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As both US and Israeli leaders openly contemplate attacking Iran again, it’s easy for the world to miss the fact that the genocidal alliance has also dramatically reinvigorated its ethnic cleansing agendas in Gaza.

The Adelson-owned pro-Netanyahu outlet Israel Hayom reports that in the coming weeks the so-called “Board of Peace” overseeing life in the Gaza Strip is planning to relocate Palestinians to “humanitarian shelters” that are not under Hamas control.

Israel Hayom reports that an area near the destroyed city of Rafah is the first location where such camps will be set up. This is noteworthy because one year ago defense minister Israel Katz stated that there was a plan to construct a “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah, where “the emigration plan” for the Palestinians would then be implemented, adding that Benjamin Netanyahu was working on finding foreign nations to accept the population of Gaza.

It’s hard to ignore the similarities. Both accounts even state that the plan is to police the displaced Palestinians using an international force. The 2026 Israel Hayom report states that the camps will be overseen by “multinational forces under the Board of Peace’s management”, and Israel Katz stated in 2025 that Israel is seeking international partners to manage the zone.

So to be clear, in July of last year Israeli officials were publicly stating that they were going to build a “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah to house the Palestinians under international supervision while working to relocate them from their homeland to other countries, and in July of this year we learn that we will soon see Palestinians in Gaza relocated to “humanitarian shelters” near Rafah overseen by international forces.

So it sounds like the same plan. If it is, then it’s a plan for ethnic cleansing.

Israel has already expanded its control over Gaza from 53 percent to 70 percent of the Strip, concentrating the survivors of the genocide into a mere 30 percent of the Palestinian territory. And now, according to Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen, the plan is to expand control to 100 percent.

Israel National News quotes Cohen as saying during a recent radio interview that “our control of the territory will only continue to expand until we reach 100%,” adding, “two months ago we controlled 53% of the Strip, about a month ago around 60%, and today we’re approaching 70% of the Strip’s area.”

This comes amid other reports we discussed recently which strongly indicate that the Trumpanyahu administration is renewing its push to remove all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The other day we learned from the Israeli press that Israel’s national security agencies had been instructed to rebrand the ethnic cleansing plan as a “plan for free movement” in order to mitigate international resistance to the agenda. A few days before that, we learned that Israel’s new national security chief had convened a meeting with officials from the IDF and Shin Bet to discuss the plan to displace the Palestinians of Gaza to other countries.

Again, Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza have always been about ethnic cleansing from the very beginning. Within days of Israel’s assault on Gaza in October 2023, Israel’s Intelligence Ministry was circulating a plan for the entire population of Gaza to be moved to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, and an Israeli think tank had drawn up a strategy for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.”

The goal has always been to remove the Palestinians from Gaza so their territory can be taken from them. This was never anything other than a blatant Israeli land grab. They’ve been framing it as a “war” so that after they seize and colonize Gaza they can say “the Arabs fought a war and lost, they deserved to lose territory” like they always do, but it was never actually a war.

Calling the Gaza genocide a “war” is like seeing a man beating up a toddler and calling it a “fight”. It’s one of the world’s most sophisticated military forces raining explosives on an area packed full of children with the backing of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, opposed only by a few thousand guys running around in sandals with homemade rockets and ancient Kalashnikovs.

That’s not a war. It’s an ethnic cleansing operation. That’s all this has ever been.

_______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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As self-styled “democratic socialists” make some advancements in blue states, Republicans have launched a renewed fearmongering campaign about the urgent threat of “communism” — an ideology with no meaningful political existence in the United States.

At a speech on Wednesday, President Trump said that “communism is the greatest threat to our country” and would lead to “the ultimate annihilation of civilization.” This is just the latest in a string of rhetoric from the president as he tries to drum up fear about progressive Democrats to prevent massive losses in the midterms.

Democratic socialist politicians are still a small minority in US politics, and conflating them with communists is absurd. Communism seeks the complete dismantling of capitalism and the imperialist world order it holds in place at gunpoint, while western “democratic socialists” typically just seek a gentler, more photogenic capitalist empire where things like healthcare and public transportation are funded by taxes.

The west in general and the US in particular have spent generations stomping out communism, and, at least within the confines of the western world, they have been remarkably successful at it. In 2026 the United States is so very, very, very, very, VERY far from communism that viewing it as a threat is just a sign of weak-minded cowardice and jumping-at-shadows paranoia. It’s kind of like reading about a brush fire in Nigeria and worrying that it’s going to burn its way across the world to show up on your doorstep.

But I suppose if I were in Trump’s position I might be fearmongering about communism, too. He just lost the war in Iran, everyone hates his support for Israel, people are critical of his astonishing levels of corruption and his known Epstein associations, and it’s not like he disagrees with Democrats on enough issues to take a real position of substance. What else does he have in his arsenal besides vapid fearmongering about an imaginary boogie man?

The leader of the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on earth can’t take a stand against the real problems in our world, because the power structure is the source of those problems. So instead he has to invent fictional monsters to fight.

❖

House lawmakers have blocked a congressional debate to remove Section 219 (formerly Section 224) from the national defense spending bill, which means the US and Israel will be intimately merging their military technology to a significantly greater extent than they already were.

And hell, why not. Why keep pretending the US and Israeli war machines are two separate entities. Why keep pretending Israel’s war crimes are separate from America’s war crimes.

If you’re already living together, you might as well get married.

❖

US human rights expert and antiwar activist Dan Kovalik was recently detained at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport by UK counterterrorism police, where they reportedly confiscated his devices, interrogated him, took his fingerprints, and even took a DNA sample.

The empire’s war on dissent continues.

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Also in the UK, The Canary has been de-banked by Lloyds, placing the anti-Zionist outlet under immediate financial crisis. As of this writing Lloyds has refused to justify the move, but this new development is definitely something to keep an eye on. If banks start dropping dissident media because of their content, we’re all in a whole lot of trouble.

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You always see liberal Zionists claiming that it’s possible to love Israel and hate Benjamin Netanyahu. This is an absurd position to hold, because there’s nothing you can hate about Netanyahu that isn’t also innately true of the apartheid state of Israel.

Hate Netanyahu because he’s racist? Israel has always been racist.

Hate Netanyahu because he’s a war criminal? Israel has always committed war crimes.

Hate Netanyahu because he abuses and oppresses Palestinians? Israel has always abused and oppressed Palestinians.

Hate Netanyahu because he starts wars with Israel’s neighbors? Israel has always started wars with its neighbors.

Liberal Zionists act like Netanyahu has all these bad qualities that the genocidal apartheid state of Israel does not also have, but that’s just plain false. Israel was built on the premise of nonstop violence and abuse, and nonstop violence and abuse is all it has ever delivered, from its very inception.

