Caitlin Johnstone

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

All the frenzied shrieking about pro-Palestine protests at universities these last few days makes it clear that our civilization is so twisted and insane that it sees protesting a genocide as far worse than committing one. Which is about as backwards as any society could possibly be.

Seriously, try to imagine a crazier, more upside-down civilization than one which gets more angry at people protesting genocidal atrocities than it does at people committing them. A civilization where people wear their pants on their head and walk backwards all day? That would be less crazy. A civilization where the dogs own the people and the children go to work while the parents go to school? That would be less crazy.

It’s as wrong as you can possibly get anything in this world. It’s actually hard to imagine how anyone could get anything more wrong. If you’ve accepted daily massacres of innocent civilians as the baseline normal and appropriate thing, and regard any opposition to this as a freakish and evil abomination, then you’re as screwed up and confused about reality as any other stark raving lunatic in town. Maybe worse.

To view nonstop mass military slaughter as moral and opposition thereto as immoral is to live in a mental moral universe that has been flipped on its head. It’s to inhabit a reality tunnel that has become completely divorced from reality. But that’s the kind of mainstream worldview that the political-media class in this society are working to indoctrinate us into day in and day out throughout our entire lives.

I had to scroll past *four* college campus stories, including two protest-critical opeds (John McWhorter & Bret Stephens) before I got to the much delayed coverage of hundreds of Palestinians found in mass graves. https://t.co/b57txq0M3o

— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 24, 2024

I just saw a tweet from the commentator Briahna Joy Gray saying that in order to find any mention in The New York Times of the hundreds of Palestinians in mass graves that are being discovered in Gaza, she had to scroll past no fewer than four stories about pro-Palestine protests on college campuses — including two op-eds which criticized the protesters. 

What kind of warped, fucked up dystopia is this where that’s the kind of mainstream news outlet people are getting their information and ideas from? Our entire civilization is saturated with reality-distorting propaganda like this, and it’s making people insane. It’s got our moral compasses flipped 180 degrees from our true north, and our inner sensemaker tuning in to frequencies of nothing but garbled static.

That’s how crazy they need us to be to keep us supporting a globe-spanning empire that literally cannot exist without nonstop violence and tyranny. They need us thinking up is down and black is white. They need us not just unable to tell the difference between right and wrong, but actually believing that wrong is right and right is wrong. So they pound our collective consciousness day in and day out with extremely aggressive psyops in the form of mass media propaganda to ensure that our insides are scrambled around enough to consent to the amount of depravity necessary for our rulers to continue dominating this planet.

This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal, as Aaron Bushnell said moments before lighting himself on fire in protest of the genocide in Gaza. A society where mass graves get less media attention than university protesters. A society where more political firepower is going into stopping pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses than ending Israel’s murderous assault on an enclosed enclave packed full of children. A society where trying to stop a genocide is considered evil, and committing one is considered good.

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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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than your feelings. Your feelings don’t matter.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than playing along with the persecution-LARPing of Zionist university students.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than some privileged Ivy Leaguers pretending to feel “unsafe” or “unwelcome” on campus.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than whatever you’re pretending to believe “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” means.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than making sure everyone says all the right words and condemns Hamas with sufficient fervor. 

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than making sure Joe Biden maintains enough support to win re-election.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than performing all kinds of mental contortions and prostrations while talking about Israel’s criminality to avoid offending people who make everything about themselves.

Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than helping you avoid the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance incurred by the contradictions between your stated value system and the genocidal murderousness and cruelty of apartheid Israel.

Your feelings are not more important than Palestinian lives.

Your feelings are not more important than Palestinian displacement.

Your feelings are not even more important than Palestinian feelings.

Your feelings are not important. Stopping the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the people of Gaza is important.

It is a symptom of the cancerousness of western civilization that there are people living their whole lives under the entirely unquestioned assumption that their feelings are so important that it is fine and normal to expect that a limitless number of impoverished foreigners may be killed without any opposition whatsoever in order to promote the interests of their favorite ethnostate, and that anyone who does oppose it is persecuting them.

It is a symptom of how diseased our entire society has become that people are so narcissistic that they now perceive anti-genocide demonstrations on university campuses as a direct attack against them and their identity, and will use any amount of spin and mental contortion to make this seem true.

It is a symptom of the dire need to dismantle the entire western empire that a mainstream narrative structure exists in our society which says opposing a genocide is a far more egregious offense than committing one.

It is a symptom of the dire need for radical revolutionary changes in this civilization that western political systems are urgently discussing the need to stomp out protests against a genocide at university campuses under the pretense of protecting people’s feelings.

Don’t protect people’s feelings. Stop the genocide in Gaza.

People’s feelings should be uncomfortable when a genocide is happening.

People should be experiencing uncomfortable cognitive dissonance and shame when their innately unjust worldview is being completely discredited in front of everyone.

None of us should be feeling comfortable with any of this. We should be feeling very, very uncomfortable, and letting that discomfort drive us to end this nightmare forever.

__________________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Feature image via Ted Eytan (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

A mass grave created by the IDF has been uncovered at a Gaza hospital, where Palestinian civilians appear to have been the victims of a gruesome massacre.

“Bah, that’s old news Caitlin,” you may be saying. “We already know about the massacre and mass graves which were discovered a few weeks ago at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.”

No no, that’s a different mass grave from a different IDF massacre at a completely different Gaza hospital. The now completely destroyed al-Shifa Hospital was in Gaza City; I’m talking about the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, where some 210 bodies have reportedly been discovered in a mass grave after Israeli forces withdrew from the city earlier this month. Two different massacres, two different hospitals, two different mass graves full of Palestinian civilians.

The IDF are just attacking hospitals and mowing down civilians and trying to bury the evidence of their crimes, so naturally we’re seeing the western political-media class focus very hard on the problem of antisemitism allegations on college campuses.

MoH: Number of bodies retrieved from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis rises to 210.

Hundreds are still missing!

First picture from Nasser and the second from Al Shifa Hospital! pic.twitter.com/bI8KsSv2XV

— Motasem A Dalloul (@AbujomaaGaza) April 22, 2024

“Biden denounces antisemitism on college campuses amid Columbia protests,” reads a new headline from The Washington Post.

“As Protests Continue at Columbia, Some Jewish Students Feel Targeted,” The New York Times urgently warns us.

“White House condemns ‘blatantly antisemitic’ protests as agitators engulf Columbia University,” blares Fox News.

“Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to ‘return home’,” says CNN.

“Columbia University: White House condemns antisemitism at college protests,” the BBC reports.

How did we get a point where people are more worried that Jewish students at Columbia feel uncomfortable by chants to end Israel's genocide in Gaza than they are worried about the safety of the people facing a genocide?

Absolutely unreal.

— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) April 21, 2024

Getting far less attention than the fact that some Zionist university students are feeling uncomfortable feelings because other students say Palestinians are human beings is the fact that Israel is establishing a pattern of massacring civilians and burying them in mass graves outside hospitals in Gaza, or the fact that the IDF has been butchering children in Rafah, or the fact that the International Criminal Court is reportedly considering charging Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials for war crimes.

Those matters are important, just not nearly as important as how some western Jews feel emotionally upset about pro-Palestine protests. For that, the world must stop spinning on its axis until this extremely egregious problem has been addressed.

All the western spin and distortion around Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza these last six months have revolved around centering feelings over human lives. How western Jewish Zionists are feeling about pro-Palestine sentiments. How Joe Biden’s feelings secretly feel about Netanyahu. How Israelis feel about October 7. 

Wherever there’s an opportunity to focus the narrative on what feelings are being felt by a politically convenient population, the western press fall all over themselves to do so with tumescent enthusiasm. Wherever there’s an opportunity to focus on Israeli atrocities, the western press are nowhere to be found.

If you belong to a group that isn’t supported by the western empire, you can see your entire family murdered right in front of you and the western political-media class still won’t consider you a victim. If you belong to a group that the empire regards as human, then even someone offending your feelings will be viewed as an unforgivable hate crime.

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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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

They’re hunting civilians with armed quadcopters in Gaza.

The drones play recordings of crying babies and women screaming in distress in order to lure people out into the open, and then shoot them. 

This is reportedly happening at the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, where people live in total darkness at night and have no connection to the outside world.

