Caitlin Johnstone

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

The single dumbest conspiracy theory in the entire world is that every major humanitarian institution on earth is conspiring to falsely frame Israel for the crime of genocide.

And yet believing this bat shit insane conspiracy theory is the only way to think it’s not a genocide. There is no other way to claim that there is no genocide happening in Gaza without treating this self-evidently ridiculous theory as true.

In order to believe that there is no genocide in Gaza, you need to accept it as a given that the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory is conspiring to frame Israel for this crime. 

You also need to believe that the International Association of Genocide Scholars is in on the conspiracy. 

You also need to believe the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem is in on the conspiracy. 

You also need to believe that Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, another Israeli organization, is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that Amnesty International is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that Doctors Without Borders are in on the conspiracy.

You also need to accept that Human Rights Watch are in on the conspiracy.

You also need to accept that the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to accept that the International Federation for Human Rights is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe the conspiracy is so widespread and pervasive that there exists not a single major human rights group which holds that Israel is NOT committing genocide in Gaza. You need to believe this conspiracy goes all the way to the top.

Toward what end are all these institutions conspiring to deceive the world into thinking that the innocent, virtuous state of Israel is guilty of these heinous crimes? Well, that’s where the “theory” part of conspiracy theory comes in. You need to have some reason why all these groups would be working together to trick everyone into thinking Israel is committing genocide. “Cui bono?”, as they say in conspiracy circles.

If you press the average Israel defender to explain why all these institutions would be lying about Israel’s actions in Gaza, you will eventually get them to admit that their theory is that all these institutions secretly hate Jews. That it’s a giant antisemitic conspiracy designed to discredit the Israeli state and make Jewish people feel sad.

I defy you to find me a dumber conspiracy theory than this. There’s nothing that can possibly compete. QAnon. Flat earth. Reptilians. They all seem fairly reasonable in comparison to this demented nonsense. They’re certainly a lot less harmful.

They’re a lot less harmful because they’re not being used to justify an ongoing genocide, and because they’re not being promoted by the most powerful people in the world. All the major western powers who’ve refused to acknowledge that we’re looking at a genocide in Gaza subscribe to the dumb conspiracy theory in question. All the mass media institutions who frame genocide as an unfounded accusation rather than an established fact verified by the overwhelming consensus of the world’s relevant experts necessarily subscribe to the world’s dumbest conspiracy theory as well.

It’s the dumbest conspiracy theory in the world, but it’s also the mainstream narrative. It’s what our governments and our media tell us is reality. They’re a bunch of tinfoil hat-wearing crackpots, and they rule the world.

The western empire is the craziest, most murderous, most deceitful, and most dangerous power structure on earth, and it is only getting more so. Which is why the narratives we’re being asked to believe are getting dumber and dumber by the year.

__________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Adobe Stock.

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

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Authoritarianism continues to surge under the western empire.

Ken Klippenstein has drawn attention to the fact that President Trump has signed a national security directive which expands federal power to “disrupt” individuals or groups which “foment political violence,” including “before they result in violent political acts.” 

The president’s memorandum states that such groups can be identified by “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

Meanwhile as Trump is falling all over himself to spin lefty vegans as a massive extremist threat, an Iraq War veteran just shot up a Mormon church and killed four people.

If you’re looking for institutions that radicalize Americans toward acts of terrorism, don’t look at mosques or Antifa or trans rights activists, look at the US military, because veterans of the US war machine are where a hugely disproportionate number of these extremist attacks are coming from.

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In a move that has sparked significant political backlash throughout the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced that digital IDs will be required for anyone who wants to work.

You can tell intuitively that digital IDs aren’t being pushed for the benefit of ordinary people just from the fact that zero ordinary people have been asking for them.

You’ll see people clamoring for their government to do all kinds of things depending on where they’re at on the political spectrum, from giving them better healthcare to stopping immigration to legalizing weed to making prayer mandatory in public schools. But one thing you never see is ordinary members of the public demanding that the government create a digital ID system and force everyone to participate in it. Literally never. It’s a completely top-down initiative with zero grassroots demand.

This is because conventional systems of identification have been working out more or less fine for general members of the public for generations. What digital ID systems provide that those conventional systems do not is a significant increase in the state’s ability to surveil and control the population and their online behavior. This doesn’t benefit ordinary people, but it does benefit our rulers. The more control they have over us, the easier it will be to keep us propagandized and consenting to the status quo, and the harder it will be for us to rise up against them when it’s time to remove them from power.

That’s the only reason you’re seeing governments scramble to shove this bullshit down our throats without anyone ever asking for it or voting for it.

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There are exactly two other options:
(1) violent resistance, or
(2) consenting to the elimination of the Palestinian people.
Hamas went with (1) and the western world has spent two years furiously condemning them for not choosing (2). pic.twitter.com/0L6BsOX4LR

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 27, 2025

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A major promoter of digital IDs is Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, a surveillance proponent and virulent Zionist who has poured unprecedented amounts of personal wealth into the IDF. Ellison’s family is in the process of shoring up control over TikTok, Paramount, and Warner Brothers Discovery, giving them control over legacy media outlets like CNN and CBS. 

Ellison has been in a neck and neck race with Elon Musk this month for the title of wealthiest person on earth.

Capitalism elevates the worst among us. The ones who will claw their way to the top under this system are the most ruthless and sociopathic members of our society who are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. They then use all their power to advance their own interests and manifest their own vision of how they think the world ought to be, which is always going to be horrible and detrimental to our species because they are horrible people. 

When you create a system where sociopathy is rewarded with wealth and where wealth equals power, you’re naturally going to find yourself being ruled by sociopaths. The sociopaths won’t stop being in charge until we dismantle the system which turns them into royalty.

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I’ll never forget the day I saw reports that there was a shooting at an ICE facility and the ammo had “messages that were anti-ICE in nature” on it, and I’m thinking “Anti-ICE messages? Like what?” And then the FBI chief posts a photo of bullets with literally just “ANTI-ICE” written in pen.

This morning just before 7am local time, an individual fired multiple rounds at a Dallas, Texas ICE facility, killing one, wounding several others, before taking his own life. FBI, DHS, ATF are on the ground with Dallas PD and state authorities.

While the investigation is… pic.twitter.com/SMOyxiKLqA

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) September 24, 2025

False flags and coverups are getting so lazy it’s bringing a whole new generation of leftists back around to embracing conspiracy analysis like it’s the Bush administration.

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They’re coming out with two separate scripted shows about October 7 for the second anniversary of the 2023 Hamas attack. 

The problem with using October 7 to justify a genocide is that it was just a single event two years ago, while the genocide is happening every day. So they have to keep coming up with new ways to make people feel like October 7 just happened: films, shows, new “mass rape” stories, etc.

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It’s time for westerners to move on from our “Are we the baddies?” moment to our “Let’s actually stop being the baddies” moment. It’s great that we’re gathering all these insights into how profoundly evil our governments are, but at some point you need to stop gathering lumber and start building.

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via the White House (Public Domain).

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

The real violent extremists are the oligarchs and imperialists who run the US-centralized empire from both mainstream parties.

Not Antifa. Not trans people. Not anti-genocide activists. Not protesters against ICE.

The extremists who are inflicting the real violence and abuse in our world are the ones committing genocide, starting wars, backing blockades, imposing starvation sanctions, arming proxy conflicts, circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, and flirting with nuclear armageddon.

The United States has become the greatest source of political instability in the world. pic.twitter.com/frn8lROHPu

— Jostein Hauge (@haugejostein) September 18, 2025

Donald Trump is a violent extremist. Joe Biden is a violent extremist. Keir Starmer is a violent extremist. Benjamin Netanyahu is a violent extremist.

Oligarchs who knit themselves into the murderous imperial power structure like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Miriam Adelson and Larry Ellison are violent extremists.

The Democratic Party is a violent extremist organization. The Republican Party is a violent extremist organization. 

War profiteers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are violent extremist organizations. 

Empire management firms which facilitate imperial violence and control like Palantir, Oracle and Starlink are violent extremist organizations. 

There is no designated terrorist group foreign or domestic which can hold a candle to the death toll and human suffering that has been inflicted by the western empire.

I think it’s worth remembering this as the empire harnesses the emotional hysteria around Charlie Kirk’s death to whip up a moral panic about violent radical leftists in the United States in order to justify increased authoritarian measures to stomp out political dissent. The real violence is coming from the powerful manipulators who want you consenting to these measures. The call is coming from inside the house.

The US and its allies have killed millions of people in their wars of aggression since 9/11, and displaced tens of millions. Their cruel sanctions have killed tens of millions since 1970. Their policies of imperialist extraction force populations throughout the global south to live lives of endless poverty and toil. They are currently perpetrating a genocide in full view of the entire world. 

New research published in The Lancet finds that Western unilateral sanctions have caused 38 million deaths since 1970. The average death toll ranges from 400,000 to over 1 million per year.

Staggering levels of violence. This system is intolerable and must be replaced. pic.twitter.com/jSWZX7blp2

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) September 14, 2025

These are the violent extremists. The only reason they are able to claim that some kid wearing a keffiyeh or a balaclava is a violent extremist while they themselves are not is because they control the narrative. The plutocrats who benefit from the imperial status quo own and control the media platforms and information systems which people use to learn about the world, and they use this narrative control to frame the imperial status quo as normal and any opposition to it as freakish extremism.

