Mass Alternative Treatments Formation

(Insert DRUG, COUNTERMEASURE) Good. JABS GOOD. GERMS BAD. The Op is still live but you got tired, didn't you, and long for that PRE-COVID FEELING. SAGE HANA JAN 23 a good rule of thumb for medications is that if it has been on the market long enough to go over the counter, it's probably not going to harm you...with the exception of Tylenol of course, which will destroy your liver. do a wee bit of research and you will see the process by which famotidine does repress that severe urge to cough. it's an H2 blocker, thus helps with cough among other things. Good to know when there is a SMART BOMB OF INFECTIVITY NOVEL ENTITY MURDERING ONE OUT OF EVERY FIVE OLDS SAYS SCIENCE MAGAZINE THAT IF I’M COUGHING THEN PEPCID AC IS NOW ON MY LIST OF GOOODY THINGS TO ADD INTO THE APPROXIMATELY 300 SUPPLEMENTS THAT ARE SAFE AND EFFECTIVE. SHOULD I MAINLINE IT WITH IVM AND HCQ? TOSS IN SOME ZINC AND A POTENT COCKTAIL OF FLUVOXAMINE? WHAT TIME IS FOOOOTBAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW ON? And many BIG SMART types still point to antibodies in blood as a marker for…SEE, IT’S WORKING. PLUG AND PLAY. SH what do you make of the fact that Pepcid AC was OTC forever then as soon as the idea surfaced that it could help with covid it was pulled from the shelves? Doesn't that in itself not indicate efficacy? I think that FLCCC, Global Covid Summit, The Wellness Company, Steve Kirsch’s CETF, and DTRA DOMANE were all invested in ALTERNATIVE TREATMENTS. Oh look. CHD. Because you need zeeeeeeeee access to the bodies for zeeeeee Dangerous Germs. So I'm trying to move back one layer, and it is just not going all that well. And with every goddamned fucking step along the way, the literal CONCERN trolls come out of the woodwork. “I’M CONCERNED THAT YOU NEED A HOBBY.” How about don’t read the fucking shit? DEAR PLACE ON THE INTERNET, WHY DO YOU KEEP POSTING CONTENT AND STUFF? HOLY FUCK WHEN DID MY BOARD GET SO FUCKING DUMB? ALEXANDER PLEASE STOP RECC’ING THIS JOINT. A good rule of being fluent in bullshit is seeing what is being assumed or omitted in the examination of the phenomena at hand. For example. Laser: DRUG X GOOD Laser: DRUG X BAD Laser: Masks WORK Laser: Masks USELESS Laser: Lab leak! Laser: Zoonosis Honestly, these discussion on the various drugs turn into proxy hero discussions as though DRUG treats (BLANK, COVID, RADIATION, WHATEVER) and thus GOOD. HCQ GOOD. Trump! (Jabs GOOD. ALSO TRUMP!) IVM GOOD. Kory! (Still wear the mask, ASYMPTOMATIC MASKLESS SUPERSPREADER. Also Kory.) Remind me of Blue Pill Covidians and their allegiance to a branding of "vaccine". Like what part of THIS IS THE GREATEST AND MOST COORDINATED GLOBAL PSY OP DO YOU STRUGGLE WITH THE MOST. Foootbawwww will be on soon. Mainline some NattoPetmectinlovid and get ready for the next wave of Disease X. Disease X is coming. Sage’s Newsletter LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2024 Sage Hana 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

New Hampshire, 'abashed' silence, and smoking fast The Tuesday Pillar Post JD FLYNN JAN 23

Hey everybody, JD Flynn here, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post. As you might realize, our nation has turned its eyes today toward New Hampshire, where a winnowed field of two Republican presidential candidates square off in the battle for the Granite State. So as long as we’re thinking about New Hampshire, I want to tell you about a New Hampshire Catholic family, and the parish church they built. Old St. Mary Church, Claremont, NH. Courtesy photo. St. Mary Church in Claremont, NH, was built in 1823, under the supervision of Fr. Virgil Horace Barber, S.J., its founding pastor. In fact, the church was built on Fr. Barber’s family property, where the first Catholic boys’ school in New England was also constructed. But Fr. Virgil Barber, that pastor, didn’t come from a typical Catholic family. Here’s what happened: Fr. Virgil’s dad, Daniel Barber, was born in Maryland in 1756. He fought in the Revolutionary War, and became an Episcopalian priest in 1786, when he was 30 years old. He married, had three sons, and moved to New Hampshire. For decades, Daniel was a contented Episcopalian priest. But one day in 1816, Daniel started reading a Catholic book about the sacrament of orders. The book made him question the validity of his own Episcopalian orders. He got some more books, and talked with some Catholic priests, and then with some Episcopalian theologians. Daniel became convinced that his Episcopalian orders were invalid. He gave up his Episcopalian parish in 1818. In the same year, 1818, Daniel’s wife, Chloe, became Catholic, along with several of