Other times the drones play the sounds of explosions and gunshots and rolling tanks, and sometimes songs in Hebrew or Arabic, all to terrorize these refugees hiding in the darkness afraid for their lives.

This is the sort of report that a critical thinker would normally dismiss as absurd atrocity propaganda if it was being made about any other military power, but this is the IDF we’re talking about, and this specific allegation is pretty well-supported now. 

Also @Hind_Gaza confirmed this is happening: the IDF has quadcopters luring people to them with recordings of the sound of women and children screaming, then firing on them https://t.co/1ANe4myWLx

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) April 18, 2024

When the destruction of Gaza first began I used to read the jarring claims about the horrific things the IDF were doing and often think, “No, no way. That can’t be the whole story. It’s too cartoonishly evil. There must be some information missing.” Then a few days or weeks later confirmation would come out, showing it’s even worse than I thought before.

I don’t experience that kind of dubiousness when reading such stories anymore. There are only so many atrocities you can see documented, so many videos of IDF troops recording themselves gleefully behaving like monsters, so many hospitals you can see attacked, so many journalists you can see assassinated, before you read a new report about new unfathomable acts of depravity and find yourself saying “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

This baby-crying-sniper-drone story is something else, though. It’s like something out of a weird post-apocalyptic horror movie or something. It’s the kind of information that makes you sort of re-evaluate your previous assumptions about humanity, the world, and the kind of reality we’re experiencing here.

It is really astonishing, how cruel people can be. How cruel a whole nation of people can be made to be, if they’re indoctrinated just right. You spend your whole childhood being indoctrinated into the belief that one group of people are inferior to your own and don’t deserve the same rights and treatment your group receives, and before you know it you’re blockading aid trucks from bringing that group food, and playing recordings of crying babies on an assassination drone in order to murder civilians at a refugee camp.

That’s how Nazi Germany happened, it’s how the genocidal apartheid state of Israel has happened, and it’s how the murderous US-centralized empire has happened. It turns out it’s not all that hard to manipulate a population into supporting shocking abuses at mass scale with modern propaganda and indoctrination from early childhood. It turns out the human mind is a lot more hackable than we’d like to believe it is, and that this can be used to unleash living nightmares upon our world a lot more easily than we’re comfortable acknowledging.

This is how the entire western world has been manipulated into accepting nonstop war, militarism, nuclear brinkmanship, imperialism and exploitation as fine and normal, and into assuming that a better world isn’t possible. As long as the powerful are able to manipulate the way a sufficiently large percentage of the population thinks, speaks, acts and votes, we’re going to be stuck in this horrifying dystopia where the sky rains fire upon the innocent, where war profiteers reap vast fortunes from machines which rip apart human bodies, and where sniper drones cry like babies.

We can help weaken the empire’s propaganda machine by spreading awareness of what it’s doing and how it operates, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. Help people to see the ways in which the mass media are deceiving them, point out all the signs that we live under an empire of lies, and help spread awareness of what’s really true and what’s really possible.

All positive changes in human behavior of any scale are always preceded by an expansion of consciousness. Spreading awareness is the first step toward a healthy world, and we can each do that in our own small way every single day.

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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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

One of the reasons I often pivot to poetry and emotion-laden prose in my commentary on Gaza is because it’s so very easy to let ourselves become numb to the horrors of what’s being done there day after day and month after month — but it’s so very, very important not to.

It would be so very easy to get overwhelmed and start letting one day of lies and atrocities blend into the next until it becomes this amorphous gray blob on the periphery of our attention. Reports like IDF sniper drones playing the sounds of distressed women and children to lure civilians out into the open and then shooting them, or Israeli officials ridiculously claiming they had no idea that blowing up a consulate building full of Iranian military officers would be seen as an escalation, have been coming out on a daily basis now, and it’s tempting to let yourself become overwhelmed and stop caring as much.

And it isn’t an accident that we are confronted with that temptation every day. Since day one the Israelis have been yanking public consciousness this way and that with astonishing atrocities, ridiculous denialism and high octane narrative spin, backed by the full might of the western empire and its peerlessly powerful propaganda machine. Every day we’re smacked in the face with new horrors, coupled with new statements from the Israeli regime taunting our sense of reality like “Heeheehee, did we do it? Who knows? No, we didn’t! But if we did it was good!” while western officials make vague obfuscatory statements that they need more information about each incident before taking a position and suggesting that the IDF needs to investigate itself to find out what happened. You’ll see them pour tons of energy into indignantly denying the very idea that Israel would ever attack a hospital, only to have them arguing that it’s fine and good for Israel to destroy every hospital in Gaza just weeks later.

This can break you, if you let it. It’s hard for the mind and heart to take such systematic pummeling, especially if you don’t understand that it is being done deliberately with a very specific goal in mind. The more westerners can be psychologically shoved into throwing up their hands and filing Gaza away in our mental “bad things in the world I try not to think about” drawer, the easier it is for Israel and its imperial backers to do the monstrous things they want to do there.

So I do what I can to help keep the reality of what’s happening in Gaza on the surface, not just in terms of the factual truth but the emotional truth of it as well. The horror. The suffering. That empathetic connection to the plight of our fellow human beings that can drive us to act, and to push for real change.

Don’t let these pricks numb you to what’s happening in Gaza. You can see plainly that that’s what they want, and you can see plainly what they’d stand to gain by pushing people into that state of numbness. So don’t give it to them. Ensure that, by the measure of at least one person, they fail toward that endeavor. And do what you can to ensure that they fail with others as well.

We’re not supposed to be unaffected by this sort of thing. We’re not supposed to be able to find a state of psychological comfort with genocide. It’s not natural, and it’s not right. Man-made nightmares unleashed upon the waking earth are supposed to disturb us.

Don’t let them take that away from you. Feelings are meant to be felt. Feel the grief. Feel the outrage. Feel the anger. Feel the pain. Let it come to you and say everything it wants to say to you, like you would with a small child telling you about their fears or their hurts. Write it down, sing it out, paint it, dance it, roar it into a pillow, throw rocks at it into a stream, whatever you can do to bring it into the world in a more tangible form. Let it wash through you, feel it completely until it has had its say, then get up, and keep fighting.

As we work our way into the monumental endeavor of creating a healthy world together, it’s not enough for us to be informed about what’s going on in the world — we’ve also got to have a mature emotional relationship with it. We don’t just need to have conscious minds, we need to have conscious hearts as well. If we don’t have a conscious relationship with our emotions, and if our emotions don’t have a conscious relationship with what’s going on in the world, then how can we hope to steer the world toward health? Caring and compassion are the only useful compass we have to navigate us there.

So shelter your caring from the efforts of the bastards to snuff it out, like a precious candle flame on a windy day. Even if we lose the battle in the short term, and even if we lose the war in the long term, at the very least you can deprive these freaks of that one little victory by continuing to care.

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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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Featured image via Pixabay.

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

❖

The US doesn’t support a two-state solution, the US only supports saying the US supports a two-state solution. We know this because the US just vetoed Palestine’s bid to become a full UN member state, after lobbying other countries to vote against the resolution — despite continually saying it supports the foundation of a Palestinian state. Washington’s words say one thing, but its actions say the opposite.

This is because if the US admitted its actual position, it would greatly damage its reputation on the world stage. What the US actually wants is the same thing the Israelis want: for the Palestinians to go away, or lie down and submit completely, or otherwise stop being an inconvenience until they’re a forgotten footnote in the dustbin of history. But the US can’t come right out and say this, so it pretends to support a two-state solution that Israel has spent years doing everything it can to ensure never happens. It’s a completely fictional resolution to a very real problem, but the alternative to supporting it is to admit you support continued apartheid, oppression, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

So the US maintains this ridiculous charade where it keeps pretending to support this fake non-solution, even while taking concrete actions which make it clear that it does not. Immediately after vetoing the Palestinian bid for UN membership, Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood declared, “The United States continues to strongly support a two-state solution. This vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood,” saying the emergence of a Palestinian state can only come about through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. We can see right now how things are going on that front.