That’s the only reason a westerner who supports genocide, warmongering, militarism and imperialism gets to call themselves a “centrist” or a “moderate”. They live in an empire whose propagandists actively normalize imperial abuses while spinning any deviation from this violent madness as abnormalities on the radical political fringe.

But it’s a lie. Genocide is violent extremism. Mass murder is violent extremism. Siege warfare is violent extremism. Global tyranny is violent extremism.

Peace is moderate and normal. Justice is moderate and normal. Health is moderate and normal. Equality is moderate and normal. Equitable wealth and resource distribution is moderate and normal. 

The genocidal, ecocidal, omnicidal nightmare we see before us in our world today is what it looks like when the violent extremists are in charge.

__________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Trump White House (Public Domain).

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

The only real benefit to this latest western “recognition” of Palestine is that it drew out high-profile Israeli politicians to explain to western liberals in plain English that the entire state of Israel stands opposed to their vision of a two-state solution.

Former Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz has a new op-ed in The New York Times where he explicitly states that opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state is “the heart” of a national consensus among Israelis across the mainstream political spectrum, and that this isn’t an obstacle that will go away once Netanyahu is out of power.

“Too often, Western leaders view our policies in this war not through the lens of national security, but through the prism of individuals — and, in particular, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,” Gantz writes. “The conversation is often framed as a question of what serves the prime minister, as if Israel’s national security begins and ends with one man. This view is mistaken and counterproductive to global stability, regional normalization and Israel’s own security.”

“I myself have been a vocal critic of Mr. Netanyahu,” says Gantz. “But the nation’s core security interests are not partisan property. Today more than ever, they are anchored by a national consensus that is rooted in the hard realities of our region. Opposition to the recognition of Palestinian statehood stands at the heart of that consensus.”

The dangerous & counterproductive mistake Western Leaders make about a Palestinian State & Israel’s security.

To my full New York Times Op-Ed: https://t.co/5q2yjmGoDk pic.twitter.com/a1vFufJ99n

— בני גנץ – Benny Gantz (@gantzbe) September 24, 2025

He’s spelling it out in black and white. The Bernie Sanders-style framing of the nightmare in Palestine as a Netanyahu problem which can be remedied in short order by a two-state solution is a fairy tale that western liberals tell each other so they don’t have to face the cold hard reality that the problem is the state of Israel itself.

This comes after Netanyahu publicly stated that “There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” and after former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant proclaimed that “There will never be a Palestinian state.”

Israel is the problem. Not Netanyahu. Not Hamas. Not that both sides have tragically failed to sit down and find common ground in good-faith negotiations. The problem is that the west established a state in the middle east which holds as its foundational ideology that the people who were living there before that state was created are less than human, and must never have access to the full spectrum of human rights.

The problem is Israel. A state which has always been a racist endeavor from its very inception. A state whose Jewish citizenry are indoctrinated from birth into accepting the hateful, supremacist worldview that is necessary for apartheid and abuse to be accepted as the status quo.

It's so surreal how Israel can come right out and explicitly say there will never, ever be a Palestinian state and western officials will just keep babbling on about the possibility of Israel and Palestine negotiating a two-state solution as though it never happened. https://t.co/fdocleFU1D

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 23, 2025

No solutions are going to emerge until the west gets real about this. As long as western liberals are still buying into the fuzzbrained escapist fantasy that Israel is just an election away from a two-state solution if the US simply keeps funding the Iron Dome and making nice with Tel Aviv, we’re going to continue seeing Israel inflicting the nonstop violence and abuse that is necessary for it to exist in its present iteration as a state.

Any actual, reality-based solutions are not going to make liberal Zionists happy like their daydream about a two-state solution does. Israel simply cannot continue to exist as a Zionist entity. It needs to be disarmed, dramatically restructured, and comprehensively denazified as a society. This isn’t going to happen without force, and that necessary force isn’t going to be forthcoming from the western world as long as we are deluding ourselves with infantile fantasies.

The Israelis are telling us this is the case themselves, right to our faces. It’s time to wake up.

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Adobe Stock.

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

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The Global Sumud Flotilla which is bringing aid to break the Israeli siege on Gaza has once again come under attack. Activists say drones are dropping explosive objects which have reportedly burned the arm of one crew member and destroyed the main mast of one of the boats.

As Middle East Eye recently noted, US Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack has admitted that Israel was behind the attacks on flotilla boats in Tunisia which we discussed earlier this month, stating offhand during an interview that “Israel is attacking Tunisia.”

This happens as the Israeli government repeatedly issues statements branding the boats a “Hamas Flotilla” and claiming the activists are “pursuing a violent course of action,” something Israel tends to do when preparing to launch attacks on civilians in hospitals or press uniforms.

The Israelis will literally launch drone strikes on activist boats for trying to bring formula to starving babies and then turn around and say the world hates them because of their religion.

Les explosions continuent sur la flottille. pic.twitter.com/uPjXBpd1yV

— Emma Fourreau (@emma_frr) September 23, 2025

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On Tuesday Secretary of State Marco Rubio denounced the move by France, the UK, Canada and Australia to formally recognize the state of Palestine, telling CBS Mornings that “There is no Palestinian state no matter how many papers they put out, and the only time there’ll ever be one is if there is a negotiation with Israel.”

It’s so surreal how Israel can come right out and explicitly say there will never, ever be a Palestinian state, and western officials will just keep babbling on about the possibility of Israel and Palestine negotiating a two-state solution as though it never happened.

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Sure is a crazy coincidence how all of Israel’s defensive actions in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen and the West Bank just so happen to look exactly the same as what it would look like if Israel was trying to massively expand its territory and take control of the middle east.

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Kamala Harris’ new book reportedly contains an admission that polls found her refusal to oppose the genocide in Gaza likely cost her the election. If I was a Democrat and I knew my refusal to oppose an active genocide was what got Donald Trump elected, I personally would shut the fuck up for a while.

All the Democrats had to do was run an anti-genocide candidate. That’s all they needed to do to keep Trump out. It’s the most reasonable request voters could possibly have made of a candidate for the world’s most powerful elected office, and they adamantly refused to do it.

In a recent interview with Rachel Maddow, Harris referred to Trump as a “communist dictator”. Democrats and Republicans are always calling each other communists while in real life neither of them will even give Americans a normal healthcare system because that would make the corporations sad.

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US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee likened Israel to the “wife” of the United States during a speech at an event called “50 States, One Israel”.

“It may sound a little bit this afternoon as if I’m almost speaking on behalf of Israel rather than the U.S.,” said Huckabee, who went on to explain that “If you came to my house tonight for dinner and you came in and you said, ‘Oh, Mike, we like you. We really think the world of you. We just enjoy being with you. So excited to be here with you and have dinner with you. But your wife, we can’t stand her. We don’t like her a bit. I hope she’s not going to be at the table.’ I would say, ‘Well, she will be. You won’t be. Get out.’ Because if you were to insult my partner, you have insulted me.”

Christian Zionists are some of the craziest, weirdest, creepiest, most dangerous fanatics on our planet.

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The Pilgrimage Road is an enduring cultural and historical bond between the United States and Israel. It's a powerful reminder of the Judeo-Christian values that inspired America’s Founding Fathers. pic.twitter.com/o18ubpDqrT

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) September 15, 2025

“Judeo-Christian” just means Zionist. Anyone who uses it these days is generally just referring broadly to white people who love Israel and hate Muslims. It’s a term used to distinguish the people we kill in our wars from the people who do the killing.

There’s nothing wrong with the word “Abrahamic”; it’s a perfectly good term for the major monotheistic religions which trace their roots back to Judaism. The only reason “Judeo-Christian” gets used instead is because Abrahamic religions include Islam.

Judaism and Christianity expanded westward, while Islam has remained most popular among the darker-skinned people of the global south. So they needed to popularize a special term to separate the religions of the white western imperialists from the religion of the brown people those imperialists like to kill.

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A New York Times investigation has found that Elon Musk’s father Errol Musk has been repeatedly accused of molesting small children in his family, including his four year-old stepdaughter whom he later impregnated as an adult.

The world is ruled by traumatized, emotionally stunted men who compensate for their inner woundedness by obtaining as much power and control as possible, which they then inevitably use to inflict trauma upon all of society.

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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

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UK, Canada and Australia: Never fear, Palestinians! We’re here to save the day!

Palestinians: You’re going to stop the genocide?

UK, Canada and Australia: HAHAHAHAHA! No! Oh god no. Haha! No, we are going to give a great big Thumbs Up to the idea of your eventual statehood!

Palestinians: Will you at least stop sending them weapons?

UK, Canada and Australia: LOL no.

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In response to the UK, Canada and Australia announcing their recognition of a Palestinian state, Benjamin Netanyahu has proclaimed that Israel will never allow such a state to exist.

“It’s not going to happen. There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israel will continue expanding settlements in the West bank.

It’s funny how Israel supporters will claim it’s a genocidal hate crime to say “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free”, but apparently it’s fine to say from the river to the sea Palestine will not be free. Even if you say it while actually committing genocide.

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Israeli officials coming out saying there will never be a Palestinian state are completely discrediting all the two-state solution western liberals who’ve spent two years condemning Hamas because they didn’t pursue their liberation by going through the proper channels.

Reminds me of that Jon Stone quote you see going around sometimes, “One reason people insist that you use the proper channels to change things is because they have control of the proper channels and they’re confident it won’t work.”

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Westerner: I support a two-state solution.

Israel: There will never be a Palestinian state.

Westerner: Okay then I support a one-state solution where everyone has equal rights.