Israel was built on a political ideology that is inherently racist and violent, and it is that racism and violence that elevated Benjamin Netanyahu to power.

Netanyahu didn’t create Israel’s violence and racism. Israel’s violence and racism created Netanyahu.

_________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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I hold out hope because people aren’t buying the propaganda like they used to.

I hold out hope because trust in the imperial media is at an all-time low while our ability to attack and discredit the official narrative is at an all-time high.

I hold out hope because more and more people are realizing that capitalism simply does not work.

I hold out hope because empires don’t last forever.

I hold out hope because Iran just kicked the shit out of the US and Israel.

I hold out hope because China is showing the world that a nation can use its wealth and resources to improve human quality of life, harness renewable energy and expand scientific innovation instead of using the wealth and resources to wage wars and turn billionaires into trillionaires.

I hold out hope because Gen Z proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is morally superior to any generation which came before it with its forceful and uncompromising opposition to the genocide in Gaza.

I hold out hope because even as Israel keeps increasing its propaganda budget and Zionists keep expanding their influence over news outlets and social media, Israel’s worldwide approval rating keeps plummeting anyway.

I hold out hope because I’ve seen too many miraculous and inexplicable things in this life to believe revolutionary change is impossible.

I hold out hope because I know from my own personal experience that humans have vast untapped potential within themselves just waiting to be unlocked.

I hold out hope because I’ve seen so many longtime teachers of spiritual enlightenment say they’re getting more and more people coming to them after having spontaneous radical awakenings without any prior spiritual seeking.

I hold out hope because I’m seeing more and more chatter online about a strange phenomenon I’ve been experiencing in which people discharge deep psychological conditioning and energetic fixation points from their bodies using burps and dry heaves.

I hold out hope because a huge number of our problems are caused by doing way too many stupid things for stupid reasons we made up in our heads, so all that’s required is to stop doing them.

I hold out hope because fuck ’em, that’s why.

I hold out hope because the bastards who are destroying our world don’t want me to hold out hope.

I hold out hope because the most obnoxious propagandists are always telling us that revolutionary change is unrealistic, that environmental catastrophe is just a reality we all need to get used to, that AI is inevitable, that socialism is a silly pipe dream, that capitalism is the only system that could ever work, and that a better world is not possible.

I hold out hope because I refuse to give them the satisfaction of bending my will toward hopelessness.

I hold out hope because all our problems are ours to solve, and we can solve both our inner and our outer problems in the same way: by getting real with ourselves about what is true and what is fear.

I hold out hope because we live in wildly unprecedented times, and in unprecedented times, hopelessness is an irrational position — because nobody knows what’s going to happen.

I hold out hope because, from where I’m sitting, it truly looks like the only sensible way to be.

___________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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Israel is still pushing for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They keep trying different angles and rebranding it under different names, but the end goal has remained the same since October 2023: the removal of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

From The Times of Israel:

“Israel is seeking to revive its moribund plan for the voluntary migration of Gazans out of the Strip, and has rebranded it in an effort to soften the blanket international opposition to it, Channel 13 news reports, citing unnamed Israeli officials.

“Security agencies have in recent days been told to abandon the “voluntary migration” title due to the global opposition, and it will from now on be officially referred to as a ‘plan for free movement,’ the report says.

“The network cites officials familiar with ties with countries that could potentially receive Gazans as voicing optimism that the terminology change will persuade them to drop their current refusal to cooperate with the plan, and recruit other countries.

“A senior Israeli official is quoted as saying Jerusalem wants as many Gazans as possible to leave the Strip, viewing this as contributing to any future plan implemented in the territory.”

From the early months of the Gaza holocaust, Israel apologists had been referring to the ethnic cleansing agenda as a plan for the “voluntary migration” of Gaza’s inhabitants. This framing conveniently ignored the fact that you cannot destroy a populated area and deliberately make it uninhabitable and then say the inhabitants of that area are leaving “voluntarily”.

According to a Haaretz report that was published last week, Israel’s new National Security Council chief convened a meeting of top national security officials to discuss the issue of “encouraging the voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

And now they’re rebranding the initiative as “a plan of free movement”, which is just so fucking Israeli. They never stop doing the evil thing, they just play around with the words people say about it, like how Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced last year that it was going to stop referring to its propaganda operations as “hasbara” due to the public revulsion that has developed around that label. They never say “It’s time to stop doing the things that cause people to hate us,” they just say “It’s time for a rebrand.”

And to be clear, the mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza is already well underway. Israel now controls more than 60 percent of Gaza, and the IDF has been instructed to expand it to 70 percent. The survivors of the genocide have already been shifted and concentrated into a steadily shrinking thirty some-odd percent of the Strip, while Israel attempts diplomatic maneuvers to persuade foreign states to take them in.

Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza have always been about ethnic cleansing, from the very beginning. Within days of Israel’s assault on Gaza in October 2023, Israel’s Intelligence Ministry was circulating a plan for the entire population of Gaza to be moved to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, and an Israeli think tank had drawn up a strategy for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.”

They had these plans locked and loaded and ready to go because the elimination of Palestinians from the Palestinian territories has always been the goal.

Israel has been scheming to purge the Palestinians from the enclave and relocate them to other countries for generations. There’s a 1970 article from Life Magazine talking about how the Israelis see relocating Palestinians from Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula as the only viable path to peace, adding that “The problem is that the people of Gaza don’t want to go.”

In a 2002 article for The Guardian titled “A new exodus for the Middle East?”, Israeli historian Benny Morris writes that the agenda to “transfer” Palestinians to other countries has existed for as long as modern Zionism:

“The idea of transfer is as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past century. And driving it was an iron logic: There could be no viable Jewish state in all or part of Palestine unless there was a mass displacement of Arab inhabitants, who opposed its emergence and would constitute an active or potential fifth column in its midst. This logic was understood, and enunciated, before and during 1948, by Zionist, Arab and British leaders and officials.

“As early as 1895, Theodor Herzl, the prophet and founder of Zionism, wrote in his diary in anticipation of the establishment of the Jewish state: ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country … The removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.’”

So Israel was founded on the premise that the country’s previous inhabitants need to be eliminated in some way.

That’s all this has ever been about.

It was never about October 7.

It was never about Hamas.

It was never about hostages.

It was never about terrorism.

It was never about self-defense.

It was never about any of the countless excuses the hasbarists and imperial spinmeisters have offered up over the last three years to justify Israel’s monstrous abuses.

It was only ever about eliminating Palestinians because of their ethnicity and replacing them with Jews.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

____________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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The Israeli press are reporting that police documents on the security for the October 7 2023 Nova music festival were mysteriously deleted at some point in early January 2024. The Jerusalem Post reports that “it is unknown who removed them and whether copies still exist.”

