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BOGOTÁ / 20 OCTOBER 2026 — Fourteen people have died and seven more were injured after a gold mine collapsed in southwestern Colombia. The dead were not casualties of an unavoidable national disaster. They were workers in an industry where the absence of effective safety protection can turn a day's labor into a funeral. The collapse occurred on Monday in the rural Chambero area of Santa Bárbara de Iscuandé, in Nariño department near Colombia's Pacific coast, according to local authorities cited by Reuters. Spanish broadcaster Cadena SER reported that 12 of the 14 people killed were women. Officials say the site was operating without authorization. Governor Luis Alfonso Escobar announced that search-and-rescue operations had concluded. He also called on Colombia's national government, its National Mining Agency and the Ministry of Mines and Energy to accelerate the formalization of illegal and small-scale mining, pointing to conditions that endanger lives. A Second Disaster in Two Months The deaths did not occur in isolation. In August, another mining accident in Policarpa, also in Nariño, killed 13 people. In less than three months, two disasters in one department have taken 27 lives. They reveal a structural problem far beyond a single unstable slope. Informal mining sustains households in regions where access to secure employment, public investment and enforceable workplace standards is limited. But informal workers are exposed to hazards that a formal operator would be obliged to assess: unstable ground, heavy machinery, emergency exits, protective equipment, medical access and inspections. Calling a mine 'illegal' can identify a real regulatory problem. It cannot serve as a substitute for asking why working people were there, which commercial networks benefited from the extracted gold and who was supposed to protect those laboring underground or on unstable hillsides. The legal status of an operation never makes the death of a worker acceptable. The Cost of Abandonment The geography of Nariño compounds the danger. Mountainous access routes, severe weather and armed groups active in parts of the region complicate rescue and oversight. Reports after Monday's collapse described difficult access for emergency personnel. None of these constraints excuses a policy that waits until bodies are recovered before safety becomes urgent. There is an essential difference between a miner trying to support a family and the criminal or commercial networks that may control extraction and profits. Public policy should not collapse them into one category. Workers need a realistic path into legal protection; communities need alternatives to dangerous dependence on unauthorized extraction; organizers of violent and exploitative operations must be held accountable. Formalization should mean enforceable standards rather than paperwork alone. It should bring stable access to permits where appropriate, geological assessments, regular inspections, proper equipment, transparent gold purchasing and health coverage for workers. The state should support cooperatives that can organize production safely instead of forcing small miners to choose between poverty and an unregulated workplace. There is an environmental dimension, too. Poorly supervised gold extraction can destroy forests and contaminate waterways, including through mercury use. Local people suffer twice when public policy fails: first through dangerous labor, then through damaged land and water that sustain their communities. Safety Is a Political Choice The immediate responsibility is to support injured workers and bereaved families and publicly establish the causes of the collapse. A credible investigation should follow the money through the operation and examine why conditions were allowed to become lethal. Nariño's miners need rights they can exercise before an accident, not only condolences afterward. The people who extract Colombia's wealth should not be treated as disposable labor. Fourteen deaths are a demand for a different mining policy, starting now. Reporting and Image Credit Reuters, 19 October 2026 — official death toll and governor's comments Cadena SER, 20 October 2026 — Nariño rescue and working conditions Cover photograph: Alliance for Responsible Mining, 2014, showing a small-scale miner at a responsible-practices operation in San Roque, Huila, Colombia. This is an archival contextual image, not the Chambero collapse, the victims or the rescue operation. CC BY 4.0. Photograph and image attribution — Wikimedia Commons Photo license — CC BY 4.0

Originally published August 24, 2026. Republished with permission. Co-authored with Tim Foley. Original article Reading by Tim Foley: I still find myself fuming at the way ostensibly well-informed individuals can stand right in the heart of the empire denouncing its targets, as we saw in the open letter that a group of left-wing western individuals addressed “to Iran’s political prisoners” framing Iran as a “source of oppression” equal to the US and its allies. It’s crazy this even needs to be said, but if you are a westerner your ONLY job is to oppose the abuses of the western empire. Not Iran. Not China. Not Russia, Cuba or North Korea. If you live in the US or one of its allied nations, then you live under the single most tyrannical and murderous power structure on earth, and that’s where your focus belongs. You do not have any legitimacy in squandering any of your energy and attention criticizing human rights abuses in empire-targeted nations while living under a globe-spanning empire that is fueled by a nonstop river of human blood. It is not okay for you to use your western privilege to attack the nations your own government is working to absorb into the power structure you live under. Whenever I say this online I’ll get some Trotskyist or anarchist babbling about the need to express “solidarity” with Iranian political prisoners or whatever, but whenever I press them on what actual, material benefit those expressions of “solidarity” bring to the people they’re meant to help, they can’t point to anything solid. Whereas I can point to some very obvious ways in which contributing to an imperial war propaganda campaign can help grease the wheels for real material actions which hurt actual Iranians. They're doing the meme pic.twitter.com/09TojGfox2 — Perfectly Omicronulent (@analass666) August 22, 2026 If you’re a westerner, you have an obligation to use your voice responsibly. If you are feeding into the latest “the people in the empire-targeted nation need liberation from their evil tyrannical government” war propaganda narrative with your expressions of “solidarity” and your blind insistence on treating all bad things as equally bad, then you are using your western voice irresponsibly, and you are morally culpable for the mass slaughter you help facilitate with your recklessness. It’s not okay to be a citizen of the western empire and act like human rights abuses in an empire-targeted nation are of equal or comparable concern to the far more egregious abuses of your own leaders and their allies. It’s also not okay to be a fully grown adult and believe the use of force in empire-targeted governments is happening separately from their targeting by the empire, as though Iran would look the way it looks today if the US and Israel had not been working to