Caitlin Johnstone

Reading by Tim Foley:

I need you to understand that nothing is going to be done about anything in the Epstein files.

Nothing.

The people in the documents will suffer no consequences. The institutions responsible for the abuses you’ve learned about will not change anything about how they operate. Your government will change absolutely nothing about its policies and behavior.

Nothing will be done if you vote in the other political party. Nothing will be done if you vote in new politicians. Nothing will be done if you write letters to your senators and representatives. Nothing will be done if you hold protests outside government buildings.

No meaningful laws will be passed. No prosecutions of any meaningful consequence will occur.

Don’t believe me? Just watch and pay attention.

This verse has been stuck in my head for days. pic.twitter.com/CeWbqU8RQ8

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) February 3, 2026

The power structure which birthed the Epstein abuses is not going to do anything about the Epstein abuses. The only thing that might possibly change is that some people may become radicalized against that power structure.

That’s the only real benefit that might come out of these Epstein releases the public has been demanding for years. That a few more eyes might get opened to how creepy and evil the people in charge of their society actually are.

How creepy and evil capitalism and the western empire are. How creepy and evil Israel and Zionism are. That the collective might become a bit more aware that we live in a dystopia which elevates the very worst among us to positions of leadership and control.

That’s it. That’s the only positive change that might come out of all this. Our rulers won’t do anything to help right the wrongs, but the people might become a bit more ready and willing to overthrow our rulers.

That’s the only way health and humanity is going to win this one. By waking up to reality one pair of eyelids at a time and realizing that the reason everything is fucked is because we live under a fucked up system which elevates fucked up people, and we’re not going to have a healthy world until we abolish the fucked up system that put the fucked up people in power.

The Epstein releases won’t change the abusiveness of the system. But they might nudge people toward dismantling that system.

___________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Reading by Tim Foley:

I saw a video of a food delivery robot navigating around the body of a homeless person lying on the sidewalk, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Nothing right about this reality pic.twitter.com/EgDkJkaQac

— Invisidon (@QuantumAlteredX) January 30, 2026

This video is as close to a self-portrait of western civilization as it gets. This is who we are. This is where we’re at. Might as well have giant letters with a big red arrow saying “YOU ARE HERE” overtop it.

It captures so perfectly the creepy dance between suffering, apathy, frivolity and corporate profiteering that makes our particular dystopia so distinctive, in just a few short seconds of footage. This is the dance that makes the empire go round.

It’s got everything:

– A man splayed out on the concrete because it hurts to be human in this global ghost town, and because he was unsuccessful at becoming a productive gear-turner in the capitalist machine, and because social safety nets have been stripped bare in order to help millionaires become billionaires.

– Automation being used to eliminate workers’ wages for the maximization of corporate profits, when it could be getting used to bring about a permanent end to toil and poverty for the entire human species.

– Technological innovation stagnating at fast food delivery robots and predatory service apps instead of inventions which help save our biosphere, provide for the needful, heal the sick and improve our quality of life, because sending someone a Big Mac in a snackbot through an app will generate profits, while making the world a better place will not.

– The machine calmly navigating around the unfortunate soul on the pavement in the same way all the human pedestrians have been doing all day, because that’s what we all learn to do in a society which casts those who can’t keep up to the side of the road like so much refuse.

This is where we are. This is what we have become.

That robot steering its way around that man on the sidewalk is revealing more truth about the kind of world we are living in than you will ever receive from the corporate news media.

That robot has the real story.

That robot is giving you the real on-the-ground scoop on what’s really going on here.

That robot is a better reporter than Jake Tapper. It certainly has more journalistic integrity.

We’re all following that robot off a cliff, into an abyss of madness and oblivion.

__________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Reading by Tim Foley:

Epstein documents have been confirming for months that he was clearly and undeniably an Israeli intelligence operative, which the latest round of releases have strongly reinforced. So naturally the western media are running with the story that Epstein worked for Vladimir Putin.

A new Daily Mail article is headlined, “Epstein’s sex empire was ‘KGB honeytrap’: Paedophile financier had multiple talks with Putin after conviction — with Russian girls flown in to harvest ‘kompromat’ on world-famous figures.”

The Daily Mail is owned and controlled by billionaire British aristocrat Jonathan Harold Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, who was the subject of a recent Guardian article titled “Move over, Murdoch: will Lord Rothermere be Britain’s most powerful media mogul?”

Here's Epstein wearing his KGB t shirt https://t.co/TXKl7hcEFq pic.twitter.com/WdOThW744E

— Hughes-on-the-Wold (@NotThatHughes) February 1, 2026

A Headline from The Telegraph blares “Epstein’s links to Putin and Kremlin spies raise fears he was Russian agent.” The Telegraph is owned and controlled by British billionaire Sir Frederick Barclay.

A headline by Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun asks, “As FBI files reveal fake passport, secret recordings and links to the KGB and Putin — was Jeffrey Epstein a Russian SPY?” It should here be noted that according to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”

“Emails reveal new theory about whom Jeffrey Epstein was really working for,” reads a headline from Murdoch’s New York Post, with author Anthony Blair writing that “Emails showing unnamed sources discussing meetings between Epstein and the Russian president are prompting questions about whether the disgraced Wall Street figure may have trafficked girls from Russia in a state-backed effort to run the world’s ‘largest honeytrap’ to ensnare the rich and the powerful.”

They are trying to Russiagate the Epstein files

We have the most braindead commentariat in world

Literal quote from FBI source: “Epstein was close to the former PM of Israel, Ehud Barak and trained as a spy under him”

Marr is running interference here. Our media is compromised https://t.co/0hQrbl3V8z

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) February 2, 2026

Imperial propagandist Andrew Marr is saying on LBC that there are now “growing suspicions of a Russian connection” to Epstein, suggesting that the financier’s mysterious fortune must have come from Moscow because “he filmed and taped powerful western leaders in deeply compromising situations.”

This is of course ridiculous. Epstein is a known intelligence operative for the state of Israel, not Russia. This is an established fact, and has been for some time.

Back in November we discussed how Drop Site News had been publishing reports about Epstein’s intelligence ties under headlines like “Israeli Spy Stayed for Weeks at a Time With Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan”, “Jeffrey Epstein Helped Broker Israeli Security Agreement With Mongolia”, “Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad: How The Sex-Trafficker Helped Israel Build a Backchannel to Russia Amid Syrian Civil War”, and “Jeffrey Epstein Helped Israel Sell a Surveillance State to Côte d’Ivoire”.

at least NYPost didn't turn off the comments to this hilarious IDF dump. Israel has a credibility problem that can't be solved by redirecting at baddie Putin. Everything Israel-connected, Epstein or genocide, is depraved human darkness, and people know it.https://t.co/KtC4zXqiAG

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) February 2, 2026

Drop Site’s Ryan Grim recently noted on Twitter that the latest Epstein files released by the DOJ make this an even more conclusively established fact than it already was.

“One of the main arguments mainstream media figures make in private as to why they haven’t been able to follow Drop Site’s reporting on Epstein and his links to US and Israeli intel is that a lot of the documents we relied on are leaked and not confirmed officially by the government,” Grim said. “With this latest DOJ dump, many of the emails are now confirmed 100% as authentic, so that excuse vanishes. Let’s see if they can report it now.”

And, of course, they can’t report it now, for the same reason they’re presently trying to spin Epstein as a Russian agent. The mass media do not exist to report verified news stories, they exist to promote the information interests of the western empire and the oligarchs who steer it. 

