Facebook restricted visibility of the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story in the lead-up to the 2020 election after receiving counsel from the FBI, according to Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Reading by Tim Foley.

When Billionaires And The Government Work Together To Control Information

As I learn more and more about global power dynamics and interact with more and more people around the world responding to the things I have to say, I find myself growing more and more disdainful of those who live directly under the thumb of the US empire and yet spend their time criticizing unabsorbed governments like Russia and China. It's literally the most pathetic, snivelling, power-serving position anyone can possibly take at this point in history.

Reading by Tim Foley.

It's Gross To Live Under The US Empire And Spend Your Time Criticizing Other Governments

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
None are more hopelessly ignorant than those who falsely believe they're informed.
None are more hopelessly propagandized than those who don't know they are propagandized.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Free Speech Doesn't Matter If Propagandists  Determine What People Say

One of the weirdest, most insane things happening today is the way the entire western world is being trained to freak out about "Russian propaganda" — which barely exists in the west — while ignoring the fact that we are spending every day marinating in billions of dollars worth of US empire propaganda.

Reading by Tim Foley.

We're Being Trained To Worry About 'Russian Propaganda' While Drowning In US Propaganda

It is a good time to appreciate the insects
and functioning supply chains
and normal weather
and the fact that there are whales.

It is a good time to appreciate our loved ones
and tell people what they mean to us
and throw ourselves into romance with wild abandon
and be naked and vulnerable with someone who is gentle.

It is a good time to live in continuous appreciation
for the sun on our face
for the birdsongs in our ears
for a fresh cup of coffee
for a child's laugh
for a lover's touch
for electricity and clean water
for a visible sky
for breathable air
for arable land
for a living world.

It is a good time to cherish this orgy of terrestriality
with everything we've got
for however long it is with us
so that if the time comes to say goodbye
we can tuck it in lovingly and kiss it goodnight
like a tired little boy
after a long day's play.
_________________

_________________

_________________

Reading by Tim Foley.

It Is A Good Time To Appreciate The Insects

"At a time when cross-domain transmedium threats to United States national security are expanding exponentially, the Committee is disappointed with the slow pace of DoD-led efforts to establish the office to address those threats," Warner writes in the report. 

"Exponentially" is a mighty strong word. Taken in its least literal sense, it means that threats to US national security from UFOs are increasing at an alarmingly rapid rate. That they have swiftly become much greater than they used to be.

What is the basis for this incendiary claim? What information are US lawmakers being given to make them draw such conclusions and make such assertions? There's a long chain of information handling between an alleged UFO encounter and a US senator's pen, and corruption can occur at any point in that chain (including the first and last link).

I remain comfortably agnostic about most aspects of the UFO question, up to and including the possibility that there are actual extraterrestrial or extradimensional beings zipping around our planet in technology our science cannot comprehend. But one thing I absolutely will take a hard and fast position on is that the moment the US government starts labeling something a "threat", all trust and credulity must be immediately be thrown out the window.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Who Benefits From US Government Claims That The UFO Threat Is Increasing 'Exponentially'?

A few days after the invasion began this past February a guy named Arnaud Bertrand put together an extremely viral Twitter thread that just goes on and on and on about the various diplomats, analysts and academics in the west who have over the years been warning that a dangerous confrontation with Russia was coming because of NATO advancements toward its borders, interventionism in Ukraine, and various other aggressions. It contains examples like John Mearsheimer explicitly warning in 2015 that "the west is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked," and Pat Buchanan warning all the way back in 1999 that "By moving NATO onto Russia's front porch, we have scheduled a twenty-first-century confrontation." 

Empire apologists love claiming that the invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with NATO expansionism (their claims generally based on brazen misrepresentations of what Vladimir Putin has said about Russia's reasons for the war), but that's silly. The US war machine was continuing to taunt the possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine right up until the invasion, a threat it refused to take off the table since placing it there in 2008 despite knowing full well that this threat was an incendiary provocation to Moscow.

This is to say nothing of the US empire actively fomenting a violent uprising in 2014 which ousted Kyiv's sitting government and fractured the nation between its more Moscow-loyal populations to the east and the more US/EU-friendly parts of the country. This led to the annexation of Crimea (overwhelmingly supported by the people who live there) and eight years of brutal warfare against Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas. Ukrainian attacks on those separatists are known to have increased exponentially in the days leading up to the invasion, and it has been argued that this is what provoked Putin's final decision to commit to invading (which was a last-minute decision according to US intelligence).

The US power alliance could very easily have prevented this war with a few low-cost concessions like enshrining Ukrainian neutrality, rolling back its war machinery from Russia's borders and sincerely pursuing detente with Moscow instead of shredding treaties and ramping up cold war escalations. Hell, it could likely have prevented this war just by protecting President Zelensky from the anti-Moscow far right nationalists who were openly threatening to lynch him if he began honoring the Minsk agreements and pursuing peace with Russia, as he was originally elected to do.

Instead it knowingly chose the opposite course: continuing to float the possibility of formal NATO membership for Ukraine while pouring weapons into the nation and making it more and more of a de facto NATO member with closer and closer intimacy with the US war machine, and then either ordering, encouraging or tolerating Ukraine's aggressive assault on Donbas separatists.

Reading by Tim Foley.

It's Not Okay For Grown Adults To Say The Ukraine Invasion Was "Unprovoked"

A jet airliner opens up and sends its passengers falling to earth. You'd expect them to scream, to cry, to cling to each other in fear, to prepare for the end, to pray, to think about their loved ones, but they don't. Instead, they turn on each other and start fighting.

"I hate you! I hate you!" they scream while flailing their fists at each other on their way down.

Some try to strangle each other to death. Some try to steal from each other. Some try to climb on top of others so that the other will die a fraction of a second sooner. Others cling to their possessions yelling "You'll never take what's mine!" and kick at anyone who comes too close.