A new article from the Israeli outlet YNet reports that the IDF had planned to kill an Israeli soldier who was captured by Hamas in 2006, with one document stating “Hannibal in effect.” The Hannibal Directive is an Israeli military protocol ensuring that extreme measures be taken to prevent Israelis from capture by Palestinian resistance groups, even if it means killing the Israelis.

Israel’s Channel 12 has shown footage of Israeli officers demanding that the Hannibal Directive be implemented on October 7 to prevent hostages from being taken by Hamas, with a senior officer saying “(Strike) Gaza. Break it all apart. Along with the soldiers who got abducted.”

Many Israeli soldiers and civilians are on record saying that Israeli forces fired upon their own people on October 7.

How many of the 1,195 people killed in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood were actually killed by Israeli forces? We don’t know, and we’re not allowed to know. Electronic Intifada’s Asa Winstanley has argued that the number was in the hundreds.

Did Israel deliberately leave its people undefended from an impending Hamas attack in order to advance pre-existing agendas? We don’t know, and we’re not allowed to know, but there are mountains of evidence indicating that they did.

Ask why there’s been so much violence in the middle east these last three years and you’ll be told it’s because of October 7.

Ask why October 7 happened and you’ll be called an antisemite.

Ask what specifically transpired on that day and you’ll be called a conspiracy theorist.

It’s just so crazy how often apologists for Israel and the western empire will cite October 7 as the spark that set off all these wars of far-reaching consequence, but it’s taboo to talk about exactly what happened on that day, and it’s taboo to talk about how Israel’s abuses provoked the attack.

The official mainstream position on October 7 is that Hamas killed 1,195 Israelis for no reason other than because they are evil and wanted to kill Jews, and that anyone who suggests it may have happened for actual material reasons is an antisemitic monster. Whenever anyone spouts the official mainstream position on October 7 at me I just want to make “goo goo ga ga” baby noises at them until they shut up and go away, because such people are not thinking like adults.

Everyone who’s been watching Israel’s behavior since October 7 now understands why Palestinian resistance fighters carried out October 7 in the first place. We’re expected to avert our eyes from the glaring plot holes in the official narrative and never suggest that Israel’s horrific abuses of the Palestinians may have played some role in giving rise to the attack, but after watching a live-streamed genocide month after month after horrifying month, we all know October 7 was just Israel reaping what it sowed.

And we know there is no evil these freaks are not capable of.

_________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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They’re designing park benches
so that homeless people can’t sleep on them
and placing metal spikes beneath overpasses
so they can’t be used as shelter.

Jerry Seinfeld says Palestine doesn’t exist
and that sometimes socks go missing in the dryer,
wocka wocka
ha ha ha
it’s funny because it’s a witty observation
about life’s everyday little goofy goofs.

Fast food wrappers blow in the wind
like the leaves used to do.

Duct-taped gargoyles with garbage bag wings
peer down at the din of civilization
as we march over the sidewalk sleepers
to our Jobs,
stepping over dead bodies
while staring at our phones
and counting the minutes
til we can go home to our sofas
and watch wocka wocka comedians
and shovel SSRIs into our faces
from large plastic bowls
so the crushing beauty of our world
and the knowledge of our mortality
doesn’t topple us like Jenga blocks
and make us weep like open fire hydrants.

In this din they don’t want you to feel.
They don’t want you to think.
They don’t want you to hear.
They keep it all CLANG, CLANG, CLANG,
BUY, BUY, BUY,
WORK, WORK, WORK,
WOCKA, WOCKA, WOCKA,
so that you can’t feel your body.
So that you can’t hear the songs.

There’s bird song
and whale song
and heart song
and lung song.

There’s fire song
and sea song
and wind song
and tree song.

There’s ancestor song
and mountain song
and sun song
and wolf song,
and lots of others I bet;
I can’t hear any of them.

Oh, except thought song,
which blasts through my head
like a sonic homeless deterrent
in a shopping center alleyway,
and,
like them,
I have nowhere else to go.

________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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There are two types of racism in the west: the kind that’s considered acceptable in polite liberal society, and the kind that’s widely frowned upon.

The acceptable type of racism is the kind which considers it fine and normal to drop bombs on Muslim families overseas. The kind which sees starvation sanctions as a minor issue whose pros and cons are assessed solely on the basis of whether they will be successful or unsuccessful in achieving regime change. The kind which views imperialist extraction from the global south as the natural order of the world, with centrists and progressives squabbling only about how evenly that plunder should be distributed among westerners.

The unacceptable type of racism is the kind which affects other westerners. The kind whose consequences western liberals have to see.

If a white woman calls the police on a black man minding his own business in the park, western liberals will send her viral on social media, and she will be unwelcome in polite society until the heat dies down. If a celebrity is caught on tape uttering an ethnic slur, they’ll be unpopular for a while, and will be considered a liability by sponsors and film studios. This is the wrong kind of racism.

That’s what you’re seeing whenever the western press completely ignores a dozen Palestinians getting killed by western-made munitions on the same day the entire news media focuses on some allegation of “antisemitism” with no material consequences other than some western Jews feeling emotionally upset. The former is the right kind of racism, while the latter is the wrong kind. One is seen as acceptable and normal, while the other is a horrifying abuse.

Western racism falls into two distinct categories because our entire civilization is built upon the polite kind, whereas the impolite kind is useful to the powerful only as a wedge issue to keep western populations divided against each other. Mainstream western politics is often just a culture war between one major party which embraces both the polite and impolite kinds of racism against another major party which only embraces the polite kind of racism, thereby ensuring that no political energy goes toward ending the polite kind of racism.

The polite kind of racism is much more important to the powerful in the 21st century, because it’s an absolutely foundational component to their rule rather than merely a useful tool. Without the imperialist extraction of labor and resources from the global south through extortionate means, you wouldn’t see sprawling megacorporations turning millionaires into billionaires and trillionaires who then use their wealth to manipulate western politics to promote their own agendas. Without nonstop military expansionism and the abuses of the western intelligence cartel, the managers of the western empire could not dominate our planet.

That’s why every few years westerners get to vote on whether or not to advance the impolite kind of racism in their society, while the polite kind of racism never appears on the ballot. You’re allowed to vote on whether or not your government will become more abusive to immigrants and other marginalized members of your society, but you’re never allowed to vote on whether or not war, militarism and imperialist extraction will continue. This expression of racism (or white supremacism, or xenophobia, or western supremacism, or whatever you want to call it) is considered too important to be left to the will of the electorate.

And you see this reflected in the consciousness of the western mind. Even relatively aware westerners who would place themselves on the far left of the political spectrum will often spend a lot more energy on domestic issues than the abuses of the western war machine.

