JOHNSTONE

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.

Numerous Syrian and foreign militants have reportedly been killed and several US troops injured in an escalating exchange of attacks between the American invaders and the people in the country whose territory they are illegally occupying.

Reading by Tim Foley.

What you can do as an individual is cultivate a habit of committing small acts of sedition. Making little paper cuts in the flesh of the beast which add up over time. You can't stop the machine by yourself, but you can sure as hell throw sand in its gears.

Giving a receptive listener some information about what's going on in the world. Creating dissident media online. Graffiti with a powerful message. Amplifying an inconvenient voice. Sharing a disruptive message. Supporting an unauthorized cause. Organizing toward forbidden ends. Distributing literature. Creating literature. Having authentic conversations about real things with anyone who can hear you.

Every day there's something you can do. After you start pointing your creativity at cultivating this habit, you'll surprise yourself with the innovative ideas you come up with. Even a well-placed meme or tweet can open a bunch of eyes to a reality they'd previously been closed to. Remember, they wouldn't be working so frantically to restrict online speech if it didn't pose a genuine threat to the empire.

Reading by Tim Foley.

They lie to us all our lives about what soldiers do,

about what cops do,

about what journalists do,

about what presidents do.

They lie to us all our lives about how laws are made,

about how kings are made,

about how culture is made,

about how norms are made.

They lie to us all our lives about what our minds are for,

about what our hearts are for,

about what our neighbors are for,

about what foreigners are for.

The world is confusing

and they make it more confusing,

on purpose,

because they thrive in confusion,

and now we watch as the world turns to ashes

carried on the back of confusion

made by news men and corporate creatures who eat ashes.

And we stumble in confusion,

eyes darting behind lenses made of confusion,

trying to understand with minds made of confusion,

trying to feel our way through with hearts shackled by confusion.

Searching for an angel egg we know is there

but can't seem to find

because who turned out the goddamn lights?

And why can't I figure out which way is up?

And oop off we go chasing distractions again

for the next news cycle

the next election cycle

the next spin cycle

the next amnesia cycle.

They lie to us all our lives,

and then when we catch them in a lie they just say,

Oh, the person who gave you that information is bad,

or,

Oh, that came from Russian hackers,

or,

We made a mistake but we don't do that anymore,

or,

Don't be a conspiracy theorist,

or,

Hey! Look over there!

or,

We already knew that, it's no big deal.

And then everyone forgets,

and the confusion churns on.

But the angel egg is there in our mind's eye,

in our heart of hearts,

haunting our dreams,

calling us home,

the embryo holding our original eyes

for whenever we are ready to claim them.

They lie to us all our lives about what our country is,

about what our government is,

about what money is,

about what nature is.

They lie to us all our lives about where the answers are,

about where our friends are,

about where our enemies are,

about where our claws are.

They lie to us all our lives,

and they make the world confusing,

and beneath that confusion we are watching them

with our original eyes,

with our primal eyes,

with our natural eyes,

with our uncivilized eyes.

Watching them,

like lions watching a gazelle,

and waiting,

with primordial patience,

until it is time

to make our move.

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Reading by Tim Foley.

The empire's information war against the left has been so successful that people don't even know where "the left" is anymore. Most have it confused with things that are tangential like having pink hair and saying your pronouns, or outright right-wing like the Democratic Party.

Convincing everyone that communism is bad and unions work against your interests was just the first step. The next step was to confuse and muddy the waters of the political landscape so much that nobody even remembers where it was the left had been trying to get to — namely fighting and winning the class war that's being waged upon the working class by the capitalist class, dismantling capitalism and imperialism, and creating a just and equitable society for everyone.

Now if you tell your average westerner to point to "the left", they'll point at "woke" hashtags and at political parties that are designed to support and protect the capitalist class. They didn't just sabotage and destroy the left, they burnt the blueprints for how to rebuild it.

Reading by Tim Foley.

John: I'm worried about China.

Jane: Oh yeah? What about it?

John: Well more I'm worried about the example they're setting, and that western governments will start implementing their technocratic oppression style to turn us all into a bunch of brainwashed, homogeneous obedience machines.

Jane: What makes you think Chinese people are all brainwashed and homogeneous? 

John: Oh my God, don't you watch the news? Have you not heard of their social credit score system? The state censorship and propaganda those people are subjected to? The CCP literally doesn't let them have access to western social media platforms because our free thought and democratic values might interfere with their conformity policing. How have you not heard about this? It's in the news constantly.

Jane: Constantly?

John: Oh yeah, it's like a major news story all the time. All across the political spectrum, too. Fox News, CNN, The Washington Post. Alternative media too like Infowars and The Epoch Times; even lefty YouTubers like Vaush talk all the time about how bad it is in China.

Jane: So because you're being given the same message by all the western media you consume, you're worried about the enforcement of thought conformity in... China?

John: Yeah. Of course.

Jane: And this is why you're worried that, at some point in the future, that kind of brainwashing and homogeneity might someday be inflicted upon us by powerful people in the west?