Israel: You’re calling for an end to the Jewish state you monster.

Westerner: Alright then I support the Palestinian resistance.

Israel: That’s supporting terrorism. You are Hamas and we can legally murder you.

Westerner: Well can I at least support a permanent ceasefire to end the genocide?

Israel: [cocks pistol] What did I just tell you about supporting Hamas?

Westerner: Okay then, I support Palestinians living as a permanent underclass until they can be slowly salami sliced out of existence as a people.

Israel: Getting warmer.

Westerner: I support removing all Palestinians from their historic homeland via ethnic cleansing or extermination before the end of Donald Trump’s presidential term.

Israel: [puts away gun] That’s more like it.

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I saw a video where two Australian doctors described how they had to deliver a baby via emergency c-section because the baby’s mother had been decapitated by an Israeli airstrike. Information like this always reminds me of that period last year when all the western politicians and media outlets were telling us that the worst people in the entire world were the university students who were protesting against this genocide.

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The Global Sumud Flotilla is saying they’re seeing drones around their ships again just days out from their planned arrival to bring aid into Gaza. Earlier this month drones repeatedly dropped incendiary firebombs on the boats. 

This comes as Israel’s Foreign Ministry declares that the flotilla is a Hamas ally, and as Google runs Israel-sponsored ads spinning the flotilla as a terrorist operation.

I don’t know if the Israelis are going to kill these courageous activists, but you can tell they really, really want to.

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Remember that time we spent two years watching a horrific live-streamed genocide and then everyone tried to tell us we’re supposed to cry and express our deepest condolences when one of the propagandists for that genocide got shot? That was weird, right?

When Biden finally fucking dies I’m going to be much more insensitive and hostile than I ever was about Charlie Kirk, because he was objectively more murderous and destructive. And when I do, right wingers won’t be shrieking at me about how evil it is to speak ill of the dead. These people have no principles; they’re just herd-minded NPCs trying to canonize a horrible man because he has the same ideology as them.

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You’re never going to believe this, but it turns out that news story everyone’s been yelling hysterically about is being used to advance many pre-existing agendas of the US empire. 

Officials at the US War Department have announced that they’re considering using Charlie Kirk as a tool for military recruitment. You can add that to the list of all the other agendas they’re using Kirk’s death to advance like increased censorship and surveillance and attacks on leftist dissident groups.

This was predictable from the very beginning. Never play along with their games.

_________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

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

Imagine there was a violent cult that used scriptures from an ancient religion to convince its followers to do evil things.

Imagine the cult was given its own state.

Imagine the cult was given machine guns, tanks and war planes.

Imagine the cult obtained nuclear weapons.

Imagine the cult started committing genocide against the indigenous people who’d been living in the area where the cult’s state was established.

Imagine the cult had huge branches in the most powerful nation on earth, and the powerful nation defended the cult no matter what it did.

Imagine the cult flipped out and started relentlessly attacking and invading the surrounding nations.

Imagine the cult had so much influence and support in western society that western governments and institutions would censor, silence, fire, marginalize and deport anyone who criticized the cult’s actions.

Imagine the western media sympathized highly with the cult and spent the entire time framing its atrocities as entirely reasonable defensive actions, and framing critics of the cult as malicious bigots.

Imagine the cult kept getting crazier and crazier and more and more violent, but nobody could find a way to stop it because its actions were backed by this giant western power structure.

That’d suck, huh?

I think that’d be just about the most bat shit insane situation anyone could possibly imagine.

A nuclear-armed death cult just murdering and massacring mountains of human beings with total impunity, backed by the most powerful people on earth? That would be an unfathomable madness.

If someone made a movie about such a thing I’d stop watching halfway through, because I would find it too unbelievable.

I’d be like, come on man. Come up with a more realistic plot line. And come up with a more believable antagonist; nobody is that evil.

I’d be like come on Hollywood, you seriously expect me to maintain my suspension of disbelief when you’re putting out a movie about these cartoonishly evil bad guys who blow up hospitals and assassinate journalists and murder humanitarian workers and deliberately massacre starving civilians seeking food?

I’d be like, you really expect me to believe a violent cult could get all this power and do all these evil things and get away with it, just by lying about it all the time? Eventually people would stop believing their lies!

I’d be like, somebody would stop them. Not only does this movie have unbelievable antagonists, it also lacks any believable protagonists. Basic human decency would compel the world to stop all these atrocities being committed right out in the open. Where are the heroes in this story?

And then I’d storm out of the movie theater, glad to be outside that horrible fictional world where such freakish absurdities were taking place.

And then I’d stand in the parking lot and look up at the sky, and thank God I’m back in reality again.

_________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Adobe Stock.

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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

❖

One of the weirdest things happening right now is how Israel’s prime minister keeps going out of his way to make public statements saying that Israel was definitely not behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

In a two-minute video uploaded onto his Twitter account on Wednesday, Netanyahu complained that “Somebody has fabricated a monstrous big lie that Israel had something to do with Charlie Kirk’s horrific murder,” saying the allegation “is insane, it is false, it is outrageous,” and that “Charlie loved Israel.”

A few days earlier, Netanyahu appeared on the highly sympathetic Newsmax to spend another couple of minutes ranting about how “insane”, “stupid” and “ridiculous” it is to claim that Israel was behind Kirk’s death, saying he “can’t believe that people are saying that.”

Charlie Kirk was a great man. He deserves honor – not lies. pic.twitter.com/NwEN4B2q7w

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) September 18, 2025

This is like repeatedly going out in public to yell “I did not have a sex dream about my cousin!” so that nobody thinks you had a sex dream about your cousin. People are going to walk away with the strong impression that you probably had a sex dream about your cousin.

At this time I have no position on the emerging theories that Israel was involved in the assassination, but damn dude. Really not quelling the suspicion there.

❖

Israel’s Foreign Ministry is claiming that the Gaza flotilla bringing aid to starving civilians is actually Hamas.

“The so-called ‘Flotilla to Gaza’ is openly backed by jihadi Hamas,” the ministry said in a statement, claiming that “This is a jihadist initiative serving the terror group’s agenda.”

If you’ve been following the Gaza holocaust for a while you start getting real nervous whenever Israel begins saying a new group of civilians are Hamas.

❖

Trump has announced plans to designate Antifa a terrorist organization, which liberals have hastened to point out is a legal absurdity since Antifa is not an actual entity in any meaningful way and has no leadership or organizational structure. But the fact that they’re pushing to apply the “terrorist” label to something so vague and amorphous actually makes this more concerning in some ways, since the shapelessness of the claim will make it easier to slap that label on anyone they’ve got a mind to.

The Trump administration is also reportedly planning to include transgender suspects in the FBI’s newly created domestic threat category of “nihilistic violent extremists” as the American right’s anti-trans feeding frenzy hits fever pitch.

One of the fastest ways to lose my interest and respect is to play along with the anti-trans bullshit, because you’re telling me you’re just another dopey herd-minded NPC thinking whatever thoughts your rulers want you to think.

It’s the most obvious thing in the world that the trans community has been deliberately demonized by the ruling class to keep half the population angry at a convenient target instead of at the people with real power. All the Trumpian pundits and politicians, oligarchs and empire managers have been feeding into this frenzied hate campaign against a marginalized population to keep the populists barking and snarling at ordinary members of the public so the energy of their discontent doesn’t start drifting in revolutionary directions.

They’ve been completely transparent about this. Couldn’t have made it clearer. And people have been clapping along with it like a bunch of drooling toddlers watching a puppet show. It’s pathetic.

Leave trans people alone. Let them be. They are not a threat to you. They’ve got it rough enough as it is. Your rulers want you punching laterally so you don’t start punching up.

❖

Since I began criticizing the Trump administration’s aggressive assaults on free speech in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing I’ve had American rightists falling all over themselves in my social media notifications trying to justify government censorship. Yesterday I had multiple Trump supporters try to tell me that it should be illegal to lie, and that anyone who tells lies should be stopped from lying by the government. One of them told me he’s an anarchist.

pic.twitter.com/DYC2AdVvGo

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 18, 2025

Some of them argue, “Democrats censored us, so we get to censor the Democrats! Turn about is fair play!”

That only sounds like a cool argument if you believe the two-party puppet show is real. In reality you’re both lining up to give more and more of your power to the empire which remains in power regardless of who won the last election. They surrender some, you surrender some more, repeat.

Obviously American liberals should have known they were opening themselves up to return fire with their support for censorship when they were in power. Obviously they should not have done that, and people like me told them this the entire time. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re handing the nonpartisan oppression machine more power that you will never get back every time you throw your support behind retaliatory acts of speech suppression.

You think you’re hurting the libs, but you’re just hurting yourself. You’re just making your society more tyrannical and dystopian in ways that will inevitably affect you. You’re clapping along with the two-handed puppet show while your real oppressor picks your pockets.

❖

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex is reportedly planning a presidential run, which anyone could see coming from miles away. 

Everything about this person is a lab-grown synthetic product designed to rocket to the top of the Beltway swamp as quickly as possible. Every single step of her career has been carefully choreographed. Every statement. Every photo op. All so she can drone bomb middle eastern civilians from the Oval Office.

________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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

❖

Bernie Sanders finally issued a statement acknowledging the indisputable fact that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza after two years of adamantly refusing to do so. The statement begins as follows:

“Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this war with its brutal attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages. Israel, as any other country, had a right to defend itself from Hamas.

