Blog Archives

New Year's Resolutions 2026

12/31/2025

Caitlin Johnstone
December 30, 2025

Reading by Tim Foley:

Do some landscape paintings
Start a podcast with Tim
Enrage the Israeli government
Finish writing that novel
Grow some luffa and make my own kitchen sponge
Fall more deeply in love with everything
See beauty everywhere
Open more eyes to the fact that the western news media are propaganda services for the US empire
Publish another art book
Laugh more
Cry more
Learn more
Unlearn more
Write more poetry
Cast more spells
Play more music
Take more baths
Ask more curious questions
Play more board games
Read a dumb book
Dance in the kitchen
Sing in the car
Suffer no fools
Make a daisy chain
Become more inconvenient for the empire
Invite more love in, give more back
Become more offensive to Zionists and empire loyalists
Do more Good Works
Say the exact opposite of what my rulers want me to say
Be the exact opposite of what my rulers want me to be
Help anyone who wants to learn how to heal
Facilitate the awakening of human consciousness at every opportunity
Expel anything in me that is not aligned with the highest interest
Watch for openings to let in the light
Make Tim laugh so hard he falls on the floor
Cry for those who won’t
Speak for those who can’t
Shake out the fear
Spend more time with the really old and the really young
Have an art day with my kids and their friends
Make up a song, sing it to Tim
Hug my Mum
Force money to value a happy child, a healthy adult, an intact forest, a plastic-free ocean
End poverty
House the homeless
Fight the bastards

Free Palestine

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Anti-Jupiterite!

12/29/2025

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Spoof Video Has Much to Say About Israeli Claims to Palestine

Bill Astore
December 28, 2025

“Pack up and piss off, pretty boy.”

I always knew the Romans (Italians) could show up in Bath, England and reclaim their land based on their god, Jupiter, and the heritage of previous Roman occupation. Who cares if roughly 2000 years have passed since the Roman invasion?

I laughed at this video even as it got me thinking — the value of satire. Click on the link for more.

https://x.com/CensoredHumans/status/2005210278888432026?s=20

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Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

12/24/2025

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"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is recognized not only as a holiday classic but also as a significant protest song. It emphasizes themes of peace and social unity, making it a lasting favorite during the Christmas season.

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NFL Social Messaging

12/23/2025

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Forget About "Stop War" or "Wage Peace"

Bill Astore
December 23, 2025

If you watch too much NFL football, as I do, you may have noticed messages on the back of player helmets. If they choose, players are allowed a select choice of approved NFL social messages. These include “End Racism,” “Stop Hate,” “Choose Love,” and “Inspire Change.”

I have nothing against these messages. They’re basically feel-good bumper/helmet stickers. What gets me is the limited range of choices for the players. You either go with your team’s name or you select from a few approved messages.

You can well imagine messages that you’ll never see approved by the NFL. Messages like “Stop War” and “Wage Peace” and “End Gun Violence” and the like.

he NFL does its best to avoid “politics,” thus vague slogans like “Inspire Change” are advanced. Why not “Help Workers”? “Feed the Hungry”? Or, horror of horrors, “Share the Wealth”?

Of course, the NFL consists of millionaire players and billionaire owners, so the likelihood of truly provocative messages is slim indeed. Still, “End Genocide” should be non-controversial, right? How about “Justice For All”? Or “Equal Rights”?

Well, we shouldn’t expect too much from the NFL. Nevertheless, sports are a potent force in American society and culture. Players are leaders and role models, whether they want to be or not. I wish they had more leeway to express themselves, but the owners have spoken, so to speak, just as our owners (as George Carlin said) basically own us.

This is NOT an approved NFL helmet message

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From Franco's Spain to Trump's America: When Journalists Kill Their Own Stories

12/22/2025

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Trump targets even the BBC over content Americans couldn't watch

Alexander Verbeek
December 22, 2025

On Friday morning, CBS News promoted its upcoming “60 Minutes” investigation into CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious prison, where the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants. The network promised viewers a look at “brutal and torturous conditions.”