collapse and control it for generations. Iran has only survived the latest imperial onslaught because Tehran tightly controls what happens in that country. The only reason we didn’t see Xinjiang absorbed into the western power umbrella with the help of CIA-backed separatists is because Beijing waged a sweeping crackdown on the extremist factions who’d been launching attacks in the territory. The only reason North Korea has gone relatively unmolested by the western empire in recent years is because its government obtained nuclear weapons. It’s baby-brained analysis to pretend such things happen independently of the US and its allies working to take control of unabsorbed nations and force them into compliance with Washington’s capitalist world order. The western empire therefore makes the world a crueler and more abusive place not only by its direct acts of cruelty and abuse, but by the way it forces its targets to choose between (A) annihilation and (B) using extreme amounts of force to retain their sovereignty. The empire we live under is responsible for the vast majority of the dysfunction and misery in our world, and yet you as a westerner want to spend your time yelling at Iran? Fuck off, man. _______________ The best way to make sure you see everything I publish is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Originally published January 18, 2026. Republished with permission. Co-authored with Tim Foley. Original article Reading by Tim Foley: I support regime change in the United States. The real kind, not the “new face at the front desk every few years” kind. I’m all for overthrowing tyrannical power structures, I just think we should start with the worst one. Why should I support the violent overthrow of the US empire’s enemies while the US empire itself remains standing? Why should I want to help the one power structure that’s terrorizing and destroying nations around the world with the goal of total planetary domination? Why should I facilitate the propaganda campaign of the latest imperial regime change operation by talking about the tyranny and oppressiveness of the Official Bad Guy of the Day when it will do nothing but help the empire expand its global hegemony? In all these years no one has ever been able to give me a satisfactory answer to these questions. And I have asked them many times, in many different ways. If I’m at a crowded pub and there’s one guy going around beating people up and taking their wallets, I’m not going to be focused on the character of his victims, I’m going to be paying attention to the most glaring and urgent abuse dynamic in the room. Nobody else is mass murdering, starving and robbing populations around the world like the US and its allies are doing. No other power structure comes anywhere close. The US power alliance is unquestionably the most destructive and abusive entity in our world, and it also happens to be the power structure under which I live. This gives me a special responsibility to oppose its abuses. The only reason everything I just said isn’t completely obvious to everyone is because we live in a mind-controlled dystopia where people are aggressively propagandized from birth into believing our rulers are more or less the Good Guys and the nations they target are more or less the Bad Guys. That’s the only reason anyone thinks it makes sense to watch my tirades against US warmongering and go “Hmm and yet you have nothing bad to say about Iran and Russia? You must be getting PAID by them!” Over the years I’ve been accused of being a paid propagandist or secret agent for Russia, China, Iran, Qatar, Hamas, Hezbollah, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, and probably some others I’ve forgotten. People who live in the western empire make these assumptions whenever they see me opposing the latest imperial power grab because they’re so propaganda-addled that they cannot conceive of the possibility of someone standing against the empire’s abuses on principle. Their minds flail around searching for reasons for my behavior, and all they can come up with is that I’m some kind of state operative. People act like my focusing my criticisms on the western empire is a sign of something malignant and suspicious, but it isn’t. It’s not strange that I focus my criticisms on the western empire, it’s strange that everyone else does not. If we didn’t live in a civilization where our psyches are continually assaulted by a deluge of empire propaganda from every direction, nothing I’m saying here would even need to be explained. Regime change the United States. Not its fake official elected government: its real government. The oligarchs and government agencies which actually run the thing. Replace its empire managers and empire management institutions with real democracy which gives the American people real authority over the actions of their own government, rather than the fake decoy elections they have now. Regime change the United States, and regime change all its imperial member states. Australia. The UK. Israel. Canada. The EU. The entire imperial core. If you have done this and you still want to talk about how mean and bad the Iranian government is, THEN I might listen to you. THEN I might take some interest in what you have to say. Until then, you’re just one more mindless imperial bootlicker trying to advance the interests of the power structure under which you live. _______________ The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Feature image via Central Intelligence Agency/Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Originally published October 12, 2026. Republished with permission. Co-authored with Tim Foley. Original article Video reading by Tim Foley: Israel is so evil that it’s actually illegal for Israelis to tell the truth about it. Benjamin Netanyahu has just ordered Israel’s military, its attorney general, and its security agency Shin Bet to investigate and prosecute the soldiers who anonymously shared their experiences in the Gaza Strip with the award-winning investigative documentary “NAZA”. According to Haaretz, Netanyahu accused the soldiers of “serious information security offenses, criminal defamation and harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests,” adding that “there is concern that those involved in the defamatory film committed serious criminal offenses by exposing highly classified information and creating a breach in the information security of a highly sensitive intelligence unit.” Netanyahu’s accusations of “defamation” are contradicted by his other accusation of “exposing highly classified information”. The 24 soldiers interviewed for the film are being prosecuted not because they told lies about Israel, but because they told the truth. The prime minister is claiming the truth causes “harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests” because Israel is a state that can only exist on a foundation of endless lies. 