But,”

Dude goes two years refusing to call a genocide a genocide, then issues a statement which begins by placing blame for the genocide on the victims of said genocide. He also lumps the hundreds of IDF troops slain in the attack in with “innocent people”, ignores the large percentage of the death toll that would have been killed by Israeli troops under the Hannibal Directive, and babbles about Israel’s “right to defend itself” against an occupied population.

The rest of the statement is standard liberal Zionist fare, acknowledging the horror of the situation in Gaza while blaming it all on Benjamin Netanyahu and not the murderous apartheid state which would be doing what it’s doing with or without Netanyahu. It’s just progressive-sounding Israel apologia accompanied by a denunciation driven by the inability to escape finally calling this thing what it is.

This is the face of what passes for the “left” in modern US politics. Absolutely ghoulish.

❖

He just says it. He always just comes right out and says the thing. https://t.co/cgJN6f6mzj

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 17, 2025

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described Gaza as a “real estate bonanza” on Wednesday, saying Israel is in talks with the United States negotiating how the two countries will divide up the enclave.

“We are checking how this becomes a real estate bonanza — I’m not joking — and pays for itself,” Smotrich said, adding, “I’ve begun negotiations with the Americans, and I’m saying this seriously, because we paid a lot of money for this war. We need to work out how we share percentages on the land. The demolition phase, the first stage of urban renewal, we’ve already done. Now we need to build.”

It’s absolutely incredible how often Smotrich and his buddy Itamar Ben-Gvir will just come out and admit that Israel is doing the thing everyone says it’s doing. If this information had come out as a WikiLeaks drop or something it would have been a bombshell revelation, and this guy is right here just bloody saying it.

❖

Awful convenient for Israel to have a bunch of proxy ISIS guys running around doing stuff in Gaza that can then be falsely attributed to Hamas. https://t.co/t6cNJRMVhA

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 17, 2025

❖

There’s another report from Haaretz about the horrific things Israeli soldiers say they’ve been doing to civilians in Gaza, including descriptions of the murders of children.

Whenever I read these accounts I can’t help thinking about how there are westerners joining the IDF to participate in this genocide. People travel to Israel to massacre civilians and then fly back home to their real countries and resume their lives as though nothing happened, like they went backpacking in Europe or something. And now they walk among us in our communities, and we’re supposed to be fine with it.

❖

Netanyahu says he has been invited to visit with President Trump for the fourth time this year. At this point they should just save on jet fuel and move him into a room in the White House.

❖

Trump is repeatedly bombing civilian vessels under the ridiculous justification that drug traffickers are “terrorists”, without even providing evidence that they are drug traffickers. Trump has now admitted to the US bombing three Venezuelan boats on these completely evidence-free grounds.

When Yemen was attacking ships to enforce a blockade against a genocide, Trump declared them all terrorists and massacred hundreds of civilians. Now Trump is attacking civilian boats and calling them the terrorists.

❖

Ask a scientist when the universe began and they’ll tell you 13.8 billion years ago.

Ask a Young Earth creationist when the universe began and they’ll tell you six thousand years ago.

Ask a Zionist when the universe began and they’ll tell you October 7, 2023.

__________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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

It’s amazing how aggressively free speech in the United States is being torn apart in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing.

Jimmy Kimmel was fired after President Trump’s FCC threatened ABC when the late night comic suggested that Kirk’s killer was a Trumper. I personally dislike Kimmel, but this is about as naked a government assault on free expression as you could possibly imagine.

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has been ordered deported to Syria or Algeria after the Trump administration targeted him for political speech critical of Israel.

Trump has brokered a deal allowing TikTok to be purchased by a consortium that includes his billionaire buddies Larry Ellison and Marc Andreesen. US officials have acknowledged that Washington’s push to grab control of TikTok was because of the opposition to the Gaza holocaust that was circulating on the platform.

Larry Ellison — the Oracle mega-billionaire who has donated millions to the IDF — just had his kid buy Paramount/CBS to have Bari Weiss run, is trying to buy CNN, and now will buy TikTok (with Andreessen Horowitz).

Lucky break for Israel as its support collapses in the US. pic.twitter.com/W3fFYHGKPK

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 17, 2025

Oracle co-founder Ellison is a fanatical Zionist oligarch who has expressed support for the idea of a massive surveillance network to control all of society, and his son David just purchased Paramount, which owns CBS News. The younger Ellison has reportedly installed pro-Israel propagandist Bari Weiss to a senior leadership position within the network.

Trump says he has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into bringing “criminal RICO charges” against Code Pink activists who chanted anti-genocide slogans at him while he was dining at a restaurant. Like pro-Palestine demonstrators are mafia kingpins or something.

Bondi said during a podcast that the Trump administration is going to start prosecuting “hate speech” against conservatives, alleging that such speech was responsible for Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

When asked by the press about Bondi’s comments, Trump said “We’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe I’ll come after ABC.” Again, ABC was the network Jimmy Kimmel was fired from.

To be clear: It's not "ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel after comments about Charlie Kirk," it's "ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel after threats from Trump FCC chair"

The distinction matters here.

— Theo Baker (@tab_delete) September 17, 2025

Trump henchman Stephen Miller said on a podcast that the White House is going to start targeting leftist “terrorist networks”, claiming on no basis whatsoever that Kirk’s assassination was the fault of a “vast domestic terror movement” which foments the kind of violence which led to Kirk’s death. Trump himself said that “a lot of people that you would traditionally say are on the left … [are] already under investigation,” and that he plans to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.

Vice President JD Vance has publicly been encouraging Trump supporters to try to get ordinary members of the public fired for saying mean things about Charlie Kirk, saying, “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”

Trump’s Truth Social account recently shared a video calling for state censorship of media outlets and online influencers who share “propaganda”, falsely framing this authoritarian notion as a reboot of the Smith-Mundt Act and suggesting that it should be called the “Charlie Kirk Act”.

For chanting at him and inflicting “harm and terror” on his dinner, Trump and his Deputy Attorney General say they can charge activists with RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) crimes. All week, the administration has floated designating activist groups as… pic.twitter.com/WABtedBCwR

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) September 18, 2025

When you see me refusing to play along with the campaign to canonize Charlie Kirk or respect the emotional hysteria around his killing, this is the main reason why. His death is already being used to manufacture consent for sweeping acts of tyranny, and it was clear from day one that it would be.

The empire managers are always seeking excuses to suppress free speech, crush the left, and stomp out opposition to Zionism and the US war machine. They’ll use any chance they get to advance these goals, which are all ultimately about expanding power and control.

Many pre-existing agendas are being shoved forward by those in power, as always happens when emotions run hot over a traumatic event. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll surely say it many times again: it’s precisely when we are most tempted to abandon rationality and play along with the emotionality of the moment that we need to be thinking most clearly and critically.

_____________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

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

A UN inquiry has found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and that Israeli authorities have “intended to kill as many Palestinians as possible” in the enclave.

Israel has responded to the UN report by calling it Hamas and antisemitic, because that’s all they’ve got. The Israeli Foreign Ministry released a statement claiming the report was authored by “individuals serving as Hamas proxies, notorious for their openly antisemitic positions.”

Blah, blah, blah. The report is Hamas and antisemitic. All human rights organizations are Hamas and antisemitic. There’s a giant global antisemitic Hamas conspiracy dedicated to making it appear as though Israel is committing genocide, just to make Jewish people feel sad.

I can't stop thinking about 1 sentence in today's UN report regarding Israel's genocide in Gaza.

"Israeli security forces shot at & killed civilians, including children who were holding makeshift white flags. Some children, including toddlers, were shot in the head by snipers.”

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) September 16, 2025

At this point the only people who still deny that Israel is committing genocide are those who want to make sure nobody does anything to stop Israel from committing genocide.

The list of humanitarian institutions who accuse Israel of genocide now includes:

1. The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory

2. The International Association of Genocide Scholars

3. B’Tselem (an Israeli organization)

4. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (another Israeli organization)

5. Amnesty International

6. Doctors Without Borders

7. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights

8. Human Rights Watch

9. The International Federation for Human Rights

10. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention

The list of humanitarian institutions who say Israel is NOT committing genocide in Gaza includes:

1. Nobody

2. No one

3. Zero

4. Nothing

5. Nada

6. Zilch

7. Sweet damn all

8. A complete absence

9. Diddly squat

10. Bupkis

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza — UN

“The Commission concludes that Israeli authorities and security forces have had and continue to have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
– UN Human Rights Council. pic.twitter.com/QTTwGDi66c

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 16, 2025

It is not okay to treat the fact that Israel is committing genocide like it’s a matter of opinion. Every relevant human rights institution on earth says it’s a genocide. Zero equivalent institutions say it’s not. This is a settled matter.

People who deny that it’s a genocide deserve to be taken exactly as seriously as flat earthers. They’re just an extremely evil and destructive version of the thing flat earthers are.

You don’t see news articles about NASA with journalists adding “an agency which many believe is a government hoax designed to trick us into accepting ball earth theory” to their reporting. If a guest mentions Antarctica on the BBC, the news anchor doesn’t interrupt them to say “and we should say here that flat earth theorists deny the existence of that continent, maintaining that it is actually a wall of ice holding the oceans in place.”

You also don’t see reporting which treats accepted science about space and our planet like it’s an opinion held by some. You never see “which many scientists claim exists” when a report discusses outer space, or mentions of the horizon mitigated with words like “which some hold is due to the curvature of the earth rather than laws of perspective and light refraction”. They’re just treated as established facts, and those who disagree with the established facts are not taken seriously.