their children, and Daniel’s sister. It took Daniel a few more years, but he became a Catholic too. But Daniel and Chloe were not the only family converts, or even the first ones. Their son Virgil was also an Episcopalian priest for a while in the 1810s, serving happily as the headmaster of an Episcopalian school in New York. But while he was visiting his parents in 1817, Virgil got into his dad’s Catholic books. He started reading them. He became convinced — pretty quickly — that the Catholic faith was true. So did his wife, Jerusha. So, in 1817, even before Virgil’s parents became Catholic, Daniel and Jerusha entered the Church — along with their five children. Both Virgil and Jerusha blossomed spiritually in the Catholic Church, and it wasn’t long before they both felt a different calling. Now, this story would be pretty unusual today but back then, things were done a bit differently. As they grew in the Catholic faith, Daniel and Jerusha both discerned a call to religious life. Daniel wanted to enter the Jesuits. Jerusha wanted to become a Visitation nun. Yes, they had five children, but some of them were permitted to accompany their parents into religious novitiates — a highly unusual circumstance. Jerusha and the three oldest girls entered a Visitation convent. Daniel entered the Jesuits, and his son Samuel came along. Their youngest daughter, Josephine — who was then only 10 months old — was entrusted to a family friend. In 1820, three years after Daniel and Jerusha entered religious life, they both professed their religious vows at a Mass in Georgetown. Their children were present — and each of those children, including Josephine, eventually entered religious life themselves. Our History - USA East Province of Jesuits There aren’t any known photographs of Fr. Virgil Barber, SJ. This is one of his confreres —probably Fr. John Bapst, SJ. Still, I put it in anyway, so you could see what an old-timey Jesuit looked like. Credit: New England Province of the Society of Jesus. For his part, Fr. Virgil was sent up to New Hampshire after ordination, where he built a parish church on his parents’ land, and opened that school. He ran both for a couple of years, before becoming a missionary to Indigenous communities. Jerusha became Sr. Mary Augustine, and after final profession, she helped new and growing Visitation communities in Illinois, Missouri, and Mobile, Alabama, where she died in 1860. The story of that remarkable family is mostly forgotten outside New Hampshire, and even by most people in the state. Except for this sign, I guess, and a couple of plaques: With a big day for New Hampshire today, we should pray for the souls of the Barber family, and if they’re now in heaven, we should hope they pray for us. And here’s one more cool thing. As I mentioned to you, Daniel’s sister became Catholic during the family’s big 1818 conversion. Her name was Mrs. Tyler — for the life of me, I can’t find her first name. After she converted, her husband and children did as well. Mrs. Tyler’s son became Bishop William Tyler, the first bishop of Hartford, Connecticut — who lived in such austerity and simplicity, among the poor, that he caught consumption and then rheumatic fever, and died at the young age of 45. So, if he’s in heaven, he can pray for us today, too. And just in case he’s not, pray for his soul, if you would. Bishop William Tyler. Credit: Archdiocese of Hartford. Upgrade to paid The news Bishops in Belgium are fighting a government order to delete the baptismal record of an unnamed Belgian, amid a growing number of requests for official disaffiliation from the Church. Baptismal records are a notation of a historic fact — that a baptism has occurred. For that reason, Church leaders say they won’t comply with those requests. What happens next could set precedent across the whole of the European Union. Read about it. — The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis announced earlier this month that its former head, Archbishop John Nienstedt, will not be charged with canonical crimes after a lengthy Vatican-ordered investigation — but that his ministry will be restricted because of “imprudence” on the archbishop’s part. The announcement was strange — more transparent than most, but still quite ambiguous about what the archbishop had actually done, or why he no longer enjoys the ordinary faculties of a bishop. In an analysis Friday, we looked at how “semi-transparency” became the order of the day, and what the Nienstedt decision means for the Church’s reform efforts. Leave a comment — Vietnam is an officially atheist, one-party communist state and one of the few countries lacking full diplomatic relations with