JOHNSTONE

Just as the United States hits its first official trillion-dollar annual military budget, the New York Times editorial board has published an article which argues that the US is going to need to increase military funding to prepare for a major war with China.

Reading by Tim Foley.

We definitely don't need to wait until the bastards have been defeated and we're feeling safe and secure in order to begin our healing journey.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The blue whales have stopped singing

because the krill are vanishing

because the oceans are warming

because we are ruled by long-toothed liars

whose insides are full of dead leaves.

The great whales have gone silent

and my bird has gone blind

and there are chatbots in the basement

and corpses in the corn.

Under the overpass it is dry and still.

You would never know that everything is dying.

You should come and visit me.

Meet me over there under the sepia streetlights

with the strangleporn perverts and fentanyl fallen,

all the stillborn scar tissue extractions

from the wreckage of a banished womb,

the NAFTA-noosed factory towns full of deserted buildings

and the window-snarling meth towns full of deserted people,

where the cries of orphaned Palestinians mingle

with the cries of the last baby orangutan

ever born in the wild.

Meet me under the flickering lights.

Bring me some smokes and a sad luck story

and let's stay up late by the freeway

watching the traffic get sparse.

Show me the spots on your skin

where life has kicked you

and I will kiss them

and give you a flower.

The leviathans have gone quiet

and the turbines are getting loud,

and everything has become so strange.

So sit with me on this curb

under my burlap wing

and let's laugh

and heal

and mark beauty

until sunrise.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Trump campaigned on being a president of peace and continues to stake his personal reputation on big talk about peacemaking, but in terms of concrete action he's just as much of a warmonger as the psychopaths who came before him.

Reading by Tim Foley.

If Maduro really was a monstrous tyrannical dictator the US would be selling him F-35s.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Gonna follow the dinosaurs out the door because it was too uncomfortable and confrontational to tell a few billionaires and empire managers to fuck off.

Reading by Tim Foley.

One thing I try not to think about very often is how many reports we've been seeing about Israeli prison guards training dogs to rape Palestinian captives in torture camps like Sde Teiman.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Whenever I see the US empire saying they plan to remove the latest Official Bad Guy from power in order to liberate a nation from tyranny, I always want to ask, what is tyranny?

Is it tyranny to constantly topple foreign governments by force if their leaders disobey you?

Is it tyranny to circle the planet with hundreds of military bases in order to dominate all of humanity?

Is it tyranny to continuously be inflicting mass military slaughter, backing genocides, staging foreign coups, fomenting unrest and uprisings in foreign nations, meddling in foreign elections, funding proxy conflicts, imposing blockades and starvation sanctions on civilian populations, and engaging in nuclear brinkmanship in order to rule the world?

Is it tyranny to treat the entire global south as your personal piggy bank from which to extract limitless labor and resources and murder anyone who tries to inhibit these practices through any movement toward national sovereignty?

Reading by Tim Foley.

The most common misconception about the free press of the western world is that it exists.

Reading by Tim Foley.

It's just so insane how this doesn't sit front and center in our attention all the time. There are people dying of starvation, exposure and preventable illnesses every single day for no good reason. Humanity became more than capable of ensuring that this never happened to anyone ever again, and just rode right past that stunning moment in history without even glancing up from its smartphone.

Reading by Tim Foley.