JOHNSTONE

The financial elite hate crypto not because crypto itself poses a threat to their empire, but because its existence is destroying trust and belief in the "realness" narrative of money among regular people. Bitcoin is imaginary, but it's worth real money. Why? Because money is also imaginary. 

The complexity of the markets is absolutely essential in controlling the narrative around why a few live like kings while the rest work like slaves just to keep a roof over their heads. You, regular person, are not meant to understand it. Because if you did it could not continue.

If you define crypto as shares it makes it clear that shares don't need to be based in any kind of physical reality in order to create "value" in a market-based system. Crypto as currency makes it clear that currency doesn't need the trade of a national economy to back it. 

Crypto shows that it's all made up, this whole psychopathic numbers game where the digits on your bank app dictate whether you live or die, or the digits on spreadsheets dictate whether we avoid near-term extinction or not, it's all made up. And we can change it whenever we like.

I've always hated Monopoly. What a tedious, vindictive waste of a perfectly good afternoon. I am so pissed off that we're going extinct over what essentially is just a global game of Monopoly that virtually none of us want to play.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Netflix will begin streaming a brazen hatchet job on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for its American subscribers on October 24th, just three days prior to a significant court date in Assange's fight against extradition to the United States on October 27th.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Let's argue about bisexual Superman

while the world burns,

while they prepare us for war with China,

while they take away our rights,

while they steal more and more of our power and our wealth,

while they rape our minds with advanced propaganda systems

to shape us into pawns in a global chess game.

Let's argue about bisexual Superman

to avoid our fear of an unfathomable future,

to compartmentalize away from how nothing makes sense anymore,

to sedate the creeping sensation that everything we've been taught is a lie,

to squeeze off the strangled cries of that sacred child within us,

to hide from the insight that we are one with every part of this mess.

Let's argue about bisexual Superman,

because it's easier than being real,

because it's easier than admitting we're afraid,

because it's less challenging than facing ourselves,

because us-and-them culture wars are comfortable

while authenticity is terrifying,

because the beloved keeps beckoning us back to wholeness

and we are simply not ready to confront our own perfection.

Let's argue about bisexual Superman

instead of making art,

instead of singing the glory,

instead of expressing reverence for the miracle of creation,

instead of filming everything we can before it's gone,

instead of embracing each other on a dying world,

insead of kissing each other on our plunge into the unknown,

instead of comforting each other about our own mortality,

instead of allowing real intimacy to get a word in edgewise,

instead of connecting in that way we've always longed for

but never had the courage to allow.

Let's fight over what turns Superman on

to keep ourselves from getting turned on,

to keep ourselves from living turned on,

to keep ourselves from living tuned in,

to keep ourselves from opening our eyes

and beholding life's majesty for the very first time

and never, ever closing them,

and holding hands

and walking out into a transformed world

beneath the yellow sun.

_____________________

Reading by Tim Foley.

So hey they've started mounting sniper rifles on robodogs, which is great news for anyone who was hoping they'd start mounting sniper rifles on robodogs.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/oh-great-theyre-putting-guns-on-robodogs

Ghost Robotics video: https://youtu.be/3UBlQVB7vYI

"Survival of the Richest" article: https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1

Think about how many technological advancements there have been in the military over the last century. Our rulers have been refining their methods of manipulating our sensemaking abilities to their advantage throughout that entire time, and only a small minority of us have even begun to realize that that manipulation is even happening. We're just learning to play checkers while they're mastering 3-D chess. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-science-of-propaganda-is-still

Real cancel culture is when the CIA plots to assassinate a journalist for publishing authentic documents in the public interest.

Reading by Tim Foley.

A recent poll says that now more than half of Americans would support sending US troops to defend Taiwan from an invasion by the mainland, plainly the result of the aggressive propaganda campaign that has greatly escalated public hysteria about China. In Australia the mass media are cranking out unbelievably insane 60 Minutes episodes ridiculously pushing the idea that China may attack Australia and that Australians should be willing to go to war to protect Taiwan. I've been having many disturbing interactions with people online who emphatically support the idea of the US and its allies going to war with China over Taiwanese independence.

This is clearly nuts, and anyone who buys into this line of thinking is a brainwashed fool.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/anyone-whod-support-going-to-war

Featured image via US Navy (CC BY 2.0)

Humanity's problems are made possible by mass-scale manipulation, and mass-scale manipulation is made possible by us-vs-them beliefs. If people weren't being aggressively manipulated into consenting to the status quo they would have used the power of their numbers to end the status quo a long time ago. Divide-and-conquer isn't just useful because it prevents people from unifying against their oppressors, it also pours rocket fuel on the oppressors' propaganda machine.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Olbermann video: https://youtu.be/I_rNlEVdBOs

Big Think video: https://youtu.be/14XSzWT4vI0

Article: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/all-our-problems-are-built-on-us

It's not about waking people up, it's about turning them from broken cogs into useful cogs. It's not to free them from the machine but to help them better serve it, while also serving the interests of clever pharmaceutical investors.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-psychedelic-renaissance-is-entirely

Let's touch antennae in the madhouse,

beneath the throes of a dying world

and the growing drums of war,

beneath the din of the cannibal Karens and Covid culture wars

and the miserable late night comedians pushing jokes out

through oceans of pain.

Let's touch antennae in the madhouse,

where there are more empty homes than homeless

and more jails than universities,

where there is so little scarcity that we have to artificially create it

and so much excess that we ship our garbage overseas.

Where the news is more worried about a French submarine deal

than Yemeni kids starving under Lockheed Martin bomb weather.

Where they harvest our digital information

and push for us all to get digital identifications

while piling used fast food packaging

on top of any part of us that is real.

Where future generations,

if there are future generations,

will scarce believe that there were once whales.

Let's touch antennae in the madhouse

and remind one another of our uncorrupted essence.

Let's kneel together

foreheads touching

beneath the gunfire

of ecocide advertisements and Pentagon prayers

of screaming red children and oceans of oil

and be intimate

and be infants

and press into that point of primal innocence

within each other

and let our resistances dissolve

to being at one,

to being at one with each other,

and to being at one

with this whole bloody

screaming

sexy

sacred

mess.

______________________________

Reading by Tim Foley.