JOHNSTONE

A recent Cambridge study found that this hostility toward China has been on the rise in recent years not just in Australia but throughout the "liberal democracies" of the US-centralized power alliance. But what's interesting is that public opinion is exactly reversed in the much larger remainder of the Earth's population, with people outside the US power cluster just as fond of China as those within that power cluster are hostile toward it. This relationship is largely mirrored with Russia as well.

"Among the 1.2bn people who inhabit the world’s liberal democracies, three-quarters (75%) now hold a negative view of China, and 87% a negative view of Russia," the report reads. "However, for the 6.3bn people who live in the rest of the world, the picture is reversed. In these societies, 70% feel positively towards China, and 66% positively towards Russia."

Reading by Tim Foley.

Love like there's no yesterday

like you're the first to ever love

like it's fresh and for the first time

because it is fresh and for the first time

and the illusion otherwise is just a trick of human perception

Love like a hermit crab that said fuck it

and cast aside its shell forever

Love like a three year-old rides a tricycle

Love like the nukes just started flying

Love like two middle aged bloggers

making out in the rain while Australia floods

Love like cobwebs and calliopes

Love like a geyser of starlings

pouring from your chest cave

Love like God just cracked you open

and gazed at all the parts of you you're most ashamed of

the things you feel most guilty about

and chuckled sweetly

at how you think any of that matters

in this roaring ocean of infinity

Love like an intimate ultrasound

of the world that's waiting to be born

Love like everyone's watching

and you're a slutty little attention whore

Love like peacock angels in screaming orgasm

Love like you deserve to love

and be loved

because you do

because you do

I swear to you on my accordion heart

and my warzone womb

and my eyes that are brimming with my grandmother's tears

you deserve to love and be loved

you do

you do

and it is safe

and it is right

and it is good

Love like tender holiness kisses

Love like swampwater messiahs

Love like watching My Dinner with Andre for the very first time

home alone with the lights out

and a box of tissues

and a mind full of wonder

Love like eating an orange while listening to crickets

Love like a heartfelt impromptu pop song serenade

from an adoring lover

who cannot sing

Love like a mother noticing that her prattling child

will never be that age again

Love like you are a very young primate

in a very old universe you do not understand

and your accomplishments mean nothing

because everything's so big

so all that matters is love

and loving

Love like a scarecrow saint

Love like a balrog buddha

Love like babies eating ice cream

Love big

Love hard

Empty the tank

Leave it all in the ring

There's nothing to save it for anyway

________________

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone

The official narrative promoted by the entire western political/media class is that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February of this year solely because he is evil and hates freedom. He wants to conquer as much of Europe as possible because he cannot stand free democracies, because he is another Adolf Hitler.

The official narrative is that while Russia is in Ukraine solely because its leader is an evil monster like Hitler, the US is in Ukraine solely because its leaders are righteous. The United States is providing arms, military intelligence, and assistance on the ground from special ops forces and CIA officers to Ukraine, as well as implementing an unprecedented regime of economic warfare against Russia, solely because the US loves its good friends the Ukrainians and wants to protect their freedom and democracy.

Mainstream punditry in the latter half of 2022 is rife with op-eds arguing that the US needs to vastly increase military spending because a world war is about to erupt, and they always frame it as though this would be something that happens to the US, as though its own actions would have nothing to do with it. As though it would not be the direct result of the US-centralized empire continually accelerating towards that horrific event while refusing every possible diplomatic off-ramp due to its inability to relinquish its goal of total unipolar planetary domination.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Comparisons of Putin to Hitler only sound profound and relevant if you only just began paying attention to US foreign policy and are therefore unaware that literally every single US enemy is always copiously compared to Hitler. It's like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, except there is no wolf, and the boy just keeps crying "Wolf!" over and over again, and the villagers never learn their lesson and never stop believing him.

Because mainstream westerners ignored all wars until Ukraine, they don't know we've seen all these tricks before. They don't know the war propaganda is airing reruns. They think it's new to compare today's Official Enemy to Hitler. They never question the atrocity narratives. They don't know the US always lies about every war. They think it's a crazy conspiracy theory to suggest that the actions and motives of their government isn't what they've been told.