It certainly does not serve the interests of the oligarchs and empire managers to have people reading the Epstein files with the view that he was an Israeli operative conducting his abuses and manipulations at the highest levels of society with the blessings of the western intelligence cartel. So of course they’re scrambling to make it about Russia.

_________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone:

Smoke and sky spiders fill the air
as missiles smash into Gaza
and powerful men drive needles
into the flesh of young girls.

Turns out Chomsky partied with Epstein,
so now I have to take up vaping
and go fill a shoebox with polaroid photos
of dead birds in car parks.
I’ll pretend I’m doing it ironically
so no one mocks my prayer cards 
for a dying world.

Sometimes the Buddha looks like the Buddha.
Sometimes he looks like bleached coral reefs,
or rapefinger plutocrats with pointy teeth.
Sometimes he looks like a woman in her early fifties
sobbing snot-nosed and red-faced
at the cruelty of it all
in pajama bottoms 
and a Pink Floyd t-shirt.

The war drums are getting louder,
and the bank boys are getting horny again,
and the flesh of the innocent is so soft
and so easy to digest,
and the darkness hides so much,
and the light makes so little difference.

But we shine it anyway.

We shine it anyway.

________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature photo by Caitlin Johnstone (public domain).

Reading by Tim Foley:

“Government X does bad things” and “therefore the US should forcibly overthrow Government X” are two completely different claims. Propagandists keep acting like they’re the same claim and like the second claim naturally follows the first, and I’m seeing far too many people accepting this manipulation without question.

They are not the same claim. They’re entirely unrelated. It should not be necessary to explain this to grown adults, but here we are.

Even if we accept as fact all the claims about how badly the US-targeted government is behaving, and even if we ignore the obvious fact that unilateral US regime change wars are against international law, there is still no valid reason to accept that a government doing bad things justifies US regime change interventionism.

Just because a foreign government has done bad things does not mean it would be good if another government took military action to overthrow them. This is uniquely true of the United States, who is quantifiably the single most tyrannical government on earth, and whose regime change interventionism reliably causes more death, suffering and abuse than its proponents claimed they were trying to stop.

The United States is the very last government on earth who has any business engaging in humanitarian interventionism. Literally dead last. No other government has been responsible for more catastrophic military actions justified under humanitarian pretenses than Washington and its network of allies and proxies.

Most of the violence, chaos and instability we’ve seen in the middle east in recent decades has been the fallout from prior western interventionism under the leadership of the United States. Dropping a Jewish ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization, installing puppet regimes, setting up military bases, invading Iraq, backing the Saudi genocide in Yemen, deliberately fomenting violent uprisings in Libya and Syria, and countless other interventions have kept the middle east from following the rest of humanity into a state of relative peace and stability after the second world war.

“Therefore the US should forcibly overthrow Government X” also doesn’t naturally follow from “Government X does bad things” because the US generally doesn’t overthrow governments who do bad things. A majority of the world’s dictatorships are armed and supported by the United States.

There are many, many tyrannical governments in our world whose abuses you hardly ever hear about, because they are not enemies of the US empire. You don’t hear western media and western governments constantly shrieking about the mass atrocities of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other tyrannical Gulf state monarchies, for example, because they are aligned with the global interests of the US hegemon.

This shows that the US never actually attacks countries to stop their governments from doing bad things. That might be the excuse, but it’s never the reason. The governments targeted by the United States do tend to be more authoritarian than the western liberal ideal because if they weren’t controlling their country with an iron fist they would have already folded to US efforts to absorb them into the imperial power umbrella a long time ago, but that’s never the real reason for targeting them.

The real reason is global hegemony. The US never attacks foreign governments because they are doing bad things, it only ever attacks them for being disobedient and failing to kiss the imperial ring.

It is therefore crazy and stupid to pretend “Government X does bad things” should naturally give rise to the expectation that the US should forcibly overthrow that government. The US never deposes foreign governments for doing bad things, and when it does depose them it reliably leads to far more chaos, suffering and destruction than if it had just minded its own affairs.

Propagandists rely on repetition, echo chambers, information dominance and narrative distortion to manipulate our minds. But they also rely on our own lack of basic critical thinking skills. A little robust examination of our underlying assumptions goes a long way.

_______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Department of War (public domain).

Reading by Tim Foley:

I don’t know what to say today. We are ruled by abusive monsters.

The US is preparing for war with Iran.

They’re going in for the kill shot on Cuba.

The latest batch of Epstein emails looks horrifying.

The US is full of protests because ICE keeps killing people.

Israel is still massacring civilians in Gaza as Australia prepares to host its president for an extended visit.

Reuters has confirmed that Biden officials actively obstructed the circulation of internal USAID reports that Gaza was being turned into a nightmarish hellscape in early 2024.

There’s so much cruelty. So much abuse.

You’d think all this evidence that we are ruled by deranged psychopaths would unite us against them, but it doesn’t. The population is more angrily, bitterly divided against itself than ever. 

Political discourse has gotten as intensely vitriolic as I’ve ever seen it as Trump supporters take their stand behind the current abuser-in-chief and defend the status quo warmongering and tyranny with all their might. Discussing politics on social media feels like stepping into an emotional blast furnace these days.

They’ve done such a good job dividing us and conquering us. It’s really incredible how good at it they are. It would be awe-inspiring if it wasn’t so evil and destructive.

I haven’t felt like I’m in the zeitgeist recently. Usually I feel like I’m surfing the crest of dissident political consciousness and can provide insight and information into what’s coming up for us as a collective, but everything’s been so chaotic and frenzied lately it’s like trying to ride a bucking bull. I don’t know if that makes any sense to anyone but me, but that’s what it feels like.

I don’t really have anything to add to that right now. I try to write something every day, but today all I’ve got is a feeble “There’s so much cruelty, and it hurts.”

It fucking hurts, man.

_______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Wikimedia Commons/The White House (public domain).

Reading by Tim Foley:

Any time things heat up with an empire-targeted government I always get people demanding to know why I’m not critical of that government.

“Why don’t you criticize Iran? You spend all your time criticizing the west and Israel; you’re a hypocrite if you don’t criticize Iran.”

It flabbergasts them that I’m not saying harsh things about the latest Official Bad Guy of the Day. Everyone on TV is criticizing Iran. Both mainstream political parties are criticizing Iran. Their favorite mainstream political podcasters and online pundits are criticizing Iran. So why isn’t Caitlin Johnstone criticizing Iran? There must be something nefarious and treasonous about her.

This will be a catastrophic war in which countless innocent Iranians will perish. I am sick to my stomach thinking about friends and loved ones who’ll have to endure this madness. https://t.co/wue2t4PGz5

— kev joon (@never_oppressed) January 30, 2026

It never occurs to them that a principled individual might prioritize opposing the abuses of the power structure they actually live under and can actually exert some influence upon, rather than impotently shouting at a foreign “regime” who has nothing to do with them.

It never occurs to them that the only reason we’re hearing so much about the Official Bad Guy of the Day is because the US is ramping up aggressions on the targeted country, and the imperial media are manufacturing consent for those hostilities. 

It never occurs to them that this frenzied propaganda campaign is the main reason the Official Bad Guy of the Day has been on their mind so much.

It never occurs to them to question who actually benefits from the western population chanting “IRAN BAD! REGIME MUST GO!” in unison like a bunch of animatronic theme park animals while the drums of war are beating louder and louder.

It never occurs to them that someone can simply oppose the warmongering agendas of the US empire on principle, because those agendas are reliably disastrous and the US empire is the most tyrannical power structure on earth.

