Five Things Liberals Say To Avoid Taking A Real Position On Gaza

It's so heartbreaking ! Two-State Solution ! It's Complicated ! I just want peace ! TRUMP!!! Here are five noises western liberals often make to avoid having to take a real position on Gaza: 1. “It’s heartbreaking!” 2. “It’s complicated!” 3. “BUT TRUMP!” 4. “I really hope there can be peace there someday!” 5. “I support a two-state solution!” Let’s talk about these a bit. “It’s heartbreaking!” Liberals love talking about how “sad” and “heartbreaking” what’s happening in Gaza is like it’s some kind of natural disaster, some tragically tragic tragedy that their government has been passively witnessing instead of actively facilitating. It lets them express their progressive humanitarian feelings without actually taking a meaningful political position against what’s being done in their name with their tax dollars and with their tacit consent. In reality the genocide in Gaza is not sad or heartbreaking or tragic; those are words you use for diseases and accidents. When someone is murdered with malicious intent, we don’t heave a heavy sigh and shed a tear and move on — we prosecute their murderer. It isn’t raining bombs in Gaza because that’s just the unfortunate weather there today, those bombs are being dropped by Israel with genocidal intent with the full backing of the United States and its allies. This is a crime which requires outrage and punishment, not empty crocodile tears. “It’s complicated!” No it isn’t. An apartheid regime has been oppressing and abusing an ethnic group which doesn’t receive the same rights and treatment as others, and now they’re dropping bombs on a population trapped in a giant concentration camp. If it was Jewish people enclosed in Gaza while any other ethnicity rained military explosives on them for four months, no liberal in the world would have trouble recognizing what they’re seeing and calling it what it is. “BUT TRUMP!” Push a Biden supporter hard enough on what their president is doing in Gaza and eventually they’ll start babbling about how bad Donald Trump is. As though Trump being bad somehow negates the depravity of backing an active genocide. Or as though backing an active genocide is an excusable offense if it means a little more student debt forgiveness or something. Democrats have no way to reconcile Gaza with what they believe about themselves and what values they supposedly hold, so when confronted with the horrifying reality of what their president is doing in the middle east they’re left with no option but to plunge their heads into the sand and scream “TRUMP!!!” as loud as they can. Nothing has exposed the true nature of the Democratic Party like a Democrat president running for re-election during a US-backed genocide. “I really hope there can be peace there someday!” Like “It’s tragic!”, this one replaces a meaningful political position with empty emotional fluff to create the false impression that the liberal has said something relevant which aligns with their stated values and ideology. By saying you want peace but refusing to say how you want the peace to come about, the “peace” you purport to support could mean anything. If Israel bombs Gaza into rubble and drives survivors into refugee camps in the Sinai desert, they could call that “peace” because there won’t be a war anymore. If Israel murders everyone in Gaza, they can call that “peace” because the bombs are no longer falling. Even going back to the status quo of October 6 wouldn’t be “peace”, it would just be returning to the abusive conditions which gave rise to October 7. Saying you want “peace” without talking about immediate ceasefires and negotiated agreements is just saying you want Israel to keep doing what it’s doing until it decides it’s done enough. “I support a two-state solution!” The “two-state solution” is functionally just a psychological box that liberals mentally tick off so they can pretend they have a real position on Israel-Palestine. Israeli leaders publicly spit on the notion of a Palestinian state with its own military and national sovereignty, and there is no political wherewithal to make such a thing happen. It’s nothing more than a conceptual construct which lets liberals feel nice about their personal politics without actually taking a stand against the western-backed tyrannical power structure that is the state of Israel. In reality there cannot be peace until Israel ceases to be an abusive apartheid ethnostate, until it and its allies pay massive reparations to the Palestinians, and until all the wrongs of the past are made right. This is entirely possible, but it would be a massive, massive effort toward a goal that would make the current status quo of Israel-Palestine completely unrecognizable from what it currently is. Merely flicking an intellectual thumbs-up to empty notions about a “two-state solution” is just more liberal psychological compartmentalization. Other popular noises liberals make to avoid taking a real position on Gaza include “Something something antisemitism!” and “It’s just Netanyahu and a few far-right jerks making things bad!” The specific words don’t matter much, because liberals will make whatever noises they need to make to avoid the crushing weight of cognitive dissonance and resist the increasingly loud demands from reality that they dramatically restructure their worldview. _________________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Caitlin’s Newsletter © 2024 Caitlin Johnstone PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia

