Editor’s note: In order to avoid online censorship for publishing dissenting narratives, today’s Caitlin Johnstone column has been replaced with a report from the National News Conglomerate, your trusted source for real news and authorized opinions. Obey.

BREAKING: Psychiatrists around the world are baffled by an emerging mental disorder which only seems to afflict the leaders of governments that refuse to capitulate to US interests, sources in the American Psychiatric Organization (APO) reported Saturday.

Early reports indicate that this strange new disorder, as yet unlisted in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), exclusively impacts world leaders who refuse to help the US and its growing body of client states advance American economic and geopolitical influence with their nations’ land, resources and people. Leaders who once exhibited behavior that is unremarkable for their regional, cultural and political environment suddenly transform into bloodthirsty tyrants who receive sexual gratification from the gratuitous murder of civilians as soon as their wish to retain national sovereignty becomes evident.

“It’s the darndest thing,” APO President Dr. Lewis Rafferty told NNC earlier today. “The disorder can carry a minor genetic component, as in the case of North Korea’s leadership whose entire lineage has been afflicted with an unprecedented condition which makes them likely to nuke Hawaii without provocation at any second unless aggressively sanctioned and surrounded with a vast military arsenal. But the fundamental antecedent of the illness always appears to be a general unwillingness to give the US war machine and its allied oligarchs exactly what they want at any given moment.”

Dr. Rafferty reports that an earlier theory had once speculated that this new mental disorder is actually the symptom of some sort of airborne virus, since it has infected the leadership of neighboring nations Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

“We had thought that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad had somehow contracted the disease from Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, since the accusations we are seeing leveled against them are virtually identical in many important ways,” Rafferty said. “But we later ruled that out when we realized that a more likely cause is the fact that both nations have shared similar alliances, resources, and geopolitical goals throughout recent history, and both have refused to be effectively annexed in all but name by the new imperialism of the US power establishment.”

Assad’s condition has been growing steadily worse as Russian assistance has thwarted previous humanitarian regime change efforts by the US and its allies, now dropping an assortment of chemical weapons, barrel bombs and napalm upon civilians for no discernible reason despite having every strategic incentive to avoid doing so.

“Bashar al-Assad is a very bad man, and President Trump must throw him into jail for what he has done to the children of Syria,” reports senior NNC war correspondent Bana Alabed. “Together, we can help them. Together, we can save them. Together, we can help the US prevent the Russian Federation from securing key oil and gas resources in a key strategic location, thus disrupting the rise of a potential rival superpower in the Russia-China tandem as per the goals outlined by the Project for the New American Century. Googoo gaga, I am a little girl.”

“It actually kind of makes sense,” adds another psychiatrist named Dr. Shmon ShmcCain who phoned in to NNC during the investigation for this report. “Since America is only ever pure good, you could see how those who fall away from its benevolent guidance would quickly turn to pure evil. It is therefore our responsibility to use any means necessary to remove those tyrants from power the second they begin acting in their own national interests, my friends.”

“Bomb Iran,” ShmcCain added.

_______________________

Thanks for reading! My daily articles are entirely reader-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, bookmarking my website, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.