These things never occur to them because most westerners spend their entire lives in a propaganda echo chamber which constantly feeds them stories about how evil the western empire’s enemies are, while telling them almost nothing about the empire’s own abuses.

"Why don't you criticize the Iranian government??"

Because I'm a serious adult interested in having serious adult conversations. If you want to hear one more white westerner yelling "AYATOLLAH BAD BAD BAD" go turn on the nearest television to literally any channel.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) January 13, 2026

The average westerner is not even aware that they live in an empire. The typical Australian thinks “I’m over here in my own separate, sovereign country, and the United States is another country over there doing their own thing, and also Israel is another independent country doing their own thing over there, and likewise with the UK and EU and New Zealand and Canada, and every other country I’ve been taught to think favorably of.”

In reality they’re all member states of a giant globe-spanning power structure which functions more or less as a single empire with regard to foreign policy. And they work together to subvert, undermine and eventually devour the nations we’ve all been trained to hate.

The western press do not criticize this power structure. Westerners do not learn about it in school. They don’t know it exists, so it never occurs to them that it is something that can be justifiably criticized and opposed.

You don’t see the western press criticizing the US-centralized western empire. You don’t even see them criticizing the United States as a whole. You’ll see them publish criticisms of individual presidents, politicians or political parties, but you hardly ever see them talking about the behavior of the abusive warmongering, militarism, economic warfare and surveillance systems which persist from administration to administration regardless of who happens to be in office.

This is why it’s so baffling to a westerner to see another westerner criticizing western warmongering instead of the Official Bad Guy of the Day. They don’t normally encounter such criticisms. They haven’t been trained to expect it. All they’ve been trained to expect is criticism of Tehran, Putin, Hamas, Maduro, or whoever the empire happens to be angriest at on any given day. So any divergence from their conditioned expectations looks strange and suspicious to them. It looks like something bad is happening.

But it is not a sign that something bad is happening for a westerner to focus their criticism on the western empire. It’s a sign that something bad is happening that so few westerners ever do.

I don’t criticize Iran because I do not want to feed into an imperial war propaganda campaign for a horrific agenda that I do not support. I want to focus my criticisms on the power structure under which I actually live, because that is what one does when one is not a groveling bootlicker, and because the power structure under which I live happens to be the most abusive tyrant on the world stage.

_______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Adobe Stock.

Reading by Tim Foley:

There is nothing you can say to me to convince me that US regime change interventionism in the middle east is a swell idea.

There is nothing you can say to convince me that the Trump administration is telling us the truth about Iran.

There is nothing you can say to convince me that the mass media are telling us the truth about Iran.

There is nothing you can say to convince me the people who just spent two years incinerating Gaza have kind-hearted intentions for the Iranian people.

There is nothing you can say to convince me that protecting Israel is a good and desirable thing that westerners should support.

There is nothing you can say to convince me that the empire-like globe-spanning power alliance that is loosely centralized around Washington should be in charge of our world.

There is nothing you can say to convince me that I should help the US and Israel manufacture consent for a regime change war by criticizing the Iranian government in the middle of a frenzied war propaganda campaign.

It is not okay to be a grown adult in the year 2026 and still believe US regime change interventionism in the middle east will lead to positive outcomes.

It is not okay to live in a post-Iraq invasion world and still not understand that we are being lied to about Iran.

It is not okay to have lived through what these monsters did to Libya and still believe forcibly toppling the Iranian government is a moral and just cause to get behind.

It is not okay to have just watched these freaks turn Gaza into a gravel parking lot pervaded by the smell of rotting corpses and believe they have noble intentions for the people of Iran.

I don’t care if you are making your pro-regime change arguments from a right wing anti-Islam perspective, from a liberal humanitarian pro-democracy perspective, from a left-wing “solidarity with our Persian comrades” perspective, or from an “oppose all tyranny equally” anarchist perspective. Your arguments are shit, and your position is wrong.

The agenda to oust the Iranian government is about dominating the planet in general and the middle east in particular. You might think it’s about something else, but you are wrong. It’s about power and control, and all your fanciful notions about freedom and democracy for the Iranian people will be instantly subordinated to those goals. If this isn’t obvious to you, you’re an idiot.

The goal is not to bring freedom and democracy to the Iranian people. The US and Israel do not permit democracy to thrive in the middle east unless they can control its outcomes, as they are working to do right now in Iraq. The US and Israel are not popular enough in the middle east for the people to be allowed to control their own government.

The goal is to either install a puppet regime in Tehran, or to balkanize the nation into multiple independent states which can be easily controlled, or to plunge the entire state into unmanageable chaos like they did in Libya. None of these plans advance the interests of the Iranian people.

If you support Trump’s regime change agendas in Iran, then you support inflicting this upon the Iranian people. That’s what you get under the best-case scenario. Under the worst-case scenario, you get a hot war between the US and Iran which unleashes horrors you cannot possibly imagine. It will make the Iraq invasion and all the fallout therefrom look like an episode of Spongebob.

There is nothing you can say to me to cause me to support this. Call me a traitor. Call me a dictator lover. Call me an antisemite. Tell me all you want to tell me about how mean and bad Iran’s leadership is. I won’t care. I will dismiss you, because you are my enemy.

Anyone who supports war with Iran is my enemy. Anyone who would want to inflict such horrors upon the human species is an enemy of humanity. 

I promise I will not be moved on this. I like to keep an open mind, as the saying goes, but not so open my brain falls out.

______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Adobe Stock.

Reading by Tim Foley:

The justifications for war with Iran keep changing. First it’s nukes, then it’s conventional missiles, then it’s protesters, and now it’s back to nukes again. Kinda seems like war with Iran is itself the objective, and they’re just making up excuses to get there.

As the US moves war machinery to the middle east and holds multi-day war games throughout the region, President Trump and his handlers have been posting threats to the Iranian government on social media warning them to “make a deal” on nuclear weapons.

The following appeared on Trump’s Truth Social account on Wednesday:

“A massive Armada is heading to Iran. It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. It is a larger fleet, headed by the great Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln, than that sent to Venezuela. Like with Venezuela, it is, ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary. Hopefully Iran will quickly “Come to the Table” and negotiate a fair and equitable deal — NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS — one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence! As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL! They didn’t, and there was “Operation Midnight Hammer,” a major destruction of Iran. The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

“…Hopefully Iran will quickly “Come to the Table” and negotiate a fair and equitable deal – NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS – one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence! As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL…” – President DONALD J. TRUMP pic.twitter.com/H6qLbw3Ndi

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 28, 2026

It’s interesting that we’re back on the subject of needing to bomb Iran because of nuclear weapons, given that just a couple of weeks ago we were being told it was very, very important for the US to bomb Iran because of Iran’s mistreatment of protesters. Earlier this month Trump was openly saying “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!… HELP IS ON ITS WAY” while issuing threats to the Iranian government not to respond violently to the uprising. The president then backed off of these threats, reportedly at the urging of Benjamin Netanyahu who told him Israel needed more time to prepare for war.

Prior to that, Trump was saying he would bomb Iran if it continued expanding its conventional missile program. Asked about reports that the US and Israel were discussing plans to strike Iran to stop it from building on its ballistic missile arsenal and reconstructing its air defenses that were damaged in the Twelve Day War, the president told the press “I hope they’re not trying to build up again because if they are, we’re going have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup.” 

