Author Archives: Caitlin Johnstone

The largest religion on earth is not Christianity or Islam: it’s the widespread, faith-based belief system which holds that humans are separate from each other and from the world. Continue reading →

When Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter was first announced this past April I said that the purchase likely wouldn’t go through if the empire thought it posed a threat to its information interests. I said that any reduction of censorship protocols which Musk implements on the platform would probably not be of the sort that make any difference to the powerful, but would instead just amplify vapid partisan culture war nonsense. Continue reading →

I wonder if my own government is being truthful about its actions in that part of the world? Continue reading →

“No no you don’t understand, this US war is completely different from all the other US wars. See, the US is intervening in Ukraine for humanitarian reasons. We’re fighting a bad guy who is an evil dictator that loves war crimes and genocide. Not like all those other interventions.” Continue reading →

Crawling on our hands and knees vomiting up life hearts which go bouncing across the floor like pennies, disgusted by the latest headline, the latest heartbreak, the latest bill, the latest bullshit. Continue reading →

Some find it easier to die than to go on living. Continue reading →

A jet airliner opens up and sends its passengers falling to earth. You’d expect them to scream, to cry, to cling to each other in fear, to prepare for the end, to pray, to think about their loved ones, but they don’t. Instead, they turn on each other and start fighting. Continue reading →

I talk about narrative all the time partly because narrative control is the source and foundation of the power of the US-centralized empire. The ability to control the way people think, act and vote with mass-scale psychological manipulation allows our rulers to dominate us more pervasively than we could ever be dominated by brute totalitarian force, which is why so much energy goes into keeping the people from controlling their own narratives. That’s all the current mainstream panic about “disinformation” is, for example. If narrative control were fully decentralized, our rulers couldn’t rule. Continue reading →

Have you ever noticed how those who shriek the loudest about tyranny in foreign countries are always the same people calling for the censorship and deplatforming of anyone who criticizes the western empire? Continue reading →

Some worship at the feet of deities, at the feet of gurus, at the feet of dead prophets, at the feet of stone idols, in churches, in temples, in mosques, in Mecca. Continue reading →

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Continue reading →

The other day an Australian journalist was giving me a hard time for not criticizing Russia and China the way I go after the US empire, calling me “morally bankrupt” for not criticizing all governments equally. He said the ethical thing to do would be to criticize the US, but also criticize the governments the US doesn’t like for balance. Continue reading →

Robert Heinlein said, “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.” And from all the facts in evidence currently available to us, that certainly does seem to be the case. We’re destroying our biosphere and moving beyond mere flirtation with nuclear war to full-blown courtship, all to facilitate a status quo that everyone hates and which benefits hardly anybody. Continue reading →

Numerous Syrian and foreign militants have reportedly been killed and several US troops injured in an escalating exchange of attacks between the American invaders and the people in the country whose territory they are illegally occupying. Continue reading →

It is not easy being someone who cares about the world and opposes the status quo. It’s a series of disheartening failures and crushing disappointments amid an endless deluge of information saying that everything is getting worse and worse. Continue reading →

There’s a scene in The Usual Suspects where Kevin Spacey tells the fable of the mysterious Keyser Soze and how he became a crime lord. Continue reading →

In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, immortal Hague fugitive Henry Kissinger says the US is acting in a crazy and irrational way that has brought it to the edge of war with Russia and China. Continue reading →

If someone criticizing the most dangerous agendas of the most powerful and destructive government on earth looks like “Russian propaganda” or “Chinese propaganda” to you, it’s because you yourself have been brainwashed by propaganda. Continue reading →

Western civilization is a story of full bellies and starving hearts. Of a feast of information and a famine of truth. Of conveyor belts churning out processed food, conformity-enforcing media and power-serving culture. Enough food to stay alive but not enough sustenance to live. Continue reading →

The president and first lady of Ukraine have posed for a romantic photoshoot with Vogue magazine, wherein President Volodymyr Zelensky waxes poetical about his love for his darling wife. Continue reading →

Stories about protagonists who’ve been misguided their whole lives about something very important have been emerging in our culture for generations, and they continue to delight audiences in the box office to this day. Continue reading →

Did you know chimpanzees hunt smaller primates for food? Continue reading →

Genocide walrus John Bolton outright admitted to planning foreign coups with the US government in conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday. That’s coups, plural. Continue reading →

The human species is at an adapt-or-perish juncture in its history on this planet; we will either drastically change the way we operate, or we will wipe ourselves out by nuclear war or environmental cataclysm. Because we’ve been brought to this point by our unhealthy relationship with mental narrative, the adaptation we’re being challenged to make would be a collective movement into a healthy relationship with mental narrative. Continue reading →

It sure is mighty convenient timing for all political and electoral energy in the United States to suddenly get sucked up into a single issue which affects the powerful in no way, shape or form. I wouldn’t have thought it would be possible for everyone’s attention to get diverted away from inflation and the looming likelihood of wage reductions and soaring unemployment or the economic war with Russia that’s making everything worse for everyone while pouring vast fortunes into the proxy war in Ukraine, but by golly, the empire found a way. Continue reading →

Former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech at the Hudson Institute last week that’s probably worth taking a look at just because of how much it reveals about the nature of the US empire and the corrupt institutions which influence its policies. Continue reading →

“China is a strange, backwards nation ruled by tyrants,” said the nation founded by Puritans who used to execute women for witchcraft and just killed reproductive rights protections because they think Jesus told them to. Continue reading →

Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts. Nobody thinks of themselves as a warmonger, but then the spin machine gets going and before you know it they’re spouting the slogans they’ve been programmed to spout and waving the flags the flags they’ve been programmed to wave and consenting to whatever the imperial war machine wants in that moment. Continue reading →

Twitter has done an about-face and sold the company to the richest person in the world for $44 billion. Continue reading →

The newsman tells me the CIA’s “Queen of Torture” now runs a life and beauty coaching business which helps midlife women “look good, feel good, and do good.” Continue reading →