JOHNSTONE

Biden is lying. The US is deliberately surrounding China with war machinery and has been for years, and has rapidly escalated its efforts to do so during Biden’s term. There are currently no fewer than 313 US military bases in East Asia by the Pentagon’s own admission, with the Biden administration adding four new ones in the Philippines. Biden’s war machine has been busy instituting the AUKUS alliance which is specifically set up to menace China, moving nuclear-capable bombers to Indonesia, signing a military deal with Papua New Guinea, working to station missile-armed marines at Japan’s Okinawa islands, staging provocations in Taiwan, and getting into increasingly confrontational encounters with Chinese military vessels and aircraft off China’s coast as part of its dramatically increased military presence in the area.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The New York Times excludes some crucial information about cluster bombs from its headline, The Washington Post and Guardian have some interesting views on NATO membership for Ukraine, and, surprise! John Bolton loves cluster munitions.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Professional psychopath John Bolton has an article out with The Hill titled "America can't permit Chinese military expansion in Cuba" which inadvertently spells out exactly what's wrong with the way the US empire keeps amassing heavily armed proxy forces on the borders of its large Asiatic enemies.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Anyone who is capable of honest self-reflection and critical thinking understands that the "self-made man" is a myth of our culture; that anyone who amasses a fortune does so on the backs of many other people whose work made it possible, and found the opportunity to do so because of the circumstances they happened upon by chance of birth, conditioning and sheer dumb luck.

And it's worth highlighting that this is also true of all other personal circumstances, including those that people in this slice of the online community might take pride in. One doesn't for example become aware of the manipulations of the powerful and the deceptions of the media because they are particularly smart and virtuous, they do so because they were lucky enough to find information from others which helped them form this understanding, and because their personal conditioning allowed them to take that information in and let it inform their worldview.

Similarly, one doesn't wind up opposing capitalism because of any personal specialness or righteousness; one finds themselves opposing capitalism because they happened upon socialist ideas after having meandered through a life which gave them the conditioning necessary for them to seriously consider those perspectives and take them on board. If their life had unfolded differently, through no fault or virtue of their own, they never would have happened upon those ideas, or if they had they would not have been receptive to them.

I said "Anyone who is capable of honest self-reflection and critical thinking" above, but even those gifts come upon us largely by sheer dumb luck, brought to us by other people in the form of information and conditioning throughout our lives.

My point is we're all just kind of muddling our way through this thing, and our successes and failures (by whatever metric we measure success and failure) are due more to the unfolding of humanity's collective consciousness than any brilliance or defectiveness on our own part.

Obviously we must all try to do our very best with the hand that we were dealt in life, but it's probably a good idea to harbor some compassion for those who don't get it as right as we do in our eyes. We were all born into a world saturated with propaganda and dominated by abusive systems, and ultimately the degree to which we are able to see our way around in that world says as much about how good or bad we are as a seed landing on rich or sandy earth says about the quality of the seed.

Reading by Tim Foley.

I was 19 the first time I was raped.

Backpacking through Europe, drugged, woke up being sodomised over a toilet bowl in some Italian hotel bathroom.

Blood everywhere.

Memories were fuzzy through whatever it was he slipped me, but I recall fumbling with the doorknob trying to get out, unable to understand why it wasn't opening, then looking down and seeing that he had his foot up against the bottom of the door.

Earlier that day I'd felt like I was flying. Here I was, traveling in Europe just like a grownup, making it work somehow even in a country where I didn't speak the language.

"I'm doing it! I can do it! My god, I can really do it!"

I was going to be an artist. I loved to paint. Teacher told me I should try to get some life experience before going to art school, so out I went to get some. My god did I get some motherfucking life experience.

Came home from Europe and immediately got into an abusive relationship, with a man who would use my talents to get him as much money, as much female attention, and as much professional clout as possible. He got me pregnant right after one of the times I tried to leave him.

I didn't paint.

I turned 26 the day after my daughter was born. I was terrified. I loved her so much I wanted her to have a better mother than me.

"Can I do it? Can I do it? Dear god, please help me do it!"