The US justified its airstrikes on Iranian energy infrastructure during the Twelve Day War by citing concerns that Tehran was building a nuclear weapon, after which Trump confidently proclaimed that “All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or OBLITERATED. It would take years to bring them back into service.”

And yet here we are a few months later back on the subject of nuclear weapons, with the US president citing urgent concerns over nukes to justify its renewed brinkmanship with Iran. 

I kinda think they’re lying to us, folks.

Didn’t Trump say last summer that he destroyed three nuclear sites in Iran that they couldn’t bring back into service for many years? https://t.co/hK9AAqrpAK

— Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) January 28, 2026

When someone’s feeding you all sorts of reasons for why they need to bomb a country, and the reasons are all different and unrelated to each other, then those aren’t reasons. They’re excuses.

It’s just like they did with Venezuela. It’s because of fentanyl! Okay it’s not because of fentanyl, but it’s definitely about cocaine! Wait, no, it’s because of the tyrannical dictator! Also this is happening in the western hemisphere so it’s fine and good for us to intervene!

Both Venezuela and Iran are oil-rich nations which have been disobedient to the will of the US empire. Both Venezuela and Iran have presented obstacles to US global hegemony. It’s not about nukes or protesters or dictators or drugs, it’s about ruling the world. 

That’s all it’s ever about. They just move the arguments around to get what they want.

Despite all Trump’s showmanship about nuclear weapons, behind the scenes the US is reportedly trying to get Iran to agree to limit its conventional ballistic missiles, which, as The New York Times notes, “are the last deterrent in Iran’s arsenal against a renewed attack by Israel.”

What this means is that the Trump administration is trying to get Iran to consent to becoming a neutered subject who must forever submit to the US and Israel’s demands, because it won’t be able to defend itself if they decide Tehran isn’t being sufficiently compliant. 

They’re trying to frame this as being about humanitarian concerns and nuclear weapons, but it’s actually about domination. They either get a submissive vassal, or they get their regime change war.

The more tense things get with Iran, the more the empire is going to lie to us. 

_________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via The White House (public domain).

Reading by Tim Foley:

The lies get so tedious.

The Iranians want their country to be bombed.

Hamas beheaded 40 babies.

Pro-Palestine demonstrations caused the Bondi massacre.

There’s a terrorist base under every hospital.

The news media are reporting objective facts about the world.

You live in a democracy where the votes of the people influence the actions of your government.

We’re the Good Guys in every foreign conflict.

The US makes mistakes from time to time, but they’re acting with good intentions and we’re better off with them in charge of the world.

Rich people are rich because they’re smarter and work harder than everyone else.

Capitalism is more or less working out fine for everyone.

The world works pretty much the way you were taught in school.

Profit-driven technological innovation and industry is going to rescue us from the ecological consequences of profit-driven technological innovation and industry.

It doesn’t matter that we’re destroying our biosphere because we’re about to set out for the stars and colonize space any minute now.

All the problems in your country are the fault of the other mainstream political faction, and you can fix those problems by focusing all your anger on the people in the other faction.

Now is not the time for revolutionary politics.

You can’t just let people say whatever they want to say about their government and its allies.

Success looks like making a lot of money and owning a lot of possessions and earning the respect of the largest and most influential institutions in our society.

If you are unable or unwilling to make a lot of money and obtain a lot of possessions, you are bad and you should feel bad about yourself.

You should derive your sense of self-worth from how effective you are at turning the gears of industry and giving the system exactly what it wants from you.

This is all normal. All this suffering, death, destruction, war, chaos, exploitation, injustice, poverty and abuse is normal. People who want to change things are abnormal, and should be viewed with suspicion.

Tedious.

It’s just lies, lies, lies, all the way down.

We live in a civilization that was built on lies, is made of lies, and is sustained by lies. As soon as the lies stop, the whole thing comes tumbling down.

They begin teaching us the lies as soon as we are old enough to learn them, and they never stop educating the lies into our brains until we are dead. It’s no wonder we’re getting more and more miserable, dysfunctional and crazy.

Mental sovereignty under the empire of lies means purging all the malignant indoctrination from every level of your cognition and perception until you are able to think freely and perceive the world with clear eyes. It’s a long, difficult process, but it’s necessary if you want to form a truth-based relationship with reality and learn to see things as they actually are.

_______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Reading by Tim Foley:

No mentally healthy person wants to rule the world.

Nobody with a functioning conscience and a working empathy center in their brain is interested in becoming a billionaire.

We are ruled by the most dysfunctional members of our species. The most wounded, neurotic and sociopathic among us. The least wise, caring and insightful.

What drives a person to claw their way to the top of a wildly sick society and become a lord of the dystopia?

What compels someone to amass obscene amounts of wealth in a world where so many have far too little?

What causes someone to ascend to political leadership of a power structure that’s built for the purpose of robbing and oppressing the most underprivileged populations on earth?

Nothing wholesome, to be sure. That impulse is never coming from anywhere good.

The worst among us are striving to prevail in this dystopia by riding the tides of its ugliest inclinations, while the best among us are striving to dismantle the dystopia and replace it with something kind and equitable. This causes the worst of us to be elevated to the top and the best of us to be smacked down to the bottom.

Under our current system the easiest way to set yourself on a trajectory from millionaire to billionaire to trillionaire is to exploit workers, crush your competition, plunder the available resources of the global south, externalize the costs of industry onto society and the ecosystem, bribe the government to advance your corporate interests via lobbying and campaign donations, contract with the most murderous military and intelligence agencies in the world, and psychologically manipulate the public into consuming products and services they don’t need.

Who is going to be most successful in this endeavor? The very worst people alive. People whose hearts and minds are so stunted and dysfunctional that they see other human beings as tools for their own personal enrichment, to be used up and discarded like juice boxes or condoms.

These are the people who are touching the most lives on this planet. These are the people whose decisions affect the most of us.

Michael Parenti, the path-breaking Marxist scholar, historian and political scientist, passed today at age 92

He went peacefully this morning, surrounded by his family

“Now he is in what he used to refer to as ‘the great lecture hall in the sky,’” his son, Christian, reflected pic.twitter.com/LEnQ5oE6ml

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 24, 2026

Michael Parenti has passed away after a luminous life advancing powerful ideas and insights about the abusive dynamics of human civilization and how best to address them. He did not die a wealthy man. The mainstream papers did not report on his departure from our world. Only a relatively small percentage of the population is aware he ever lived.

But everyone knows who Elon Musk is. Everyone knows who Jeff Bezos is. Who Bill Gates is.

The best of us live and die in relative obscurity, generally being subjected to scorn and derision from the ruling establishment the entire time. The worst of us become plutocratic demigods.

It’s an uphill battle. You spend your life swimming against the current of dystopia, and you are not handsomely rewarded for your efforts. You’ll get deplatformed, censored and smeared. You might even get shot by government agents for standing up for the disempowered. And you’ll definitely never be a billionaire.

But it’s absolutely worth it, and you should do it. Fighting for truth and justice in a civilization made of injustice and deceit is the only way to live. It’s the only way to feel satisfied with your efforts during this life. The only way to be sure that when you are on your deathbed you can look back and know you spent your time here in a right and admirable way.

It costs a lot to fight for a healthy world. But it costs a lot more not to.

_______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Reading by Tim Foley:

A normal, healthy person would look at Australia’s lack of free speech protections and say “Hmm, Australian leaders should be extremely resistant to new laws and policies which restrict speech then, because it would be very easy for those restrictions to become abusive.” 

Australian leaders look at our lack of free speech protections and say “See? This means we get to take away your right to protest genocide!”

