There's a lot happening in the life of the empire, so we're doing another multi-story article to wrap it all up. Today we're discussing four stories:

1. Facebook is censoring multiple articles by Seymour Hersh.

2. Weapons industry-funded think tank helps Congress discover that Taiwan needs way more weapons.

3. The New York Times really, really doesn't like RFK Jr.

4. Twitter drops its "state-affiliated media" and "government-funded media" labels.

Reading by Tim Foley.

So many emerging technologies would be cause for celebration if our rulers weren't so damn evil and our systems weren't so damn oppressive. In a healthy society we'd be celebrating automation and AI giving us more and more abundance and free time; instead we're terrified of police robots and technocratic dystopia.

The knitting of neurology and technology would have incredible implications if we didn't know sociopathic intelligence agencies would immediately insert themselves into the use of those technologies. Virtual reality would be awesome if it wasn't going to be used to create fake worlds for people to purchase fake goods in so that capitalism can continue expanding while we destroy the real world.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Biden administration's Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says "weaponized" the First Amendment rights of Americans.

Reading by Tim Foley.

People shouldn't be punished for revealing the secrets of the government, governments should be punished for keeping secrets from the people.

Reading by Tim Foley.

You couldn't design a more effective totalitarian dystopia than the one we're in right now. One where everyone's brainwashed by propaganda without even knowing it, where everyone thinks, acts, votes and shops exactly as their rulers want them to, all while thinking they are free.

Reading by Tim Foley.

So when people try to frame Assange's persecution as a matter of public perception and fighting foreign narratives about the US, they are incorrect. The issue is not that Assange's persecution makes the US look bad, the issue is that it proves the US is bad.

Reading by Tim Foley.

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.