JOHNSTONE

The US State Department's spokesperson Ned Price is being replaced by a man named Matthew Miller. Like Price, Miller has had extensive prior involvement in both the US government and the mass media; Price is a former CIA officer and Obama administration National Security Council staffer who for years worked as an NBC News analyst, while Miller has previously had roles in both the Obama and Biden administrations and spent years as an analyst for MSNBC.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Too much interesting stuff happening in the life of the empire to cover in just one article today, so we're doing a three-in-one wrap-up.

Reading by Tim Foley.

There's a really gross video going around of the Dalai Lama kissing a young boy on the lips and telling him to suck his tongue while an adult audience looks on approvingly.

Reading by Tim Foley.

It's one of the most shameful jobs in the entire world to spend your time doing critical reporting on the enemies of your government while ignoring your own government's far more egregious crimes. 

People talk about sex work as shameful, and in America they'll even shame you for working a low-paying job like McDonald's, when on all our screens every day we see people selling their own government's ugly foreign policy in a line of work that is entire universes more shameful.

That's why I dislike the use of the word "presstitute" to refer to these people. Not because it's insulting to the press, but because it's insulting to sex workers.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The use of the phrase "journalism is not a crime" is an interesting choice since the most common individual case you'll hear it used in reference to is surely that of Julian Assange, who has been locked in a maximum security prison for four years while the US government works to extradite him for the crime of good journalism. Every pro-Assange demonstration I've ever been to has featured signs with some variation of the phrase "journalism is not a crime," and any Assange supporter will be intimately familiar with that refrain.

So as an Assange supporter it sounds a bit odd to hear that slogan rolled out by two DC swamp monsters who have both enthusiastically supported the persecution of the world's most famous journalist.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Churchill: "I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them. I believe that as civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China—I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph."

Reading by Tim Foley.

So it is a bit funny that John Lansing is now cited complaining about NPR being labeled "state-affiliated media" on Twitter, given that he has devoted his life to promulgating US state-affiliated media. NPR receives funding from the US government, consistently advances the information interests of the US government, and is routinely run by professional propagandists of the US government. You could spend hours of your life just reading through Fair.org's "NPR" section to see the many, many ways that platform has exhibited wild biases to grease the wheels of the US empire. If NPR is not state-affiliated media, then nobody is.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Assange is not only the world's greatest living journalist, he is the greatest journalist who has ever lived. There's really no valid argument against this. Seriously, name me a superior journalist. You can't. Assange began his journalism career by revolutionizing source protection for the digital age, then proceeded to break some of the biggest stories of the century. There's no one who can hold a candle to him, living or dead. The fact that he is now in prison for doing great journalism tells you everything you need to know about our society.

And now he's in a maximum security prison, solely and exclusively because he was better at doing the best kind of journalism than anyone else in the world. That is the kind of civilization you live in. The kind that imprisons the best journalist of all time for doing journalism.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Lyrics:

Good morning Mr Newspaper, for your enquiry, thank you kindly

you want to profile me? How wonderful, I must say, you surprised me!

Let's have an earnest tete-a-tete on the dangers of realpolitik

Oh, what's that you wanna know? What's the taste of Putin's dick?

I see what's going on here

I see what's going on here

I see what's going on here

You come to me all compliments but we all know where you pay your tithe

If you wanna try to smear your shit on me I'll grow roses in your shite

No matter how you twist my words, it's me you're gonna amplify

I got nothing to lose, I just tell the truth, it's you who'll be ashamed this time

Do you see what's going on here?

Do you see what's going on here?

Do you see what's going on here?

Do you see what's going on here?

I see what's going on here

Do you see what's going on here?

the harder you spin, the more eyes it will bring, til everything is in the light

Your job's to obscure, to finegal the brutes, pay your tributes, dodge and weave, pretend that you're right

you gotta think about all the big picture synoptics, gotta stay on message, gotta keep to the topic

Won't somebody think of optics. Won't somebody think of optics??

Do you see what's going on here?

Do you see what's going on here?

Do you see what's going on here?

Do you see what's going on here?

I see what's going on here

Do you see what's going on here?

What you don't know is that those times are over, those who deal in the dark will have no deals they can make.

There's a man in a cage who got your number, my friend, and the world now knows you're a fake

Trust in the media's now the size of your groupchat, your Bill Maher condescension

has lost all its impact,

The tranks you inject are losing their effect and you have to be asleep to have a nightmare

Do you see what's going on here?

Do you see what's going on here?

Do you see what's going on here?

Do you see what's going on here?

I see what's going on here

Do you see what's going on here?

“Just today, Brazil, the largest country in the Western Hemisphere, cut a trade deal with China," said Rubio. "They're going to, from now on, do trade in their own currencies, get right around the dollar. They're creating a secondary economy in the world totally independent of the United States. We won't have to talk about sanctions in five years, because there'll be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won't have the ability to sanction them."

Reading by Tim Foley.