The genocide in Gaza should be no different. As the old adage goes, if one side says it’s raining and the other says it isn’t, your job isn’t to quote both sides, your job is to look out the window.

The window’s right there, western media. And it’s pouring genocide.

________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Adobe Stock.

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

US Attorney General Pam Bondi just said on a podcast that “hate speech” directed at conservatives was responsible for Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and that people who utter such speech will be prosecuted by the Trump administration.

Bondi’s comments came after the podcast’s host Katie Miller (wife of Trump henchman Stephen Miller) bizarrely suggested that Kirk’s murder at a university was a symptom of university campuses being too tolerant of mistreatment of people with conservative views.

Here’s a transcript:

Miller: “These universities are complicit in allowing conservatives to be harassed on campus. And what happens when you allow a university to harass conservatives and don’t expel or don’t take action is what happened last week.”

Bondi: “It is, and you know, on a broader level, the antisemitism that’s been happening at college campuses around this country is disgusting. It’s despicable. And we’ve been fighting that. We’ve been fighting these universities left and right, and we’re not going to stop. There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place — especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — in our society.”

Miller: “Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people so we show them that some action is better than no action?”

Bondi: “We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything. And that’s across the aisle.”

At the same time, Miller’s husband Stephen circulated the baseless claim that an “organized campaign” by left wing “terrorist networks” led to Kirk’s murder, and that the Trump administration is going to “dismantle and destroy” these networks.

Appearing on the late Kirk’s podcast which was being guest hosted by Vice President JD Vance, Miller stated the following:

“We are going to channel all the anger we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks … The organized doxxing campaigns. The organized riots. The organized street violence. The organized campaigns of of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses. Combining that with messaging designed to trigger and incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence. It is a vast domestic terror movement. With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks, and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”

On the same show, Vance urged American conservatives to report anyone who celebrated the killing of Charlie Kirk to their employer in order to get them fired.

“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and hell, call their employer,” Vance said, adding, “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”

Stephen Miller: “We are going to channel all the anger we have over the organized campaign to led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks … The organized doxxing campaigns. The organized riots. The organized street violence. The organized of… pic.twitter.com/XGtVUlWeac

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 15, 2025

If the Biden administration had been saying these things about right wingers, Trump supporters would’ve shrieked their lungs out. But because Trump supporters are mindless unprincipled NPCs, they’re perfectly fine with using authoritarian speech suppression and cancel culture against the other side.

One of the many naive mistakes I made when I first started this commentary gig was taking Trump supporters at their word when they said they support things like free speech, ending wars, and dismantling the deep state. I thought they can’t be all bad, because they’re saying they’re on the same side as me with many important issues that I care about.

This wishful thinking quickly fell apart as I watched them defend every single one of Trump’s acts of warmongering and authoritarianism and advancements of longstanding deep state agendas throughout his first term. Even actions which should have gone against their own basic partisan ideological biases like imprisoning Julian Assange were excused, justified, or spun as some kind of 4-D chess maneuver to actually rescue Assange. I stayed in dialogue with them the entire time, and they stood by literally every last bit of Trump’s warmongering, authoritarianism, and assaults on free speech.

Every once in a while you’d see one of them go “This is the final straw for me! I don’t support Trump anymore!” But then their disdain for Democrats would pull them right back into the fold and they’d be toeing the Republican Party line just the same as before.

JD Vance gives a full-throated endorsement of Cancel Culture, urging citizens to tattle to the employers of anyone "celebrating" Charlie Kirk's murder. Only problem: many who've already been fired didn't actually "celebrate" the murder, they engaged in protected political speech pic.twitter.com/cJxyoSNaKU

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 15, 2025

And it became clear to me that these people do not actually oppose the terrible abuses they claim to oppose, they just oppose them when the other party is doing them. They don’t oppose assaults on free speech, they just oppose assaults on their own speech. They don’t oppose war, they just oppose wars that they perceive as being started by Democrats. They don’t oppose the unelected power structure which runs the US empire, they just oppose the aspects of that power structure which they perceive as hostile to Trump.

And they’ve been demonstrating this even more clearly during Trump’s second term. They’ve defended every single one of their president’s genocidal, warmongering, tyrannical abuses. They stood by him when he deliberately torched the ceasefire with Hamas and the truce with the Houthis and reignited the bloodshed in Gaza and Yemen. They stood by him as he worked to stomp out free speech in the United States with moves intended to silence criticism of Israel. They stood by him when he announced his ethnic cleansing plans for the Gaza Strip. They stood by him when he bombed Iran. They’re standing by him as he expands his warmongering to Venezuela. Whatever authoritarian measures Washington decides to surf on the tide of the Charlie Kirk assassination will surely be complied with too.

They’re a bunch of worthless, power-worshipping bootlickers who support everything they claim to oppose. They’re garden variety Republican empire simps posing as populist revolutionaries, just as devoted to the imperial murder machine as the Democrats they despise.

Eventually you learn that anyone who aligns themselves with either mainstream party in any way is someone you can just dismiss as a compliant empire stooge. They might say “No no I’m this new special kind of Republican that opposes the war machine and fights for liberty,” or “No no I’m this new special kind of Democrat who opposes the oligarchy and works for peace,” but they’re lying. It’s a play. A performance. They’re just trying to herd people into the two mainstream imperial parties whose entire purpose is to protect and promote the interests of the empire.

They’re all part of the swamp, and you cannot use the swamp to drain the swamp.

_______________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image is a screen grab from The Katie Miller Show (Fair Use).

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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

❖

“Hacks” costar Hannah Einbinder said “Free Palestine” during her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress at the Emmys on Sunday. Questioned by the press afterward, Einbinder said she has friends in Gaza, adding, “I feel like it is my obligation as a Jewish person to distinguish Jews from the state of Israel, because our religion and our culture is such an important and longstanding institution that is really separate to this sort of ethnonationalist state.”

I’ve followed Einbinder on Instagram for a long time because she’s been one of the few people in Hollywood consistently using their influential voice to oppose this genocide, and it is very good that she said these things. Hopefully we see much more of this.

But right now I can’t help thinking about how unforgivable it is that all the other Hollywood celebrities haven’t been using their platforms at these events to call for an end to the Gaza holocaust this entire time. For two years this nightmare has been normalized in the eyes of the public with the assistance of the vast conspiracy of silence between all the people with the largest and most influential voices in our society.

❖

❖

I’ve been seeing a lot of people talking about how hypocritical it is of Trumpers to be going around trying to get people ostracized or fired for speaking ill of Charlie Kirk after his assassination.

One of the most boring political observations you can make about Republicans or Democrats is that they are “hypocrites” who say one thing and do another. That stops being interesting when you realize their words are never actually saying anything about their real principles and values; they’re always just making empty noises to advance whatever agendas they’re trying to push in a given instance.

Of course Republicans pretend to care about free speech and then support the suppression of the speech of their political enemies; their lip service to “free speech” was just something they said to attack the Democrats. Of course Democrats pretended to care about racism and injustice and then threw their support behind a live-streamed genocide; their lip service to justice and equality was only ever empty noise they were making to attack Republicans.

The interesting thing about these contradictions isn’t that they show “hypocrisy”, it’s that these people don’t actually stand for anything. It’s that they’re just a bunch of babbling human livestock mindlessly regurgitating whatever noises they’re conditioned to regurgitate in order for their team to win.

This unthinking lateral feuding benefits nobody but the powerful. The empire managers are always happy to see a white hot culture war sucking all the oxygen away from the kind of dissident thinking that could give rise to a revolutionary class war. The more Americans are fixated on empty partisan feuding with no real content, the less inclined they will be to do anything real. The more their gaze is fixed horizontally, the less likely they are to look up at those who are pulling their strings.

❖

When rightists talk about people who “celebrated” Charlie Kirk’s death they’re talking about literally anyone who didn’t give him the respect and reverence they feel he was due. For days they’ve been falsely claiming I celebrated and cheered his assassination because I didn’t act like Jesus Himself had been shot.

Go ahead and search through my articles. Search my tweets. You’ll find me saying he was a genocide apologist, you’ll see me saying his life wasn’t worth more than the lives of the people being murdered in Gaza as we speak, you’ll see me calling him a GOP swamp creature, you’ll see me calling rightists a bunch of mindless NPCs for uncritically swallowing every narrative they’ve been fed about this thing, but you won’t find me celebrating, expressing joy at his death, mocking or making jokes about his death, justifying his death, or saying he deserved to die.

They’re just lying and claiming people celebrated his death whose only real offense was declining to participate in the efforts to posthumously beatify this asshole and pretend he was a wonderful, saintly person.

❖

“Don’t criticize the behavior of a dead political operative” is not a legitimate position to have. Grow the fuck up.

______________

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

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Feature image is a screen grab from Television Academy (Fair Use).

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

The McDonald’s flag at Guantanamo Bay was lowered to half-mast in honor of the GOP swamp creature who was assassinated by a sniper the day before 9/11, which I think we can all agree is the most American thing that has ever happened.

They’re saying they caught the guy who did it. Some 22 year-old Utah kid with no priors. My social media feeds have been full of people debating whether he was right wing or left wing, or agreeing with each other that he was obviously one or the other depending on their own ideology and how insulated their echo chamber is.

I am not young enough or online enough to understand what the hell they’re talking about. It’s all about memes and groyper culture and video game references and furries. Reading the discourse makes me feel older than rocks.