🚨Netanyahu accidentally confirms NAZA's exposè Instead of Israel's earlier claim that the movie is a "hoax," Netanyahu is formally saying the soldiers in NAZA "exposed classified information" & "breached information security in a sensitive intelligence unit" pic.twitter.com/FUhIIvuXZR — Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) October 11, 2026 If Israel considers the truth a national security threat, then Israel should not exist. “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” This quote by PC Hodgell certainly applies to an apartheid state which assassinates Palestinian journalists, bans the foreign press from witnessing its atrocities in Gaza, constantly attacks press outlets who report on its abuses, spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on foreign propaganda, and prosecutes soldiers who tell the truth about its war crimes. It also applies to the US empire, which prosecutes whistleblowers, imprisons journalists for exposing US war crimes, shrouds its actions in a veil of government secrecy, exerts extensive control over the flow of information via Silicon Valley, and manipulates the minds of the public using the most sophisticated propaganda system ever devised. It also applies to abusive relationships that would collapse if the community could see what was happening, or if the victim fully understood what was being done to them. It also applies to marriages where one spouse isn’t being truthful about who they are and what they do in secret. It also applies to worldviews that would crumble if contradicting facts were heard and deeply listened to with courage and intellectual honesty. It also applies to the psychological constructs we hold within ourselves that were built when we were too young to understand the traumas we were experiencing and the maladaptive coping habits we were subconsciously forming to deal with them. It also applies to the ego itself, which dissolves when sufficient attention and clarity has been brought to its mechanisms through rigorous self-inquiry. Netanyahu signed a formal letter ordering the IDF chief, Shin Bet head, and Attorney General to open a criminal investigation against everyone involved in the NAZA film. He demands an urgent investigation into the soldiers (serving and discharged from Unit 8200) who were… pic.twitter.com/DUZyIJfgXj — Clash Report (@clashreport) October 11, 2026 At all levels, human dysfunction is held in place by untruth and dispelled by truth. The lies we hold onto as individuals, as communities, and as a society are what allows suffering and abuse to continue at whatever scale you’re looking at. Humanity’s collective quest is to become a truth-driven species with a truth-based relationship with reality, because if you’re not dealing with reality as it actually is then you’re not able to respond to your challenges with wisdom and efficacy. We move in this direction by seeing through the mental narratives and perceiving reality as it is actually happening: as individuals, as a society, and as a species. Tell the truth uncompromisingly, come what may. Let all that would crumble under untruth do so as swiftly as possible. May all be revealed. Let us face the ever-expanding light of truth with heroic courage. _________________ My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you feel inspired. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. No generative AI used in any works. Feature image is a screen grab from Israeli PM on YouTube (public domain).

Originally published October 8, 2026. Republished with permission. Co-authored with Tim Foley. Read the original article I never asked to know what a dismembered child looks like. Israel imposed that knowledge upon me. I never wanted to know what it looks like when military explosives blow an infant’s head off. I only know it because Israel forced me to know it. The reason the Gaza holocaust hit westerners so hard is because it punched through the wall of our shitbrained western supremacist narcissism and our vapid mainstream culture and shook us violently awake to something real and terrifying. All of a sudden the idea that our bombs are killing people in the middle east was no longer a vague abstraction sitting in the periphery of our awareness. It was a reality hitting us right in the guts in the middle of the day while we casually scrolled our phones, forcing us to run to the toilet to vomit up our lunch. It made it personal. We were being kicked in the stomach over and over again by the state of Israel with the backing of our own western governments. The abuse of the Palestinians wasn’t something that was happening exclusively to the Palestinians; to a much smaller degree, it was also something that was happening to everyone who witnessed it. Westerners aren’t accustomed to such confrontations. We are accustomed to bustling around in our mind-controlled dystopia with our first world problems and our neuroses and distractions, our attention going into treats and screens and our consumerist preferences and the petty dramas playing out in our respective social circles. Then all of a sudden we find ourselves in the bathroom puking up our sushi because our phone had just shown us the most unimaginably horrific thing we have ever seen. And we were at all times aware that all the nausea and horror and rage and disgust we experienced when witnessing the Gaza holocaust happened because of the real material actions of real material people. The Israelis were deliberately causing as much devastation as possible to advance their longstanding goal of forcibly transferring all Palestinians out of Gaza. Our leaders were deliberately stalling and equivocating from behind their podiums to buy Israel enough time to make Gaza uninhabitable. We all understood that the waking nightmare we were witnessing was not some natural disaster that was passively occurring; it was being actively inflicted by people who were fully aware of what they were doing. That’s the sort of thing that changes you as a person. Changes your whole worldview. Changes your politics. Changes your beliefs. The average westerner needs to do a lot of internal restructuring to truly reckon with the Gaza holocaust and all its implications. That, I think, has been the biggest reason why the genocide of the Palestinians has gotten so much attention and sympathy. It’s because its live-streamed nature caused it to affect us in ways other acts of mass military slaughter usually don’t. Westerners are so propaganda-addled and indoctrinated that we are largely apathetic to what our bombs are doing to human bodies on the other side of the world. It’s only when we are given some skin in the game, as in the Vietnam draft, that we start caring in any politically significant way. Gaza gave us skin in the game in the way it entered into our lives through our electronic devices and showed us things that were so jarring it left a permanent mark upon our lives. Gaza forced us to look, and forced us to see, against all the efforts the propagandists have expended trying to keep us from noticing such things. That’s why this thing isn’t going away. People are only getting angrier and angrier. The empire has spent three years scrambling around unsuccessfully trying to get us to close our eyes again, and it keeps failing and failing and failing. Caitlin Johnstone’s work is reader-supported. All works are co-authored with Tim Foley. Support Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley Replacement feature photograph: destruction in Jabalia, Gaza, October 16, 2024. Hussein Jaber / UNRWA, CC BY 4.0. Cropped version by IOHANNVSVERVS via Wikimedia Commons. Image license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Headline card: Pamphlets, using the credited photograph. Article text © Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley; republished with permission.