Earlier this month the discourse on Left Twitter revolved around whether or not it was a “privileged take” to say that people shouldn’t serve in the US military, the argument being that many US military personnel come from disadvantaged backgrounds. I saw a lot of US progressives who furiously disparage ICE agents and American cops falling all over themselves to defend those who enlist in the US war machine, which is quantifiably far more murderous and oppressive than domestic American law enforcement.

The only way to see things this way would be to view those who live in the global south as less human than people who live in the United States. That’s the only way it could possibly make sense in your mind to see the abuses of your country’s domestic police forces as worse than the demonstrably more egregious abuses of the US war machine. You’d have to view a school full of Iranian children being blown up by the US Navy as less worthy of attention and opposition than an American being beaten by a police officer in the United States. You’d have to assume those Iranian lives don’t matter.

And those are some of the more awake members of western society. Most westerners are a lot less conscious and compassionate than that.

Westerners live in the most savage and murderous civilization on earth. We don’t feel like we are savage and murderous because we outsource most of our violence and slavery to overseas operations, but that’s what we are. We go about our lives consuming products made by wage slaves under an oppression machine that is defended through constant mass military slaughter, and then we wag our fingers at a viral video of some schizophrenic saying racist things in order to feel nice feelings about ourselves. That’s what western life is, right there.

We’ve got a lot of growing up to do. We are in need of drastic, revolutionary change, more extensive than probably most of us can imagine at this point in time. We’ve got a long, long way to go, and a whole, whole lot of wrongs we need to make right around the world.

____________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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I just saw an article in The Conversation titled “Your AI habit is wasting precious resources. Here’s how to use it responsibly,” and it pisses me off because you can already see where this is going. Neoliberalism is already doing that thing where they shift all the blame for the environmental consequences of ecocidal capitalism to the individual consumer, like how they told everyone to ride bikes and recycle instead of regulating the corporations who are actually destroying our biosphere.

There are plenty of reasons why we should all avoid using AI, but the push to offload all the responsibility for the ecological consequences of data centers onto individual users instead of just regulating AI companies is typical capitalist power-serving bullshit.

This is especially the case when AI is being aggressively shoved down our throats on every front, and when we all know most of this AI infrastructure being built up all around us is probably just going to wind up going toward mass surveillance and the western war machine. Telling people not to use ChatGPT to make shitty memes isn’t going to save us from the ecological fallout of the AI-driven facial recognition murder drones we’ll have patrolling our skies in the future of this increasingly dark dystopia.

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A UN independent inquiry issued a report on Tuesday finding that Israeli forces have been deliberately targeting Palestinian children, saying Israel is guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, as well as war crimes in the West Bank.

I have said it before and I will say it again: the single dumbest conspiracy theory of all time is that there’s a secret plot between all the world’s mainstream humanitarian institutions to falsely portray Israel as a genocidal apartheid state.

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My new thing is just telling hasbarists “Nobody believes you.”

Because nobody does. Nobody’s buying the “Israel did nothing wrong because words words words words” schtick anymore. No amount of words can paper over all the horrifying shit we’ve seen these last few years.

There’s no real point trying to win a debate with an Israel apologist; they’ll always ignore all facts, reason and ethical concerns and just make whatever noises they need to make to advance the interests of their prize ethnostate. But by putting a “Nobody believes you” under their hasbara screeds it lets all the normal people know that they’re not the only ones who smell bullshit.

And that’s all you really need to do. Communicate to everyone that they don’t actually have to engage the mountains of words justifying transparently horrible actions, and that it’s fine to trust your instincts on this one. There’s no amount of words you can throw at someone to manipulate their thinking if they already know you’re a liar.

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The other day the IDF issued a statement complaining that “Hezbollah launched 50+ projectiles toward IDF soldiers operating in southern Lebanon.”

I’m sorry, operating where?

It’s been bananas watching the hasbara machine trying to spin Lebanese people firing upon hostile invaders inside Lebanon as some kind of unwarranted act of aggression.

After the 2024 “ceasefire”, Israel attacked Lebanon on a daily basis; this happened for months on end without a single kinetic response from Hezbollah. The mass-scale murdering resumed after Hezbollah fired a few rockets when the US and Israel launched the war on Iran, following month after month after month of daily IDF attacks on southern Lebanon.

Hasbarists have been trying to frame the IDF invasion as Israel going in to protect itself from unprovoked attacks by “terrorists”, but the violence has been unbelievably one-sided by Israeli forces, with Hezbollah exhibiting remarkable restraint.

Israel is very clearly and undeniably the aggressor here, and it’s absolutely hilarious that we’re being asked to view them as innocent little victims when they’re attacked by Lebanese men in Lebanon during an active military invasion.

❖

Oh those people are terrorists, you say? What terrorist things are they doing? Oh, they’re killing military forces who are invading their country?

Okay.

Oh and those other people are terrorists, you say? What did they do? Oh, they broke into a weapons factory and destroyed military equipment intended for use in an active genocide?

Okay.

Oh and those other people over there are terrorists also? What evil terrorist crimes are they guilty of? Oh, they held pieces of cardboard with the words “I Support Palestine Action” on them?

Okay.

Maybe I just don’t understand what terrorism is, then.

_________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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A spirituality that is uninterested in ending war, genocide, poverty and injustice is a dead spirituality. If you hold your time on the meditation cushion as something separate from the weeping mother clutching a small body in Lebanon, you’re wasting your time.

Sometimes I get asked why I only occasionally write about “spiritual” matters like awakening, egoic delusion, inner work etc, but from my point of view everything I write is about that stuff. To oppose the injustices and abuses of our world is to directly interface with the mechanisms of humanity’s struggle to become a conscious species.

The overwhelming majority of what people call “spirituality” in our society is really just glorified escapism. It’s about avoiding reality by focusing on good vibes, nice feelings, and comforting stories about the nature of the cosmos. Some of the most unpleasant individuals I’ve ever encountered considered themselves deeply spiritual people, because for them spirituality is about creating a Spiritual Person identity to feel good about yourself rather than engaging in uncomfortable confrontations with the repressed materials within you that are the source of your personal dysfunction.

And this happens to align nicely with the whole of mainstream culture under the western empire; our entire civilization is built upon psychological compartmentalization and avoidance of uncomfortable truths. If we paid too much attention to all the war, imperialist extraction, exploitation, injustice and abuse that western society is built upon, we’d never consent to the political status quo which holds those abominations in place.

Authentic spirituality moves in the exact opposite direction to all this. While false spirituality is about turning away and avoiding, true spirituality is about turning towards and facing. Turning and facing all the uncomfortable realities about yourself, your internal dynamics, your trauma, your maladaptive coping mechanisms, your belief systems, your interpersonal relationships, your community, your society, your nation, and your world.