the Holy See — but for the first time in its history, a papal visit to Vietnam has begun looking like a very likely possibility. Given the world travels of recent popes, it might seem remarkable that no pope has yet been to Vietnam. But The Pillar’s Luke Coppen explains why it might soon happen, and why Pope Francis could be the first pontiff to visit. Vietnam is beautiful. Credit: Pierre Mounier/wikimedia. CC BY SA 2.0 — A massive explosion rocked the Nigerian city of Ibadan last Tuesday, leaving two dead, more than 70 injured, and left several Catholic families in the area homeless. The Pillar talked with Fr. Francis Awotoye, pastor of the Ascension Bodija parish, about what the explosion was like, and what the fallout means for the parishioners of his parish. Read about it here. Share — Credit: Paramount Pictures. If you’re like me, you’re a bit nervous these days to get an airplane, what with the possibility of a door plug blowing out, or an engine catching fire. America has seen a few big aviation mishaps this month, and while they’re still statistically improbable, that doesn’t mean the prospect isn’t a bit scary. So we thought it was a good time to talk about a classic conversation in sacramental theology — the prospect of general sacramental absolution, while a plane you’re on is headed rapidly for the ground. If you’re on a plane, and a priest is too, and that plane is crashing, can he absolve your sins? What else do you need to know about general absolution? Buckle your seatbelts, put your tray tables up, and read about it right here. Give a gift subscription ‘Abashed’ silence Pope Francis on Monday hosted the International Association of Journalists Accredited to the Vatican, an organization founded in 1978 which has never before had an official meeting with the Roman pontiff. The pope’s prepared speech for the meeting thanked the Vatican press corps for their dedication to covering the Vatican, and for making sacrifices to do so. The pope’s speech even said that being a journalist is a vocation, that reporters choose to “touch personally the wounds of society and the world,” and in so doing to love the world. That’s all very nice. But soon after it was published, the speech caught global attention, and not just because the pontiff said those nice things about journalists. Rather, the pope’s remarks “went viral” after the Wall Street Journal’s Frank Rocca tweeted the portion of the speech in which the pope thanked the Vatican press corp for “the delicacy which you often use when speaking about scandals in the Church: there are so many and I have often seen in you a great delicacy, a respect, an almost — I would say — ‘shameful’ silence: thank you for this attitude.” I should note that the official English translation, published a few hours later, used the phrase “‘abashed’ silence.” In either case, the section of the speech was controversial: Thank you, reporters — the pope’s speech said — for reporting on ecclesial scandal with “delicateness” and with a kind of “silence.” Now, I think the pope probably meant that he appreciates that journalists have chosen to cover abuse scandals with discretion regarding the most prurient details of sexual misconduct. Indeed, that’s a decision that reporters like me have to wrestle with often. There is a value, when reporting on alleged abuse and misconduct, to providing concrete, tangible details. Those details help shore up the credibility of a story. They also might help other victims of sexual abuse to think through their own experiences, and to come forward about them. And they help Church leaders to identify patterns and vulnerabilities. And in fairness to the accused, it’s also better to have an allegation’s details known publicly, so that if he wants to refute them, he can address them with specificity, instead of just denying a vague notion of “misconduct” or “imprudent behavior.” But at the same time, one wants to avoid writing salaciously or with lurid detail about alleged abuse, in a way that disrespects the victim, or makes a spectacle of an alleged event that would have been profoundly traumatic. So there is a balance there, and I think it is likely that the pope was trying to recognize that. But the speech didn’t land that way, for a lot of journalists, or for most other Catholics paying attention to it. And the reason is likely obvious — given the pope’s spotty track record on decisions regarding abuse, his admitted mistakes on that front, and the Vatican’s handling of cases like those of Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, and Fr. Marko Rupnik, it’s not evident that the pope has a commitment to the kind of transparency that Catholics