The Guantanamo McDonalds flag is at half-mast to honor Charlie Kirk https://t.co/MdKtmGUZWK

— Thoughts on this? (@lib_crusher) September 11, 2025

I have no idea how much of what we’re being told about this case is true and how much we are being lied to. All I know is at the moment it all fits very nicely into the pre-existing plans of the powerful.

White House lackey Stephen Miller is saying that Charlie Kirk’s assassination means “radical left organizations” need to be targeted and dismantled in the United States, because it’s what Charlie would have wanted.

“The last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence. That was the last message that he sent me before that assassin stole him from all of us. And we are gonna do that under President Trump’s leadership,” Miller told Fox News.

Yeah okay. The fascists want to roll out authoritarian measures and crush the left, something they definitely never planned on doing until this past Wednesday.

Stephen Miller: "The last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence. That was the last message that he sent me … we are… pic.twitter.com/j0Gumd9V5i

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 13, 2025

And meanwhile the nightmare in west Asia continues to blaze on with the backing of the empire Kirk spent his life supporting.

People in Gaza are still being starved to death and shot while seeking aid and bombed in their homes, with scores of innocents slain in the days since Kirk’s death in the genocide that he had actively facilitated. Former Israeli commander Herzi Halevi has publicly admitted that more than 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured since the onslaught began — a number which is surely a massive undercount.

Israel killed at least 30 journalists in an attack on a press office in Yemen on Wednesday, because the only thing the Israelis love more than bombing hospitals is assassinating news reporters, and the only thing they hate more than Palestinians is the truth.

On Thursday the IDF abducted over a thousand Palestinians at random in the West Bank following an explosion which wounded two Israeli soldiers, marching them through the streets in a public display of humiliation. 

Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on a major West Bank settlement expansion on Thursday, proclaiming that “there will be no Palestinian state, this place belongs to us.” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich added that the West Bank will soon be annexed, a move the Trump administration has reportedly signed off on.

While you're all talking about Charlie Kirk, Israel just took more hostages in one single day than Hamas has taken in their entire existence. https://t.co/QULOrlxNjR

— onagapnotsew (@westonpagano) September 12, 2025

Anyway, yeah. Things are dark.

Sometimes when the world looks dark and scary I like to remind myself that the darkness was probably what pressed humanity to become the clever creature that it is.

According to British anthropologist and primatologist Richard Wrangham, the most likely explanation for the explosion in human brain size in our evolutionary history was because our early ancestors started cooking their food with fire. This greatly reduced the amount of energy needed for chewing and digestion, which could then be redirected toward the brain, whose operation consumes a large amount of energy.

Why did our ancestors start using fire? What was the initial appeal? It probably wasn’t “I can roast this piece of animal flesh over the flames so my digestive system doesn’t have to work as hard and I can reallocate those calories for other purposes.” It was probably the warmth and the light — things which we wouldn’t have had access to in the night time.

Until our ancestors started making fire, the night would have been a terrifying time. Prehistoric predators would have been able to pick them off before they ever saw it coming; they’d have just huddled together surrounded by an infinite stretch of darkness full of sharp teeth and claws until sunrise. They probably started making fires because they were afraid of the dark.

If early humans had been a nocturnal animal, this probably wouldn’t have happened. If their eyes had been adapted for night vision, they may never have been incentivized to go through all the hard toil and trial and error that would have gone into learning how to start and maintain a fire. 

They wouldn’t have been afraid of the dark, so they wouldn’t have started cooking, so their brains wouldn’t have begin to grow, and all the brilliance of our species would never have emerged. All the artistic, scientific and philosophical wonders we have birthed into this world would never have existed. We get to experience all these amazing things, ultimately, because our world used to be dark and scary.

Maybe the darkness of these times will press us to make the next adaptations necessary for a further leap forward as a species.

________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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

❖

Hi I’m an anti-establishment right winger. I’m enraged about the murder of a mainstream Republican pundit who worshipped the president and I demand sweeping authoritarian measures to stomp out the political left. I believe whatever the TV says about this. I’m anti-establishment.

❖

To be clear I would be just as unmoved if a mainstream Democrat-aligned manipulator like Bill Maher or Joe Scarborough was killed, and I would be just as disdainful of their memory. They are exactly the same to me.

I had no strong feelings about Charlie Kirk especially; to me he was just one of the empire’s countless flying monkeys, and his role will be easily filled by the next flying monkey in line. My disdain toward him was of the ordinary blanket variety that I hold toward all the lackeys of the most tyrannical and murderous power structure on our planet, regardless of their political affiliation.

All mainstream Republican pundits, politicians and political operatives are evil pieces of shit. All mainstream Democratic pundits, politicians and political operatives are evil pieces of shit. You cannot become a high-level pundit, politician or political operative in either mainstream party without being an evil piece of shit. It’s part of the job description, because the job requires you to make excuses for the abuses of a globe-spanning empire which is fueled by human blood.

The Republicans are not your friend. The Democrats are not your friend. If you have any special attachment to any mainstream American pundit, politician or political operative, then you have a special attachment to an evil piece of shit. That includes Charlie Kirk, and it includes all major Republican pundits and politicians, and it includes all major Democrat pundits and politicians.

There are no exceptions. That’s just the way the empire is structured.

❖

Rightists have been aggressively pushing the narrative that the weapon used to assassinate Charlie Kirk contained ammunition which had been engraved with “transgender and anti-fascist ideology”, based on an early internal police bulletin whose contents made its way to the press via right wing pundit Steven Crowder.

Yeah, sure. Hey you guys they found “I am trans” written on the bullets and “I am Antifa” was also written on the bullets and also “Nothing can stop us radical leftists but a huge Palantir surveillance network” and also “Killer police robots and murder drones would thwart our plans.” Come on.

The claim fizzled almost as soon as it surfaced, with one law enforcement official telling The New York Times that “the report had not been verified by A.T.F. analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted.”

CNN was then told by two law enforcement sources that “agents quickly ran an initial search on one of the markings, including a series of arrows, which analysts initially interpreted to be a connection to the transgender community. That information remains unverified and is still being investigated.”

So police found a “series of arrows” on some ammo, thought that maybe the arrows have something to do with trans activism, and then someone fed this completely unsubstantiated hunch to Steven Crowder, further inflaming the insane, shrieking vitriol that has been consuming the American political right.

❖

A few days before Global Sumud Flotilla activists began reporting that drones were repeatedly dropping incendiary firebombs on their aid boats headed for Gaza, TRT World came out with a report saying Israel has been using quadcopter drones to drop incendiary firebombs in Gaza. Social media users have been posting footage of these drone attacks in Gaza alongside the video footage of the flotilla attacks, and they look the same.

Israel is droning activist boats for trying to bring formula to starving babies and Israelis are still like “the world hates us because of our religion!”

❖

Jerry Seinfeld said during a speech at Duke University on Tuesday that he believes that members of the Ku Klux Klan are morally superior to Palestine supporters, because they are more honest about their hatred of Jewish people.

“Free Palestine is, to me, just — you’re free to say you don’t like Jews. Just say you don’t like Jews,” Seinfeld said.

“By saying Free Palestine, you’re not admitting what you really think,” he continued. “So it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here because they can come right out and say, ‘We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews.’ Okay that’s honest.”

This is such a perfect example of the insanity of the Zionist ideology. They’re like, “The KKK is fine, it’s the ones who never voice hatred of Jews that I worry about. The ones whose Jew hatred is completely invisible and has no actual manifestations in the physical world.”

Israel supporters make alliances with the far right while attacking the left and alienating the centrists, and completely ignore all the actual white supremacist groups who want to kill Jews while shrieking about a fictional epidemic of Jew hatred among people who are protesting a genocide. You never see them yelling at Klansmen and neo-Nazis, you only ever see them yelling at people who think genocide is bad.

This is because Israel is a far right racist genocidal country, and its most natural allies are therefore racist right wingers who think genocide is cool. All the world’s worst people cozying up together in one big happy genocidal cuddle party.

❖

The other day I tweeted about an IDF sniper who had boasted about murdering unarmed civilians just for the hell of it, and a commenter said, “If that is a real quote from the real sniper, it’s bad but I don’t think it is real because it is so obviously bad.”

This is a common error when learning about the abuses of Israel. So much Israeli depravity hides behind the assumption that nobody could possibly be that evil. And then you dig a little deeper and it turns out, oh shit, yes they absolutely are. It really makes you reassess things.

________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

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

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

American rightists have been losing their fucking minds about the Charlie Kirk assassination, bawling their eyes out and babbling about “civil war” and how ready they are to use any amount of violence to crush the “radical left”.

The president himself suggested that Kirk was a victim of “radical left political violence” and said he’ll be taking action against groups and individuals who he views as responsible for it.

“My Administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it,” Trump said in a speech after the assassination, adding that “radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives” and complaining that “those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.”

Farming rage . Setting the scene for something terrible pic.twitter.com/9cn0dnfuGv

— Bassem Youssef (@Byoussef) September 11, 2025

All this despite the fact that as of this writing there is no evidence whatsoever that Kirk’s killing was motivated by left-wing ideology. The assassin appears to have been able to successfully escape after the killing, so nothing is known about what their motives were. Rightists are braying for civil war and demanding sweeping new authoritarian measures to crush what passes for the political “left” in the United States these days, based on nothing but vibes and feelings.