Originally published September 22, 2026. Republished with permission. Co-authored with Tim Foley. Read the original article The biggest AI threat isn’t artificial superintelligence wiping out humanity in a fit of mechanical vengeance like some digital Old Testament God, it’s the same oligarchs and empire managers as usual inflicting the same evils and abuses as usual upon their fellow man. We’re already presently watching the empire building AI into its killing machines and causing all kinds of horrifying problems while these technologies become more and more complex and unpredictable. CNN reports that US military AI “almost started a war” with China when it hallucinated intelligence showing a Chinese ship transporting nuclear weapon components to Iran; US military planes were apparently already in the air preparing to attack the vessel before human intelligence picked up on the error. NEW: An AI-assisted intel report sent the military scrambling to intercept a Chinese ship in the Middle East it believed was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program. It turned out to be a hallucination. And it "almost started a war." https://t.co/xXZHEE64M6 — Katie Bo Lillis (@KatieBoLillis) September 18, 2026 A recent Pentagon report has officially concluded that an over-reliance on Palantir’s AI-powered command-and-control system Maven contributed to the bombing of a school in Minab which killed 120 children attending classes on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran. We learned early on in the Gaza holocaust that the IDF was using AI to help it bomb suspected Hamas members when they are at home with their families rather than when they are out in the battlefield using a program called “Where’s Daddy?” — a bit of Israeli humor about the fact that they would be killing the children of Palestinian resistance fighters when their fathers came home. We’re seeing politicians like Bernie Sanders voice concerns that “AI could soon be smarter than humans and function outside of our control,” but the most obvious and imminent threat right now is not that artificial intelligence will outsmart us and escape our control, it’s that it is being fully controlled by humans who are stupid and evil. Scientists and industry leaders have been increasingly clear: AI could soon be smarter than humans and function outside of our control. For the sake of all of humanity, Trump and Xi must negotiate a treaty NOW to pause AI and ban superintelligence before it is too late. pic.twitter.com/nL0Ias2fDb — Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 21, 2026 Again, we know for a fact that powerful nuclear-armed military forces are knitting AI into all their systems. We’re watching them do it, right in front of our faces. An increasingly complex and confusing element has been added to an environment of already tense and dangerous military standoffs around the world as the US and its allies work to absorb the few remaining nations who have managed to retain sovereignty into the imperial power umbrella. And yet recent weeks have seen the mass media flooded with punditry speculating about possible scenarios under which AI might perhaps wind up leading to human extinction. We already know the most likely scenario under which AI will get us all killed. If it happens, it will be because rich and powerful sociopaths knit these technologies into war machinery that is designed for killing humans at mass scale. Duh. These developments are unfolding in the context of a frenetic new arms race with China in which nobody’s willing to tap the brake pedal for fear of falling behind. Any talk of regulation or slowing things down before they get out of control is dismissed because the competition-based systems which currently govern human behavior have thrust us into a nightmare of constant military expansionism and brinkmanship instead of collaboration and harmony, all fueled by the fact that this paradigm makes tech plutocrats and war profiteers obscenely wealthy. That’s clearly the most immediate existential threat that AI poses to our species right now. There’s also the only slightly less frightening threat of artificial intelligence enabling our rulers to use mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems to stifle any revolutionary political movement before it gets off the ground, locking us into this freakish capitalist dystopia until the planet is an uninhabitable wasteland. In any case, this isn’t a new threat. It’s the same old threat with new toys. Capitalism must end, and the empire must fall. Our very existence depends on it. Caitlin Johnstone’s work is reader-supported. All works are co-authored with Tim Foley. Support Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley Replacement feature photograph: the Pentagon, May 15, 2023. U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Alexander Kubitza / Department of Defense. Public domain. Headline card: Pamphlets, using the credited photograph. Article text © Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley; republished with permission.