have called for in recent years. Indeed, the pope’s own signature accountability and reform process — Vos estis lux mundi — is so devoid of actual transparency that it’s done practically nothing to assure Catholics that abuse and its cover-up are being seriously investigated and seriously handled by ecclesiastical officials. When a pontiff is under fire for failing to establish transparent processes, praising “‘abashed’ silence” from reporters is not likely to garner appreciation. Coupled with that is the fact that in the Vatican’s own McCarrick report, at least one member of the Vatican press corps conceded that he hadn’t pursued rumors about former cardinal Theodore McCarrick because he was concerned, in part, about losing the cardinal as a source. That admission has led some critics to speculate that the established Vatican press corps is not always zealous about covering abuse and misconduct — and for some, the pope’s praise for their discretion seemed to confirm theories about a back-scratching symbiosis between the pontiff’s men and their local court reporters. For context to all this, I want to tell you first-hand something you probably already know: While the pope has praised journalists and urged them to do investigative work in the Church, appreciation for that work is not universal in the Church. When I think about the Church’s reform and renewal, I am edified by the number of bishops who read The Pillar, and who express appreciation for our commitment to investigating abuse, cover-up, and misconduct among ecclesiastical leaders. I am edified by how often they tell us to “keep going,” because of what that likely signifies about their own commitment to good governance of their dioceses. But I can also recall the time when a ranking Vatican official chided me for “hurting the Church” by reporting the existence of a Vos estis lux mundi investigation. He asked me why, if I am really a Catholic who loves the Church, I would “shame” her by reporting on the fact that a bishop was under investigation. And I think about what happened a few years ago, after The Pillar reported on the misconduct of a ranking ecclesiastical official in a leadership position. Soon after, an American bishop approached me privately, to say that such reporting could ruin people’s lives — and that if a cleric eventually took his own life because of our reporting on his misconduct, well, that would be our responsibility to bear before God, at our judgments. I thanked the bishop for the feedback, and asked for his blessing, but I disagreed with him, as you can well imagine. I tell you those stories because it seems to me that they are context for how the pope’s remarks have been interpreted in some corners. In a Church in which telling the truth can be seen as an act of rebellion, or disobedience, pontifical praise for ‘silence’ on the moral crisis of abuse was never likely to land well. Of course, I’m not a member of the International Association of Journalists Accredited to the Vatican. I know some very fine journalists who are. But the pontiff wasn’t talking to The Pillar in this case. I’m not sure that he’d be as laudatory about our work. upgrade your subscription Upgrade to paid Smoking fast Finally, I want to tell you about a Chinese marathon runner, who goes by the nickname “Uncle Chen.” On Jan. 7, the runner finished the Xiamen Marathon in 3 hours and 33 minutes, a respectable time for anyone, especially a 52-year-old. And Uncle Chen’s time was even more respectable when you consider this: He chainsmoked cigarettes for the entirety of the race, a feat which ultimately merited him a disqualification in marathon, but only he’d crossed the finish line. Smoking is bad for you, and anything more than the occasional cigarette is a vice to be put out, poor stewardship of the body God has created. But there is something remarkably charming about Uncle Chen puffing away along the course, and still managing to finish in a pretty decent time. And while corpulent runners (like me) are celebrated in the NY Times, you’d hope we could make room for other people who don’t fit the running stereotypes — including Uncle Chen and his carton of Kools. Of course, Chinese racing authorities think Chen’s smoking is kind of a drag, which is why they created new rules last year to prohibit cigarettes on marathon courses. Before that, Chen had lit up the competition in other races, finishing with pretty good times in previous marathons. But now his racing dreams are up in smoke. Uncle Chen, left. Credit: Xiamen Marathon. While Chen’s smoking on the course is clouded with criticism, maybe some context would clear the air. Ranchers in my state, Colorado, have