U.S. at the UN: what we just voted no on is something that we strongly support pic.twitter.com/9psBUIzcP7

— Hamza M Syed (@HamzaMSyed) April 18, 2024

As always, the only way to understand the US-centralized global power structure is to ignore what its officials say and watch what they actually do instead. This is good advice for understanding geopolitics and government dynamics in general, and it’s good advice for sorting out fact from fiction when dealing with any manipulator in your personal life. Ignore their words, and watch their actions.

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The Washington Post put out a good investigative report on the IDF’s murder of six year-old Hind Rajab along with her family in Gaza earlier this year, showing that evidence points to Israeli forces being behind the attack. Washington Post editors immediately shitcoated this report by giving it the obnoxious headline “Palestinian paramedics said Israel gave them safe passage to save a 6-year-old girl in Gaza. They were all killed.” 

This headline is carefully crafted to suggest that Israel kindly granted safe passage to Palestinian healthcare workers, who were then killed by some unknown assailant. Imagine going through all the work of putting out a hard investigative report, and then having your editor slap this shit on it. Disgusting.

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A senior US Air Force leader and whistleblower has informed Congress that the US is refusing to pull its military forces from Niger despite being told to do so by the new Nigerien government, and that refusing to withdraw troops from a nation where they aren’t wanted is putting them at risk. Which means we’ve got yet another illegal US military occupation on our hands.

New illegal US military occupation just dropped. https://t.co/0BPPuhJF3o

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 19, 2024

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It’s so stupid how everyone’s felt the need to keep pretending to believe the Gaza death toll has legitimately hovered around thirty thousand for months now just because Israel supporters have even been calling the official death count a Hamas-driven exaggeration. 

We all know the Gaza health ministry hasn’t had the infrastructure or ability to count all the dead throughout the Gaza Strip for months and that the official number doesn’t include people killed by starvation and disease due to the Israeli blockade, but because Israel supporters (including the US president) threw shade on the health ministry’s numbers from the beginning they succeeded in dragging the Overton window all the way down to this ridiculously conservative estimate just through sheer vitriol and denialism — even though we know the killing never stopped.

Ralph Nader wrote in early March that the real number is probably more like 200,000. There’s no good reason to discount this. It’s certainly more likely than the number just continuing to sit around thirty thousand for no reason.

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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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

The imperial media are reporting that Israel launched a missile attack against Iran early Friday morning, with explosions also seen in Syria and Iraq. Tehran is denying there was any missile attack on Iran at all, with Iranian media reporting that the blasts were actually from drones that were successfully shot down over Iran. It doesn’t appear that any nuclear sites were struck.

A senior Iranian official has reportedly told Reuters that Iran has no plans for any immediate response to Israel, which is good because Tehran has previously stated that if Israel makes another “mistake” it will result in immediate retaliation. Israel’s extremist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted a word in Hebrew which roughly translates to “feeble” in an apparent reference to the Israeli attack, signaling his disapproval at Israel’s failure to ignite World War Three.

So as things stand right now it looks like the cycle of escalation between Iran and Israel has thankfully ended or at least paused, which means now all we have to worry about is a horrific massacre in southern Gaza. The Times of Israel reports that Washington has agreed to go along with Israel’s planned assault on the city of Rafah so long as Israel doesn’t launch a large attack against Iran in response to its unprecedented retaliatory drone and missile attack on Saturday, according to an Egyptian source speaking to a Qatari outlet. A White House spokesperson has denied this, but you’d expect them to. 

Egyptian sources to The New Arab: “the US has accepted Israel’s plan for an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, in return for not carrying out a large strike in Iran in response to Tehran’s unprecedented missile and drone attack.” https://t.co/PA5A7EWixI

— Matthew Petti (@matthew_petti) April 18, 2024

Israel had reportedly notified the US earlier on Thursday that an attack on Iran was coming, and that nuclear sites would not be damaged. If all Israel did was launch a small attack on Iran that did no significant damage, that would certainly fit the bill for the kind of strike that was alleged by the aforementioned Egyptian source.

As Dr Assal Rad said on Twitter regarding this report, “If this is true, Biden is green lighting a massacre so that Israel doesn’t start a wider war with Iran.”

Iran’s retaliatory strike for Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus reportedly delayed Israel’s planned assault on Rafah, where according to CNN the IDF was ready to begin dropping leaflets on Monday. Israel has spent the last six months kettling the population of the Gaza Strip southward into Rafah, so now it’s extremely densely populated and a full-on attack could be deadlier than anything we’ve seen in Gaza so far.

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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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Featured image via Adobe Stock.

Listen to a reading by Tim Foley:

“I want my legs back,” the girl cried in Arabic.
“I want my legs back.”

You can’t have your legs back, little girl.
They have been eaten by a hungry machine
who needs them for fuel to power its gears.

The machine needs your legs to keep the sky raining bombs
and to make its death robots fly.
Your legs power the bulldozers digging mass graves
and the tanks blowing holes in the hospitals.

A glorious kingdom is held together
by the amputated limbs of children.
A pentagon-shaped castle is built from the bones
of the amputated limbs of children.
Wall Street werewolves and bank boys dine
on the amputated limbs of children.
Movie stars treat their wrinkles with creams
made from the amputated limbs of children.
Suburban families prop up their smiles
with the amputated limbs of children.
The news man lies and in his eyes
you see the amputated limbs of children.
The podium man smirks and between his teeth
are the amputated limbs of children.

And the little girl cries,
and the news man ignores her,
and the podium man smirks at her,
and the bank boy bites her,
and the machine rolls on,
limbs fed into its furnace with pitchforks,
crushing houses and blackening the sky,
poisoning the oceans and bloodying the earth,
while the air fills with the crying of children,
for limbs that will never come back,
for homes that will never come back,
for mothers that will never come back,
for childhoods that will never come back,
for brightness that will never come back,
for innocence that will never come back,
for dreams that will never come back,
for joy that will never come back.

And we are here,
eating cheesy meatcarbs and watching funny haw-haws
and gossiping and prattling and wishing we looked better
and trying not to think about all the tiny arms and legs
we see covering the earth
whenever we step outside.

❖

“I want my legs back”

-11-year-old Palestinian girl Razan Muneer Arafat wakes up to find her legs amputated, after she was injured by US-UK-EU-armed Israeli airstrikes

Horror such as this, given the all clear by the US-led ‘rules-based order’ https://t.co/L8g0N2eZxs pic.twitter.com/XGSBTTKkTJ

— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) March 15, 2024

_____________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

❖

Israel’s allowed to bomb an Iranian consulate, but Iran’s not allowed to strike back. The US is allowed to surround China with war machinery, but it would be World War Three if China ever tried to militarily encircle the US. NATO is allowed to expand to Russia’s doorstep and amass proxy forces on its border, but the last time Moscow placed a credible military threat anywhere near the United States, the US responded so aggressively that the world almost ended. 

The “rules-based international order” that the US-centralized power structure purports to uphold just means an order in which the US makes up the rules and nations had better obey them. It means rules for thee but not for me.

❖

Democrats are currently committing genocide, pushing through terrifying NSA surveillance powers, and working to imprison a journalist for life for telling the truth about US war crimes, but it’s very important to support Biden because if Trump wins, fascism might come to America.

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The Assange extradition case is like if the mafia was demanding a snitch be extradited to Italy and multiple nations collaborated with them to help make this happen, except in this case the snitch is a journalist who told the truth, and the mob happens to run a global superpower.

❖

The imperial media are once again trotting out John Bolton to help sell the idea of war with Iran. This monster belongs in a cage, not on camera. The fact that the mainstream western press keep having this completely discredited bloodthirsty psychopath on their shows to advocate every possible US war proves that our entire civilization is diseased.

To call on Israel not to act in self-defense is reprehensible. By saying that Israel had a "win" simply because no one died encourages belligerent dictatorships like Iran to strike again. I'd like to hear from one politician who would call for restraint if hundreds of missiles… pic.twitter.com/ze0teJTnDe

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) April 15, 2024

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Israel’s actions over the last six months have made it abundantly clear that Biden’s stated goal of preventing the outbreak of more war in the middle east and his stated “ironclad” support for Israel are two mutually exclusive positions. You can do one or the other, but not both.

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Outside the mainstream press the news about Ukraine is a nonstop deluge of stories about how badly things are going for them. 