Originally published on CaitlinJohnstone.com.au, October 17, 2026. Republished under the author’s public permission. Co-authored with Tim Foley. Video reading by Tim Foley: ❖ Today in dystopia, the military-industrial complex is reassuring investors that the wars will indeed be endless. Asked about concerns over falling defense stocks in a recent interview on CNBC, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet replied, “Investors need to know and understand that this demand is not fleeting — it’s permanent.” In 2023 Taiclet called Washington’s soaring military budget “as good an outcome as our industry or our company could ask for.” These people are such evil freaks. War profiteering should be fucking illegal. ❖ A Washington Post photojournalist was savagely beaten by a gang of Israeli settlers who were attacking Palestinian villagers on Friday, reportedly with the support of the IDF. The reporter, Heidi Levine, said her assailants “just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times” while she was wearing a clearly marked PRESS vest. This is why everyone hates Israel now. They just can’t seem to stop themselves from doing evil things in broad daylight. The western political/media class are always making up bogus excuses for Israel’s plummeting worldwide approval rating, from antisemitism to TikTok to Iranian propaganda, but ultimately public opinion of Israel is falling because there’s a glaring contradiction between Israel’s PR interests and the way Israelis actually conduct themselves. In other words, Israel’s PR problem is caused by Israeli behavior. They can increase their propaganda budget as much as they like and western hasbarists can churn out all the narrative spin in the world, but it still won’t cancel out what happens when you just film Israelis doing Israeli things. ❖ A judge in Brazil’s top electoral court ruled on Thursday that Meta has been algorithmically favoring right wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro over President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, instructing the social media titan to cease its election interference and begin providing equal treatment to both candidates. Meta’s own employees have acknowledged election interference favoring Bolsonaro over Lula, as Reuters reports: “Meta employees acknowledged in internal communications that the Instagram accounts of Brazilian ​President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were hindered by ‌restrictions during the country’s election, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported on Friday, citing messages it reviewed. “The messages also acknowledged the platform recommended the profile ​of challenger Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, as well as his ​WhatsApp channel, according to the report.” This Zuckerberg scale-tilting is a reminder of why right wing “populism” has been so successful: it is able to posture as a revolutionary anti-establishment movement while still retaining the backing of western oligarchs and empire managers. It gets the votes that come with opposing the status quo without actually opposing the status quo. It gets the popularity of revolutionary politics with none of the cost. Capitalism leads to dissatisfaction, so some charismatic wingnut stands up and goes “You know, the problem is that we haven’t capitalismed hard enough! Those fat cats at the top don’t want you do know this, but what we actually need is MORE capitalism! MORE wealth for the wealthy! MORE authoritarianism! MORE abuse of the marginalized! And we should probably also send way more money to Israel for some reason!” It’s a complete scam from top to bottom, but it works. It exacerbates all the problems we’d already been seeing because doing more of the same stuff that created the problems isn’t going to solve the problems, but the human mind is very hackable, and people are easily duped. These Trumpian fraudsters are able to ride popular sentiments of discontent into elected office with the backing of all the plutocratic parasites who’ve been leeching off the voters this entire time. We’ve been seeing it in the United States, we’ve been seeing it in Brazil, we’ve been seeing it in Argentina, Italy, India, and in surging iterations of the same scam in various political factions all around the world. The question is, what comes next? What comes after people see through the scam and realize their beloved Trumps and Bolsonaros were working for the same establishment they despised and bolstering the status quo they’d been suffering under this whole time? Whatever the backlash is, we can be sure the empire will try to find some way to manipulate it and steer yet another generation back into support for the capitalist world order. ❖ Sinesto on Twitter asks, “Hi Caitlin. You are brilliant on Palestine, but I still don’t get why you are not sympathetic to the people of Ukraine?” Well Sinesto I am sympathetic to the people of Ukraine. That’s why I want a negotiated settlement to end the war, which is what polls say the people of Ukraine want, rather than continuing to force them to keep fighting and dying in a war they don’t support like the people of Washington want to do. ❖ I refuse to even think about claims that chatbots are conscious beings whose rights must be protected until I live in a society where all humans are treated as conscious beings whose rights must be protected. ❖ Basically there are three different groups: 1. People who know things are fucked but are too busy, exhausted and propaganda-addled to oppose the status quo. 2. People who benefit from status quo fuckery. 3. People who know things are fucked and fight the status quo. Group 1 is the largest. Group 3 is the smallest. Right now those of us in the third group can’t do anything about the exhaustion and busyness of the people in the first group, but we CAN do something about how confused and propagandized they are. The most important thing you can do to help nudge us toward revolution at this juncture in history is therefore to inform, educate and spread awareness to counteract all the status quo indoctrination keeping public consciousness away from revolutionary politics. By doing this we can start moving people from Group 1 into Group 3. Once Group 3 outnumbers Group 2, things will start moving very fast. ____________________ My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you feel inspired. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. No generative AI used in any works. Feature image is a screen grab from CNBC (fair use).

