Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

Wednesday was World Press Freedom Day, and it saw US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and Deputy State Department Spokesman Vedant Patel confronted about the glaring hypocrisy of the Biden administration's persecution of Julian Assange for the crime of good journalism. Reading by Tim Foley.

This is what dystopia looks like. Like a bunch of thought-controlled automatons mindlessly marching toward ecocide and omnicide to a beat played out by screens who tell them every day and in every way that there is no higher purpose than this. Like military industrial complex-funded feminist rock operas about drone operators and Cookie Monster helping Samantha Power psychologically colonize Iraqi children. Like Bono coming home from singing a heartfelt number about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr to illustrate a cover for a war propaganda piece in The Atlantic. Reading by Tim Foley.

I think it's probably a good thing when our idols get knocked off the pedestals we put them on. Chomsky. Bernie. The Dalai Lama. It's not healthy to elevate others to a lofty status above ourselves instead of seeing them as normal human beings who are as capable of error as anyone else. Reading by Tim Foley.

The single dumbest thing the US-centralized empire asks us to believe is that the military encirclement of its top two geopolitical rivals is a defensive action, rather than an act of extreme aggression. Reading by Tim Foley.

Some people wonder why mental health conditions are so bad, while I marvel at the fact that they're not much worse. It's actually amazing anyone's functioning at all in a civilization that's ruled by exploiters and abusers who dominate the world using mass-scale psychological manipulation. It's a testament to human resilience that anyone is sane. When everyone's mind is always being pummeled with messaging that you're deficient if you can't thrive under our oppressive systems, that you're flawed if you don't look, think and act a certain way, that poverty is normal and acts of mass military slaughter are acceptable, it's a wonder we don't all snap. When everyone's consciousness is being continually warped and twisted to suit the agendas of the powerful and keep us all thinking, speaking, working, shopping and voting in ways that advance their interests, it's surprising we're not seeing more suicides, more mass shootings, more substance abuse, more clinical depression and anxiety. In a totalitarian dystopia t

The US has been increasingly treating Taiwan like a sovereign nation with whom diplomatic relationships and alliances can be formed, in violation of its longstanding One-China policy that has kept the peace for decades. And I just think it's worth noting that the western media who've lately been condoning these moves became outraged at Donald Trump just a few years ago for doing the same thing to a far lesser degree. Reading by Tim Foley.

Australia has been paying insiders of the US war machine for consultation on how to run the nation's military, a massive conflict of interest given that Washington has been grooming Australia for a role in its war agendas against China. Reading by Tim Foley.

No I will not be supporting any US presidential candidate. Not because I don't think Australians have any business involving themselves in US political affairs (we absolutely do), but because the elections are fake and the next president will with absolute certainty be another corrupt imperialist monster. I won't be picking any favorites in the next WWE event either. Reading by Tim Foley.

So to recap, Australia's foreign policy is being shaped "for decades to come" by an "independent" strategic review that (A) was authored by someone who is compromised by US funding, (B) is being implemented in part by an American former military official, (C) calls for greater and greater cooperation with the United States across the board, and (D) focuses primarily on targeting a nation that just so happens to be the number one geopolitical rival of the United States. Reading by Tim Foley.

The US is raging about Russia jailing a Wall Street Journal reporter on espionage charges, while the US is: - Jailing Julian Assange for doing good journalism. - Threatening to imprison Matt Taibbi. - Charging African People's Socialist Party members with "propaganda" crimes. Reading by Tim Foley.

There's a lot happening in the life of the empire, so we're doing another multi-story article to wrap it all up. Today we're discussing four stories: 1. Facebook is censoring multiple articles by Seymour Hersh. 2. Weapons industry-funded think tank helps Congress discover that Taiwan needs way more weapons. 3. The New York Times really, really doesn't like RFK Jr. 4. Twitter drops its "state-affiliated media" and "government-funded media" labels. Reading by Tim Foley.

So many emerging technologies would be cause for celebration if our rulers weren't so damn evil and our systems weren't so damn oppressive. In a healthy society we'd be celebrating automation and AI giving us more and more abundance and free time; instead we're terrified of police robots and technocratic dystopia. The knitting of neurology and technology would have incredible implications if we didn't know sociopathic intelligence agencies would immediately insert themselves into the use of those technologies. Virtual reality would be awesome if it wasn't going to be used to create fake worlds for people to purchase fake goods in so that capitalism can continue expanding while we destroy the real world. Reading by Tim Foley.

The Biden administration's Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says "weaponized" the First Amendment rights of Americans. Reading by Tim Foley.

People shouldn't be punished for revealing the secrets of the government, governments should be punished for keeping secrets from the people. Reading by Tim Foley.

You couldn't design a more effective totalitarian dystopia than the one we're in right now. One where everyone's brainwashed by propaganda without even knowing it, where everyone thinks, acts, votes and shops exactly as their rulers want them to, all while thinking they are free. Reading by Tim Foley.

So when people try to frame Assange's persecution as a matter of public perception and fighting foreign narratives about the US, they are incorrect. The issue is not that Assange's persecution makes the US look bad, the issue is that it proves the US is bad. Reading by Tim Foley.

The US State Department's spokesperson Ned Price is being replaced by a man named Matthew Miller. Like Price, Miller has had extensive prior involvement in both the US government and the mass media; Price is a former CIA officer and Obama administration National Security Council staffer who for years worked as an NBC News analyst, while Miller has previously had roles in both the Obama and Biden administrations and spent years as an analyst for MSNBC. Reading by Tim Foley.

Too much interesting stuff happening in the life of the empire to cover in just one article today, so we're doing a three-in-one wrap-up. Reading by Tim Foley.

There's a really gross video going around of the Dalai Lama kissing a young boy on the lips and telling him to suck his tongue while an adult audience looks on approvingly. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's one of the most shameful jobs in the entire world to spend your time doing critical reporting on the enemies of your government while ignoring your own government's far more egregious crimes.  People talk about sex work as shameful, and in America they'll even shame you for working a low-paying job like McDonald's, when on all our screens every day we see people selling their own government's ugly foreign policy in a line of work that is entire universes more shameful. That's why I dislike the use of the word "presstitute" to refer to these people. Not because it's insulting to the press, but because it's insulting to sex workers. Reading by Tim Foley.