I gained a lot of weight, and I kept it on. Made me feel secure. Invisible. Like even if I can't do it, even if I fuck up royally at life and completely drop the ball, at least I won't wake up in a blood-smeared bathroom being sodomised over a toilet by a man who won't let me leave.

Now I am 48. I am healing, and I have grown strong. 

Through a strange series of miracles and unexpected rabbit holes, I've found myself in a situation where complete strangers from all around the world give me money to share my thoughts on things.

And I've begun painting again, after all these years. Just sold a few pieces at auction. And it's been bringing up some old feelings.

"I'm doing it! I can do it! My god, I'm really doing it!"

And my bum has started hurting. I've been having shooting pains radiating from right where that bastard stuck me all those years ago. Smacking me out of the air in my state of teenage exuberance. Breaking my wings. Breaking my paintbrush.

People keep asking me to do interviews, but I prefer to stay more hidden. Makes me feel secure. Invisible.

I don't know why I'm sharing this with you right now. I guess I can only write what's coming up for me on a given day, and this is definitely what's front and center for me at this moment.

I'm going to keep healing. I'm going to keep growing stronger. I'm going to keep painting. I may even do interviews one day. 

I don't know where this ride is headed, but I'm very happy I'm on it.

I'm really glad to be alive you guys.

CNN reports that President Biden has nominated criminal neocon Elliott Abrams for a position on the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which according to the US State Department is responsible for "appraising activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics" and pays "acute attention" to the US government's official foreign propaganda arm, the US Agency for Global Media.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Ask who benefits from the continued emphasis on electoral systems that never succeed in bringing about real change. 

Ask who benefits from the continued emphasis on culture wars over class war. 

Ask who benefits from people being continually herded into two mainstream political factions which both support empire, oligarchy and authoritarianism. 

Ask who benefits from the mass media continually focusing on the misdeeds of nations their government doesn't like while ignoring their own government's abuses of the needful, the marginalized and the disobedient. 

Ask who benefits from ordinary people being too busy getting the bills paid to learn about what's going on in the world. 

Ask who benefits from those who ask these questions being labeled crackpots and conspiracy theorists. 

Ask who benefits from the widespread assumption that how things are is the only way they can be. 

Ask who benefits from the widespread assumption that the status quo is inevitable and resistance is futile. 

Ask who benefits from your beliefs about what's possible and what's impossible. 

Ask who benefits from each of your beliefs about the world. 

Ask who benefits from each of your beliefs about humankind. 

Ask who benefits from each of your beliefs about yourself and how you should be. 

Ask who benefits from these beliefs not just among the powerful, but among the people you know in your own life. Who put that belief in your mind, and why might they have done so?

Any time you are presented with a narrative about how things are in a way that asks you to believe it, question who would benefit from that belief, whether it's a large-scale narrative about the world, or a small-scale narrative about yourself and your own life.

Reading by Tim Foley.

1. It's easier to understand what's going on in the world when you mentally "mute" people's narratives about what's going on and just look at the material movements of wealth, resources, weapons, and people. That's how you separate what's real from the manipulations and empty narrative fluff, how you see who's doing the taking and hoarding, and how you figure out who the real aggressors are in international conflicts.

2. The three most overlooked and under-appreciated aspects of the human experience are consciousness, the extent to which conditioned thought patterns dictate our lives, and the influence of propaganda.

3. We live in a civilization that's so pervasively steeped in lies and manipulations that the only way to have a truth-based relationship with reality is to drop all your assumptions and premises about what's true and begin examining everything from the very beginning with fresh eyes.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Of course Greta Thunberg met with Zelensky. Of COURSE she did. That was the only box left to check off in the most PR-intensive proxy war of all time. They got Bono. They got Mark Hamill and Sean Penn. They got appearances at the WEF, the New York Stock Exchange and the Grammys. They just needed Greta.

Reading by Tim Foley.

President Biden accidentally referred to Putin's war in "Iraq" when answering questions from the press, a year after former president George W Bush made the same gaffe. Both men played crucial roles in the push to invade Iraq.

Reading by Tim Foley.