Here are some recent articles from Antiwar.com:

“Ukraine’s Top General Says Situation on the Battlefield Has ‘Significantly Worsened’” discusses Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi’s acknowledgement that Russia is making steady gains and that the frontlines in Ukraine are at risk of collapsing wherever Russia focuses its offensive.

“US General Says Russia’s Military Is Bigger Than Before Ukraine Invasion” quotes General Christopher Cavoli saying “The army is actually now larger — by 15% — than it was when it invaded Ukraine,” an acknowledgement that Washington’s stated goal of using this proxy war to “weaken” Russia has failed.

“Russia Quickly Restores Oil Refinery Capability Hurt By Ukrainian Attacks” discusses how badly Russia is damaging Ukraine’s energy infrastructure compared to the damage Ukraine has been able to deal to Russia’s.

Here are a couple more from The Libertarian Institute:

“US Official Admits Ukraine Proxy War Failing to Weaken Russia” features an acknowledgement from Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell that Russia has reconstituted nearly all of its military losses in Ukraine.

“Ukraine Tightens Rules on Military Service, Angering Soldiers” reports on how “Ukraine’s legislature advanced multiple new laws that tighten rules on conscription and extend military services for those already in uniform.”

It’s absolutely criminal how the west pushed this country into sacrificing a generation to a war they always knew was unwinnable.

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1. Deny bombing the consulate
2. Say the consulate wasn't really a consulate
3. Say Iran better not retaliate against you for that time you bombed the consulate
4. Say you had no idea that Iran would make such a big deal about you bombing their consulate https://t.co/86cA0QK453

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 18, 2024

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So much suffering and loss has been caused by the way people decided a long time ago that killing one person is murder and therefore immoral but killing thousands of people is “war” and therefore fine. The actual act is the same; only the narrative and the scale are different.

❖

Around the mid-1800s humanity began to notice it doesn’t make sense for a small group of rich people to own everything and for everyone else to continually give that group labor, rent and expenses just to stay alive, and ever since then the media, the mainstream culture and the foreign policy of the ruling class have been intensely devoted to aggressively erasing this realization from humanity’s memory.

_________________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

So they’re really doing it. The Biden administration is really ignoring Australia’s request to end the case against Julian Assange, and they’re proceeding with their campaign to extradite a journalist for telling the truth about US war crimes.

In order to move the extradition case forward, per a British high court ruling US prosecutors needed to provide “assurances” that the US would not seek the death penalty and would not deprive Assange of his human right to free speech because of his nationality. The US provided the assurance against the death penalty (which they’d previously opposed doing), and for the free speech assurance they said only that Assange will be able to “raise and seek to rely upon” US First Amendment rights, adding, “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. Courts.”

Which is basically just saying “I mean, you’re welcome to TRY to have free speech protections?”

US Issues Assurances on Assange https://t.co/6a7osJoc82

UPDATED WITH TEXT OF DIPLOMATIC NOTE: The U.S. Tuesday filed  assurances on the death penalty and the 1st Amendment, the latter of which Stella Assange called a “non-assurance.” pic.twitter.com/KQNNeIQNYD

— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) April 16, 2024

At the same time, CIA Director William Burns has filed a State Secrets Privilege demand to withhold information in a lawsuit against the agency by four American journalists and attorneys who were spied on during their visits to Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. State secrets privilege is a US evidentiary rule designed to prevent courts from revealing state secrets during civil litigation; the CIA began invoking it with the Assange lawsuit earlier this year.

Burns argues:

“I am asserting the state secrets and statutory privileges in this case as I have determined that either admitting or denying that CIA has information implicated by the remaining allegations in the Amended Complaint reasonably could be expected to cause serious — and in some cases, exceptionally grave — damage to the national security of the United States. After deliberation and personal consideration, I have determined that the complete factual bases for my privilege assertions cannot be set forth on the public record without confirming or denying whether CIA has information relating to this matter and therefore risking the very harm to U.S. national security that I seek to protect.”

Which is obviously a load of horse shit. As Assange himself tweeted in 2017, “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.” Burns isn’t worried about damaging “the national security of the United States,” he’s worried about the potential political fallout from information about the CIA spying on American lawyers and journalists while visiting a journalist who was being actively targeted by the legal arm of the US government.

https://t.co/n1yfRuA8xy pic.twitter.com/COz405MbrJ

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 16, 2024

Political security is also why the US is working to punish Julian Assange for publishing inconvenient facts about US war crimes. The Pentagon already acknowledged years ago that the Chelsea Manning leaks for which Assange is being prosecuted didn’t get anyone killed and had no strategic impact on US war efforts, so plainly this isn’t about national security. It’s just politically damaging for the criminality of the US government to be made public for all to see.

They’re just squeezing and squeezing this man as hard as they can for as long as they can get away with to keep him silent and make an example of him to show what happens when journalists reveal unauthorized information about the empire. Just like Gaza, the persecution of Julian Assange makes a lie of everything the US and its western allies claim to stand for, and reveals the cruel face of tyranny beneath the mask of liberal democracy.

_______________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

The destruction of Gaza proves the entire mainstream western worldview is bullshit, because if the mainstream western worldview was accurate, the destruction of Gaza would not be happening.

By the mainstream western worldview I mean the general consensus about what’s going on in the world which is prevalent among mainstream western politicians and pundits and the creators of mainstream culture in New York and Hollywood. The worldview which takes it as a given that western democracy is real, that the US and its allies are basically good actors on the world stage even if they make mistakes from time to time, that the western news media pretty much tell us the truth about things (or at least the media which align with the mainstream political faction we support), and that the world works pretty much the way we were taught in school.

If the mainstream western worldview was accurate, the US and its western allies would not be helping Israel rain military explosives upon a walled-in civilian population that’s half comprised of children — because the mainstream western worldview maintains that the US and its western allies behave in an ethical way with high regard for human rights and wellbeing.

If the mainstream western worldview was accurate, the US and its western allies would not be assisting Israel while it deliberately starves civilians — because according to the mainstream western worldview that kind of collective punishment is a violation of the international law which the US and its western allies uphold and defend.

If the mainstream western worldview was accurate, we would not be continually reading stories about how large media outlets like CNN and The New York Times force their staff to slant their coverage in a way that benefits Israeli information interests — because per the mainstream western worldview the western press are reliable sources of information, and propaganda is something that is only used by bad guys like Putin and Kim Jong Un.

If the mainstream western worldview was accurate, Hollywood and the western news media would have spent six months united in passionate and consistent condemnation of Israel for its nonstop mass atrocities in Gaza — because the mainstream western worldview says we live in a truth-based society guided by ethical institutions.

If the mainstream western worldview was accurate, we wouldn’t see western officials standing behind podiums justifying the mass slaughter of civilians and denying obvious Israeli war crimes day after day and month after month — because in the mainstream western worldview murdering civilians and facilitating war crimes is something that is only done by illiberal, undemocratic countries to the east and the south.

If the mainstream western worldview was accurate, the US and its allies wouldn’t have spent this time bombing people in Yemen, Iraq and Syria who try to fight back in opposition to Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza — because the mainstream western worldview asserts that the US power alliance is an upholder of peace and stability throughout the world.

We simply are not seeing what we’d expect to be seeing with regard to Gaza if the mainstream western worldview was accurate. This is because the mainstream western worldview is not accurate — it’s a false narrative construct that has been carefully assembled inside each of our skulls by the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed. 

In reality we do not live in a truth-based society that is guided by morality and governed by basically decent people — we live in a lie-based society that is guided by greed and the pursuit of power, and is governed by unelected sociopaths. We do not live in the kind of world we were taught about in school. We live in a corrupt, mind-controlled dystopia, under the thumb of an undeclared globe-spanning empire which requires more and more violence and tyranny to sustain.

Gaza should devastate any part of the mainstream worldview which still exists in your mind, because all the facts we are seeing right in front of our faces squarely contradict that worldview. 

Changing your worldview is not easy. It takes work. It takes sincerity. It takes a willingness to sit in the discomfort of cognitive dissonance while staring at facts which prove our perspective is misinformed, and coming to terms with them. But it’s the only way for an individual to come to a truth-based understanding of the world, and one day it’s how we as a collective will move into the creation of a real truth-based society.

