because the bear hasn't woken up yet.

The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future is a type of fallacious reasoning known as normalcy bias. The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future, even though you keep doing things to make it increasingly likely, is just being a fucking idiot. It's like Wile E Coyote jumping up and down on the land mine until it explodes because it didn't explode when the Roadrunner ran over it.

Reading by Tim Foley.

If the logic that "there are no innocent Russians" because the Russian people have a moral obligation to overthrow their warmongering government were evenly applied, it would also apply to Americans. Even more so, really, since their government is vastly more warlike than Moscow.

Per the "there are no innocent Russians" argument, Americans should be banned from participating in international events. Americans should be kicked out of foreign universities. Cinemas should stop playing Hollywood movies. Hemingway should be banned from schools.

Reading by Tim Foley.