raised concern in recent months about the litter left behind on their ranches, by bicycle races in the state’s rural regions — among that litter is human waste, and soiled undergarments discarded into fields where cattle graze. Bike racers shouldn’t defecate on the fields where our food is fed. Compared to that, Uncle Chen’s social foible seems nearly considerate. Uncle Chen. Credit: Xiamen Marathon. So while he’s disqualified from Chinese racing, I’d like to invite Uncle Chen to come to Colorado for a run. I’ll take him to see some truly wild bike racing behavior. We can even go for a run together — but no cigarette for me, please. At least not until we’re having a beer after the race. — As always, readers, please be assured of our prayers, and please pray for us — we need it. Keep the faith! Yours in Christ, JD Flynn editor-in-chief The Pillar The Pillar.

What Is Not PAUL WITTENBERGER JAN 23

Divide what is from what is not Tell me, then, what have you got? To that which is we give a name. But what is not will still remain. We think it’s nothing But what do we know? Perhaps from this nothing A world can grow Thanks for reading Paul’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Paul’s Substack is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Paul’s Substack that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments. © 2024 Paul Wittenberger 205 S. Park Avenue, Fond du lac, WI 54935

Let's Check in on the Leading Conservative Think Tanks No more dog whistles, just... dogs.

One of the arguments I made in the afterword to The Ideas Industry was that the Trump administration encountered severe problems with implementing its preferred policies because of a lack of know-how. It admittedly does not require as much information to destroy institutions as it does to create them, but some knowledge of politics, policy, and law is required. Despite a largely pliant Republican Party, the Trump administration repeatedly lost in the marketplace of ideas because it was pretty easy for, you know, actual experts to brand their proposed policy ideas as wrong, cruel, or just plain stupid. With the passage of time, many of Trump’s supporters frame his first term as an administration that had the right impulses even if the implementation is poor. And there is certainly a grain of truth to that. If you like trade wars with China, for example, Trump was the first president to push hard on that policy lever — not that it worked terribly well. As Trump runs for his second term, however, the difference this time around is the support he is getting from key conservative think tanks. Both the Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation are helping to lay the groundwork for Trump’s return to the White House. Drezner’s World is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has commented previously on Heritage’s intellectual devolution — just as the hard-working staff at Spoiler Alerts before it previously commented on the intellectual devolution of Claremont. As it turns out the New York Times recently checked in on both institutions with two items that merit further discussion. They highlight the new symbiosis between think tanks and the Trump campaign. They also highlight some more disturbing trends. The first, by Nicholas Confessore, looks at the conservative movement to push back on diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs at universities. It turns out that the motives of some of these groups might not have been quite as noble as they articulated in public: Centered at the Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank with close ties to the Trump movement and to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the group coalesced roughly three years ago around a sweeping ambition: to strike a killing blow against “the leftist social justice revolution” by eliminating “social justice education” from American schools…. The Claremont effort seemed to diverge from others on the right who had long urged academic institutions to renew their commitment to ideological diversity. In one exchange, some of those involved discussed how to marshal political power to replace left-wing orthodoxies with more “patriotic,” traditionalist curriculums. “In support of ridding schools of C.R.T., the Right argues that we want nonpolitical education,” [Claremont’s chairman Thomas] Klingenstein wrote in August 2021. “No we don’t. We want our politics. All education is political.” Dr. [Scott] Yenor appeared to agree, responding with some ideas for reshaping K-12 education. “An alternative vision of education must replace the current vision of education,” he wrote back…. Dr. Yenor and his allies bristled