_______________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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In an article titled “Israel vows to retaliate against Iran for missile attacks,” Axios reports that the Israeli defense minister has informed his American counterpart that Israel “has no choice” but to attack Iran for the retaliatory strike it launched in response to Israel’s deadly attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus.

“Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Sunday that Israel has no choice but to respond to the unprecedented missile and drone attack launched by Iran over the weekend,” reports Axios, citing an anonymous US official and another unnamed source.

The state of Israel has been churning out massive lies on a daily basis for the last six months, but this whopper could wind up being the most consequential.

Report: Israel Tells US It Has No Choice But To Respond to Iran
Israeli TV reports that Israel's War Cabinet has decided it will attack Iran, but it's unclear how or when
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Israel #Iran #Gaza https://t.co/bcs6DQgDsb pic.twitter.com/x3C51NQcse

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) April 15, 2024

Obviously Israel has a choice as to whether it continues to escalate a conflict it initiated with an extreme act of aggression. This fraudulent apartheid ethnostate is so accustomed to crying victim every minute of every day that it will even pretend to be the victim of its own conscious decisions. 

As professor Jason Hickel put it on Twitter, “People need to understand that Israel *does not* need to retaliate. Iran’s action was a telegraphed response to Israel’s bombing of its consulate, which killed 16 people and violated the Vienna Convention. Iran says they now consider the matter closed. Israel must de-escalate.”

Iran’s deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri has made it clear that if Israel launches another attack against Iran, this time Iran’s response will be instantaneous instead of a twelve-day grace period with Tehran giving neighboring countries and the United States a 72-hour advance warning to ensure minimal damage to Israel.

Iranian DepFM Ali Bagheri says that #Iran will respond to a new mistake by #Israel “in seconds, not in days or hours”. He said, “This time, they will not have 12 days”. https://t.co/nKzXZncz4P

— Abas Aslani (@AbasAslani) April 15, 2024

Predictably, the Biden administration is doing its usual phony schtick where it pretends to be a passive witness to all this, with National Security spokesman John Kirby telling the press that the White House plans to just “wait and see what the Israelis decide to do.” 

But as foreign policy analyst Tariq Kenney-Shawa noted of Kirby’s statement, “Israel will be using US-supplied weapons, will have to coordinate with US forces throughout the region, and will depend on the US for missile defense when Iran responds.” So the fact that the US won’t be actively planning the attack with Israel doesn’t mean the US won’t be involved in it on a fundamental level.

If Israel’s escalatory attack happens, it will be because Washington allowed it to. If the US informed Israel that it will instantly lose its pricey US weapons supplies and Pentagon support if it attacks Iran, Israel would discover very quickly that it does in fact have a choice as to whether or not to proceed.

My latest for @ForeignPolicy on Iran, Gaza & Israel:

Biden’s support for Israel is often described as a continuation of a long-standing US policy. In reality, it is a break with tradition. Previous presidents regularly twisted Israel's arm if needed.https://t.co/vDdjZmdvbM

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) April 15, 2024

In an article for Foreign Policy titled “Netanyahu Wants War With Iran. Biden Can Prevent It.”, Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi argues that while Biden’s unconditional support for Israel is often described as a continuation of longstanding US policy, it has actually been a rather dramatic break from the norm. Presidents like Reagan, both Bushes, and Obama have not hesitated to give Israel’s arm a twist whenever they found it necessary to advance US interests in the region; this new policy of just letting Tel Aviv do whatever it wants while providing unconditional support is actually without precedent in the White House.

Both Israel and the US are pretending to be powerless in this situation, when in reality they’re both anything but. They’re like two muggers getting ready to mug someone and saying “If only there was something we could do to stop this terrible mugging!”

Israel absolutely can choose not to accelerate toward a terrifying war between extremely powerful militaries, and the US absolutely can choose to pump the brakes. The fact that neither of them are doing so is just what it looks like when you live under a globe-spanning empire that is fueled by human blood.

______________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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The more I think about it the more obnoxious I find the Biden administration’s “Gee whiz, I sure hope Israel doesn’t drag us into a giant war in the middle east” posturing and the imperial media’s facilitation of it.

CNN has a new article out titled “As Iran attacks Israel, Biden confronts an escalating Middle East crisis he had hoped to avoid,” which is a genre of story that has been coming out in slightly different iterations again and again for the past six months. Every time Israel does something that makes things more dangerous in the middle east with the assistance of the United States, the American press fall all over themselves to inform the world that the president really doesn’t want this to happen and that his feelings are very upset about it.

“For President Joe Biden, an attack on Israel launched from Iranian soil amounts to a scenario he’d greatly sought to avoid since the start of the current Middle East conflict,” writes CNN, saying the strikes “heighten the risk of a wider regional conflict that could directly draw in the United States, along with other countries.”

“Israel will respond to Iran’s attack, but the scope of that response has yet to be determined,” CNN reports, citing an anonymous Israeli official.

-Iran was *responding* to Israel’s attack on its embassy, this framing makes it seem like Iran initiated an attack

-If Biden wanted to avoid a crisis he could have supported a ceasefire, instead he gave Israel no red line, aided atrocities in Gaza and shattered international law pic.twitter.com/83bmPIDOgd

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) April 14, 2024

And it’s just such an obscene insult to our intelligence to suggest that the Biden administration is some kind of passive witness to all this, sitting around wringing its hands hoping Israel doesn’t do something so horrible that the United States will have no choice but to leap into World War Three in defense of its dear ally. It’s insulting in that it asks us to believe the US would have no choice but to enter into a war of unimaginable horror if Israel acts belligerently enough, and it’s insulting in that it asks us to ignore the fact that Biden could have ended this insane cycle of escalation with one phone call to Israel at any time over the last six months.

Being asked to accept that the Biden administration is just standing there hoping Israel doesn’t ignite the worst war in middle eastern history is like seeing a dog owner letting their rottweiler run around biting people all over the neighborhood and saying “Yeah he just does what he likes, I just hope he doesn’t kill anybody.”

It’s like, no. Stop that. You’re not just crossing your fingers and hoping Israel doesn’t do something monstrous, you’re letting them do whatever they want because that’s what you’re choosing to do. Israel’s entire existence is as dependent on US support as a scuba diver is on their oxygen tank, and as such the White House has essentially limitless leverage it can use to make Israel do as it pleases — and it has done so in the past. Hell it’s done so during this very Gaza assault, successfully commanding Israel to stop cutting off Gazan telecommunications and to start letting more aid trucks in to the enclave.

If Biden truly didn’t want Israel to be turning the middle east into a hurricane of death and fire, he would stop it. He would put the damn dog on a leash.

This administration’s many leaks to the press about Israel always manage to make it sound like Biden is being held against his will and blinking twice to signal he needs help pic.twitter.com/qo0M1KUjOc

— Megan K. Stack (@Megankstack) April 14, 2024

The western press have a well-established track record of consistently framing US wars as these traps that Washington just clumsily stumbles its way into, like there’s some giant Macaulay Culkin-like deity sneaking around laying tripwires to force the Pentagon to regime change Libya or whatever. After a certain number of wars you have to figure that a regime is starting a bunch of wars because it’s just a warmongering regime, though — and the US has been involved in a whole, whole lot of wars. Nobody’s that clumsy or that unlucky; it’s like believing your husband when he tells you he keeps slipping and falling with his man parts inside the lady parts of various coworkers.

The most powerful empire that has ever existed is not just passively sitting there praying that big bad Israel doesn’t force it to go to war with Iran. That is not happening. All the violence and chaos that’s happening in the middle east right now is happening because the US empire wants it to happen, and because the people who steer that empire are psychopathic ghouls. And don’t let the crooked manipulators of the western mass media tell you otherwise.

______________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image official White House photo (public domain).

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

❖

Anyone who wants the US and its allies to attack Iran is a psychopath. People who want to unleash a war of that scale upon our species should be rejected from our society as aggressively as child molesters and Nazis.

❖

A new CNN report says multiple Biden administration officials “saw Iran’s attacks on Israel Saturday as disproportionate to Israel’s strikes in Damascus that prompted the retaliation.” 

There are zero reported fatalities as a result of the Iranian retaliation. The Israeli strikes on the Iranian embassy in Damascus killed 16 people, including multiple high-level Iranian military officials. To see Iran’s response as “disproportionate” is to admit you believe Israeli lives are worth literally orders of magnitude more than Iranian lives.