Nowhere is this more clearly exemplified than the repeated statements from New South Wales premier Chris Minns saying it’s fine to silence Australians because we don’t have free speech rights. 

Over and over again Minns has defended his promotion of authoritarian speech crackdowns in his state by claiming it’s okay to stomp out dissident speech of Australians because Australians don’t have the same speech protections as Americans, saying “we don’t have the same free speech rules that they have in the United States and I make no apologies for that” and similar statements in recent weeks.

NSW Premier Chris Minns says that you will get the freedom of speech opportunities that the government affords you, not what you think you’re entitled too. pic.twitter.com/nkxtfyPUyB

— Australians vs. The Agenda (@ausvstheagenda) January 21, 2026

To be clear, Minns is being repulsively tyrannical when he says this, but factually speaking he isn’t wrong. 

As Joe Lauria wrote for Consortium News following the passage of Australia’s frightening new “hate speech” bill:

“Unlike the United States, Australia has no Bill of Rights in its Constitution protecting freedom of speech, assembly and other rights. Much as Israel would want it, a law such as this adopted in Australia would still be difficult to pass in the U.S. on paper, despite the Israel Lobby’s hold over the U.S. Congress.”

If Australians had the same speech protections that they have in the United States, we could appeal tyrannical new laws on First Amendment grounds. Because we have no such protections, it is much harder to oppose authoritarian speech restrictions once they are in place.

As I often remind readers, Australia is the only so-called democracy in the world which has no national charter or bill of rights of any kind. A tremendous amount of faith has been placed in state and federal legislators to simply do the right thing, which has proved foolish and ineffective. Professor George Williams wrote for the Melbourne University Law Review in 2006:

“Australia is now the only democratic nation in the world without a national bill of rights. Some comprehensive form of legal protection for basic rights is otherwise seen as an essential check and balance in democratic governance around the world. Indeed, I can find no example of a democratic nation that has gained a new Constitution or legal system in recent decades that has not included some form of a bill of rights, nor am I aware of any such nation that has done away with a bill of rights once it has been put in place.”

A mentally disabled Australian woman is being prosecuted for antisemitic hate crimes after accidentally pocket-dialing a Jewish nutritionist, resulting in a blank voicemail the nutritionist found frightening. We're being told we need MORE of this. There's "hate speech"… pic.twitter.com/hoTihNRE89

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) January 16, 2026

It has been clearly and conclusively established that this system does not work. State and federal governments are working frenetically to shred the right of Australians to oppose the actions of the state of Israel, with their assault on our civil rights disguised as an effort to fight “antisemitism” in our country and help Jewish Australians feel more safe. The fact that this happens to advance the information interests of the western power alliance, we are told, is purely coincidental.

The evidence is in and the case is closed. The Australian system does not work. We need a national bill of rights, and we need free speech to be enshrined in our constitution.

In the meantime, we need to be aggressively opposed to laws and policies which assault our freedom of speech. We need to be more aggressive in our opposition than Americans would be, because we have fewer safeguards against tyrannical abuses.

It’s so disgusting how these freaks are telling us right to our faces “Yeah well you guys don’t have any rights, so I’m going to silence you and oppress you and I make no apologies about that.”

That kind of arrogant, abusive authoritarianism deserves nothing but ferocious defiance.

_______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Phil Desveaux (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Reading by Tim Foley:

If I spoke critically of something abusive that India was doing in Kashmir, would you expect me to be accused of an anti-Hindu hate crime?

If you criticized an Indian military operation, would you have to preface it with “I don’t hate Hindus or their religion and am not the slightest bit Hinduphobic”?

If there was worldwide opposition to something that Indian military forces were doing, would you expect western governments to start frantically churning out laws to ban that opposition because it was making members of the Hindu community feel unsafe?

Would it ever in your wildest imaginings occur to you that a criticism of the violent actions of the government of India could in any way be interpreted as an attack on the Hindu faith and the membership of that religion?

You can probably see where I’m going with this.

Normal person: It's bad to massacre tens of thousands of civilians.

Crazy person: Oh so you're saying you hate Jews then. You're saying Jews shouldn't defend themselves. You want all the Jews to die so there won't be any more Jews because you hate Jews. Jews Jews Jews Jews Jews.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) January 16, 2024

You don’t expect to see criticisms of the state of India framed as an attack on its majority religion because people in your society haven’t been conditioned to have that expectation. But we have been conditioned to have that expectation about Israel.

The association between antisemitism and criticism of the state of Israel isn’t natural. It’s not something that would organically occur to an untrained mind. 

If a man who’d never heard of Israel or Palestine were shown footage of the genocide in Gaza, he would reflexively recoil in horror and say what he was looking at was a bad thing. If somebody then ran up and explained to him that what he just said was actually a hateful act of religious persecution, he would be very surprised and confused. Because he hadn’t been indoctrinated into making that association, in the same way you haven’t been indoctrinated into associating criticism of the Indian government with an attack on the religion of Hinduism.

It’s a completely counterintuitive association. There’s nothing about it that that you could find your way into through your own observation and reasoning. It’s something you’d need to be taught by others. You need it to be explained to you.

That’s the literal translation of the Hebrew word “hasbara”. It means “explaining”. Israel and its supporters have spent decades “explaining” to the world that criticism of the state of Israel is actually a terrible hate crime against Jews and their religion, because otherwise it would never occur to a normal person that that is the case.

It’s actually astonishingly impressive. The political ideology of support for this tiny apartheid state has been so effective at explaining to the world what thoughts they should think about it that those efforts touch all our lives. It’s so effective that you could be at a social gathering all the way across the sea in the United States and, unless you are very familiar with the people around you, if the subject of Israel comes up you’ll immediately understand that you could be in for a very uncomfortable evening.

It’s stunning how much influence this ideology has had throughout our society’s culture and institutions. It’s almost magical.

“Using the magic system, Zionism…” says Daniella Weiss, a far-right Israeli settler leader and former mayor of Kedumim, describing how to overcome the “great difficulty” of establishing Zionist colonies in Gaza. In the BBC 'The Settlers' documentary, she lays out her vision… pic.twitter.com/Ukn4vaNmKK

— Translating Falasteen (Palestine) (@translatingpal) April 29, 2025

There was a segment in last year’s Louis Theroux documentary The Settlers that stuck with me where Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss refers to Zionism as a “magic system”.

“Jewish settlements in Gaza is a very difficult step that demands a lot of work,” Weiss told Theroux. “You have to influence the leftists, the government, the nations of the world, using the magic system: Zionism.”

It isn’t surprising to learn that Weiss views her operations as a kind of magic. On paper she and her ilk shouldn’t be able to do what they do. Forcefully dropping a foreign ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization and violently hammering it into place against every organic impulse of the region is freakish enough, but then convincing the rest of the world to support this? To the point that it actually affects our interpersonal relationships and interactions on the other side of the planet? It shouldn’t work. But it does.

I don’t really know what magic is, but it makes sense that some Zionists would see it that way. Because from the outside looking in all that mass-scale psychosocial manipulation kind of does look like an inexplicable sort of wizardry.

Luckily, the magic seems to be wearing off. The old tricks just aren’t working anymore. Calling someone who criticizes Israel an “antisemite” is widely recognized for the fraudulent manipulation that it is. Pro-Palestine politicians are winning elections despite highly coordinated smear campaigns saying their candidacy makes Jews feel unsafe. Everyone knows Israel lies about everything all the time. Trust in the media is at an all-time low, while awareness of the pro-Israel bias of the mainstream press is at an all-time high. 

