Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“They launched a live-streamed genocide in full view of the entire world. They’re openly targeting civilian populations with siege warfare in Iran and Cuba in full view of the entire world. They openly kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation in full view of the entire world. They deliberately provoked a horrific and dangerous proxy war in Ukraine in full view of the entire world. They spent years actively backing Saudi Arabia’s monstrous genocidal atrocities in Yemen in full view of the entire world. They’re plundering and exploiting the resources and labor of the global south in full view of the entire world. They’re killing the biosphere we all depend on for their own enrichment in full view of the entire world.” (02/09/25)
“The first time I spoke to Jeff Bezos, he had founded Amazon as an online bookstore and made himself available to all kinds of journalists — a ‘political genius,’ said The New York Times Magazine, a ‘brilliant, charming, hyper, and misleadingly goofy mastermind.’ In 1999, having blown past the naysayers who scoffed at the strange notion of online retailing, the 35-year-old businessman was named Time’s Person of the Year. Nearly a decade-and-a-half later, as one of the world’s richest men, Bezos spent $250 million of his personal fortune to buy the Washington Post from Katharine Graham’s family. And now he should fold his cards and sell it. It’s a different era for the industry and a very different Bezos, one who is comfortable slashing a third of the paper’s staff.” (02/09/25)
Source: Common Dreams
by Jeffrey D Sachs & Sybil Fares
“History occasionally presents moments when the truth about a conflict is stated plainly enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s February 7 address in Doha, Qatar (transcript here) should prove to be such a moment. His important and constructive remarks responded to the US call for comprehensive negotiations, and he laid out a sound proposal for peace across the Middle East. Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for comprehensive negotiations: ‘If the Iranians want to meet, we’re ready.’ He proposed for talks to include the nuclear issue, Iran’s military capabilities, and its support for proxy groups around the region. On its surface, this sounds like a serious and constructive proposal. The Middle East’s security crises are interconnected, and diplomacy that isolates nuclear issues from broader regional dynamics is unlikely to endure.” (02/09/25)
“Whoever posted a video on President Trump’s social media containing a racist animation of the Obamas as apes committed an own goal that overshadowed what otherwise would have been a great week for the administration. It shouldn’t have needed the GOP’s only black senator, Tim Scott, to decry the clip as racist for the post to be deleted and an apology issued by the White House. The one-minute video reposted late Thursday on Trump’s Truth Social account was about voter fraud in the 2020 election, one of the president’s favorite subjects. At the end, the video flashed for a split second to a clip of the Obamas from an old ‘Lion King’ meme depicting Democrats as animals, and Trump as a lion. It was obviously a mistake.” [editor’s note: So it’s not the person who posted the video “stirring up racial division,” it’s anyone who noticed and mentioned it? How … Clintonesque – TLK] (02/08/25)
“As details about President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace and its plans for the reconstruction of Gaza trickle out, two things become increasingly clear: Palestinians have barely, if at all, been consulted in these plans; and the people in Trump’s orbit stand to benefit from the project the most. The U.N. Security Council approved the Board of Peace as a mechanism for implementing Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Israel and Gaza back in November, though its mandate now appears much broader. The BoP itself consists of high-level representatives from Gulf nations, Israel, Serbia, Albania, and Argentina, among others, with Trump himself as the chair and ultimate decision-maker. Absent from the Board of Peace are representatives from almost every EU country except Bulgaria and Hungary, and anyone representing Palestine.” (02/09/25)
“There is an unbridgeable gap in the United States right now between two people with polar opposite views of the world, its purpose, man’s place in it, and what the country should be in the future. And nobody can sit on the fence; you are on one side or another. ‘You are either for me or against me,’ Jesus said, and that is the situation every American faces right now, regarding the future and destiny of the nation. The Left isn’t going to change, folks. They are, for the foreseeable and indefinite future, rooted in their beliefs and ideology, and they aren’t going to be converted.” [editor’s note: Nor, I suspect, will Mark Lewis turn his life around, start rejecting the glamour of evil, and refuse to be further mastered by sin – TLK] (02/07/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“I saw a tweet by Elon Musk the other day: ‘Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about.’ He put a sadface emoji at the end. I personally do not feel the slightest bit sorry for Elon Musk and his feelings. But the fact that these billionaires aren’t even enjoying themselves as they poison our planet and rob us all says so much about the madness of the civilization we are living in. I mean, think about it. It’s not even making them happy. … It would be terrible if these obscenely wealthy oligarchs were robbing everyone else of happiness in order to make themselves exponentially happier than all of us. But they’re not even making themselves happy. They’re fucking miserable. Everyone involved in this abusive dynamic is suffering from it — even the abusers.” (02/07/25)
“‘Imminent financial collapse,’ United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres hysterically predicted in a Jan. 29 letter to all UN member states, saying his reputationally challenged organization is so cash-strapped that it will run out of money by July, close its iconic Manhattan headquarters in August and cancel its annual General Assembly meeting in September. Most UN functions, including its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which claims to coordinate responses to global emergencies, may also sunset in the coming months due to lack of funds. This gushing cavalcade of good news sounds more like a promise than a warning.” (02/07/25)
“As did many fellow Americans, I chuckled when President Trump announced the creation of the US Space Force on December 20, 2019. I even remember laughing heartily while taking in the late-night circuit’s many Star Trek jokes that day. Yet, I had mostly forgotten that the Space Force still exists until last week when Secretary of War Pete Hegseth started a policy speech alongside Elon Musk at SpaceX’s headquarters by flashing the Vulcan salute and affirming Musk’s desire to ‘make Star Trek real.’ The absurdity of Musk’s introduction (in which he spoke of ‘going beyond our star system to other star systems, where we may meet aliens or discover long dead alien civilizations’ as if this could happen in any of our lifetimes) belied the seriousness of the new U.S. Military Artificial Intelligence strategy that Secretary Hegseth proceeded to announce.” (02/07/25)
“In the dystopian novel ‘1984’, George Orwell wrote, ‘The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.’ The true meaning of that line was never more clear than watching the truly bizarre photo op of Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom heralding the success of the greatest boondoggle in history: his high-speed train to nowhere. Without laying a single yard of track after burning $12 billion, Newsom showed a diesel freight train on a conventional track to create the appearance of a working railroad. I have been writing about this boondoggle for years. Newsom promised years ago that the project would be transformative. It was, but not as he promised.” (02/07/25)