Authentic spirituality doesn’t separate inner work from outer work, because with enough investigation you discover that “inner” and “outer” are imaginary distinctions created in the mind. For every abuse or dysfunction I have seen “out there” in the macro world I have found a micro version playing out in my own subconscious. For every delusion-based mechanism I have found within myself, I have seen a reflection of that same mechanism in the large-scale strife of the human species.

So if you keep doing the work, at some point you lose the ability to see spiritual liberation as separate from writing an essay about Gaza. Your ability to hold subtle self-enquiry apart from anti-war activism evaporates into the ether. You just move to bring what’s endarkened into the light, however that happens to play out in a given moment.

You won’t often see this modeled for you in spiritual teachers — even the very skillful and enlightened ones. Their focus is on keeping their teachings open to everybody, so they’ll avoid saying things that might turn away someone with awful politics in the hope that that person can start doing the work and wake up eventually.

And hey, fair enough. Westerners with shitty power-serving worldviews are the people whose delusions the world most urgently needs rescuing from. Whatever gets them removing the scales from their eyes is probably a helpful thing.

But the rest of us shouldn’t look to those teachers as role models in this regard. Don’t mistake an enlightened teacher’s avoidance of politics as a signal that enlightenment looks like avoiding politics. Internal clarity is by its nature a radically political development, because it naturally leads to a deep compassion for all the anguish in our world, and we live in a world whose anguish is largely caused by politics.

True spirituality is the never-ending process of getting real about what’s real. Letting the light of truth pervade every aspect of the human adventure, from our unexamined habits of perception and cognition, to our understanding of global power dynamics. And letting our actions flow from there.

________________

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Some guy broke into my house and set up residence in the study room. He says his great-grandparents used to live in this house and now he won’t leave.

My family and I tried to kick him out but he got very violent. He brings in his friends and they help beat us up if we ever try to make him leave.

They keep saying I hate the guy because of his religion. I don’t even care about his religion, I just don’t like sharing my house with some random outsider who broke in here out of nowhere and took my stuff.

“The poor guy just wants one room to call his own,” his friends say in his defense. “You and your family have all the surrounding rooms in the house, and yet you have a problem with the guy having sovereignty over ONE room? That’s kind of bigoted and evil.”

He keeps throwing stuff at me and my family if we get too close to his door, saying we make him feel afraid. His friends say it’s understandable because his room is surrounded by enemies who hate him just for existing, but we don’t hate him for existing, we hate him because he forcibly inserted himself into our home and keeps throwing stuff at us.

And what’s weird is whenever I explain my situation to normal people they completely understand where I’m coming from and agree the guy is being a dick, but if I talk to the police or the local paper they always side with the guy. Almost everyone in town hates this guy now because of how he’s been acting, but everyone in power does everything they can to protect him. It’s like there’s a total disconnect between the authorities and the will of the public on this particular issue.

It’s having a nastier and nastier effect on the community at large all across town. The police have been showing up to arrest anyone who says they think the guy’s being an asshole. The paper keeps printing these obnoxious lies telling everyone that me and my family are the real criminals and the guy is actually sweet and awesome. It’s really unfair.

Things have been so tense and hostile ever since this guy showed up. I honestly think it would be better if he’d never moved in here at all, but whenever I say that his friends try to get me in trouble and claim I want to exterminate the guy.

It’s a real mess, man.

That guy sucks.

_________________

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If you can hear the whales
through your glowing foot roots,
then stand up.

Open your mouth.
Let their aria rip through you.
Let it pound up and out
so the others can find you.

Burrrp!

Now’s not the time for politeness, my love.
We’re staring down mass extinction.
We don’t have time to be cool.
Care! It’s fine!

There’s a rumbling in your belly.
Can you feel it?
An inner ocean,
still teeming with luminescent jellyfish,
dulled by a thin coat of plastic,
immortal but dying anyway.

For so many
their foot roots
have withered away
somewhere in between an Uber shift
and a Door Dash,
and besides,
their heart,
rick-roll racketed by rent scam subscriptions,
beats too loud and fast
to hear any stupid whales.

Exhausted bodies
hosting ghosts
running on
foodless food
and godless gods,
too sick and tired
to look up
to see,
to know what’s happening
in our name,
to understand that the cold blue eyes
of the empire of whiteness
stamped on our every dollar bill that
we are forced to pray for
fervently each night,
“Please God please God
Please may I pay my bills God
Please may I feed my children God
Please may we keep this roof God
Please may you give me more money God
Please oh money God
Please oh please
I don’t want to die
Please give me your demon dollars
Made from the bones of African child slaves
Pressed from the meat of the babies of Gaza
Printed with the oil made from the blood sacrifices of Chevron
Paper gods every one
I know not where they come from
Or how they are made
And I might die of grief if I did
Just give me some more of your green demon prayer cards
So that I might live
Another day,
Amen.”

That is not you.
You pray of course
(we all must),
but you,
you hear the whales.

And there are others.
You can tell us by the flowers of light sprouting
from our eye stalks
and noggin crowns,
from our bellowing war cries
roaring through us
giving voice
to our blue mama,
her rainforest hair slick with oil
but beautiful still.

_______________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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In a move that surprised precisely zero people, Israel once again bombed the shit out of Lebanon while Netanyahu continued to insist that the IDF will continue its extensive occupation of Lebanese territory. Israel’s actions resulted in Tehran calling off scheduled peace talks with Washington, but now we’re seeing reports that Israel and Hezbollah have agreed to another ceasefire.

Israel pretty much never abides by its ceasefire agreements in Lebanon, but we’ll see what happens I guess.

One major factor in this new development may have been Iran’s threat to bomb Israel without warning if Trump doesn’t pressure Netanyahu to end the war in Lebanon, which we learned about from a recent report by Drop Site News.

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have been creating viral content with tough talk about Israel’s need to make peace and stop killing people in Lebanon, but all that matters in this instance is action. Either they’re willing to exert the leverage they have over Israel to make sure this peace deal happens or they’re not. If Israel keeps sabotaging the agreement without suffering severe consequences from Washington, we may safely conclude that the Trump administration was all talk.

And in case anyone’s unclear, Trump will never deserve any “credit” for making peace with Iran, even if he does end up pushing Israel to comply with the deal. You don’t get praise for starting an unprovoked war of aggression and then losing. That’s not a thing.

❖

Zionists are screaming bloody murder about Hezbollah killing a tank crew of four Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon, with war propagandist Mark Levin taking to Twitter to say that “Israel will hit back very hard” and that “No MOU or final agreement will change who these terrorists are,” while Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir proclaims “For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!”

From all this melodramatic garment-rending and victim-LARPing you’d assume the four Israelis were killed in their beds in Tel Aviv, not traveling by tank through a foreign country they’d invaded. As Ryan Grim put it, “I have never heard of a country invading a neighbor and then calling it unfair that their soldiers died in that invasion. I don’t think any other country ever even thought to make that complaint.”