People are still showing up for protests and pro-Palestine events. The public is turning against Israel in unprecedented numbers. Nobody’s buying the old song and dance anymore.

Maybe the people are finding a little magic of their own.

________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

And Other Notes Reading by Tim Foley:

❖

Israeli president Isaac Herzog is expected to visit Australia at the invitation of the Australian government, with anonymous sources telling the Israeli press that he’s scheduled to arrive on February 7, but so far Canberra itself has been very opaque about the time and nature of the visit. We can surmise from this that they’re currently trying to come up with a strategy for how to sneak the president into the country without the spectacle of him getting confronted by throngs of anti-genocide protesters.

Again: they’re trying to sneak the president into the country for a visit to protect him from anti-genocide protesters. Really think about what that means, and what it says about Australia as a country.

When you are doing things like this, you’re on the wrong side of history.

❖

As soon as the UK listed Palestine Action as a terrorist group it was made clear to the entire western world that there is no limit to how far our governments will go to stomp out speech that is critical of Israel. Literally no limit. Once you’re arresting old ladies in wheelchairs for holding a sign that says “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action,” you’re making it clear that there’s nothing you won’t do to bludgeon the populace into line regarding this one particular foreign state.

That was a real turning point for western society, in retrospect. Up until then it’d been horrific genocidal depravity in Gaza and some ugly shenanigans with TikTok and university campuses, but actually proclaiming that an activist group is a terrorist organization and arresting anyone who supports it was a wildly unprecedented escalation. From that point on it’s been clear to every decent person throughout the western world that we’re in the imperial crosshairs now.

They’re coming for us directly. Our rights are on the chopping block. There’s no limit to how dark and dystopian things can get from here.

❖

pic.twitter.com/n7zAwONdqa

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) January 21, 2026

❖

I’m not trying to be antisemitic or anything but I personally think it should be legal to voice criticisms of the military activities of a foreign state.

❖

One of the many reasons I’m so hostile to authoritarian efforts to stomp out pro-Palestine speech in Australia is because there’s something deep inside me that would find it intolerable for us to be worse than the Brits.

❖

There should be a mandatory six-month “cooling off period” between any mass shooting or act of terrorism and any legislation purportedly put out in response to it, because the emotional immediate aftermath is always when lawmakers try to roll out their most authoritarian agendas.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: nobody actually believes the Bondi attack had anything to do with Palestinians or pro-Palestine protests. Anyone who claims they believe that is lying. They’re just pretending there’s a connection in order to stomp out pro-Palestine speech and activism in Australia.

❖

International social media has rediscovered video footage of the Sydney Harbour Bridge protest last year, and it is very impressive to revisit. A massive line of hundreds of thousands of people holding umbrellas and Palestinian flags in opposition to their government’s complicity in the holocaust in Gaza.

It must have left a mark, because the Israel lobby has been on the warpath frantically trying to crush our right to protest ever since. People sometimes knock the effectiveness of peaceful demonstrations, but if they didn’t make a difference tyrants wouldn’t hate them so much.

❖

It's so creepy knowing I share a country with people who want to destroy my right to normal political speech. It would never occur to me to try to kill Zionists' right to free speech, but they very openly want to kill mine. They want to permanently silence me and anyone like me. https://t.co/XOEjolbyIy

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) January 20, 2026

❖

The reason I’ve been talking about the Australian Israel lobby so much lately is because it has made itself my problem. Kwame Ture said “If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem.” I find his logic sound.

The Israel lobby in Australia has shown it has the power to successfully pressure governments to advance laws and policies which threaten the speech of people like myself who speak critically of the state of Israel. That makes them my problem.

There are more important and urgent things going on in the world than the lobbying efforts of an apartheid state in a peripheral nation of the imperial core, to be sure. I’d rather be writing about those matters. But the Australian Israel lobby has made itself my problem, so I need to mention its abusive behaviors from time to time.

I know my name has appeared on lists. I know I’ve been the subject of private discussion among people I’d have preferred not to receive attention from. I know I share a country with people who would openly celebrate if I was imprisoned for the things I have said about Israel and Zionism. So I’ve got a vested interest in calling attention to the forces that are working to assault the civil rights of people like myself, and to my government’s inexcusable advancement of those agendas.

And all decent Australians have that same vested interest, to be clear. Every person of conscience who wishes to be able to speak out against their government’s facilitation of mass murder and abuse has a personal stake in this debate. Because we’ve each got a target on our voice box now. We all need to speak out while we still can.

_________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Wikimedia Commons/Government Press Office of Israel (public domain).

Reading by Tim Foley:

Australia’s Labor government has successfully passed a “hate speech” bill that’s plainly aimed, at least in part, at suppressing pro-Palestine organizations as “hate groups”. 

Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm about the new laws, saying their extremely vague wording, lack of procedural fairness and low thresholds for implementation mean groups can now be banned if they make people feel unsafe or upset without ever actually posing any physical harm to anyone.

For me the most illuminating insight into what these laws are actually designed to do came up in an ABC interview with Attorney-General Michelle Rowland on Tuesday. Over and over again throughout the interview Rowland was asked by ABC’s David Speers to clarify whether the new laws could see activist groups banned for criticizing Israel and opposing its genocidal atrocities in a way that causes Jewish Australians to feel upset feelings, and she refused to rule out the possibility every single time.

“Let’s just go to what it means in practice: would a group be banned if it accuses Israel of genocide or apartheid, and as a result, Jewish Australians do feel intimidated?” Speers asked.

Rowland didn’t say no, instead saying “there are a number of other factors that would need to be satisfied there” and saying that agencies like the AFP and ASIO would need to make assessments of the situation.

“Okay, just coming back to the practical example though, if a group is suggesting that Israel is guilty of genocide, what other measures or factors would need to be met before they can be banned?” Speers asked.

“Under the provisions that are now before the parliament, there would also need to be able to demonstrate that there are for example, some aspects of state laws that deal with racial vilification that have been met as well,” Rowland responded, again leaving the possibility wide open.

(It should here be noted that Greens justice spokesperson David Shoebridge has pointed out that “state laws that deal with racial vilification” can include “tests like ‘ridicule’ and ‘contempt’,” meaning people could wind up spending years in prison for associating with groups that were essentially banned for upsetting someone’s feelings.)

“Just to be clear, if a group is saying Israel is engaged in genocide, or they’re saying that Israel should no longer exist, that is not enough for that group to be banned?” asked Speers.

“Well, again, that would depend on the other evidence that is gathered, David, so I would be reluctant to be naming and ruling in and ruling out specific kinds of conduct that you are describing here,” Rowland replied.

All this waffling can safely interpreted as a yes. Rowland is saying yes. Speers pushed this question three different times from three different angles because it’s the most immediate and obvious concern about these new laws, and instead of reassuring the public that they can’t be used to target pro-Palestine groups and aren’t intended for that purpose, the nation’s Attorney General confirmed that it was indeed possible.

So that’s it then. Under the new laws we can expect to see the Israel lobby crying about Jewish Australians feeling threatened and unsafe by every pro-Palestine group under the sun, and then from there all it takes is the thumbs-up from ASIO to put the group on the banned list and cage anyone who continues associating with it for up to 15 years.