Democrats Are Demented Genocidal War Sluts

President Biden is reportedly preparing to begin a new weeks-long bombing campaign in the middle east in retaliation for a drone attack which killed three US troops this past weekend. These strikes are expected to include Iranian targets, tempting the nightmare scenario of a full-blown war with Iran, despite the public acknowledgement that there’s no evidence Iran was behind the drone strike. Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp explains: “US officials told NBC News that the US is planning to launch a weeks-long bombing campaign in the Middle East in retaliation for the drone attack in northeast Jordan that killed three American soldiers. “The officials said that the targets are expected to include Iranian targets outside of Iran, and the campaign will involve strikes and cyber operations. Other reports have said the US is considering targeting Iranians in Iraq and Syria or the Iranian navy. “While the potential targets are not inside Iran, direct attacks on the Iranian military could provoke a full-blown war between the US and Iran. The US is considering taking this course of action even though the Pentagon admitted it has no evidence Iran was directly involved in the drone attack in Jordan.” https://twitter.com/DecampDave/status/1752791054284169230 Iran threatened to “decisively respond” to any US attack, either upon the Islamic Republic itself or upon the nation’s “interests and nationals under any pretexts.” So this looks to be yet another dramatic escalation in the middle east by the warmongering policies of the sitting US president, who has also been waging a new bombing campaign in Yemen and backing a genocide in Gaza of unbelievable savagery where starving Palestinians are now eating grass and drinking polluted water in a desperate attempt to survive. According to a memo obtained by The Intercept, US troops have been put on standby for possible involvement in Israel’s assault on Gaza as well. In the midst of all that murderousness the Twitter account from this bloodthirsty ghoul of a president is posting cutesey tweets at Elmo from Sesame Street about the importance of emotional wellbeing, which is about the most dystopian thing you can possibly imagine. “Our friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it,” Biden tweeted during an active US-backed genocide. https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1752518567239536821 Longtime Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi has been behaving even more freakishly. The former House Speaker said this past Sunday that people advocating a ceasefire in Gaza are promoting “Mr. Putin’s message,” claiming on no basis whatsoever that some pro-Palestine demonstrations are backed by Russia and should be investigated by the FBI. In a video posted the very next day by antiwar activist group Code Pink, Pelosi is seen admonishing protesters against Biden’s Gaza genocide to “Go back to China where your headquarters is.” Pelosi’s demented accusation is presumably a reference to a New York Times smear piece which used sleazy insinuations to falsely imply a connection between Code Pink and the Chinese government without ever actually showing one to exist, and not even that smear piece ever claimed that Code Pink had a headquarters in China. The “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party isn’t much better, with political pop stars like Bernie Sanders flailing all over the place to avoid advocating a ceasefire and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying she fully supports Biden despite his actions in Gaza and adamantly refusing to say if the president is backing a genocide. https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1752920818420437006 A Democratic president engaging in genocide during a re-election year is highlighting the depravity of this warmongering capitalist party more starkly than anything else I can remember. Democrats frame themselves as responsible humanitarians who stand in opposition to the reckless murderousness and fascism of the Republican Party’s worst impulses, yet here they are openly falling all over themselves to justify mass atrocities driven by the racist feeding frenzy of a tyrannical far-right regime. In reality the Democratic Party exists to promote the interests of the murderous US empire just as much as the Republican Party does. They might sometimes promote imperial interests in different ways, in the same way the left jab and the right cross are used differently in boxing. But just as a boxer uses jabs and crosses together to score a knockout blow, the empire uses the Democratic and Republican parties in conjunction to keep the imperial war machine trudging forward over human bodies, year after year and administration after administration. ________________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 © 2024 Caitlin Johnstone PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia

Strange Groceries

What strange groceries that man is carrying Odd shapes in two plastic bags Dripping blood They look like they weigh more than the world Head bowed Eyes screwed shut Step after step, feet like lead Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah What are those strange groceries you carry, sir? These are my children, he says through a clenched jaw They have had a long and weary day And it is time to put them to bed His face is wet with tears And his arms are shaking He walks on Heavy feet with a heavy burden Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah Oh Allah ____________ ____________ ____________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Caitlin’s Newsletter © 2024 Caitlin Johnstone PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia

Commemorating A Past Holocaust While Cheerleading The Current One

The US and eight of its allies have suspended funding to UNRWA, the primary humanitarian agency in Gaza, following Israeli allegations that a dozen employees of the 30,000-staff organization were involved in the October 7 attack by Hamas. The allegations conveniently sprung up at the same time as the International Court of Justice rulings against Israel in the genocide case brought against it by South Africa, quickly supplanting the ICJ ruling in western mass media headlines. The US has continued to dismiss the South African case as unfounded. A senior Israeli official told Axios that Israeli intelligence agencies came upon the information about the UNRWA staffers largely through “interrogations of militants who were arrested during the Oct. 7 attack.” Israel has an extensive history of using torture in its interrogations, and there’s no reason to believe it hasn’t been used on captured Hamas fighters in recent months. So to recap —  Accusations of genocide deemed credible by the International Court of Justice: Preposterous lies. Not worth opposing a single massacre over. Unsubstantiated claims about UNRWA staff extracted via torture: Gospel truth. Worthy of ending humanitarian support to Gazans for. ❖ How does ANY unproven claim by the Israeli government get treated seriously by ANYONE anymore? There ought to be a limit on how many lies you can get caught circulating before the entire political/media class just starts laughing at you whenever you make any claim about anything. ❖ It’s been so surreal watching empire managers issue solemn words in honor of Holocaust Memorial Day while enthusiastically facilitating a modern-day genocide in Gaza. https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1751251282789122053 Commemorating the Holocaust while cheerleading for the current holocaust is next-level dystopia. ❖ The IDF shot and killed a Palestinian man who had a white flag in a designated “safe zone” right in front of an ITV News crew, drawing headlines around the world. It’s been undeniable that the IDF routinely kills Palestinians who are waving white flags ever since last month when they killed three escaped Israeli hostages who were waving a white flag mistaking them for Palestinians. This was just the first time the western press filmed it. ❖ A re-election campaign year for a Democrat president coinciding with an active genocide backed by that same president is exposing the true face of the Democratic Party clearer than anything I can remember. Biden is preparing to send Israel 50 child murder jets and 12 child murder helicopters, but oh no no we mustn’t focus on this too much because it’s an election year and Trump is a very bad person. ❖ I understand the logic of lesser-evil voting. I just don’t understand the logic of designating a president who backs a literal genocide and engages in nuclear brinkmanship a “lesser evil”. ❖ A political establishment which tells you you have to choose between two presidential candidates who both want to help Israel murder children by the thousands is a political establishment which must not be permitted to exist. ❖ https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1751048481853317182?s=20 ❖ Israel has been caught in lie after lie after lie after lie since October 7, yet we’re meant to believe it’s crazy anti-semitic holocaust denialism to think it may have lied about some of the stuff that happened on October 7 as well. ❖ Young people spent 2020 protesting against racism and injustice and spent 2022 being told that it’s bad for an occupying force to drop bombs on people, but when Israel started a racist and unjust bombing campaign in 2023 older generations were still somehow surprised to see young people stand against it. ❖ To defend Israel is to defend the US empire, because the military might of the US empire is what makes Israel’s existence possible. You can’t separate the two. Israel apologists pretend they’re defending a plucky little underdog country in the middle east and a persecuted religious minority, when really they’re defending the most powerful empire that has ever existed and the most murderous and tyrannical power structure of the 21st century. ____________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Featured image via U.S. Institute of Peace (CC BY 2.0) Caitlin’s Newsletter © 2024 Caitlin Johnstone PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia

Israel Accuses The ICJ Of (You Guessed It) Antisemitism

The International Court of Justice rejected Israel’s request to dismiss the genocide case brought against it by South Africa on Friday, ruling by a massive majority that the case shall proceed and instructing Israel to refrain from killing and harming Palestinians in the interim. Many Palestine supporters have expressed dismay that the ICJ did not explicitly order a ceasefire, while many others (including South African officials) argue that the ruling is very positive and tantamount to a ceasefire order because it demands the end of harm to members of the protected group. Imperial media are aggressively emphasising the absence of a ceasefire order in their headlines and many Israel apologists are framing that absence as a victory for their favorite ethnostate, but such performative chest-thumping is severely undercut by the way high-level Israeli officials are currently accusing the ICJ of antisemitism and saying Israel should ignore its rulings. https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1751048855032926448 “The international court of justice went above and beyond when it granted South Africa’s antisemitic request to discuss the claim of genocide in Gaza, and now refuses to reject the petition outright,” complained Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant in response to the ruling. “The decision of the antisemitic court in The Hague proves what was already known: This court does not seek justice, but rather the persecution of Jewish people,” said Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Ben Gvir also tweeted “Hague Schmague” immediately after the ruling was issued, which will probably go down in history as the most Israeli tweet of all time. Everyone’s arguing about whether or not the ICJ’s ruling is helpful, and I don’t know enough one way or the other to be sure either way, but from where things stand right now it does seem unlikely to me that managers of the Israeli war machine would be getting this freaked out and whipping out their tired old “antisemitism” song and dance if there wasn’t something of substance to it. International lawyer Francis Boyle, who won provisional measures against Yugoslavia at the ICJ in 1993, said the following of the ruling: “This is a massive, overwhelming legal victory for the Republic of South Africa against Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. The U.N. General Assembly now can suspend Israel from participation in its activities as it did for South Africa and Yugoslavia. It can admit Palestine as a full member. And — especially since the International Criminal Court has been a farce — it can establish a tribunal to prosecute the highest level officials of the Israeli government, both civilian and military.” So take that for whatever that’s worth to you. In any case the butchery in Gaza still urgently needs to be ended, and only time will tell whether Friday’s development had any major effect on the outcome of this horror. But man what I wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the wall at the meetings they were having at the US State Department on Friday. It’s days like this that remind you why empire managers switched from talking about “international law” to using the meaningless phrase “rules-based international order”. ________________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Caitlin’s Newsletter © 2024 Caitlin Johnstone PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia

Gaza Is Exposing Western Liberals For The Frauds They Are

The entire western liberal worldview is currently balanced on the ability to psychologically compartmentalize away from the mass atrocities in Gaza and what western governments are doing to perpetuate them. Everything that mainstream liberals claim to oppose is on full display in Israel’s actions in Gaza. Racism. Fascism. Tyranny. Injustice. Genocide. Yet they must necessarily avoid throwing themselves into opposing these things there at all cost, because it would mean acknowledging that their own political allegiances are inseparably interwoven with them. https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1749972923631186298 It would mean turning against Biden during an election year. It would mean admitting that their entire political posture against Trump all these years has been a phony performance, because they’re tacitly endorsing all the things they claimed to hate about him. It would mean admitting their entire worldview is a lie, and that all their critics to their left have been correct. The western liberal is therefore in the year 2024 engaged in an exhausting regimen of nonstop mental gymnastics to avoid having an authentic relationship with the reality of what’s happening Gaza. They squirm this way and that, twisting their gaze toward empty nonsense like Barbie movie Oscar snubs and Trump’s latest instance of verbal diarrhea to avoid looking at what’s happening. On those odd occasions when they are forced to confront the reality of Gaza they start spouting gibberish about how “complicated” and “heartbreaking” it is and how they hope there can be peace as soon as possible, while frenetically avoiding saying precisely how that “peace” should be brought about. https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1750185844219015517 https://twitter.com/birrion/status/1749985611123994943 Gaza exposes the mainstream western liberal ideology for the kayfabe performance it always has been. The job of the so-called liberal “moderate” has never been to oppose racism, fascism, tyranny, injustice or genocide, their job is to perpetually give the thumbs-up to one head of the two-headed monster that is the murderous western empire. Their job is to help put a positive spin on a globe-spanning power structure that is fueled by human blood. To help elect Bidens and Starmers and Trudeaus and Albaneses who will ensure that the gears of the empire keep on turning completely unhindered while paying lip service to human rights and social justice. The one faint glimmer of brightness in this profoundly dark chapter in human history is that it might start opening some eyes to the fraudulence of the mainstream fake-left political faction that has been marketed to the western public as an alternative to far right depravity. That westerners might start awakening to the reality that everything they’ve been trained to believe about politics, their government and their world is a lie. Such an awakening would be the first step toward a mass-scale movement into health. ____________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Featured image via Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0) You're currently a free subscriber to Caitlin’s Newsletter. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. Upgrade to paid SHARE LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2024 Caitlin Johnstone PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia

The Biden Administration's Absurd Justification For Its Yemen War

On Monday the US launched its eighth wave of airstrikes in its new war against Yemeni forces, which it has now formally titled “Operation Poseidon Archer”. The strikes are aimed at breaking a Red Sea shipping blockade which the de facto authorities in Yemen have implemented to pressure Israel and its allies into ceasing the genocidal onslaught in Gaza. At a press briefing on Monday, Principal Deputy State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel uttered a now-familiar Biden administration line when asked if the war would escalate to involve US boots on the ground. “First, as it relates to the Houthis, the United States is not interested in any escalation, but it is never acceptable for malign actors to target international vessels, to target legitimate commerce that is flowing through the Red Sea,” Patel said. “We’re talking about international waters that allow 30 percent of global container shipping to flow through those waters — 15 percent of seaborne trade. This is a waterway that is vital. And we will always take appropriate steps to hold those accountable that put things like legitimate commerce, civilians, U.S. personnel, in harm’s way.” Ever since the Biden administration began bombing Yemen, its official spinmeisters have been babbling about commerce and global container shipping to justify it. The unspoken premise behind this justification is that an active genocide should be permitted to continue with zero economic repercussions of any kind, for Israel or anyone else. It’s just taken as a given by empire managers and their defenders that the money must keep flowing and the gears of capitalism must keep turning at the same rate they were turning before Israel began massacring tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, if not faster. That the horrors being unleashed in Gaza should have no material impact on the rest of the world whatsoever. The empire will permit you to think thoughts and feel feelings about the butchery in Gaza quietly in the privacy of your own head, and under the right circumstances it will even permit you to attend pro-Palestine demonstrations and share your opinions on social media. But as soon as it comes to physically interfering with the gears of the imperial machine, they’ll blow your guts out. Which is of course absurd. The horrors in Gaza should be affecting the whole world. Our lives should not be proceeding normally, and it’s freakish and obscene that they do. It’s a sign of a profoundly sick civilization that so many of us in the west are able to lose ourselves in idle entertainment and laugh and stuff our faces with snacks and go out on the town while the nightmare in Gaza continues to unfold. Gaza should be stopping us in our tracks. Hell we should be disrupting the economy ourselves — we shouldn’t have to wait for impoverished Yemenis to do it for us. We should be holding general strikes and stopping ships and disrupting everything we can possibly disrupt in order to force western civilization to look at what it’s supporting in Gaza and bring this mass atrocity to a screeching halt. Instead we’re just sleepwalking through life like we always do while people in the poorest nation in the middle east bravely fight our battle for us. https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1737923032482767223 The empire is not entitled to expect that all commerce keep flowing normally during an active genocide. Israel is not entitled to have zero consequences for its actions, and its trading partners are not entitled to be unaffected by those consequences. The idea that it’s normal and appropriate to use any and all measures to prevent Israel’s atrocities from having any material impact on commerce — up to and including starting a new American war — is self-evidently ridiculous. It’s been an incredibly draining past 100 days for those of us who’ve been following events in Gaza. There’ve been days when I couldn’t believe the sun dared to shine. The premise that there shouldn’t even be a slight economic downturn as a result of this madness, and that it’s fine to start a war to make sure there isn’t, deserves to be dismissed with extreme disdain. We live in a dystopian world where it’s completely normalized to subvert human interests to commercial interests, to toss tens of thousands of lives into the incinerator for wealth and convenience. Where war profiteers rake in vast fortunes for selling instruments of mass murder to genocidal governments, and where the most powerful empire in history declares a war to defend shipping containers at the cost of human life. Don’t ever let these sick freaks convince you that this is normal. _____________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Caitlin’s Newsletter © 2024 Caitlin Johnstone PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia Unsubscribe

