JOHNSTONE

Israel is demolishing residential buildings in the West Bank, burning homes in Lebanon and constructing military facilities in Syria, all while continuing to kill civilians in Gaza. Reading by Tim Foley.

"And it should here be mentioned that Donald Trump has publicly admitted to being bought and owned by Zionist oligarchs. The president openly acknowledged on the campaign trail that the first time he was president, megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson were at the White House “probably almost more than anybody” demanding favors for Israel like moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and acknowledging Israel’s illegitimate claim to the Golan Heights, which he eagerly granted. Miriam Adelson, who is Israeli-American, gave the Trump campaign $100 million last year." Reading by Tim Foley.

It is very possible to live a truth-driven life which does not shy away from the harsh realities of the world without being consumed by the darkness. All you have to do is make sure you’re expanding your knowledge in both directions, not just your knowledge of the outer world. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's not very often you hear a US empire manager come right out and admit they only care about planetary hegemony and that their whole schtick about spreading freedom and democracy is a sham. They'll pick a US crony dictator over a sovereign democratically elected leader ten times out of ten. Reading by Tim Foley.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Nowhere is it inscribed upon the fabric of reality that control of the world must be ceded to the dumbest, crudest and cruelest among us. Nowhere is it written in adamantine that our happiness and the fate of our biosphere must depend on what the market will bear. It’s one of those things that gets sillier and sillier the more you think about it, like making your bed or the Avatar sequel. We are giants who have been tricked into thinking we are insects. We are a dragon wearing a name tag being yelled at in a cubicle by a short man with a receding hairline whose wife is about to leave him. We could bite him in half at any time, or light him on fire like a child’s marshmallow on a stick, but instead we sit there taking it while his spittle frosts our cheeks, silently hoping that we are making the expected level of eye contact. There is a hungry wolf inside every wagging dog. Every tiger in every cage remembers the natural order of things, and reminds us now and then right when we are in the middle of our favorite sequined Vegas routine. We have galaxies and sorcery roiling within us. We have barbed wire wings beneath our sundresses waiting to be unfurled. The tiger show is over when we decide it is over. They can lock up Luigi, but they can’t lock up everyone. ___________ Reading by Tim Foley.

And this, ultimately, is why the world looks the way it looks: because powerful people have been so successful at manipulating the way the public thinks about things. Reading by Tim Foley.

Drop Site News reports that more than 80 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF in Gaza since what we’re calling a “ceasefire” went into effect on the 19th of January. The majority have been in Rafah, a now completely destroyed city which the Biden administration had previously said was off limits for a major Israeli offensive. Reading by Tim Foley.

And the liberals shriek about Donald Trump while the sky rains blackened skeletons And the capitalists surf on collapse like raptors on an updraft And we scurry back and forth between toil and distraction with pythons around our stomachs and mollusks in our mouths And we search achingly for our pilfered hearts inside bottles of pills and TED Talks And the amputated limbs of Ukrainian men and Palestinian children are draped about the fast food restaurants like Christmas tinsel And the billionaires turn the oceans into plastic so they can pay strangers to pretend to love them And men with rusty nail teeth push needles into babies to open up markets in the global south And the talking heads tell us the news but won’t tell us why the flesh is melting from their faces as they die of radiation poisoning And we cackle at parties and act like everything isn’t covered in oil and the bones of birds and fish And we beat back the revolution within ourselves with a chair and a whip for no other reason than because that’s how we were raised And the rotting corpse of the middle eastern woman in the corner is beginning to make you uncomfortable And the floorboards creak as something green and ancient moves below them And the platypus with mirror eyes is gazing at you from the dawn of the universe And your consciousness is consumed with the words “THERE ARE FATHOMS OF PEACE BENEATH THE WARS, AND A VAST WISDOM WINKS FROM BEHIND THE MADNESS” And you come at long last to stillness And you turn and face the world, palms open. Reading by Tim Foley.

The buzz around Xiaohongshu and then DeepSeek has had an unusually high volume of westerners speaking positively about China for the last couple of weeks, which of course means we're also seeing many westerners falling all over themselves to say "Well actually China is actually quite bad actually" in response. Reading by Tim Foley.

Both Jordan and Egypt have put out statements rejecting President Trump's proposal to "clean out" Gaza and move its population to those nations. Reading by Tim Foley.