The only reason the Attorney General wouldn't rule out the criminalisation of dissent and criticism of foreign countries and heads of state is if that's exactly what Labor intends to cover here. pic.twitter.com/rV3e8TRB0l

— David Shoebridge (@DavidShoebridge) January 20, 2026

The bill that ended up making it through Parliament is actually a narrowed down version of an even scarier bill that was scrapped by Labor due to lack of support which went after individuals as well as groups. The earlier version contained “racial vilification” components which could have been used to target any individual who voices criticisms of Israel or Zionism — so it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing any prison time for my writing any time soon. The new version moved its crosshairs to groups with the obvious intent to disrupt pro-Palestine organizing in Australia.

And we’re already seeing the Israel lobby pushing to resurrect the laws targeting individuals. A new ABC article titled “Jewish leaders call for vilification offence to be revisited as Coalition splits over watered-down hate laws” cites Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler and Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim arguing that the new laws don’t go far enough.

So we can expect the Australian Israel lobby to both (A) push to get pro-Palestine groups classified as “hate groups” under the new laws and (B) keep pushing to make it illegal for individuals to criticize Israel in the form of new “racial vilification” laws. They’ll keep trying over and over again, from government to government to government, until they get their way.

The Israeli lobby in Australia is flat out trying to make anti Israel speech illegal. Imagine being so hated you have to make laws to force people to like you. pic.twitter.com/gCX5Wy7RDU

— Israel Exposed (@xIsraelExposedx) January 20, 2026

This comes after Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council Executive Manager Joel Burnie publicly stated that he wants to ban pro-Palestine protests and criticism of Israel throughout the nation, and as prosecutors drag an Australian woman to court for an antisemitic hate crime because she accidentally butt-dialed a Jewish nutritionist and left a blank voicemail.

So things are already ugly, and they’re getting worse.

It’s so creepy knowing I share a country with people who want to destroy my right to normal political speech. It would never occur to me to try to kill Zionists’ right to free speech, but they very openly want to kill mine. They want to permanently silence me and anyone like me. I find that profoundly disturbing.

Israel supporters are horrible people. And I hope my saying that hurts their feelings.

_______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image is a screenshot from ABC News In-depth (fair use).

Reading by Tim Foley:

Everyone hates Israel now, and what’s funny is this wouldn’t have happened if our society had been the tiniest bit normal about Gaza.

If everyone wasn’t constantly being forcefully told they’re not seeing what they’re seeing, it wouldn’t have become so personal for them.

If western governments had just said “this is bad” when news came out about Israel bombing a hospital instead of “THIS ISN’T WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE THERE’S A HAMAS BASE IN EVERY HEALTHCARE FACILITY YOU ARE BEING ANTISEMITIC”.

If the news media had just said “this is bad” when Israel systematically exterminated journalists in Gaza instead of reporting “three killed in what IDF describes as strike on terrorist vehicle” over and over again.

If we’d just been allowed to say “this is bad” when we saw raw video footage showing children ripped apart by military explosives without getting fired and de-platformed and told we’re evil Nazis who need our free speech rights taken away.

That’s all it would’ve taken to keep Israel from being a front-and-center issue for so many people. There would still have been critics of the Gaza holocaust, of course, but opposing Israel wouldn’t have become this massive mainstream cultural phenomenon if our own western leaders and institutions hadn’t exposed themselves as lying, propagandizing, murderous sociopaths.

It’s not hard to get westerners to ignore the victims of mass military violence, even when it’s mass military violence their government is directly orchestrating. Westerners, by and large, are indoctrinated human livestock who think whatever they’ve been programmed to think by the imperial propaganda machine. What opened so many eyes to Israel’s criminality wasn’t the slaughter itself, it was our own government, media and social institutions trying to gaslight us about what we knew we were looking at.

It’s one thing to see a cruel government doing bad things on the other side of the world. It’s quite another to be shown in vivid detail that your own society is ruled by monsters, and that those monsters have a vested interest in deceiving you and controlling your words and your actions in order to advance the most depraved agendas you could possibly imagine.

That’s what made this so personal for so many people. It’s not that Israel exposed itself, it’s that the whole of western civilization did.

________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Biden White House (public domain).

Reading by Tim Foley:

I can’t get over the fact that people were casting bets on whether the US would bomb Iran the other day. It just says such dark things about the type of civilization we are living in.

In this dystopia, Americans are never given the option to vote for a president who won’t bomb foreign countries in wars of aggression. But they do have the option to gamble on when those bombs will be dropped.

They’re not allowed to vote against war, militarism and imperialism, but they can go to an app on their smartphone and place bets on how the war, militarism and imperialism will unfold.

Preventing your government from raining military explosives onto foreign countries full of civilians who are just trying to live their lives? No. Thumbs down. You don’t get to do that.

Pouring money into “prediction market” scams like Kalshi and Polymarket with bets on when those military explosives will end the lives of those foreign civilians? Yes. Thumbs up. You are encouraged to do that.

BREAKING: 51% chance the U.S. strikes Iran tonight. https://t.co/cOFZOwns3T

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) January 14, 2026

You’re allowed to get rich making an app which lets westerners gamble on military atrocities of immense humanitarian consequence.

You’re allowed to get rich starting a company that manufactures missiles, sells those missiles to the US government, and then pays think tanks and lobbyists to convince US decision makers to use those missiles in gratuitous acts of mass military violence.

You’re allowed to get rich buying stocks in the arms industry and then funding the political campaigns of politicians who pledge to help start wars.

As long as it’s profitable and sits within the extremely broad parameters of acceptable liberal norms, it’s perfectly legal. But when it comes to doing anything that might eat into those profits by making the world a less violent place, there’s not even a viable option at the ballot box.

Polymarket spreads neocon disinformation to manufacture consent for bombing Iran

It is also paying influencers all across this site to popularize its brand

The "world's largest prediction market" relies on psychological warfare to manipulate betting markets https://t.co/wPfOtneENR

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 12, 2026

Our world looks the way it looks because our entire civilization is driven by the mindless pursuit of profit. 

It’s profitable to start wars, so the wars never end. 

It’s profitable for corporations to destroy the ecosystem and offload the costs of industry onto the environment, so it keeps happening. 

It’s profitable for capitalists to keep wages down and worker’s rights at a minimum, so wealth inequality gets worse and worse.

It’s profitable for plutocrats to manipulate legislation and government policy using campaign funding and corporate lobbying, so the government gets more and more corrupt and oligarchic while society gets more and more unjust and oppressive.

As long as we have systems in place which cause mass-scale human behavior to be driven by the pursuit of profit, things are going to keep getting more and more violent, abusive, poisoned, polluted, unjust, unhappy, and dystopian.

This will continue until we as a collective decide we’ve had enough and force new systems into place. Until then the object in motion shall remain in motion.

______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Reading by Tim Foley:

I support regime change in the United States. The real kind, not the “new face at the front desk every few years” kind.

I’m all for overthrowing tyrannical power structures, I just think we should start with the worst one.

Why should I support the violent overthrow of the US empire’s enemies while the US empire itself remains standing? Why should I want to help the one power structure that’s terrorizing and destroying nations around the world with the goal of total planetary domination? Why should I facilitate the propaganda campaign of the latest imperial regime change operation by talking about the tyranny and oppressiveness of the Official Bad Guy of the Day when it will do nothing but help the empire expand its global hegemony?

In all these years no one has ever been able to give me a satisfactory answer to these questions. And I have asked them many times, in many different ways.

If I’m at a crowded pub and there’s one guy going around beating people up and taking their wallets, I’m not going to be focused on the character of his victims, I’m going to be paying attention to the most glaring and urgent abuse dynamic in the room. Nobody else is mass murdering, starving and robbing populations around the world like the US and its allies are doing. No other power structure comes anywhere close.