I myself have a hard time believing the narrative that Kirk’s assassin was a blue-haired they/them Antifa ninja who had developed the skills and training necessary to shoot a high-profile individual through the jugular at 200 yards and then execute an elaborate escape plan, and yet chose to use all those abilities to murder some divisive pundit instead of Trump or somebody with real power. That doesn’t make much sense to me.

It seems a lot more likely as of this writing that Kirk was assassinated by one of the usual types of sniper assassins — someone whose job is assassinating people, or some weird, fringey right winger (I’m seeing people online say that Kirk was despised by white supremacists). There are all kinds of motives someone can have for assassinating a prominent political operative, and not all of them are ideological or personal. As things stand right now there is no evidence for any of them.

Israel says Hamas beat the baby hostages of Ariel and Kfir Bibas to death with their bare hands.

This is likely the truth. Israeli forensic analysts say there is no proof that a bombing caused their death.

Hamas is a death cult fixated on the elimination of all Jews. https://t.co/mLpuD3VaC4

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 25, 2025

I don’t have much else to say on the subject, other than to tie it back in to the genocide in Gaza. Charlie Kirk was an enthusiastic cheerleader and propagandist for the Gaza holocaust, and the right wingers who’ve been talking about how gruesome they find the video of his assassination are accidentally confessing that they haven’t been watching the footage that’s being produced by the mass atrocity they support. If they had, someone getting shot in the throat wouldn’t feel like such a big deal to them. I saw more shocking things today before my morning coffee.

The same day Charlie Kirk was killed, at least 72 Palestinians were killed in the genocide he supported. The Palestinians killed in Gaza on that day collectively mattered at least 72 times more than Charlie Kirk, but his death received many orders of magnitude more attention from the mainstream press and from western political discourse. Westerners do not regard Palestinians as fully human.

So on this particular day I would like to express my sincere condolences to the families of everyone in Gaza who’ve been massacred by bombs and bullets every single day for the last two years with the facilitation of the US government and cheered on by wealthy Republican pundits. 

I don’t believe anything positive will be gained by Charlie Kirk’s death; he was a mediocre man who will be easily replaced by the next mediocre man in the right wing punditry pecking order. But he was also a piece of shit, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise just because he’s dead now.

__________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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

Recent hours have seen too much Israeli depravity to write about, including an assassination strike in Qatar to sabotage peace talks, a second drone attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla, and a Guardian article featuring an IDF sniper who discussed killing civilians like a trophy hunter talking about game animals.

The IDF bombed a Doha residential building on Tuesday in an attempt to assassinate Hamas officials who had gathered to discuss US-Israeli ceasefire proposals, reportedly killing a Qatari security officer and four Hamas aides, as well as the son of the acting Hamas political bureau chief.

President Trump publicly criticized the Israeli attack, but Middle East Eye reports that according to US and regional officials the president had actually “blessed” the strike in advance. These would be the same Hamas officials who Trump had just been aggressively threatening to accept his ceasefire proposal or face severe consequences. 

Israeli Airstrikes Target Hamas Leadership in Qatar
Sources told Middle East Eye that the attack was 'blessed' by President Trump #Qatar #Doha #Israel #Hamas #Trump https://t.co/ky1ZtWnpOV

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) September 9, 2025

Hamas said the following in a statement:

“Targeting the negotiating delegation, as they discussed US President Donald Trump’s latest proposal, confirms beyond doubt that Netanyahu and his government do not want to reach any agreement and are deliberately seeking to thwart all opportunities and thwart international efforts, disregarding the lives of their prisoners held by the resistance, the sovereignty of states, or the security and stability of the region.

“We hold the US administration jointly responsible with the occupation for this crime, due to its ongoing support for the aggression and crimes of the occupation against our people.”

It’s hard to argue with any of this. Clearly nobody who’s calling the shots in Washington and Tel Aviv has any interest in actually ending this genocide. Which should surprise no one, since people who are committing genocide aren’t typically interested in negotiating ceasefire talks with their victims.

People really need to stop taking seriously the idea that Israel has any intention of ever agreeing to a ceasefire. They’ve made it clear that they’re not going to stop until they’ve kicked all the Palestinians out of Gaza and annexed it, and the Trump administration has made it clear they’re going to support this agenda. It’s time to start believing them.

NEW — Footage of the reported drone attack of the "Alma" ship on the Sumud Gaza aid flotilla.

The boat was sailing under the British flag. Fire damage seen in this video.

Comes after the "Family" was attacked yesterday in Tunisian waters.

Fire since extinguished. Crew safe. pic.twitter.com/SANljqf1qn

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) September 9, 2025

The Global Sumud Flotilla reports that there has been another drone attack on another activist ship bringing aid to Gaza, with video footage clearly showing something incendiary hitting the boat from above and starting a fire. 

The day before, the boat that had been carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists was struck in the same way. A video was released showing something on fire being dropped on the boat from above. Another showed an activist reacting to seeing a drone drop the incendiary object and saying later that he clearly saw a drone. Another video picked up whirring sounds immediately prior to the fire.

Yesterday my social media notifications were ablaze with hasbarists trying to claim the first attack was an internal mechanical fire or a cigarette fire, and then when the subsequent footage emerged they shifted to trying to claim it showed a misfired flare from the boat’s own occupants. The evidence is overwhelming that the Sumud flotilla is being attacked by drones, but we can expect the usual spinmeisters to keep pretending to believe obvious lies about it.

These activists are truly risking their lives with their efforts to break the Israeli siege. Their selflessness gives me hope for our species.

An Israeli sniper from Chicago, after killing a 19-year-old and then shooting his brother for trying to retrieve the body: "What was so important about that corpse?”

Those were 2 of the 4 members of the same family killed by Israeli snipers on a single day in Gaza, Nov 2023. https://t.co/BqEN8pwdn4 pic.twitter.com/706syuLu9k

— jasper nathaniel (@infinite_jaz) September 9, 2025

A Guardian article titled “The Gaza family torn apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich” is creating a lot of buzz today because of the incredibly psychopathic quotes it includes from a sniper from Chicago named Daniel Raab.

A joint investigation by the Guardian, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) and Paper Trail Media, Der Spiegel and ZDF connected footage of unarmed civilians being murdered by Israeli snipers in Gaza with social media posts and recorded admissions from the perpetrators. Raab had been tricked by Palestinian journalists into confessing to his crimes in Hebrew under the false promise of anonymity, with footage of his admissions published online last year. 

An excerpt from the article:

Daniel Raab shows no hesitation as he watches footage of 19-year-old Salem Doghmosh crumpling to the ground beside his brother in a street in northern Gaza.

“That was my first elimination,” he says. The video, shot by a drone, lasts just a few seconds. The Palestinian teenager appears to be unarmed when he is shot in the head.

Raab, a former varsity basketball player from a Chicago suburb who became an Israeli sniper, concedes he knew that. He says he shot Salem simply because he tried to retrieve the body of his beloved older brother Mohammed.

“It’s hard for me to understand why he [did that] and it also doesn’t really interest me,” Raab says in a video interview posted on X. “I mean, what was so important about that corpse?”

Another:

“They’re thinking: ‘Oh I don’t think [I’ll get shot] because I’m wearing civilian clothes and I am not carrying a weapon and all that, but they were wrong,” said Raab, who majored in biology at the University of Illinois before joining the Israel Defense Forces. “That’s what you have snipers for.”

After Salem was shot, his father, Montasser, 51, rushed to the site, and tried to collect his sons’ bodies for burial, but was also fatally injured by a sniper.

An actual serial killer from Chicago who volunteered to go snipe unarmed human beings as if they were animals on safari https://t.co/RxqrAoXapQ

— Sean Padraig McCarthy (@SeanMcCarthyCom) September 9, 2025

If I had murdered people for trying to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones who I had also murdered, I’d definitely be asking myself a lot of questions, but “what was so important about that corpse?” would definitely not be among them.

Gaza has become a hunting ground which is visited by psychopathic individuals who want to experience what it’s like to kill human beings, and it’s always open season. Those bloodthirsty monsters then re-enter our communities and walk among us without consequences. 

They get to go commit atrocities and then come back and resume their lives as though nothing happened, like going off to some kind of genocide summer camp. It’s about the most horrific thing you can imagine.

Israel poisons the entire world.

___________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Wikimedia Commons/IDF.

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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

❖

A drone appears to have struck a boat from the Global Sumud Flotilla while it was docked at a Tunisian port on its way to bring aid into Gaza, temporarily starting a fire. Nobody on board was harmed. The boat was reportedly crewed by the same activists who had attempted to sail to Gaza on the Madleen this past July, including Greta Thunberg.

And it is here worth noting that Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir recently said that Global Sumud Flotilla activists must be designated as terrorists and treated accordingly, in order to “create a clear deterrent” against foreign parties attempting to bring aid into Gaza by sea.

It is no mystery who the prime suspect is in this attack.

Breaking news;

Here is the security camera footage from the Family vessel of the Sumud Flotilla, stationing just outside Tunis port. So:
1. Sound of something that the crew identified as a drone.
2. Crews sounds the alarm and calls for help.
3. Explosion.
Draw your conclusions. pic.twitter.com/HmkFG7yaEt

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) September 8, 2025

This is such a dark and surreal timeline. I keep imagining going back in time a few years and trying to explain to someone from like 2019 that in 2025 there’d be a solid chance that the Israeli military might assassinate Greta Thunberg.