❖

Meanwhile instead of attacking Trump for failing to do enough to make peace, Democrats are calling him a weak little bitch for not continuing the war, and for agreeing to ensure $300 billion in reconstruction financing instead.

“Iran took Trump to the cleaners with this so-called understanding,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday, adding, “Are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle prepared to send Iran $300 billion when economic needs are so severe here at home? That’s what Trump wants them to do.”

“With $300 billion, we could end homelessness, fund cancer research for 40 years, and give every child free pre-K for over 7 years. Instead, Trump is sending it to Iran,” tweeted Senator Amy Klobuchar.

“Here’s what this deal basically is: Iran makes zero concessions, and the United States lets Iran trade oil for free and commits to give them $300 billion in reparations,” said Senator Chris Murphy.

“Trump is touting a ‘deal’ that promises to lift all sanctions, allow Iran to export oil and potentially charge tolls, and hand over more than 300 billion dollars to that country,” said Senator Adam Schiff, adding that the deal “looks more like a surrender.”

These prominent Democrats make it sound like Trump is just taking $300 billion from the American taxpayer, when according to Reuters the financing for the deal “will be comprised entirely of private-sector funds.” Democrats are essentially running the same bogus “Obama gave Iran pallets of cash” attack that Republicans used to use when slamming the 2015 JCPOA.

More importantly, how revealing is it that these warmongering freaks are suddenly pretending care about how much $300 billion could do to help ordinary Americans? Whenever anyone tries to nudge the party an inch to the left on universal healthcare or whatever you see Democratic Party officials wagging their fingers at them telling them there’s no money for such pie-in-the-sky fantasies, but as soon as they get an opportunity to push for more war they’re out there saying they could use all that peace money to end homelessness. All of which will of course be right out the window when it comes time to vote for the next $1.5 trillion military budget.

Democrats are such obnoxious liars. Their sleaziness is exceeded only by Trump supporters claiming their president deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for losing a war he started.

Anyway, things are a mess. We’ll see how this all plays out.

____________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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Humans create empires for the same reason they create egos. It’s all about the impulse to control.

We come into this world boundless and free with eyes full of wonder, but within a few years our minds create and solidify a sense of self around which our mental lives revolve.

We do this because we are helpless when we are born, and things happen which are uncomfortable or startling, so we naturally begin seeking out strategies to control what happens to us. Before you know it we’ve got vast spires of psychological architecture within us dedicated to using thought to promote the interests and security of an entirely symbolic me-character that we made up in our minds.

And from that point on we are cut off from the Eden of perception. Our attention rests no longer in the wonder of the senses but in the incessant babbling of the mind and its churning narratives about self and other, enemies and threats, attainment and lack, attachment and aversion, ambitions and deficiencies, unworthiness and shame. All because we were born helpless little creatures with nervous systems and a startle response in a world full of chaotic giants.

And then we have the capacity for psychological suffering. Whereas previously we were only able to experience discomfort from actual material forces like hunger or a diaper rash, or from being startled by a big dog or something, suddenly we have created the ability to suffer for reasons we created entirely inside our own heads. Stories like “I’m inadequate,” “I failed,” “I embarrassed myself,” “I made a mistake,” “I hate that person,” or “That person isn’t doing what I want” consume our attention throughout the day and make us miserable.

And it all arises from that initial impulse to control what happens in order to feel secure.

All social dysfunction has its roots in that impulse. Abusive relationships happen when one partner tries to exert extreme control over the other for their own sense of security. Economic injustice happens when one class exploits the other because they think they’d feel a bit more secure if they just had another billion in the bank. Tyrannical governments happen when leaders feel the need to control the thoughts, words and behavior of the populace to secure their ongoing rule. Empires happen when tyrannical governments feel the need to control what goes on not just in their own nation, but in surrounding nations as well.

That’s ultimately all that drives the US empire. People who have far too much interest in controlling other people, with far too much power to do so. It causes a horrifying amount of suffering, destruction, chaos and injustice, but at its root is that fundamental impulse to control what happens which emerges within all of us in early childhood. We’re basically ruled by emotional toddlers who never learned to rein in their egos. They’re trying to control the planet in the same way they tried to control their access to toys and candy when they were small.

It is possible for the human organism to liberate itself from its habituated creation of the ego through the process commonly referred to as spiritual enlightenment. It is also possible for humanity as a species to liberate itself from its large-scale control mechanisms in the same way.

That’s what a healthy humanity will look like. We will be free from all internal impulses to control, manipulate, exploit and dominate, and our systems for organizing society will no longer feature states which oppress their populations and try to rule the world.

We are still very, very far from achieving this potential as a species. Humanity is still deeply ensnared in its egoic delusions, on an individual level and at mass scale. But we’re waking up. Strangely, awkwardly, stumbling forward like a toddler, we are moving to become a conscious species.

____________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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Everyone’s talking about the Memo of Understanding that has been reached between the US and Iran, set to be signed on Friday. All the most fanatical Zionist warmongers are rending their garments in heartbreak over the development, which is always a good sign, but it remains to be seen how much of this thing actually happens and for how long.

One major sticking point in the deal is ending Israel’s assault on Lebanon, which Tehran remains adamant about, warning of an Iranian military response if the IDF doesn’t cease its constant attacks on the country. This could easily end up tanking the whole thing.

Either way, I personally can’t see a whole lot to get excited about right now. Any “peace deal” with Iran is at best a temporary pause in the US/Israeli efforts to topple Tehran while the US pursues other war agendas like regime change in Cuba. And there’s a very, very strong possibility that it won’t even be that.

But it is clear that the efforts to shatter and balkanize Iran have failed for the time being, and that the US/Israel tandem has been successfully deterred from ever attempting the same type of military operation in the same way again.

And that’s a good thing. The US empire is the most destructive and tyrannical force on the planet, and it is good when it fails to accomplish its goals.

Westerners love to whine about how tyrannical and authoritarian Iran’s government is, but it’s worth noting that the control Tehran exerts within its borders is a major reason US-Israeli efforts to turn the nation into a giant Libya have failed. That control exists to thwart precisely the type of existential foreign threat that Iran just thwarted. Were it not for that existential foreign threat, such control wouldn’t be necessary.

The US has openly admitted to deliberately fomenting the domestic unrest we saw in Iran earlier this year, and to attempting to arm insurgent factions. Those foreign threats were put down by precisely the Iranian “tyranny” you’ve seen western liberals and anarkiddies huffing about all year.