And it was at an embassy, for god’s sake. Israel can assassinate 16 people while shattering decades of diplomatic norms, and in the eyes of the US that’s still not as bad as Iran creating a few potholes in an Israeli street.

And anyway how obscene is it that these shitstains can babble about proportionality at all after backing Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza? When Iran attacks the response needs to be proportionate, but when Israel incinerates Gaza over October 7 it’s “LMAO fuck around and find out, laughcry emoji, Israeli flag.”

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No no you don't understand, this time Germany is rounding up Jews to FIGHT antisemitism. https://t.co/uyhMBUmAfX

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 12, 2024

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After six months of mass murder and chaos the only thing that looks more absurd than the claim that Israel is morally superior to other nations in the middle east is the claim that the United States is morally superior to other nations in the world.

No matter how low your opinion was of western power structures and western civilization, if you’ve been watching events of the last six months with sincerity it will have sunk even lower by now.

❖

BREAKING: NBC News reports that 'President Joe Biden has privately expressed concern that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to drag the U.S. more deeply into a broader conflict'

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) April 14, 2024

It’s so obnoxious how the mass media are helping the White House pretend this is something the Biden administration is just passively sitting around hoping doesn’t happen, as though the US hasn’t had the power to end all this every single day for the last six months.

❖

It’s just an easily quantifiable fact that the Trump administration was vastly less warlike and murderous than the Biden administration has been. This doesn’t mean Trump wasn’t warlike and murderous. It doesn’t even mean Trump wouldn’t have been doing more or less the same evil things that Biden has been doing if he’d won in 2020. But it does mean the entire mainstream liberal narrative about what Trump is and what Biden is has been complete bullshit this entire time, which necessarily means the whole mainstream narrative about the US political system is a lie.

❖

It’s possible that as the United States was first beginning to move toward planetary hegemony there were some empire managers operating in good faith who sincerely believed US unipolarity could be a force for achieving world peace. It’s doubtful that everyone constructing this monstrosity has been an evil, mustache-twirling cartoon villain who wanted to see nonstop violence, oppression and nuclear brinkmanship inflicted upon populations around the globe. But that’s what wound up happening.

And of course it did. The belief that a regime can take over the world by any amount of force necessary and create peace and prosperity for all was always a poorly reasoned fantasy of deeply unwise minds. Of course there are going to be populations who refuse to be subjugated, and some of them are going to have nuclear weapons, and others will have conventional weapons but defend their sovereignty tooth and claw. Most of the violence and cold war brinkmanship you see in international conflicts today is a direct result of this dynamic.

The US-centralized empire’s foreign policy is one long and unrelenting war against disobedience. It simply is not possible to bring the entire human species under one single power umbrella without copious amounts of violence and tyranny. If we keep going along this trajectory, the empire’s war on disobedience is going to lead to nuclear armageddon someday.

______________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Featured image via Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Iran has carried out its long-promised retaliation for Israel’s attack on its consulate building in Damascus, launching a massive barrage of drones and missiles which it claims hit and destroyed Israeli military targets, while Israel says they dealt only superficial damage with a few injuries. The US and its allies reportedly helped shoot down a number of the Iranian projectiles. 

Just as we discussed in the lead-up to the strike, the western political-media class are acting as though this was a completely unprovoked attack launched against the innocent, Bambi-eyed victim Israel. Comments from western officials and pundits and headlines from the mass media are omitting the fact that Israel instigated these hostilities with its extreme act of aggression in Syria as much as possible. Here in Australia the Sydney Morning Herald write-up about the strike didn’t get around to informing its readers about the attack on the Iranian consulate until the tenth paragraph of the article, and said only that Iran had “accused” Israel of launching the attack because Israel has never officially confirmed it.

UPDATED: Iran Launches Major Drone and Missile Attack on Israel
Tel Aviv condemned the move as a “dangerous escalation” and claimed to have repelled most incoming projectiles
by Will Porter@TheWillPorter #Iran #Israel #IRGC #drones https://t.co/GOjbAm3OqU pic.twitter.com/Q2PtxbMAjy

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) April 14, 2024

In any case, Iran says the attack is now over. Given that we’re not seeing any signs of massive damage, Iran’s reported claim that its retaliation would be calibrated to avoid escalation into a full-scale regional war seems to have been accurate, as does Washington’s reported claim that it didn’t expect the strike to be large enough to draw the US into war.

A new report from Axios says Biden has personally told Netanyahu that the US will not be supporting any Israeli military response to the Iranian strike. An anonymous senior White House official told Axios that Biden said to Netanyahu, “You got a win. Take the win,” in reference to the number of Iranian weapons that were taken out of the sky by the international coalition in Israel’s defense. Apparently helping to mitigate the damage from the Iranian attack is all the military commitment the White House is willing to make against Iran at this time.

And thank all that is holy for that. A war between the US alliance and Iran and its allies would be the stuff of nightmares, making the horrors we’ve been seeing in Gaza these last six months look like an episode of Peppa Pig.

But Washington merely declining to get involved is nowhere near enough. As the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi quipped on Twitter, “Biden needs to PREVENT further escalation, not just declare his desire to stay out of it.”

Not significant enough.

Biden needs to PREVENT further escalation, not just declare his desire to stay out of it. https://t.co/KQ0paadDtY

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) April 14, 2024

Indeed, Israel has already made it clear that it is going to be moving forward with an escalation against Iran. Israel’s Channel 12 cites an unnamed senior official saying the Iranian counter strike is going to receive an “unprecedented response”.

“Israel has already informed the Americans and governments in the region that its response is inevitable,” The Economist reports. “Its military options include launching drones at Iran, and long-range airstrikes on Iran, possibly on military bases or nuclear installations.”

It’s unclear at this time how much the latest message from the Biden administration will affect the calculations of this position, but the mass media are reporting that White House officials are worried Israel is getting ready to do something extremely reckless that could draw the US into a war it would rather avoid. 

NBC News reports the following:

“Some top U.S. officials are concerned Israel could do something quickly in response to Iran’s attacks without thinking through potential fallout afterward, according to a senior administration official and a senior defense official.

“Those concerns stem in part from the administration’s views of the approach Israel has taken to its war against Hamas, as well as the attack in Damascus.

“President Joe Biden has privately expressed concern that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to drag the U.S. more deeply into a broader conflict, according to three people familiar with his comments.”

Read this piece on why Bibi chose to radically escalate with his April 1 strike on Iran's diplomatic compound. It's by Paul Pillar, who knows the territory–he was once in charge of analysis of the Middle East for CIA & all other US intelligence agencies. https://t.co/w4dZjkdy3w

— Robert Wright (@robertwrighter) April 13, 2024

People have been raising this concern for some time now. Earlier this month Responsible Statecraft’s Paul Pillar wrote up a solid argument that Netanyahu stands a lot to gain personally from drawing the US into a war with Iran to help him with his legal and political troubles and take the focus off of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

Whether that’s the case or not it’s pretty absurd for the Biden administration to just sit around passively hoping this doesn’t happen as though it wouldn’t have a say in the matter, and as though there’s nothing it can do to prevent such an occurrence right now. Biden has had the ability to end this insane cycle of escalation in the middle east since it started six months ago by demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and demanding that Israel rein in its murder machine, just as US presidents have done successfully in the past.

Biden could end all this with one phone call. The fact that he doesn’t means he’s a monster, and no amount of mass media reports about how “concerned” and “frustrated” he is regarding Israel’s actions will ever change that.

_______________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Iran appears to be poised to launch an attack on Israel in retaliation for the Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, which killed 16 people including multiple Iranian military officers. Iranian forces have already seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, and Tehran continues to vow that it will soon retaliate for the embassy attack at an undisclosed time.

Iran has reportedly said through Oman that the scope of the attack will be calibrated to avoid escalation into an all-out regional conflict. Reuters reports that Washington does not expect the retaliatory attack to be large enough to draw the US into war, so both Washington and Tehran appear to be saying basically the same thing about what’s coming. So as things stand right now it seems both sides see it as unlikely that this will be the spark to ignite a new war of profound horror in the middle east.

