JOHNSTONE

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, its crazy lunatic government will flip out and nuke us all. Watch out for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, those guys are a bunch of maniacal antisemites who want to attack Israelis just because they’re Jewish. Oh no, Putin is invading Ukraine completely unprovoked because he’s a madman who hates freedom and won’t stop until he’s conquered all of Europe. China is building up its military because the megalomaniacal Xi Jinping wants to take over the world; all those US military bases surrounding China are just a defensive measure to contain Beijing’s insanity. Assad just went nuts one day and started slaughtering his own people out of nowhere. Gaddafi is a sexual sadist who’s giving Viagra to his troops to help them commit mass rapes in Libya. Saddam Hussein is so crazy and evil he’s trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction to give Americans another 9/11. The North Koreans used to be far too insane to be allowed to have nuclear weapons because they’d nuke San Francisco immediately, but after they obtained nuclear weapons they were miraculously cured of this rare psychological disorder. The stories of the western empire ask us to believe that everyone who finds themselves in the imperial crosshairs is an irrational actor whose loony behavior can only be attributed to some uncontrollable defect within their own minds, or who will soon snap and do something nutty if they are not contained by force. Reading by Tim Foley.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading by Tim Foley.

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

Israel and its western allies are crying and rending their garments about an Israeli hospital that was damaged in an Iranian missile strike. Western media outlets like the BBC and New York Times have suddenly remembered how to write headlines which assign blame to the attacker after deciding that hospitals getting bombed is a newsworthy event again. The Iranian attack didn't even kill anybody, and the damage to the hospital was reportedly the result of a shockwave from a strike on a nearby Israeli military facility. That's right: the Israeli military was using the hospital for human shields. As always, every accusation is a confession. Israel, as we all know, bombs hospitals constantly. Israel bombed an Iranian hospital just the other day to almost no coverage from the western press. Israel has attacked healthcare workers and healthcare facilities in Gaza around 700 times according to the World Health Organisation, and the IDF has repeatedly been documented entering the hospitals it attacks to destroy individual pieces of medical equipment. Israel, unlike Iran, is deliberately targeting healthcare facilities to make Gaza unlivable. Israeli defense minister Israel Katz is now saying that because of the hospital strike, Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "cannot continue to exist." Knowing what we know about Israel's track record, saying that people who bomb hospitals should not be allowed to exist can only be interpreted as an extremely antisemitic statement. Reading by Tim Foley.