The fact that the US-Israeli war failed to achieve the government-toppling goals set out by Washington and Tel Aviv means that Iran was able to inhibit the visibility that US and Israeli intelligence agencies had into the nation, because you only fail to accomplish a military objective you think you can accomplish if your enemy is able to surprise you. Countering US and Israeli intelligence operations, rooting out US and Israeli intelligence assets, blocking US and Israeli propaganda from domestic consumption, and obstructing US and Israeli visibility into Tehran’s government and military could only be achieved by a strong government that’s willing exert forceful control over what goes on inside its own borders.

Westerners like to point at the “authoritarianism” of the few remaining enemies of the US-centralized empire as though it proves that we’re looking at a struggle between a beneficent and virtuous civilization and a bunch of evil tyrants, but really all it proves is that the only nations who are able to resist absorption into the imperial blob are the ones who are willing and able to exert control over what happens inside their borders. If the US and its allies weren’t constantly working to subvert and topple all unabsorbed nations, this “authoritarianism” wouldn’t be needed to resist it.

The managers of the western empire are the real tyrants. Abusing populations around the world with nonstop wars, proxy conflicts, regime change ops and starvation sanctions in an effort to rule the world is as tyrannical as it gets.

I hope Iran keeps winning. I hope all of the empire’s enemies succeed in thwarting its ambitions of planetary domination.

__________________

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It’s so pathetic watching Elon Musk’s groveling bootlickers fall all over themselves on social media to defend their favorite oligarch from criticism as he becomes the world’s first trillionaire.

They’re like “Don’t be mean to the trillionaire, just become a trillionaire yourself! All you need is luck, connections, wealthy parents, the ruthlessness to step on anyone who gets in your way, and a willingness to cooperate with murderous imperial institutions like the Pentagon and the CIA!”

Elon Musk is a military-industrial complex plutocrat who is balls deep in the US intelligence cartel and recently facilitated the US-Israeli attempted regime change operation in Iran. You have infinitely more in common with the average person in Iran, Cuba, Lebanon or Palestine than you have with the world’s first trillionaire.

It’s so gross how many fawning admirers this freak still has. The trillionaire is not your friend.

❖

People who say “Zionism is just the belief that Jews should have a homeland” are hilarious. Zionism isn’t some abstraction; we can all see its material manifestations with our own eyes. We can all see that Zionism means genocide, apartheid, and nonstop wars and abuse.

This isn’t some kind of theoretical debate where we all get to have our own opinions about what Zionism is and what it entails. It’s 2026, not 1890. The facts are in and the case is closed, kids. This is what Zionism is. This is the only Zionism in existence. What you see is what you get. And what you see is quantifiably one of the most evil things happening on our planet.

❖

Some guy told me, “Why are you fine with the existence of approximately 50 Islamic nation-states, but the single Jewish one is apparently too many?”

I showed him an illustration of a nail stuck in somebody’s foot and said, “Why are you fine with an entire foot made of flesh, but a single metal spike is too much? The only possible explanation is that you have a seething hatred of metal. It can’t possibly be that you object to a foreign object being violently forced into a region where it does damage.”

He got upset and wound up telling me he hopes I get murdered by Mossad.

❖

Hasbara is so gross because it’s just Zionists throwing walls of language at you to convince you you’re not seeing what you’re seeing.

You see raw video footage of the most horrifying thing imaginable in Gaza, and then you see them in the replies going “This is actually fine and normal because words words words words words words words.”

You see a news report about Israel doing something astonishingly evil in Lebanon, and there they are underneath it going “There’s actually a lot more to the story because words words words words words words words.”

You see some far right Israeli minister spouting nakedly genocidal rhetoric, and they’re swarming all over it saying “Well this isn’t actually what it looks like because words words words words words words words.”

You see every major human rights group on earth saying Israel is guilty of genocide and apartheid, and they’re running around frantically telling you it’s a giant conspiracy to frame Israel and the truth is that words words words words words words words.

You see more and more mainstream news institutions reporting on the mountains of evidence of widespread rape and torture in Israeli prisons, and they saturate the airwaves claiming it’s an antisemitic blood libel because words words words words words words words.

The idea is to just pound your intellect with a firehose of verbiage until your inner sensemaker has been shredded and you’re too confused to form a coherent picture of what’s actually going on. It’s a disgusting, abusive, and profoundly unethical thing to do to people.

But the good news is it’s not working anymore. Language is immensely powerful, but its power has its limits. Israel’s behavior has become so transparently unacceptable that no amount of word magic can manipulate people into seeing anything other than what’s happening in front of their face.

________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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Caitlin and Tim discuss Trump, trillionaires and other tribulations. Caitlin paints the US Secretary of War and then sets fire to the painting. Available in video or audio, and can be found on all your favorite podcast platforms.

VIDEO:

AUDIO:

____________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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

Caitlin and Tim discuss Trump, trillionaires and other tribulations. Caitlin paints the US Secretary of War and then sets fire to the painting. Available in video or audio, and can be found on all your favorite podcast platforms.

Video version:

____________________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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The UK has sentenced four anti-genocide activists to years in prison on terrorism charges, and the US is working to deport a prominent foreign policy analyst for criticizing the war in Iran.

Four members of the group Palestine Action were sentenced to a combined total of 25 years in prison on Friday for breaking into a UK weapons factory owned by Israeli company Elbit Systems in 2024 and damaging some of the genocide machinery contained therein. The judge refused to allow the activists to explain to the jury why they did what they did, and also refused to notify the jury that the defendants could receive terrorism sentences if convicted.

The BBC reports that this is believed to be the first time anyone has received a terrorism sentence for property damage. Amnesty International has slammed the sentencing as “completely disproportionate” to the crime.

The UK has previously made headlines with its ridiculous classification of Palestine Action as a terrorist group, leading to mass arrests of activists who hold signs saying “I support Palestine Action”.

Meanwhile in the United States, the Trump administration is reportedly targeting foreign policy analyst Trita Parsi for his criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

According to Zionist outlet The Free Press, the US State Department has launched an investigation into the possibility of revoking the green card status held by Parsi, an Iran-born Swedish citizen. Free Press quotes an unnamed State Department official as saying “Anyone who seeks to undermine the U.S., we’re taking a hard look at,” which would include “people who support adversaries of ours and whose work furthers their agenda and undermines our security.”

This is a significant expansion of the Trump administration’s efforts to stomp out domestic foreign policy dissent. Previously the State Department was only working to deport unknown university students like Mahmoud Khalil for their opposition to the Gaza holocaust, while Parsi is a professional commentator who is regularly seen on CNN. It’s an escalation in much the same way the UK has moved to banning the visas of mainstream pundits like Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker for voicing criticisms of Israel.

It’s a war on the human conscience. Sentencing anti-genocide activists as terrorists. Working to deport mainstream foreign policy experts for criticizing an American war. They’re actually punishing people for not acting like sociopaths.

It’s the same war on the conscience that saw the empire persecute Julian Assange, crush pro-Palestine demonstrations on university campuses, investigate peace activists for bringing aid to Cuba, and dramatically ramp up the suppression of free speech to silence criticism of Israel.