The US power alliance is unquestionably the most destructive and abusive entity in our world, and it also happens to be the power structure under which I live. This gives me a special responsibility to oppose its abuses.

The only reason everything I just said isn’t completely obvious to everyone is because we live in a mind-controlled dystopia where people are aggressively propagandized from birth into believing our rulers are more or less the Good Guys and the nations they target are more or less the Bad Guys. That’s the only reason anyone thinks it makes sense to watch my tirades against US warmongering and go “Hmm and yet you have nothing bad to say about Iran and Russia? You must be getting PAID by them!”

Over the years I’ve been accused of being a paid propagandist or secret agent for Russia, China, Iran, Qatar, Hamas, Hezbollah, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, and probably some others I’ve forgotten. People who live in the western empire make these assumptions whenever they see me opposing the latest imperial power grab because they’re so propaganda-addled that they cannot conceive of the possibility of someone standing against the empire’s abuses on principle. Their minds flail around searching for reasons for my behavior, and all they can come up with is that I’m some kind of state operative.

People act like my focusing my criticisms on the western empire is a sign of something malignant and suspicious, but it isn’t. It’s not strange that I focus my criticisms on the western empire, it’s strange that everyone else does not. If we didn’t live in a civilization where our psyches are continually assaulted by a deluge of empire propaganda from every direction, nothing I’m saying here would even need to be explained.

Regime change the United States. Not its fake official elected government: its real government. The oligarchs and government agencies which actually run the thing. Replace its empire managers and empire management institutions with real democracy which gives the American people real authority over the actions of their own government, rather than the fake decoy elections they have now.

Regime change the United States, and regime change all its imperial member states. Australia. The UK. Israel. Canada. The EU. The entire imperial core.

If you have done this and you still want to talk about how mean and bad the Iranian government is, THEN I might listen to you. THEN I might take some interest in what you have to say.

Until then, you’re just one more mindless imperial bootlicker trying to advance the interests of the power structure under which you live.

_______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Central Intelligence Agency/Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Reading by Tim Foley:

A mentally disabled Australian woman is being prosecuted for antisemitic hate crimes after accidentally pocket-dialing a Jewish nutritionist, resulting in a blank voicemail which caused the nutritionist “immediate fear and nervousness” because she thought some of the background noises in the recording sounded a bit like gunshots.

We’re being told we need more of this. There’s “hate speech” legislation presently in the works to make this worse. Australia’s controversial Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill appears to be explicitly crafted to dramatically increase the scale, frequency and consequences of the exact sort of dynamics we’re seeing in this case, and to eradicate opposition to Israel throughout the nation.

This is how overextended Australia’s freakout over “antisemitism” already is. You can literally just be sitting there not saying or doing anything and still find yourself getting arrested and prosecuted for an antisemitic hate crime. They have the authority to do this presently, under the laws that already exist. The argument for this bill is that our present horrifyingly tyrannical and abusive system is insufficiently authoritarian and tyrannical, and that prosecutors need more power to police speech far more forcefully.

Australians are being asked to trust a system that would take a woman with an intellectual disability to prosecution in a court of law over an accidental butt-dial to a person of Jewish faith with the authority to send people to prison for years over their political speech. And this is happening after we just spent years watching Australian authorities roll out authoritarian measures to stomp out criticism of Israel and quash protests against an active genocide.

This is madness, and it needs to be brought to a screeching halt. Immediately. This entire country has lost its damn mind.

The Bondi attack isn’t the reason, it’s the excuse. All these laws being rolled out to stomp out criticism of Israel in Australia were sought for years before the shooting occurred.

Immediately after the attack last month I tweeted, “Not a lot of info about the Bondi shooting yet but it’s safe to assume it will be used as an excuse to target pro-Palestine activists and further outlaw criticism of Israel in Australia, as has been happening to a greater and greater extent in this country for the last two years.”

They could have proved me wrong, but instead they’ve spent this entire time proving me one hundred percent correct. The frenzied efforts to crush anti-genocide protests and silence speech that is critical of Israel and Zionism in these subsequent weeks has plainly established this.

Labor is rushing a 144-page omnibus mess through parliament with just 48 hours for public submissions. Communities are fearful this is designed to criminalize people calling out genocide in Gaza. You have my word that we won't let Labor silence dissent.

— David Shoebridge (@DavidShoebridge) January 15, 2026

There is no connection between pro-Palestine demonstrations and the Bondi attack. None. It had nothing to do with Palestinians, and it had nothing to do with anti-genocide demonstrations. It’s a completely made-up claim that Israel’s supporters have been circulating in Australian consciousness through sheer repetition. They’re just pretending to believe it’s true in order to promote the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state.

Israel’s supporters need to use propaganda, deception, censorship and oppression to promote their agendas, because it’s all they have. They don’t have truth. They don’t have arguments. They don’t have morality. All they have is brute force. They are shoving support for Israel and its atrocities down our throats whether we like it or not, and if we refuse what we’re being force-fed they will punish us. That’s the only tool in their toolbox.

This needs to be ferociously opposed. The more Israel and its supporters work to assault our right to oppose their abuses, the more aggressively we need to oppose them. We are no longer fighting against war and genocide in the middle east, we are fighting against an assault on our own civil rights. It’s personal now. They’re coming for us directly.

________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image is a screen grab from 9 News (Fair Use).

Reading by Tim Foley:

You can always tell how murderous the US empire is being from day to day from the expression on warmongering senator Lindsey Graham’s face, and right now he looks like he just found his mother dead in the bathtub.

Earlier this month Graham looked positively giddy while posing with President Trump holding a Make Iran Great Again hat and gushing about how Cuba will be the next Latin American socialist government the US takes out after Venezuela, but in a Fox News clip the South Carolina senator shared on Twitter he looks and sounds like he spent all night crying and punishing his internal organs with intoxicants.

“President Trump’s resolve is not the question,” Graham glumly told reporters on Thursday regarding the possibility of an attack on Iran. “Question is, when we do an operation like this, should it be bigger or smaller? I’m in the camp of bigger. Time will tell. I’m hopeful and optimistic that the regime days are numbered.”

If you want to know what I think about recent developments in Iran, watch this clip: pic.twitter.com/T9lwN8RwEE

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 15, 2026

I personally place a lot more hope in Graham’s long face than I do in recent news reports that US airstrikes on Iran now appear unlikely, because the US and Israel have a track record of circulating disinformation about their intentions before attacking. In June Trump falsely announced on social media that he had hope for a diplomatic solution with Iran regarding its nuclear program hours before bombing Iranian nuclear sites, so reports that Israel and Arab states had successfully convinced Trump to hold off on attacking Iran should be considered untrustworthy.

But Lindsey Graham’s heartbroken whimper? I personally find that encouraging. Maybe war with Iran really has been put off for the time being. One less nightmare to have to worry about.

Sometimes I think it would be helpful to publish a daily Graham-o-Meter which shows Lindsey Graham’s face on a scale from dour to ecstatic to illustrate how evil the US empire is being on a given day. When the US launches airstrikes or orchestrates a regime change operation the Graham-o-Meter features a Delighted Lindsey, and when it looks like the empire has been forced to postpone a given power grab it shows a Depressed Lindsey.

People often say Lindsey Graham is gay, but I don’t think that’s true. I don’t know if there’s a word for an orientation where someone is only sexually attracted to mass military violence, but it’s not gay.

Here’s hoping we see a lot more Depressed Lindseys going forward.

_____________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2