Biden Has Started Another US War CAITLIN JOHNSTONE JAN 22

The Washington Post has an article out titled “As Houthis vow to fight on, U.S. prepares for sustained campaign,” with “sustained campaign” being empire-speak for a new American war. “The Biden administration is crafting plans for a sustained military campaign targeting the Houthis in Yemen after 10 days of strikes failed to halt the group’s attacks on maritime commerce, stoking concern among some officials that an open-ended operation could derail the war-ravaged country’s fragile peace and pull Washington into another unpredictable Middle Eastern conflict,” the Post reports. The Post acknowledges that “sustained military campaign” means “war” in the ninth paragraph of the article, saying the anonymous US officials cited in the report “don’t expect that the operation will stretch on for years like previous U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria.” Which is about as reassuring as a pyromaniac saying he doesn’t expect he’ll be burning down any more houses like all those other houses he’s burned down. https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1749096661811437841 This bizarre refusal to just call a war a war also appeared in a recent press conference with Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, who acted shocked and aghast that reporters would even ask if repeatedly bombing a country would qualify as being at war with them. “Is it now fair to say that the U.S. is at war in Yemen?” Singh was asked by a Reuters reporter on Thursday. “No, we don’t seek war,” Singh replied. “We don’t think that we are at war. We don’t want to see a regional war. The Houthis are the ones that continue to launch cruise missiles, antiship missiles at innocent mariners, at commercial vessels that are just transiting an area that sees, you know, 10 to 15 percent of world’s commerce.” In a follow-up several questions later, Singh was asked by a reporter from Politico, “You said that we are not at war with the Houthis, but if — you know, this tit-for-tat bombing — we’ve bombed them five times now. So if this isn’t war, can you just explain this a little — a little bit more to us? If this isn’t war, what is war?” “Sure, Lara, sure, great question, I just wasn’t expecting it phrased exactly that way,” Singh replied with a laugh and a smirk. “Look, we are — we do not seek war. We are — we do not — we are not at war with the Houthis. In terms of a definition, I think that would be more of a clear declaration from the United States. But again, what we are doing and the actions that we are taking are defensive in nature.” It is worth noting that since that Thursday press conference the number of US strikes on Yemen has increased from five to seven as of this writing. It is also worth noting here that, per Singh’s absurd definition, the US has not been at war since the end of WWII, as there has not been a “clear declaration of war” since June 5, 1942. The only wars the US has officially declared through congress in accordance with its own constitution have been the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, and the two world wars. If you go by this definition the US is among the more peaceful nations in the world, since it hasn’t been at war in eight decades. In reality the US is the single most warlike and murderous nation of modern times with wars of aggression that have killed millions and displaced tens of millions just in the 21st century alone, and plays some role in most of the world’s major international conflicts. Singh’s claim that the US attacks on Yemen are “defensive in nature” is also self-evidently absurd; Yemeni forces weren’t even attacking American commercial vessels until the US began attacking them. Only the US could launch unprovoked attacks on a foreign nation on the other side of the planet and call it self-defense. Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp explains: “Before the US began bombing the Houthis, Ansar Allah officials made clear they would only stop attacking Israeli-linked commercial shipping if the onslaught on Gaza ended. Instead of pressuring Israel to end the slaughter in Gaza, President Biden chose escalation, and now the Houthis are targeting US commercial shipping, and several US merchant vessels have been hit with missiles.” https://twitter.com/Antiwarcom/status/1749130972866769289 Indeed, the only reason Houthi forces began attacking ships in the Red Sea was to pressure Israel and its allies into ceasing the ongoing massacre that has been taking place in Gaza since October 7. As usual the world’s most murderous and powerful government is framing its horrifying acts of extreme aggression as innocent defensive responses to unprovoked attacks, when in reality the US empire is bombing Yemen in order to facilitate the genocide of Palestinians. And while we’re on the subject of Gaza and Yemen it’s probably worth pointing out that according to US empire managers the stated goals of both campaigns have been completely unsuccessful. A new report by The Wall Street Journal says that according to US intelligence Israel is nowhere remotely close to eliminating Hamas, with only 20 to 30 percent of the group having been killed since October. Asked by the press on Thursday if the strikes against the Houthis are working, Biden replied “Well, when you say ‘working’ — are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.” So they’re raining military explosives on impoverished middle easterners to maintain their status quo domination, under the pretense of goals which they themselves admit are not being achieved. Just another day in the empire, I guess. ______________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Featured image via Rawpixel (public domain). © 2024 Caitlin Johnstone PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia

Welcome To The Empire CAITLIN JOHNSTONE JAN 20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLT-u2x2d0c&t=3752s Welcome to the empire Where genocide is self-defense and peace rallies are genocide Where war criminals are the victims and the hospitals are terrorists Where calls for freedom are hateful and ceasefires are anti-semitic Where civilians get called terrorists and real terrorists get Nobel Peace Prizes Where the propaganda is journalism and the journalism is propaganda Where the democracy is real and the apartheid is imaginary Where the corporations are people and the people are corporate resources Welcome to the empire Whose bombs are humanitarian and whose provocations are invisible Whose veterans are heroes and whose victims are forgotten Whose wars are always just and whose enemies are always Hitler Whose cause is always righteous and whose critics are always Russian Whose sufferings are unforgivable and whose crimes are erased from history Whose atrocities are always an unfortunate accident and whose enemies kill civilians for fun Whose disastrous interventions are always innocent mistakes no matter how often they happen Welcome to the empire Ever the victim of unprovoked attacks from the people it has been strangling Ever the shining city on a hill of human corpses Ever the defender of the poor helpless plutocrats of Wall Street Ever the savior of the families incinerated by missiles made by Raytheon Ever the protector of natural resources in the soil of foreign nations Ever the upholder of the rules-based order of a world with a boot on its throat The empire loves you with a heart made of dollars and oil The empire watches over you through your smartphone and your computer The empire is your only friend The empire is the only one who will ever love you You can’t leave You can’t get rid of the empire If you get rid of the empire, this world could be taken over by tyrants _______________ _______________ _______________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Featured image via Adobe Stock (formatted for size). Caitlin’s Newsletter. © 2024 Caitlin Johnstone PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia

CNN And Washington Post Busted For Pro-Israel Propaganda Shenanigans CAITLIN JOHNSTONE JAN 6

 Both CNN and The Washington Post have been caught engaging in some pretty shady journalistic malpractice with their Israel reporting in recent days. 