In a healthy society, a person of conscience would thrive while a sociopath would be shunned and marginalized. In western society it’s the exact opposite: people of conscience are sent to prison, and sociopaths are made president of the United States.

That’s what you get when you live under an empire established on and driven by sociopathic values. The agenda to dominate and control the entire human population is evil, because it can only be accomplished through nonstop war, militarism, propaganda, deception, and tyranny.

That’s why the truth-tellers are branded traitors, the anti-genocide demonstrators are branded anti-semites, and the peace activists are branded terrorists. We live in a backward dystopia with backward values, so the good are beaten down while the wicked rule the world.

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The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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The human species has essentially been transformed into a giant machine to generate profit for corporations.

Under capitalism, humanity exists to serve the interests of the corporation. We are all livestock; beasts of burden used to carry margin expansion forward from quarterly statement to quarterly statement. Enjoyment of life has no value other than the extent to which it can be used to increase the net worth of the shareholders.

That’s why everyone’s so unhappy. We’re not living with purpose. We’re not working together to build a better world and a better future, we’re just pulling levers to turn gears to make the arrow line go up on the graph in the conference room. It’s a hollow, pointless way for people to live.

It makes our whole culture vapid and soulless.

Music is made to be as profitable as possible, which means giving it the broadest possible appeal using formulaic song structure calculated to cause a chemical response in the largest number of human brains.

Movies are designed to draw the largest possible box office revenue at the lowest possible risk to studios and investors, often by just rehashing a movie that’s already proven successful in the past or by slapping together a story about an IP with pre-existing mass appeal.

Food is made to be fast and addictive rather than nourishing.

Healthy human connection has been commodified as social media intertwines with friendships and dating apps insert themselves into the development of romantic relationships.

Human sexuality is being warped and twisted as internet porn normalizes violence and degradation for the maximum number of clicks.

Attention and engagement have been monetized, creating an information ecosystem dominated by conflict and gossip designed to appeal to our baser instincts.

Advertisement is injected into every possible corner of our waking sensory experience, with any available space where the eye might rest or the ear might listen being flooded with psychological manipulation compelling us to consume. They’ll start running commercials in our dreams the instant they have the technology to do so.

You spend eight hours at the office working to generate corporate profits, then you come home and consume products to profit other corporations. You need your beer and snacks to unwind, your streaming services and social media to distract your mind from the stress of it all, your online clothing purchase to try to feel good about yourself, and your prescription drugs to get to sleep at night. People live their entire lives like this.

And that’s those of us who are lucky enough to be living in the global north. In the global south you get wage slavery and exploitation with far more toil, far less relaxation time, and no cheap products made by impoverished workers on other continents with which to comfort yourself.

All of humanity has been roped into this mess. And for what? To make the numbers in some bank accounts increase. To get some green arrows pointing upward on the stock exchange. To enable a few billionaires to buy islands and elections.

All while destroying the biosphere we all depend on for survival.

This, we are told, is the best possible system we could possibly be living under.

I personally do not believe this is true. I personally believe we can have better. Those who benefit from this current arrangement are going to assure us it’s impossible and do everything they can to stop us from changing it, but we do have the means to reclaim the wealth, dignity and happiness that they have stolen from us.

They built this whole machine on our backs. All we need to do is stand up.

_________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that the US is going to be launching major strikes in Iran, while President Trump says he’ll “bomb the shit out of” the Iranians if they don’t agree to a deal of his liking.

The latest wave of US airstrikes has already reportedly damaged critical civilian infrastructure, which according to the Iranian government has cut off some 20,000 Iranians from their water supply amid sweltering heat.

Meanwhile the US war machine is acting like a poor widdle victim and claiming it’s only bombing Iran in order to defend itself from unwarranted aggression.

CENTCOM released a statement on Wednesday saying “U.S. Central Command forces began launching additional self-defense strikes today at 5:15 p.m. ET against multiple targets in Iran at the Commander in Chief’s direction. The strikes are in response to Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression.”

Yep, sure, I know what that’s like. I just drove across town to break into someone’s house and he tried to stop me from pouring gasoline all over his living room, so I had to kill him in self-defense.

The US is like a malignant narcissist who begins with the assumption that everyone is obligated to provide him with deference and validation, and then takes it as a personal attack whenever they set normal boundaries. Empire managers really do believe the entire planet should submit to their authority and that it’s an unprovoked act of aggression when this isn’t given to them.

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The claim “Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror” only makes sense when you remember that the western empire labels any group which opposes US/Israeli interests as a terrorist organization.

They even designated the IRGC as a terrorist group for fuck’s sake. If you define a major part of a country’s actual military forces as a terrorist entity, then obviously that country will per your own definition be a major “sponsor of terrorism” just by having a military.

Other Iran-backed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are counted as “terrorist organizations” by the western empire, even as the rest of the world declines to classify them as such. For the overwhelming majority of the world’s governments those organizations are not terrorist entities, they’re just armed factions who oppose Israel and its western backers. They only get to define Iran as the top “sponsor of terrorism” because they say anyone who doesn’t like them is a terrorist.

It’s like if I said anyone who doesn’t like Caitlin Johnstone is a Nazi and then went around punching them, and if anyone objected I said “But they’re Nazis! Why are you defending Nazis??” Really they’re just people who don’t like me, but because I’ve changed the definition of “Nazi” to “someone who dislikes Caitlin Johnstone” I can then use that label to justify physically assaulting them.

That’s all the “terrorist” label exists to accomplish these days. It’s just a label they affix to any faction which poses an obstacle to the empire’s goals of planetary domination.

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Trita Parsi has a new article out arguing that Iran’s attacks on Israel in response to its Lebanon onslaught could represent “a new regional equation” where the Zionist entity is no longer free to do whatever it likes in the middle east, because Iran may start imposing consequences for its actions. It’s an intriguing possibility.

I hope the US/Israeli efforts to topple the Iranian government continue to fail. I hope Iran gets stronger so that it can hammer Israel whenever Israel does evil things. I hope the US war machine implodes, I hope the US empire ends, and I hope Palestine is freed from the scourge of Zionism.

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Israel: [ignites regional war]

Israel: [never abides by ceasefire agreements]

Israel: [bombs southern Lebanon every day]

Israel: [openly sabotages US negotiations with Iran]

Israel: [begins bombing Beirut]

Iran: [bombs Israel]

Zionists: They attack us because of our religion!

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Look it’s very simple. If you want to wear a small hat and pray Jewish prayers, that’s awesome. If you want to support a genocidal apartheid state, you’re a piece of shit.

People always try to add in extra layers of complexity, but that’s really all there is to it.

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The best way to make sure you see everything I publish 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