Originally published on October 16, 2026. Republished under the author’s public permission. Co-authored with Tim Foley. Original article — CaitlinJohnstone.com.au During a speech at the Las Vegas Sphere on Saturday, Metallica frontman James Hetfield took aim at artists like Macklemore for making political statements about the genocide in Gaza during their concerts. “I just gotta say, Metallica is not here, like some other entertainers, to influence you with their bullshit, okay?” said Hetfield, adding, “We’re here to forget about all the outside shit, okay? Metallica’s agenda is love, energy and heavy music, baby!” Defenders of imperial status quo apathy like Matt Taibbi are presently defending Hetfield from the backlash his comments are receiving, arguing that art exists on some kind of magical higher plane that transcends such trivial “political” concerns like whether or not genocide is bad. I have no respect for this idea that art is somehow separable from politics. ALL art is political when you live in a genocidal dystopia, because all your expression exists in relation to our freakish civilization. If you were on fire, any action OR inaction on your part would necessarily be happening in relationship to the urgency of your situation. If you chose to stand there strumming your guitar while the flames consumed your body, nobody would try to argue that your artistic expression in that moment was somehow separable from your failure to address your urgent need for extinguishment. Your inaction would be a self-destructive act, and your final song would have been about burning to death — whether you sang anything about fire or not. In exactly the same way, western artists who ignore the abuses of the western empire are taking a political position and sharing a political message. They might be singing about romance, or dancing, or the Sandman, but their actual message is, “Here are those circuses you ordered, you vapid NPCs, you mindless empire automatons, you shambling zombies consuming the flesh of the third world. Distract yourselves from the burning ecosystem, from the screams of Gaza, from the suffering of the poor and the marginalized, from the AI-assisted surveillance system they are constructing all around you right this very moment. Pretend everything’s fine and capitalism is working out great for everyone. Here you go, you empty-headed human livestock, sedate yourself with some catchy rhythms while our rulers turn our world into a desert planet so a few billionaires can become trillionaires.” I always suspected Matt Taibbi actually was a useless idiot. And now he’s come clean. Who’s more important Matt? The Mona Liza or Hind Rajab? Matt scratches his head. Ok Matt, The Mona Liza is a painting, Hind Rajab is our sister. https://t.co/lfBHVraWeD — Roger Waters ✊ (@rogerwaters) October 15, 2026 Real art tells the truth, and facilitates a deeper connection with reality. It pulls us into intimacy with parts of ourselves we’d been neglecting, draws attention to aspects of the human experience we’d avoided, directs us, rebukes us, inspires us, encourages us, emboldens us and reassures us as we crawl forth on our adventure across this mysterious blue planet during our short few decades between birth and death. And in a healthy world it could do all these things without ever getting “political”, because the most urgent needs of the moment would typically just involve our feelings, our interpersonal relationships, and our struggle toward self-actualization. But we do not live in a healthy world. We live under a tyrannical world-eating empire that is fueled by human blood and suffering. That is our reality, and your art is either real about reality or it isn’t. You’re either telling the truth about reality or you’re normalizing it. It’s easy for the rich and the propaganda-addled to believe we are living in a healthy world where everything’s basically fine, but for everyone whose eyes are open to the reality of our situation as a species, it’s a five-alarm fire. A real artist is in tune with reality, and in this particular slice of spacetime our reality contains horrors that should be treated with the same urgency as we would have if our clothing caught fire. Telling artists to shut up about politics is telling them to stop being artists and start being propagandists for the empire. It’s telling them, “Don’t say anything unless you have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say. Your job isn’t to incite, your job is to distract and sedate. Your job isn’t to blow on the embers of human brilliance, your job is to play the fiddle while we smooth the pillow of a dying world.” Fuck that. Make art. Be brilliant. Fight the empire. Free Palestine. ___________________ My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you feel inspired. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. No generative AI used in any works. Feature image by Dennis Radaelli — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78819699 Support Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley Photograph: Dennis Radaelli — Wikimedia Commons original Photo license: CC BY-SA 4.0 — photograph reproduced without alteration

Originally published on CaitlinJohnstone.com.au, October 18, 2026. Republished under the author’s public permission. Co-authored with Tim Foley. Video reading by Tim Foley: All our problems basically come down to narrative control. People are manipulated into believing the story that Israel’s existence must be preserved at all cost because of this religious belief or that political ideology. People are manipulated into believing the story that western elections are real and that voting in the two-party system is the only path toward beneficial policies. People are manipulated into believing the story that capitalism is the best possible system, and that socialism always fails (organically, all by itself) because its tenets go against human nature. People are manipulated into believing the story that the US-led liberal world order, while perhaps flawed, is still our best shot at a just and stable world. People are manipulated into believing the story that the mass media are telling us the truth about our society and the world, and that everything works pretty much the way we were taught in school. People are successfully manipulated in these ways because the wealthiest among us control the media and own all the largest platforms, which gives them a very high degree of narrative control. They decide what stories get told to the largest audiences about how the world works, so they control public perception of reality. This has been happening for generations, so we grow up with our parents, teachers, preachers and pundits teaching us the narratives that they were trained to believe when they were young. So we grow up marinating in this. It’s so rife throughout our society that most people don’t even notice it’s happening; they just think all those narratives are what reality objectively looks like. But they’re not. They’re just thoughts. Mental noises. Stories made of words. Pick any of them apart and you’ll find that’s all they are: empty narrative fluff. Their power comes entirely from large numbers of people imbuing those narratives with the power of belief. The consciousness of the average human is dominated by mental stories, so if you can control the mental stories the average humans are telling themselves, then you can control the humans. Get them buying into your preferred narratives about reality and you can exert huge degrees of influence over the way they think, speak, work, shop, live, and vote. Our entire