In a new article titled “CNN Runs Gaza Coverage Past Jerusalem Team Operating Under Shadow of IDF Censor,” The Intercept reports that all of CNN’s reporting on Israel and Palestine is funneled through a bureau in Jerusalem which slants reporting to benefit Israeli information interests and is subject to regulation by Israeli military censors. The Intercept also reports that last year CNN “hired a former soldier from the IDF’s Military Spokesperson Unit to serve as a reporter” at the onset of the war on Gaza.

Unnamed CNN staff told The Intercept that CNN’s iron-fisted protocols for regulating information related to the Israel-Palestine issue have had a “demonstrable impact on coverage of the Gaza war”.

“‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words,” the anonymous CNN staff member said. “Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.”

https://twitter.com/DRBoguslaw/status/1742994805238456796

The Intercept reports that the former IDF spinmeister has been bylined in dozens of CNN stories since the attack on Gaza began, with one report being “little more than a direct statement released from the IDF.”

Kind of makes you wonder why CNN doesn’t just cut out the middleman and run all its reporting directly through IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv. Seems like it would be a bit more efficient, and certainly a lot more honest.

Meanwhile The Washington Post has been caught assigning a reporter with a history of anti-Palestinian bias to write a smear piece on independent media outlets Electronic Intifada and The Grayzone for their critical reporting on Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza.

Both Electronic Intifada and The Grayzone received emails from a Washington Post reporter named Elizabeth Dwoskin, who said she’s writing a piece on “efforts to minimize or misdirect information about the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel” and interrogating them about their articles casting doubt on the official narrative about what exactly happened that day.

As Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah highlighted on Twitter, when Dwoskin was at Columbia University twenty years ago she was authoring Nakba denialist claims that Palestine never existed and that prior to Israel’s formation the land was inhabited only by “desert Bedouins without a sense of national identity as we know it today.”

It’s bad enough for The Washington Post to be attacking independent media for asking the critical questions and doing the real journalism the Post itself should also be doing, but to assign someone with a public history of egregiously anti-Palestinian rhetoric to the task is especially lacking in journalistic integrity.

“If I’m following, a reporter that has denied the fact that Palestinians existed before the state of Israel is allowed to cover Israel/Palestine and write about ‘misinformation’ for Washington Post?” tweeted award-winning journalist Laila Al-Arian of Abunimah’s revelation.

Neither of these instances will come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying critical attention to the amazingly awful reporting the western mass media have been churning out about the Gaza assault these last three months, but they do offer some rare insight behind the curtain into how the sausage gets made.

https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1743301540973060547

The biggest misconception about propaganda is that it is something that happens to other people, and is done by other countries. Westerners like to think of themselves as free-thinking people whose worldviews are formed by facts and truth, contrasting themselves with nations like North Korea and China where populations are viewed as being subjected to conformity-enforcing propaganda. They believe that if propaganda does occur in the west, it comes here from nations like Russia trying to corrupt our minds and weaken our trust in our institutions, or if the propaganda is domestic in origin it only affects people in other political parties.

In reality the typical western mind has been marinating in domestic propaganda throughout its entire life, and its worldview has been manufactured for it by powerful manipulators who benefit from its intellectual compliance with their interests. The indoctrination into the mainstream western worldview began in school, and it continues throughout adulthood with the help of mainstream media outlets like CNN and The Washington Post.

If we’re ever to have a healthy civilization, we’re going to have to wake up from the propaganda-induced coma we’ve been placed in so we can begin pushing against the cage walls we’ve been indoctrinated our whole lives into ignoring and start using the power of our numbers to force real change in the systems which govern our world. Luckily the atrocities that have been taking place in Gaza have been rapidly waking people up, because it turns out there’s only so much propaganda spin you can put on the murder of thousands of children. 

The more people become aware that our civilization is built on deception and everything we’ve been told about the world is a lie, the closer we get to living in a truth-based society where nothing like the Gaza massacre would ever be permitted to occur.

____________

Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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© 2024 Caitlin Johnstone
PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia
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