John: I mean yeah, if the CCP doesn't do it to us first. Did you know they're trying to take over the world?

Jane: They are?

John: Oh yeah! The Chinese want to take over the world and give us all a social credit score so we'll all think the same. How do you not know about this? Don't you ever watch TV?

Jane: How do you know it's true though?

John: That they want to conquer us and give us a social credit score? Come on! Open your eyes! Have you seen how they treat their own population? They're genociding the Uyghurs as we speak! Millions and millions of them in Nazi-style extermination camps! Plus they deliberately released the Covid virus to hurt us after cooking it up in a lab, they're taking over Hollywood and infiltrating our political and academic institutions, and they've colonized the entire continent of Africa! Of course the CCP wants to rule us! Don't you ever watch Tucker Carlson? They're truly, deeply evil, and we've got to do something to stop them.

Jane: Sounds like you've got this China thing all figured out. You're right, that sounds really scary. I can't imagine what it would be like, living in a thought-controlled dystopia where your rulers are brainwashing everyone into obedience and making sure everybody thinks the same way about stuff.

John: Yeah! Finally you get it! I'm glad you've come around. Honestly you're the first person I know who didn't already understand these things about China. 

Jane: I'll bet.

John: So do you think it will happen? Do you think our government will implement a social credit score system to make us all believe lies and propaganda, like the Chinese?

Jane: You know, I wouldn't worry about it.

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Reading by Tim Foley and Caitlin Johnstone.

Wealth is meaningless if everyone is wealthy. Power is meaningless if everyone has power. The kings of our day have a vested interest in keeping everyone poor and powerless, because if everyone is king, then no one is king.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Our self-destructive species is acting just like a self-destructive individual: torn between the knowledge that we need to change and our inability to see within ourselves lucidly enough to actually make change happen. We're killing our biosphere, marching toward nuclear war, and playing along with status quo systems for the same reason someone uses heroin, hurts those they love, stays in an abusive relationship, or sabotages their goals: because we are driven to.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Crawling on our hands and knees vomiting up life hearts which go bouncing across the floor like pennies, disgusted by the latest headline, the latest heartbreak, the latest bill, the latest bullshit.

There is an owl sitting upon the arm of our sofa. We don't know how long it has been watching us and we are too nauseous to care. Something is scratching at the insides of our walls.

"It's all fake and I can't take it," we cry from our depths with sobs of motherhood and milk. "The YouTube ads, the lonely cereal, the sitcom reruns full of dead people's laughter. The coworker small talk painted over oceans of anguish and the maddening impulse to tongue kiss each other just to make a real connection, the skyscraper savagery, the screens full of pundits arguing which boot to lick. When I was small everything crackled and was boundless, but now I'm waiting to die on a dying world with a rectangle in my pocket that keeps trying to sell me things I don't understand."

"There is a deeper wisdom at work here," says something from the blackness in the owl's eyes. "Something watching all this unfold, something ancient, something nameless. We shall not call it god, because it doesn't behave like any god concocted by the minds of men. It is utterly agendaless, eternally patient, entirely embracing of all that is; still the great powers of our day splat against it like a cooked spaghetti noodle tossed against the wall. Before the empire arose, it is. Before humanity's great Fall from wisdom to cleverness, it is. It is beyond us and before us, yet closer to us than our own mitochondria." 

"But the tyrants!" we protest. "And the rainforests! And the screaming red children who won't leave the center of my vision no matter how hard I rub my eyes! And the black tie oil orgies, and the persecution puppets, and the fentanyl boneyards and the spinmeister Slack channels and the nursing home warehouses and the Reaper drones in flock formation and the tent city police raids and the schizophrenic street wailers and the gig economy car sleepers and the microplastic metastases and and and and..."

"In school they taught you how the world works, and that it is sane and happy," said the blackness. "Then you grew up and you learned that was all a lie, and that everything is dark and crazy. Now you're growing up some more and learning that, underneath everything, there really is a deep sanity and happiness after all."

And then the camera zooms out, out from our cratered heart floor, out from our living room, out from these words being read on this page, out from the eyes of the reader, out through the reader's mind and through the flotsam and jetsam of subconscious currents, back back back as far as it can go, to that peaceful point of origin before all arisings, to your original nature, to your original self.

And from here it's all happening just as before. The sharp-toothed bank boys, the cackling talk shows with eyeless hosts, the ballbuster billboards selling geoengineering and prosthetic contentment, the electronic escapism and the overpriced brain fog.

But it's seen differently. Seen in a much, much larger context. And oh so clearly doomed to fail.

"Humans have built tall language castles," says the blackness. "But the language castles are built upon the unlanguageable. The empire is built on quicksand. Human dysfunction is built on a bottomless hole."

We struggle to our feet.

We stand.

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Reading by Tim Foley.

China poses no threat to the United States of America, the country. What China poses a threat to is the US empire and the hegemonic unipolarist ambitions thereof. That's what various government agencies are talking about when they describe China as the number one "threat".

Reading by Tim Foley.