Reading by Tim Foley.

I stand here before you

in my mother's hand-me-downs,

in this world where mothers must work like they don't have children

and parent like they don't have jobs,

keeping households running and bills paid

while their hearts run around outside their bodies

on tiny little legs that don't yet know where the wolves are,

but don't you dare over-mother them,

or under-mother them,

or get anything wrong while treading laundry

and kung fuing the kitchen

and, oh yeah,

if you could save the world from nuclear armageddon

and environmental collapse when you get a minute

that'd be great.

I stand here before you

in my mother's hand-me-downs,

with my mother's strangled voice,

and my mother's Pinesol hands,

and my mother's weeping back,

and my mother's feral chores,

and my mother's loving patience,

and my mother's gritted teeth,

and my mother's inner beauty

that you never get to see —

her inner world of unheard symphonies

and unpainted art

and oceans of sleeping babies,

neatly stuffed into a housecoat

drowned out by a Helen Reddy song.

I stand here before you

in my mother's hand-me-downs,

glaring with crosshair eyes at eelfaced manipulators

who blacken the children's sky,

who poison my children's water,

who microplastic my children's blood,

who scorch my children's Earth

to turn billionaires into trillionaires,

vowing "I see you,

I'll stop you,

right after this dentist appointment,

right after this assignment,

right after these taxes,

right after this to-do list,

I'll be ready to stop you

in, like, two more weeks, maybe,

or maybe two weeks after that."

I stand here before you

in my mother's hand-me-downs,

with my mother's intuition

(two eyes in the back of her head —

"I can see what you are doing!"),

but my many eyes can only glance

before more dishes pile up

before the to-do list unfurls  —

I'll get to it, I'll get to you,

I'll stop you,

I will,

I see what you are doing,

I just need to take the kids to daycare

but make the sandwiches first

and stop off on the way to work

for a part to fix the air con

before the summer comes

before the heat you stoked

with dinosaur bones

and Canary Island loopholes

and the infantile ambitions

of impotent men

hits our little rental

(that I'm so grateful to have

so grateful I am

on-my-hands-and-knees grateful

your-cock-in-my-throat grateful

please don't kick us out we love you we do)

like a solar wind storm

barbecuing my children

in this tent made of weatherboards

like a tiny funeral pyre

for bad women,

naughty witches,

ladies flying solo

who need to be put in their place.

Just two weeks.

Just two weeks.

Just two weeks more.

Just two weeks and I'll sit in silence for while.

Just two weeks and I'll write this all down.

Just two weeks I need to get this stuff done.

Just two weeks.

Just two weeks.

Just two weeks,

and I'll stop you.

____________________

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has retracted an extremely mild, toothless letter its members had written to President Biden politely asking him to consider adding a little diplomacy into the mix to help end the conflict in Ukraine. The retraction followed a deluge of public outrage against their slight deviation from the official imperial narrative.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Western propaganda means people always oppose the last war but not the current war. The US provoking and sustaining its Ukraine proxy war is no more ethical than its invading of Iraq; it just looks that way due to propaganda. Ukraine isn't the good war, it's just the current war.

It is only by the copious amounts of propaganda our civilization is being hammered with that this is not immediately obvious to everyone. In the future (assuming we don't annihilate ourselves first), the propaganda will have cleared from the air enough for people to see clearly and realize that they were lied to. Again.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Biden administration is reportedly considering opening a national security review of Elon Musk's business ventures which could see the plutocrat's purchase of Twitter blocked by the White House, in part because Musk is perceived as having an "increasingly Russia-friendly stance."

Reading by Tim Foley.

We should probably talk more about the fact that the US empire is loudly promoting the goal of achieving peace in Ukraine by defeating Russia while quietly acknowledging that this goal is impossible. This is like accelerating toward a brick wall and pretending it's an open road.

The narrative that Russia can be defeated by escalating against it makes sense if you believe Russia can be defeated, but the US empire does not believe that Russia can be defeated. It knows these escalations are only going to exponentially ramp up death and devastation.

Reading by Tim Foley.