They're all headed toward the same fate at the same time, but they turn on each other and try to get one over on each other during their short plummet instead of making peace with each other and with what's to come.

That's what our bizarre relationship with mortality is like. A giant vagina opens up in the sky and births babies who grow as they fall to their deaths, and they spend that short time hating, fighting, manipulating, and scheming against each other.

Of course it doesn't feel quite that way. Because of the way humans happen to perceive time it doesn't feel like a fast plummet toward death. From our point of view it seems to last just long enough for us to forget what's happening, to get distracted and get caught up in drama and conflict and opinions and grudges, and lose our focus on the great splat that awaits us below. 

But that is what's happening. We're all engaged in an intimate dance with death, whether we acknowledge that that's what's happening or not. We're in the thick of it. Everything we do in life is a ball that we're bouncing off the wall of that definite end from wherever we happen to be standing. It's the other end of the span of time where we get to be doing stuff on this planet, opposite where we are now. Death is standing on the same court as we are, hitting back every ball we serve.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Our Mortality Should Unite Us

Future generations, if there are future generations,
will scarce believe that our species once stockpiled armageddon weapons on purpose,
once built our entire civilization around economic models that could only result in the destruction of our biosphere,
once permitted corporations who profit from war to successfully lobby policymakers to start more wars,
once warehoused living beings in factory farms where they were tortured and brutalized,
once starved children to death with sanctions because their rulers disobeyed our rulers,
once made policies which kept people poor so they’d be financially coerced into facilitating military mass murder,
once let people go hungry and homeless if they didn’t have enough imaginary numbers in their bank accounts,
once stripped this planet of biodiversity and old growth forests to turn the gears of an imaginary economy instead of collaborating with our ecosystem.

Future generations, if there are future generations,
will look back in perplexity at our omnicidal madness,
at our blind subservience to the very worst among us,
at our remarkable ingenuity in always finding groundbreaking new ways to hate each other,
at our fanatical devotion to competition and control when we knew that all we really wanted was to be loved,
at the way we’d marginalize and outcast those who thought differently from the rest of us even though we knew full well that our way of thinking wasn’t working,
at the way we’d spend our lives feeding insatiable hungry ghosts only to wind up on our deathbeds wondering why we feel dissatisfied,
at the amount of energy we’d pour into not experiencing the beauty which surrounds us in every moment and rejecting the gifts we were being showered with from every direction,
at the herculean effort we poured into keeping enlightenment from crashing in,
at our nonstop desperate flailing attempts to be anywhere but here and now,
at the amount of work we put into avoiding being at ease.

Future generations, if there are future generations,
I am so glad that you made it past all the many obstacles we put up between our present age and your birth.
Praise be to you and your parents
for cleaning up our mess,
for setting things right,
for becoming conscious,
for valuing a healthy world,
for getting humanity to where you’re at now
so that the real adventure of our species could begin.

Future generations, if there are future generations,
thank you for your kindness and compassion as you gaze back on us through the records we have left you.
It might not be immediately obvious,
but some of us here saw what you’re seeing from there.

__________________

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Reading by Tim Foley.

Future Generations (If There Are Future Generations)

At the risk of upsetting the entire internet, the annexation of those four Ukrainian territories seems like a great time to end this war to me. Does anyone honestly believe a significant percentage of the people who live there want a massive counteroffensive on their doorstep? I don't.

The west knowingly provoked this war, the thing experts warned for years would happen did happen, and now Ukraine lost some territory. Rather than risking millions or billions of lives escalating this conflict, it seems sensible to draw a line under it. You can yell "Putin bad!" and "International law!" all you want, but it's just a cold hard fact that after the annexation the US/NATO/Ukraine tandem is going to be presented with the choice of either ending the bloodshed or massively, massively escalating it. Pretty easy choice, in my opinion.

Reading by Tim Foley.

This Would Be A Wise Stopping Point For This War

"Let the market decide" really means let the manipulators decide, because the markets are dominated by those who excel at manipulating. We're taught that letting the market decide means letting supply and demand take its natural course, as though we're talking about ocean tides or seasons or something, but in reality both supply and demand are manipulated constantly with extreme aggression. Manipulating the supply of diamonds. Manipulating the supply of housing. Manipulating the supply of oil. Manipulating people into wanting things they'd never thought to want before through advertising. Manipulating women into feeling bad about their bodies so they'll buy your beauty products. Manipulating people into paying $2000 for a $20 bag using branding. Manipulating people into buying Listerine by inventing the word "halitosis" and convincing them to be worried about it. Manipulating people into believing Beanie Babies were prized collectors items when they were just standard stuffed toys. 

Capitalism gives us a civilization that is dominated by trickery. Those who get to the top are those who succeed in tricking as many people as possible. Tricking them into paying more. Tricking them into buying your product and not someone else's. Tricking people who actually produce something of value into making you their middle man who gets paid despite producing nothing. Tricking competitors into making the wrong move. Tricking people into asking their doctor about your extremely lucrative pharmaceutical product. Tricking people into buying or selling certain stocks or cryptocurrencies or NFTs. Tricking people by using the legal system and your team of lawyers who understand it better than normal people do. Tricking people into letting you privatize their own drinking water and then selling it back to them in bottles. 

It's a scam competition. Whoever scams the best wins. How can you save the planet from destruction by human behavior when all of human behavior is driven by a bizarre scam competition? And the biggest scam of all is the narrative that this system is totally working and is entirely sustainable. That's the overarching scam holding all the other scams together.

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

Capitalism Is A Giant Scam

Readings of all Caitlin Johnstone's articles, usually by her co-writer Tim Foley.

Our Mortality Should Unite Us

Caitlin Johnstone

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