What’s really interesting about this situation right now is how western empire managers and propagandists have been framing the coming Iranian retaliation to suggest that Iran is about to attack Israel out of the blue, completely unprovoked. As though bombing an embassy would not be considered an extreme act of war by any nation anywhere on earth.

In response to a reporter asking President Joe Biden what his message to Iran is in this moment, Biden responded "Don't."

“We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed," Biden said. pic.twitter.com/zfPkl4i71g

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 12, 2024

They’ve seriously just been talking about it as though the embassy strike didn’t happen, babbling about defending Israel and Israel’s right to defend itself like any attack by Iran would be coming completely out of the blue. On Friday President Biden warned Iran not to attack Israel when questioned about the coming strike, saying, “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed.”

“The threats from Iran are completely unacceptable and we, like the Americans, fully support Israel’s right to defend itself,” said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday.

“Australia is deeply concerned by indications Iran is preparing military action against Israel,” chimed in Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, saying Iran should “use its influence in the region to promote stability, not contribute to escalation.”

“Israel is under threat of imminent attack by Iran,” said US Senator Tom Cotton on Twitter. “President Biden needs to warn the ayatollahs immediately that the United States will back Israel to the hilt and the joint American-Israeli retaliation for any attack will be swift and devastating.”

“Iran will bear the consequences for choosing to escalate the situation any further,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said following the cargo ship seizure.

You'd never guess from this biased headline that Israel just bombed Iran's embassy. https://t.co/lxKiQ5kWhQ

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) April 12, 2024

Mass media headlines have also been framing this as an attack that’s coming completely out of nowhere by an irrational aggressor.

“Netanyahu meets top officials as fear of Iran attack on Israel grows,” reads a headline from the BBC.

“Israel braces amid fears of Iranian strike; U.S. shifts forces to region,” a headline from The Washington Post says.

“Israel Bracing for Unprecedented Direct Iran Attack in Days,” blares Bloomberg. 

“Major Iranian attack on Israel believed to be imminent,” warns CBS News.

The casual news consumer would see all this and assume that Israel and its allies have received some intelligence that Iran is preparing an attack without provocation, and are doing everything they can to deter this maniacal regime from doing so.

This is ridiculous. If Iran had bombed a US embassy and killed multiple US military officials, the US would be raining bombs on Tehran within hours and everyone knows it. But Israel bombs an Iranian embassy and everyone acts like it didn’t happen and starts yelling at Iran instead.

It’s like if someone ran up and sucker-punched somebody at the bar, and then everyone started screaming at the guy who just got punched that he’d better leave the other guy alone and stop being a bully. 

Iran is probably going to attack Israel, because at some point it does have to push back on Israeli violence to create some deterrence. Hopefully it will indeed be limited, hopefully the violence will not spiral into something nightmarish, and hopefully enough people are able to see through all the propaganda spin enough to understand what’s actually happening.

________________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Gaza is simpler than Iraq. Iraq was simpler than Yemen. Yemen was simpler than Libya. Libya was simpler than Ukraine. Ukraine is simpler than Syria. Gaza is the simplest and most straightforward of all the evil interventions of the US murder machine in recent memory — which is why I’ve got no patience for anyone who gets it wrong.

I’m a lot more forgiving of people who bought into the imperial narrative about Syria and believed that country erupted in violence because Assad just went ape shit and started killing innocent people for no reason, because it takes a lot of work to sort out fact from fiction about what actually happened there. There were really good journalists who got Syria wrong at first in the early years of the conflict, just because there was so much information to comb through and so much aggressive imperial narrative management about it. There was so much less visibility into the facts on the ground in Syria than there is in Gaza, and there were so many complex narrative control ops muddying the waters.

Gaza isn’t like that. What’s happening really could not be more obvious. A nuclear-armed high tech military has been raining bombs and inflicting siege warfare upon a densely packed, walled-in civilian population, half of whom are children, with the full backing of the most powerful empire that has ever existed. We’ve been seeing a constant stream of footage showing children ripped apart by military explosives and starved to skeletons, Israeli soldiers posting videos of themselves gleefully doing some of the most sadistic and depraved things you can imagine, destroyed hospitals, carpet-bombed neighborhoods, and Israelis blocking aid trucks from feeding starving people.

This is not the slightest bit complicated. It’s as subtle as a kick in the teeth. There is no excuse for getting this one wrong now. There’s not even any excuse for getting it wrong on day one. It’s been obvious this entire time. Any politician, pundit or journalist who’s gotten it wrong can be dismissed as completely worthless, even if they’re beginning to come around now after they sensed the wind blowing against Israel in recent weeks.

Gaza is a test of the absolute bare minimum requirements for someone to be worth listening to about anything at all, because if you got this one wrong then there’s just something wrong with you as a human being. You’re too fucked up and twisted inside to have a clear vision into anything that’s happening in the world. You’re not in touch with your own humanity enough to have any useful insight into humanity as a collective. You have wasted your time on this planet. You’ve managed to spend your entire life without learning any of the more meaningful lessons that can be learned here.

And there are plenty of people getting Gaza right who are buying into all kinds of other imperial propaganda spin about other international affairs and conflicts, which is to be expected — being able to understand the simplest possible foreign policy issue doesn’t mean you’ll be able to grasp the more complicated ones. But every one of them stands head and shoulders above everyone who couldn’t see the destruction of Gaza for what it is. They might fail other tests, but at least they passed the first one.

Everything I’m saying here will all be completely obvious to everyone one day. People will look back on what was done to Gaza and struggle to comprehend how the world could have allowed such a thing when it was all happening right out in the open for everybody to see. And if I’m still around I will struggle to explain it myself, because it baffles me here and now in the present moment. It probably always will.

_______________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

❖

The mass media are once again pushing the narrative that Israel is “scaling back” its operations in Gaza, which as journalist Sana Saeed noted on Twitter is a claim they’ve been falsely making for months. To promote such stories even as Israel publicly declares that it’s preparing for an invasion of Rafah is absurd and irresponsible.

❖

A member of the Israeli Knesset named Limor Son Har-Melech says there are secret Israeli plans to establish settlements in the Gaza Strip. It sure is a crazy coincidence how every single part of Israel’s response to October 7 has looked exactly the same as what it would look like if Israel just started doing all the things that it has wanted to do to the Palestinians for generations.

❖

Biden has declared “ironclad” support for Israel as fears mount that Iran will soon retaliate for the Israeli strike on its consulate building in Syria which killed multiple Iranian military officers, despite the fact that Iran has made it clear to the White House that if the US comes to Israel’s defense it will make the US a target as well. We could be near the precipice of the worst-case nightmare scenario of all possible middle eastern conflicts because of this president’s unwavering support for the genocidal Zionist state.

❖

In the early weeks of Israel’s assault Palestinian journalists were filling social media with footage of Israeli atrocities in Gaza. We’re seeing far less footage now because the journalists have been killed and access to the internet made far more difficult and Palestinian access to much of Gaza has been restricted, but it’s important to remember that those atrocities have continued to happen this entire time.

❖

I’m sick of hearing October 7 mentioned in the same breath as Israel’s incineration of Gaza as though they’re equal or even comparable. A thousand Israelis dying (probably hundreds by indiscriminate IDF fire) is not comparable to tens of thousands of Palestinians (probably more) being deliberately exterminated by high tech war machinery, even if before you account for the fact that Israel was the aggressor and that the violence of the oppressed is not comparable to the violence of the oppressor in the first place.

But that’s what you’ll hear all the time from polite western liberals trying to walk a center line on the Israel-Palestine issue. They’ll talk about how “sad” and “tragic” and “heartbreaking” BOTH the butchery in Gaza AND October 7 are, giving equal weight to two exponentially unequal acts of violence.

This is the same as lying. It actively misrepresents what’s actually going on, leading to widespread misunderstanding like the fact that half of Americans have no idea whether more Palestinians or Israelis are being killed in the current “war”. Trying to balance out two wildly unbalanced events gives people a wildly unbalanced understanding of what’s really happening, leading to a wildly unbalanced worldview. But you see this constantly, and the western political-media class do everything they can to feed into it.

Israeli suffering is not equal to Palestinian suffering. It’s not even in the same ballpark. Pretending otherwise is deceitful and manipulative.

