Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

Everyone’s still talking about Bob Vylan, and rightly so. A crowd full of westerners happily being led through a chant of “Death, death to the IDF” at the 2025 Glastonbury Festival was a historical landmark moment for the 21st century, and the group’s persecution at the hands of western governments is once again highlighting the way our society’s purported values of free thought and free expression go right out the window wherever Israel is concerned. But one thing that’s not getting enough attention is the fact that many, many other acts also spoke out in support of Palestine at that same festival, and that the crowd was full of attendees waving Palestinian flags. Supporting Palestine and opposing Israel’s genocidal atrocities is just what’s cool now. This is a massive cultural development, because it means we are seeing the emergence of actual, meaningful rebellion in western counterculture for the first time arguably since the Vietnam War. The artists and their fans aren’t just talking the talk of sticki

Anyone who has had the misfortune of knowing a manipulative narcissist has seen all these patterns before. The self-centeredness. The hypocrisy. The horrific abuse, followed by collapsing into blubbering victimhood the second the abuse is called out. The aggressive efforts to control the narrative and frame all critics and rivals as evil monsters. It's a very familiar playbook. Reading by Tim Foley.

Honestly at this point they should just get Netanyahu his own room in the White House and a desk in the Oval Office. The prime minister of Israel is taking his third trip to the White House in the five months since Trump has been back in office. I have immediate blood family members who I love with all my heart and visit less often than this. Reading by Tim Foley.

Do something every day to help undermine public perception of the empire. Draw attention to its abuses in places like Gaza. Get people laughing at its absurdities and hypocrisies. Spread distrust in the imperial propaganda services known as the western press by spotlighting their deceptions and manipulations. Help people to recognize all the ways their government is screwing them over for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Facilitate the collective dawning of the realization that everything westerners have been taught about their society and their world is a lie. Help people to understand that it really, truly does not need to be this way. Use every means at your disposal to help open up the next pair of eyelids to the ugly reality of the empire. Cultivate a habit of daily acts of sabotage against the imperial machine. There is always something you can do. You cannot defeat the machine by yourself, but you can do something every day to help tilt our society’s collective consciousness toward tearin

Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic Party primary in the New York City mayoral race after a frenetic smear campaign to portray him as an antisemite for his pro-Palestinian views, and now all the world's worst people are freaking out about it. Reading by Tim Foley.

The more exposed Israel's criminality becomes, the more absurd the arguments made in its defense are getting. Reading by Tim Foley.

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, its crazy lunatic government will flip out and nuke us all. Watch out for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, those guys are a bunch of maniacal antisemites who want to attack Israelis just because they’re Jewish. Oh no, Putin is invading Ukraine completely unprovoked because he’s a madman who hates freedom and won’t stop until he’s conquered all of Europe. China is building up its military because the megalomaniacal Xi Jinping wants to take over the world; all those US military bases surrounding China are just a defensive measure to contain Beijing’s insanity. Assad just went nuts one day and started slaughtering his own people out of nowhere. Gaddafi is a sexual sadist who’s giving Viagra to his troops to help them commit mass rapes in Libya. Saddam Hussein is so crazy and evil he’s trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction to give Americans another 9/11. The North Koreans used to be far too insane to be allowed to have nuclear weapons because they’d nuke San Francisco

There is nothing you can say to me that will make me stop opposing Israel's western-backed atrocities. Call me an antisemite or a Nazi or any name you want. The name-calling stopped having any effect a long time ago. Babble about October 7 and Hamas and hostages all you wish. I've stopped listening to you. Reading by Tim Foley.

The US empire and Israel both exist in a perpetual state of war and attack other countries constantly; Iran never invades other countries and avoids war like Melania Trump avoids missionary position. But we're meant to accept that it's fine for the US and Israel to have nukes and do anything necessary to prevent Iran from getting any? Reading by Tim Foley.

It's like this administration is doing everything it can to vindicate those who accuse it of being Israel First instead of America First. Reading by Tim Foley.

He's rolling out the George W Bush playbook for regime change war and playing it note for note, while still trying to ride the support he garnered with his populist messaging about draining the swamp and ending the wars. Reading by Tim Foley.

I am really not looking forward to all the melodramatic victim-LARPing if and when Iran kills US military personnel stationed in west Asia. The US is the only nation on earth that can rival Israel in its ability to play the victim when the ball they’ve thrown at the wall bounces back. Reading by Tim Foley.

Do Israel's supporters know it's over for them? Like, they know they're going to be despised for the rest of their lives, right? That they will never, ever live down the fact that they supported a live-streamed genocide? And that it will only get worse for them as history clarifies things? Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

War creates a waking nightmare which any sensible person would want to avoid except in the direst necessity. And yet we are ruled by people who actively seek it out. Reading by Tim Foley.

Israel and its western allies are crying and rending their garments about an Israeli hospital that was damaged in an Iranian missile strike. Western media outlets like the BBC and New York Times have suddenly remembered how to write headlines which assign blame to the attacker after deciding that hospitals getting bombed is a newsworthy event again. The Iranian attack didn't even kill anybody, and the damage to the hospital was reportedly the result of a shockwave from a strike on a nearby Israeli military facility. That's right: the Israeli military was using the hospital for human shields. As always, every accusation is a confession. Israel, as we all know, bombs hospitals constantly. Israel bombed an Iranian hospital just the other day to almost no coverage from the western press. Israel has attacked healthcare workers and healthcare facilities in Gaza around 700 times according to the World Health Organisation, and the IDF has repeatedly been documented entering the hospitals it attacks to destroy indiv

Nuclear weapons and doomsday cultism are poor bedfellows. Reading by Tim Foley.

There is absolutely no excuse for buying into the war propaganda about Iran after what we all saw with Iraq. "OMG nuclear weapons!" Shut up, idiot. If you're a grown adult with internet access still swallowing this load of bull spunk in the year 2025 you're either stupid or evil. Reading by Tim Foley.

President Trump is reportedly returning to Washington early from a G7 summit in Canada and has told his national security council to prepare for an urgent meeting in the situation room, apparently to discuss Iran. Reading by Tim Foley.

Do NOT join the US military. Do NOT join the militaries of any nation which normally participates in America's wars. If you are in those militaries, you should get out by any means necessary, as quickly as possible. If further on down the track there is a draft for a war with Iran, you should dodge the draft. Because otherwise you will be throwing yourself into a war with one of the world's most formidable militaries, for nothing. Reading by Tim Foley.