JOHNSTONE Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley

When opposing a genocide means you're a Nazi. 

When opposing nuclear brinkmanship means you love Vladimir Putin.

When opposing the looming global conflict with China means you're a sinister propagandist for "the CCP".

When opposing the latest imperial escalations against the latest Official Bad Guy always means you're an appeaser of the Bad Guy and would have opposed fighting Hitler.

When your skepticism toward government and media institutions who have an extensive record of lying and propagandizing means you're a crazy conspiracy theorist.

When wanting to live in a society where everyone has enough means you're an evil authoritarian with a despised ideology.

When believing it's possible to have systems where humans aren't killing the biosphere and waging insane wars while brandishing armageddon weapons at each other means you're a silly little child who doesn't understand how the real world works.

When these things are happening in your society, it means your society has gone stark raving insane. It means you are surrounded by lunatics, and ruled by madmen.

Reading by Tim Foley.

"The Washington Post is one of the worst propaganda rags ever to exist in any country. If I'd published such an article for such a depraved empire propaganda outlet, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night."

Reading by Tim Foley.

The moonlight caresses the missile silos in Russia and the blown out hospitals in Gaza.

The garbage plays in the wind like children. The exhaust fumes and the sounds of traffic feel like sex in your senses.

You can meet the divine here. Here in the city. Here in dystopia. Here amid the smell of piss and the sleeping bags on the sidewalk. Here in the heart of a dying empire, whose cancerous tendrils sprawl like ivy across the dying face of a dying world.

You can let the LED lights dance with the light at the core of your being.

You can drink from the Great Mother’s breasts beneath a billboard for the latest iThingy.

You can raise up your heart to the pigeons, and to all the other animal species whose lives we have not yet succeeded in extinguishing.

For us, this is Eden.For us, this is the only place in which Buddha can be born.

In the future, if there is a future, maybe the humans figure things out and create a healthy world. But that world is not our world. That world is not where we clocked in to do our daily work.

We clocked in to this strange civilization, where headless robot dogs keep showing up in police forces and sniper drones play the sounds of crying babies to lure out Palestinian civilians.

Where we have amputated our sacred connection with nature and land and affixed a prosthesis made of viral videos and sitcoms to the aching, festering stump.

Where everyone’s eyes are darkened by unnatural mindings, and everybody’s always hungry no matter how much they eat.

This is where we will make our stand.

This tanglewire nest full of fast food wrappers and broken toys, this mess where everything smells like motor oil and despair.

This is the manger in which Christ consciousness will be lain.

This is the armageddon town that will become our paradise.

This is the landfill empire where we will finally let sprout those mysterious seeds planted in us long ago.

In this strange civilization, in their own secret language, even the buzzing drones over Gaza sing the holy name of Allah.

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Reading by Tim Foley.

It's damn near impossible to keep up with all the warmongering of the western empire these days.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Cynthia Vigil was never charged with any crime because anyone could see that violent force was an entirely understandable and legitimate response to having been kidnapped and subjected to horrific treatment. It never at any time occurred to anyone to say that she should have acted differently, and it most certainly never occurred to anyone to make her single act of desperate violence the major story instead of the fact that there was a serial killer who'd been abducting women and torturing them in his murder dungeon.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The light of awareness makes it very difficult for an empire which is fueled by human blood to operate, which is why so much effort has been going into shutting off the lights.

Reading by Tim Foley.