❖

Normal person: It’s bad to murder children

Crazy person: Aha I see you hate the Jewish faith

❖

“It’s so sad and tragic that children are being fed to the Child Incineration Machine,” said the liberal while loading the children onto the conveyor belt. “It’s heartbreaking!”

❖

Is there a word for the tactic where a government does something evil and then throws out a bunch of flimsy lies right off the bat to mute the initial backlash, so when the truth comes out public attention has moved on and it has no impact? Whatever that is, Israel excels at it.

❖

Funny how people get so emotionally invested in US presidential elections when the whole system’s stacked to ensure that each party wins half the time. It’s like putting 10 blue marbles and 10 red ones in a hat and crying when you pull out a red one and celebrating when it’s blue.

_____________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Featured image via Wikimedia Commons.

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Dopey Republican pundits and politicians have begun claiming that Joe Biden has “abandoned Israel” and has fallen under the control of Hamas, because this is a presidential election year and everything needs to be ten times dumber than usual.

Donald Trump said on the campaign trail on Wednesday that “Any Jewish person that votes for a Democrat or votes for Biden should have their head examined,” saying of Biden, “He totally abandoned Israel.”

Trump’s comments were made in response to Biden saying that Israel should declare a ceasefire of six to eight weeks, seemingly suggesting that Israel should do so without conditioning the ceasefire on the release of Israeli hostages. This hopeful statement was swiftly dispelled by Biden himself, however, with the president reiterating the same keep-killing-children-until-Hamas-gives-us-everything-we-want position that this administration has stood by for six months. Apparently Biden’s dementia-addled brain is just struggling to keep its story straight.

Meanwhile Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro has been pushing the narrative that Biden has “saved” Hamas by capitulating to demands from the left on Gaza, going so far as to declare that “Hamas is now in control of the Biden administration.” 

We've reached the moment you've all been waiting for: "Joe Biden is Hamas" pic.twitter.com/mWmh6PJbTF

— Read Let This Radicalize You (@JoshuaPHilll) April 9, 2024

To be clear, this is all foam-brained nonsense. Biden has spent six months pouring weapons of mass murder into Israel without any conditions whatsoever, and his administration has been justifying and spinning and making excuses for all of Israel’s heinous actions in Gaza this entire time. No US president in history has done more to directly serve the murderousness of the Israeli war machine than Joe Biden.

Right to this very day the president is declaring “ironclad” support for Israel as fears mount that Iran may retaliate for the Israeli strike on its consulate building in Syria which killed multiple Iranian military officers, despite the fact that Iran has made it clear to the White House that if the US comes to Israel’s defense it will make the US a target as well. Biden is so fanatically pro-Israel that we could be near the precipice of the worst-case nightmare scenario of all possible middle eastern conflicts because of his unwavering support for the genocidal apartheid state.

In reality, the only reason Republicans have begun trying to frame Biden as anti-Israel is because only through fiction and fantasy can America’s two mainstream parties pretend there are any significant differences between them. They’re both insanely supportive of Israel and its crimes. They both support war, militarism, imperialism, capitalism and oligarchy. The only areas in which there’s any meaningful disagreement between them are the issues that don’t inconvenience the powerful in any way like whether or not you’re allowed to have an abortion or whether it’s good or bad to be mean to trans people — and even those issues are only used to keep everyone’s interest and attention locked into mainstream politics and diverted from revolutionary sentiment.

So they make up these moronic fictional battlegrounds to fight on, because that’s the only way they can actually have anything to fight about. Joe Biden is a Hamas agent. Donald Trump is a Kremlin agent. Joe Biden is controlled by “the CCP”. Donald Trump is going to be another Hitler instead of another shitty Republican. The Democrats want to steal your guns and make your son wear a dress. The Republicans want to dismantle NATO and let Vladimir Putin take over the world.

Absolutely none of this is real, but if Republicans and Democrats were forced to campaign against each other solely on issues in which they truly disagreed, they’d have very little to talk about, and it would give the whole two-party scam away. Before you know it you’d have them arguing about things like whether it would be best to ramp up nuclear aggressions with China first or prioritize taking out Russia, and people would start to notice that neither of these parties have the interests of normal human beings at heart.

So they keep up their kayfabe combat schtick, and sell it as hard as they can to make sure as many Americans as possible are clapping along to the pretend drama of the two-handed puppet show.

Can’t wait til this election is over and done with so we can go back to the normal levels of stupid.

_______________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Featured images via Wikimedia Commons.

The March edition of JOHNSTONE, “This Is What Our Ruling Class Has Decided Will Be Normal”, is finally available to order or download. There was a delay because Amazon gave us a hard time about this particular cover image, but it finally let us publish.

On the 25th of February, 2024, a young Airman recorded himself approaching the Israeli embassy in Washington DC and said these words:

“I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

He then set the camera down, walked a small distance and calmly emptied accelerant over his entire body, put on his hat and lit himself on fire, uttering the words “Free Palestine” with increasing urgency as the flames took hold of his body until he physically couldn’t make a sound ever again. 

His name was Aaron Bushnell and this month’s edition of JOHNSTONE is dedicated to his memory. 

You can get a paperback copy of this issue by clicking here, or a pay-what-you-feel digital copy by clicking here.

Other paperback editions of JOHNSTONE can be purchased by clicking here. Other digital editions can be downloaded by clicking here.

You can also get a subscription to the digital versions which will be sent to your inbox every month by clicking here.

Contents:

The Most American Thing That Has Ever Happened … 5

Aaron Bushnell Burned Himself Alive To Make You Turn Your Eyes To Gaza … 7

A Profound Act Of Sincerity … 9

Israel Accused Of Torturing UN Workers To Obtain False Testimony About UNRWA … 11

Crocodile Tears For Gaza While Backing Its Destruction … 13

Saying “Hamas Just Needs To Surrender” Is Saying “We’ll Kill Kids Until We Get What We Want” … 15

Genocidal Psychopaths Celebrate International Day To Combat Islamophobia … 18

They’re Really Going To Try To Lay All The Blame For Gaza On Netanyahu … 20

You Can’t Trust Any Part Of This Dystopia If You Want Health And Sanity … 22

Don’t Equate The Violence Of The Oppressor With The Violence Of The Oppressed … 24

It’s Journalistic Malpractice To Say Gazans Are Starving Without Saying Israel Is Starving Them … 26

Without Extensive Narrative Manipulation, None Of This Would Be Consented To … 28

Find Someone Who Loves You Like Israel Loves Attacking Palestinian Hospitals … 30

When The Imperial Media Report On An Israeli Massacre … 33

The Empire’s Weakness Is That It Still Needs Normal People To Turn Its Gears … 36

You Have Already Taken A Side On Israel-Palestine (Whether You Admit It Or Not) … 39

Aaron Bushnell’s Death Can’t Rightly Be Called An Act Of Suicide … 41

On Palestine And The Worthlessness Of The Western Liberal … 43

So They’re Experimenting With Military Robots In Gaza Now … 45

Nobody With Real Power Cares If You Refuse To Vote For Biden … 48

“Pay No Attention To That Genocide Right In Front Of Your Face” … 50

The Difference Between Republicans And Democrats … 52

You Can’t Be A “Lesser Evil” When You’re Sponsoring A Genocide … 54

Israel Supporters Are Some Of The Worst People In The World … 57

On Aaron Bushnell, Methinks The Israel Apologist Doth Protest Too Much … 60

Just Keep Bringing Awareness To The Depravity Of The Empire In As Many Ways As Possible … 65

When The Slaughter Stops In Gaza … 67

Pretending The US Can’t Just Drive Aid Into Gaza … 69

Worrying About TikTok During An Active Genocide … 72

This Is What Our Ruling Class Has Decided Will Be Normal … 74

If Israel Wants To Be An “Independent Nation”, Let It Be An Independent Nation … 76

Podcast And Videos … 79

Liberals Are Always Trying To Distance Biden From Netanyahu, And Netanyahu From Israel … 80

I Don’t Need Guns I Need Fire Extinguishers … 83

As usual, these works are creative commons and may be freely used or repurposed by anyone in any way, with or without attribution.

Again, you can get a paperback copy of this issue by clicking here, or a digital copy by clicking here.

Enjoy!

_________________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2