On Sunday afternoon, two hours before airtime, CBS pulled the story.

The official explanation is that it “needed additional reporting.” The actual explanation came in an email from correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi to her colleagues:

"In my view, pulling it now—after every rigorous internal check has been met—is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

The story had been screened five times. CBS lawyers cleared it. Standards and Practices cleared it. Alfonsi’s team had requested comment from the White House, State Department, and Homeland Security. Then Bari Weiss, CBS’s new editor-in-chief, demanded changes on Saturday. She wanted an interview with Stephen Miller or another senior Trump official. She objected to calling the men “migrants” instead of “illegal immigrants,” even though many were asylum seekers with pending applications.

When the administration didn’t respond, Weiss killed the story.

Alfonsi saw exactly what was happening. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story,” she wrote, “we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
A kill switch. That’s the phrase that should terrify every American who cares about press freedom.

The Franco Precedent

Europeans recognize this pattern. We’ve seen it before. In Spain under Franco, the regime didn’t need to shut down newspapers or jail every critical journalist. The dictatorship created something more insidious: a system where editors censored themselves.

Franco’s 1966 press law formally ended direct censorship while keeping criminal penalties for anything deemed subversive. Editors learned to anticipate what the regime would tolerate. They killed stories before authorities had to intervene. The regime’s power became invisible because it was internalized.

Journalists called it “autocensura” — self-censorship. By the time Franco died in 1975, Spain’s press had spent decades protecting itself by protecting the regime.
Trump is building the same system in America, and he’s doing it more efficiently than Franco ever could.

Trump's Three-Step Intimidation Strategy

Trump’s playbook is simple. First, sue media outlets with massive, frivolous lawsuits. Trump demanded $20 billion from CBS over how “60 Minutes” edited a Kamala Harris interview. Legal experts agreed he had no chance of winning. The network’s previous leadership resigned during settlement talks. Paramount paid Trump $16 million to make it go away.

Trump isn’t limiting this strategy to American outlets. In mid-December, he filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC over a “Panorama” documentary that edited clips from his January 6 speech. The documentary was geo-restricted to UK viewers on BBC iPlayer. Americans couldn’t watch it without a VPN. Trump claims it influenced the 2024 election he won. The absurdity is the point. He’s suing a foreign public broadcaster over content virtually no Americans saw, demonstrating that the threat alone is enough. The BBC had already apologized in November. Two executives resigned. Mission accomplished before the lawsuit even landed.

Second, install loyalists in editorial positions. Enter Bari Weiss, whose hiring in October came after Paramount’s new owner, David Ellison, acquired her publication The Free Press. Ellison’s father, Larry, is a financial supporter and adviser. CBS staff told reporters they were “freaking out” over Weiss’s lack of broadcast experience and clear political agenda.

Third, wait for self-censorship to take hold. You don’t need to threaten every story individually. Editors learn. A $16 million settlement teaches a lesson. A new boss hired by Trump-friendly ownership sends a message. Eventually, inconvenient stories die in editorial review, killed by people worried about their jobs and their network’s survival.

The CECOT story would have shown Americans what their government is doing in their name. Men who believed they were being deported to Venezuela instead found themselves in what Human Rights Watch documented as a torture facility. The U.S. government funded this prison with $4.7 million. These men described beatings, sexual abuse, and months of hell.

Americans deserved to see that story. They won’t, because CBS decided protecting itself mattered more than informing the public.

Weiss claims she just wanted “additional reporting” and “critical voices.” But Alfonsi’s team had sought comment from every relevant agency in the Trump administration. The government’s silence was deliberate. By accepting that silence as a veto, CBS established a new rule: if Trump’s team refuses to comment, the story dies.

Keep reading Alexander Verbeek on Substack.

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