❖

Western officials have been falling all over themselves to express their deepest condolences and sympathy for six Israelis who were killed by Palestinian gunmen at a bus stop in Jerusalem on Monday, with statements pouring out from the US State Department, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, and EU Spokesman Anouar El Anouni.

Over six dead Israelis. After watching scores of Palestinian civilians get butchered by Israel every single day for two years without uttering a peep about them.

Make no mistake, with all this weeping and garment rending about six dead Israelis the leaders of the western world are openly and explicitly telling us that they do not regard Palestinians as human beings.

❖

Holocaust museum: Never again can't only mean never again for Jews.

Holocaust museum: Woah woah, hey, we weren't saying don't genocide the Palestinians! Obviously exterminate THEM! https://t.co/HWbdPDavuS

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 6, 2025

Israel supporters are so crazy and evil that the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum recently retracted a statement saying “Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews” after objections from Zionists.

The museum issued a statement saying, “We recently posted an item on social media that was part of a pre-planned social media campaign intended to promote inclusivity and community that was easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East. That was not our intent. It has been removed to avoid any further confusion.”

Think about how gross your position has to be for you to be all hey, let’s say no genocide for ANYBODY, and then immediately have to come back and clarify that you definitely weren’t saying no genocide for the Palestinians.

❖

Cracks me up that Israel supporters’ strongest argument that the Jews have claim to that land is “Okay, so, thousands of years ago, some people with similar religious beliefs to modern Israelis were forced to leave.”

❖

Some lady broke into my house and moved into my bedroom. Can't tell her to leave because that would be ethnic cleansing. https://t.co/GGwsZnlZMt

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 8, 2025

❖

The point is to make forceful opposition to the Gaza holocaust mainstream. That is the goal here. This will necessarily entail celebrities cynically joining the cause far too late, politicians whose politics we despise joining our side, copious amounts of liberal cringe, and the same western media outlets who helped manufacture consent for this genocide suddenly pivoting against it.

Those of us who’ve been opposing Israel’s western-backed holocaust from the beginning should want this. We should welcome it, because we care about ending this mass atrocity more than we care about feeling superior to the mainstream liberals and conservatives who are carrying this issue into the front and center of public consciousness. Moving this issue out of the political fringes and into the mainstream has always been the goal; it’s too important to gatekeep.

As this issue picks up more and more steam, our role will shift from one of drawing attention to a historic injustice to one of leadership. The people in our communities whose attention is suddenly being steered toward this issue will need our help forming a clear picture of what’s been happening this whole time.

This will mean teaching people about the complicity of our own western governments. How both major political parties have played a role in inflicting this nightmare upon the Palestinians, not just since 2023 but for generations prior. How the mass media lied to them and manipulated their understanding of what was really happening. How we’ve been deceived about all the acts of mass military slaughter our government has involved itself in over the years. How we really don’t live in the kind of world we were taught about in school.

The mainstream public opening their eyes to Gaza creates an opportunity for us to help them open their eyes to so much more. Don’t waste your energy getting annoyed at the normies showing up late to the protest and saying naive things. Instead, be glad of their participation, help them form a truth-based understanding of what’s really going on with Palestine, and use this moment to radicalize them against the machine that gave rise to this horror.

________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Francesca Albanese on X.

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

In a sense all I’m ever really pointing at here is the importance of taking responsibility. Taking responsibility as westerners for the suffering and destruction inflicted upon the world by the western power structure that we live under.

To be a westerner is to live in a civilization that is powered by the abuse and exploitation of the people of the global south. Every one of us benefits directly from the way resources and labor are exploitatively extracted from nations that are held in subjugation to the western empire at the barrel of a gun. The very electronic device you are reading these words on is a testament to this reality.

We each have a moral obligation to end this abusive dynamic. We have a responsibility to oppose the mass murder, tyranny, theft and abuse which is being imposed upon the rest of the world by the nations in which we live.

This is one of the reasons why I have no patience for rightists who whine about immigrants. It is not legitimate to live in a civilization which bombs, destabilizes, exploits and extracts from the global south and then complain when the victims of the bombing, destabilization, exploitation and extraction move to your country to get away from the misery your society caused them.

Whenever I say this I get rightists telling me “It’s not OUR fault there are immigrants! It’s our leaders! They’re the ones doing this, not us!”

And to them I can only say, nah. You’re just shirking your responsibility. You’re being immature and irresponsible. You need to grow up and take responsibility for your part of the bargain here. You need to stop blaming your problems on the desperate victims of your country’s abuses, and start doing what you can to end those abuses.

Don’t whine to me about how powerless you are. You know who’s a lot less powerful than you? The immigrants you’re bitching about. The exploited, abused nations they’ve been driven from. You’ve got a hell of a lot more power to effect meaningful change than they do. They’re being blown about by the winds of circumstances which you directly benefit from. Quit your bellyaching and get to work.

Ferociously oppose genocide. Ferociously oppose war. Ferociously oppose militarism. Ferociously oppose imperialism. Stand in solidarity with the ordinary workers around the world who are being exploited by the empire under which we live. Do everything you can to wake your fellow westerners up to the reality of the empire’s abuses and help create a grassroots movement to tear it down. That’s your responsibility.

This is why I’m always dismissive of people who say “Why are you always criticizing the west? Why aren’t you talking about that evil regime over there in Asia or Africa?” Those aren’t my responsibility. I am a westerner. I live under the US-centralized western empire whose abuses dwarf those of any non-western power structure by orders of magnitude. I focus on the power structure under which I live, which also happens to be the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on earth, because that is my responsibility.

Obviously our rulers are far more culpable in the abuses of the western empire than the ordinary individuals who live here, but we in turn are far more culpable in those abuses than the non-westerners whose labor and resources are being extracted so we can have cheap stuff whenever we want it. I’m not saying this exploitation makes all westerners inherently evil, I’m just saying we have a responsibility to do whatever we can to help end an abusive situation.

We need to stop trying to offload the blame for our circumstances onto others and set to work opening eyes and fomenting a revolutionary zeitgeist. Our leaders aren’t going to cease their abuses of their own volition, so we’re going to have to find a way to force them to.

That is our duty. That is our responsibility. We will never create a healthy world and become a truly conscious species on this planet until we have gotten real about this.

________________

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Feature image by Cary Bass-Deschênes (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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

British police arrested nearly 900 people over the weekend for expressing support for the peace activist group Palestine Action. Under UK law it is illegal to express favorable opinions about the group because London has deemed Palestine Action a terrorist organization, in the same category as ISIS or Al Qaeda.

At the same time, the Trump administration is defending its assassination of a boat full of Venezuelans on the allegation that they were “narcoterrorists”, an imaginary category designed to lump garden variety drug traffickers in with suicide bombers and mass shooters.

The word “terrorist” becomes more and more of a joke by the day.

I used to think a terrorist looks like a deranged maniac killing large numbers of civilians. Now I know a terrorist actually looks like a woman in a wheelchair holding a piece of cardboard with forbidden words written on it. https://t.co/ruQUknjNRr

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 6, 2025

In the UK a terrorist is someone with a cardboard sign saying “I support Palestine Action”.

In the US a terrorist is a Venezuelan suspected of drug trafficking.

In Israel a terrorist is someone resisting occupation.

We’re told Yemen is full of terrorists because they’re trying to stop a 21st century holocaust.

We’re told Lebanon is full of terrorists because they oppose a genocidal apartheid state.

We’re told Iran is full of terrorists because its government resists imperial regime change agendas.

We were told Al Qaeda were terrorists because they perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, but when Al Qaeda helped the west get rid of Assad they suddenly weren’t terrorists anymore.

Uyghur militants used to be terrorists, but they came off the list when they were deemed useful operatives against Beijing and Damascus.

Iraq needed to be invaded because Saddam wanted to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, but after the invasion it turned out that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and then Iraq was suddenly plagued by an epidemic of suicide bombings.

Afghanistan needed to be invaded because the Taliban was providing a safe haven for terrorists, but after 20 years of military occupation the empire needed its war machinery for other duties so they let the Taliban retake Afghanistan.

In 2010, then-vice president Joe Biden proclaimed Julian Assange a “high-tech terrorist” because his journalism with WikiLeaks exposed US war crimes.

Terrorism was used as an excuse to roll out the Patriot Act in the US and the Terrorism Act in the UK, and countless other authoritarian measures throughout the western world which tyrannical empire managers had been seeking to impose for years.

Such undignified bootlickery how American right wingers suddenly started pretending "narcoterrorists" is a real term and that assassinating drug dealers is actually killing terrorists just because the president commanded them to believe that. Pure 1984 Orwellian doublethink.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 7, 2025

Really “terrorist” just means someone the empire wants to kill or imprison, or a group whose terrorist designation might be used to justify the advancement of preexisting geostrategic agendas.

Propaganda is used to sear events like 9/11 into western consciousness as examples of terrorism which must be prevented at all cost, and then this label “terrorism” is applied to literally anyone who poses an obstacle to the agendas of the western empire.

Once it is accepted that there should be no rules restricting how the state responds to the threat of terrorism, all the state needs to do is label someone a terrorist to remove all rules which might stop them from doing whatever they want to do. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated right now than the ongoing genocide in Gaza which is being justified by the need to eliminate terrorists.

When power-seeking empire architects are given limitless power to fight terrorism, we suddenly find ourselves in a world full of designated terrorists.

The more despised the western empire becomes, the more “terrorists” there are going to be. Because a terrorist is anyone who takes action which inconveniences the empire.

If this keeps up, soon we will all be “terrorists”.

________________

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

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2