civilization looks the way it looks because of this vast network of influence. It’s what made the Gaza holocaust possible, what makes homelessness possible, what makes ecocide possible, what makes war and militarism possible. If the public were not being successfully manipulated into accepting the narratives which justify these realities, then everyone would start un-jacking their minds from the psychological control network and building the kind of world they would prefer to see. And what’s interesting is that believed mental narrative is also the source of suffering in humans as individuals. The only reason you’re unable to be present in the moment and rest in peaceful contentment with a serene mind is because of all the thought-stories about reality that you are holding onto inside yourself, both consciously and unconsciously. As we grow up and experience traumas in early childhood, we start forming beliefs about reality and who we are and how we need to be, which we then carry in our bodies deep into adulthood. With a lot of inner work we can begin releasing these old beliefs and freeing up the energy our bodies have been feeding into them this whole time, liberating ourselves from the internal commotion and dysfunction they cause. “I am unworthy.” “I am deficient.” “The world is a hostile place and I need to protect myself from it.” The young human organism forms all these belief constructs about itself and its reality, and then those beliefs quickly become maladaptive because they were built in youthful naivety without taking real-time feedback from life’s ever-changing circumstances. It is only by becoming aware of them and consciously removing the power of belief from them that they release their grip on our lives. It’s a challenging process, but if you take it deep enough it will completely transform your entire experience of reality in some surprising and delightful ways. You will discover that even your most fundamental assumptions about what you are, what your world is, and how your experience is happening were never anything more than believed thoughts held on a subtle energetic level, and that life is so much simpler and more peaceful than you had ever imagined it could be. Our collective untangling from believed mental narrative is unfolding in the same way. Gradually we are learning together that everything we were indoctrinated into believing about our world and how it’s happening was completely false from top to bottom, and we are beginning to deconstruct our power-serving worldviews one by one. The more this happens, the weaker the hold our rulers will have on our minds at mass scale. The less we buy into the old narratives, the less capable the manipulators will be of influencing our thoughts, words and actions to their advantage. And from there, anything is possible. If human consciousness becomes liberated from believed mental narrative on all levels, we could truly have paradise on earth. I am more convinced then ever that this is possible. I am more convinced than ever that it is already happening. __________________ My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you feel inspired. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. No generative AI used in any works. Cover: Caitlin Johnstone’s official author portrait, from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au.

DUBLIN — Ireland’s public-sector unions took their pay fight into the Workplace Relations Commission on October 19 after a mass strike broke the deadlock over negotiations. Teachers and doctors have suspended the planned October 21 stoppage while retaining work-to-rule action. Workers have secured movement at the negotiating table; a settlement that restores their purchasing power still has to be won. The new framework puts pay first, including union claims covering the cost-of-living squeeze between 2021 and 2025, the current year and the period of a future agreement. Both the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation and Irish Medical Organisation confirmed that sequence. It addresses the central issue behind the dispute: what public servants’ wages can actually buy. Fórsa members on a Dublin picket line, pictured on the union’s website in October 2026. Photo: Fórsa. The pressure behind the breakthrough The October 14 walkout demonstrated the breadth of organised labour across public services. INTO reported pickets at more than 3,200 primary and special schools, with tens of thousands of its members participating. The union described the mobilisation as the largest in its history. Those workers have bills that cannot be suspended while ministers debate a negotiating framework. In its October 12 statement, Unite reported that 34% of public-sector respondents to its summer cost-of-living survey had fallen behind on essential payments over the previous year, up from 26% in the spring survey. Some 37% had borrowed to cover household costs, compared with 33% previously. These are findings from Unite’s surveyed members, rather than estimates for every public servant. They nevertheless show why union members rejected the idea that a government job automatically provides financial security. A wage can rise on paper while rent, transport and household bills consume the increase. The strike is suspended; the dispute continues INTO’s October 19 update says members must continue refusing cooperation with Croke Park hours and formal staff and parent-teacher meetings outside school hours. The IMO separately confirmed that its work-to-rule remains in place. Suspending Wednesday’s full stoppage therefore does not amount to ending industrial action. The government-appointed group also recognised the need to rebuild trust by addressing commitments from the previous agreement. Its proposed mechanism allows an impasse on one issue to be referred back to the group while talks on other matters proceed. That creates a route through procedural blockages; it does not determine the size or distribution of a pay award. Public services depend on the people who provide them The class question is straightforward. Schools, hospitals and public offices depend on workers whose living standards cannot be treated as a residual budget item. Asking them to absorb repeated price increases transfers the cost of maintaining public services onto their own households. Pamphlets’ view is that the result must be judged by whether it repairs lost purchasing power, protects lower-paid grades and honours commitments already made. An announcement that negotiations have begun cannot pay a worker’s overdue bill. INTO says any draft agreement it secures should go to a membership ballot. That is where the next decisive test belongs: with the workers who created the pressure for talks and will have to live under the deal. Sources INTO: October 19 pay talks and continuing industrial action Irish Medical Organisation: negotiating framework and work-to-rule Unite: pay demands and member cost-of-living survey INTO: October 14 mobilisation

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s legal-aid workers resumed strike action on October 19 over unpaid performance incentives, frozen vacancies and deteriorating conditions, bringing the fight over public-service funding into the justice system. The dispute concerns the staff who make legal representation available to people who cannot afford a private lawyer. NovaNews reported participation by legal practitioners and support staff, with action in Johannesburg, Gqeberha, Durban and Bloemfontein. Legal Aid South Africa’s own public notice acknowledged reduced staffing and warned that service delivery could face delays. The institution said it had activated continuity measures and recognised the action as lawful and protected. File photograph of a Legal Aid South Africa community event, used by NovaNews with its October 19 strike report. This photograph does not depict the October 19 picket lines. Photo: NovaNews. A suspended dispute returns The South African Lawyers and Allied Workers Union, SALAWU, had suspended an earlier stoppage following action on June 17 and 18. In a formal October 14 notice reported by IOL, the union announced that it was lifting that suspension after accusing management, the justice ministry and Parliament’s justice committee of failing to resolve its demands. IOL reported that the grievances include outstanding occupational-specific dispensation payments and an unpaid 25% portion of the previous year’s incentive bonus. The union has also raised concerns about cost-reduction and rationalisation measures. Those fears should be understood as warnings from workers about the direction of the institution, rather than an announcement that retrenchments have begun. The return to the picket line shows how a temporary suspension can leave the underlying conflict untouched. Workers gave the institutions involved time to intervene. Their renewed action puts a practical demand before those institutions: settle the outstanding issues and provide the staffing needed to do the work. Access to justice has a workforce Legal Aid SA says its statutory mandate is to safeguard access to justice for vulnerable and indigent people. That mandate depends on paid, supported staff. A right to representation becomes harder to exercise when offices have fewer people available to advise clients or prepare cases. The institution’s October 19 notice says some employees are striking and asks the public for patience while continuity arrangements operate. NovaNews also carried management’s assurance that clients would continue receiving assistance. These arrangements matter immediately for people seeking help, but they do not settle the labour dispute. The strike’s public significance therefore extends beyond the outstanding payments. When legal practitioners and support workers say vacancies and working conditions undermine their ability to serve people, they are identifying a weakness in the machinery through which a formal right becomes an actual service. Workers’ rights and clients’ rights belong together Pamphlets’ position is that the answer is a funded legal-aid service with decent conditions for its workforce. Leaving employees to absorb understaffing and unpaid entitlements shifts the burden onto both workers and people who rely on public representation. That is a class divide in practical form. People with money can purchase legal assistance. People without it depend much more heavily on public provision. Weakening that provision makes access to justice more dependent on income. The immediate test for management and the state is whether they produce a credible resolution to the outstanding payment and staffing grievances. A continuity plan can manage disruption for a time. A durable public service requires the people doing its work to have a reason to trust the institutions employing them. Sources Legal Aid South Africa: public notice on industrial action and service continuity NovaNews: workers resume nationwide action, October 19 IOL: union notice, payment demands and June dispute

VIENTIANE — The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party has instructed the state to confront illegal mineral extraction, repair flood-damaged infrastructure and ease pressure on living costs, linking its latest Central Committee decisions to problems that people face far from the capital. At an extraordinary plenary concluding October 1, the ruling Communist Party adopted three resolutions and issued additional instructions on mining, vehicles, farming and recovery from natural disasters. The meeting, chaired by Party General Secretary and President Thongloun Sisoulith, had been scheduled to run through October 2 but closed a day early after four days of discussion. The decisions followed the 12th Party Congress and are intended to translate national development directives into administrative action. They deserve to be judged not by how many directives were issued, but by whether damage is repaired and local communities gain more control over their material future. Illegal extraction is an economic question The Central Committee called for stricter action against illegal mining, timber cutting and other unauthorised natural-resource exploitation, alongside tighter controls on imported vehicles lacking proper registration. Mining can generate revenue, but extraction that bypasses rules can drain public resources, damage farmland and leave nearby residents with environmental costs while private operators keep the gains. A socialist approach to natural resources requires more than police raids. It requires public reporting of licences, a fair return from resource wealth, environmental protection and enforcement that reaches powerful offenders as well as small operators. Party leaders also called for anti-corruption measures and more transparent government practices. These commitments are meaningful only if they constrain those with influence. Flood recovery comes before grand promises The October guidance highlighted restoration of roads, irrigation networks and agricultural land damaged by floods. It directed special attention to families that lost relatives, homes or food supplies and called for seeds, farming advice, better market access and price information to support wet-season and dry-season agriculture. Officials survey severe road and landslide damage in Bolikhamxay in August 2026. Photo: Pasaxon. This image shows earlier flood damage, not the October Central Committee session. These are the kinds of investments that rarely generate foreign headlines but decide whether working families can live with security. A washed-out road can isolate a village from schools, clinics and markets. Broken irrigation systems can turn a single flood into months of lost income. Rebuilding them is therefore both disaster relief and an economic development programme. The challenge is accountable implementation The Party also spoke of rising living costs, rural poverty reduction, corruption, waste and bureaucratic bottlenecks. KPL, the Lao News Agency, reported a call for stronger practical results from both central and local officials. This is the pressure point: instructions from Vientiane do not automatically deliver seed to farmers, repairs to roads or a fair price at the market. Laos has chosen to use ruling-Party institutions to direct reconstruction and development. Their effectiveness should be visible in the countryside: functioning irrigation, transparent mining enforcement, repaired transport, improved rural incomes and aid that reaches households rather than getting stuck in paperwork. National sovereignty has substance when the wealth and infrastructure of the country work for the people who live there. Sources: Lao News Agency (KPL), 1 October 2026 Central Committee closing report — https://kpl.gov.la/En/detail.aspx?id=107845 ; KPL, 28 September 2026 opening report — https://kpl.gov.la/Fr/detail.aspx?id=107760 ; Vientiane Times, 29 September 2026 report — https://www.vientianetimes.org.la/sub-new/Previous_187_y26/freefreenews/freecontent_187_Party_y26.php . Lead photo: a separate 12th Party Central Committee session held in May 2026, Pasaxon. The October meeting is described from official reporting, not shown in the lead photograph.