at the conventions of academic life as overly solicitous toward female and nonwhite students. He sometimes shared routine emails from administrators at his home institution, Boise State, deriding them as examples of being “ruled by women.” On one occasion, he forwarded a Boise State email featuring a photo of a female computer science student with close-cropped hair and a plaid shirt. “Gynocracy update!” Dr. Yenor wrote. Confessore also goes through Claremont’s myriad grant applications, which contain not-at-all hyperbolic rhetoric like, “Our project will give legislators the knowledge and tools they need to stop funding the suicide of their own country and civilization.” For an organization that likes to paint the left as bereft of joy, they sure do sound like a dour bunch. And if Trump wins, their members will no doubt be helping to craft federal education policy. It will be conservative political correctness run amok. Thank you for reading Drezner’s World. This post is public so feel free to share it. Share Claremont could be characterized as a fringe right-wing organization. In an interview with the New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts says proudly, “This is Heritage, you know, not some fringe group on the right.” Let’s take his assertion at face value and excerpt from Roberts’ interview to find out what a mainstream right-wing think tank believes in 2024 (Garcia-Navarro’s questions are in bold): Orban has become this darling of the right. You yourself have met with him. You’ve praised him on social media. He’s a very impressive leader…. Orban brags about turning Hungary into an “illiberal democracy” — his words. He’s anti-L.G.B.T. He’s anti-immigrant. He said explicitly that he wants to prevent Europe from becoming “mixed race.” Over his four terms, he presided over a pattern of democratic backsliding in Hungary. I’ve not seen that. That is the estimation of members of the European Union. They’re incorrect…. What is it exactly that he has done that you find laudable? That actually gets to the heart of the question, rather than framing that I would disagree with. The focus on family policy broadly. The motivation to realize that Hungary has to do something, as most countries in the world outside Africa do, to reverse the decline in the birthrate…. In a recent podcast episode, you were speaking with Jesse Kelly, the right-wing radio host, and the episode was about, and I’m quoting here, “the secret Communist movement inside America.” And you were not talking about Chinese government infiltration. You said about those employed in the U.S. government, “These men and women, these Communists, really, are in positions where they’re dictating with the power, the authority of law, what other Americans do.” You use the word “Communist” a lot to describe those you might disagree with politically inside this country. Well, at least a few of them must be Communists. I think there are far more Chinese Communists who’ve infiltrated our government than American Communists, but at the very least, they’re socialists. So if I were to revise that, I would say they were socialists, not Communists…. Do you believe that President Biden won the 2020 election? No. Can you tell me why? Sure. I think there are unknowns. I don’t know the outcome, but that’s why I can’t say yes definitively. And I am no conspiracy theorist at all, as some of the election-integrity people on the right will tell you. Still a lot of unknowns about two counties in Arizona, multiple counties in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Is it possible he won? Sure. But can I say definitively that he won? No. Having said that, I was very vocal at the end of 2020 and early 2021 that that’s what we knew and the election needed to be certified. And so let’s move on. Pretty much every bit of evidence has shown there was no substantial fraud. We have an election-fraud database at Heritage that shows a lot of instances of fraud. What I’m not saying is that the examples in that database prove that Biden didn’t win. I’m not certain that he won. Remember, Roberts insists that the Heritage Foundation is not a fringe group on the right. I agree. Which means that mainstream conservative think tanks now evinces a blinkered, maybe-kinda-racist view of demography, a McCarthyite conviction that there are communists in the U.S. government, and an abject refusal to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Little wonder that other think tankers are embarrassed by Roberts’ behavior. In her introduction to the Roberts interview, Garcia-Navarro writes: Roberts told me that he views Heritage’s role today as “institutionalizing Trumpism.” This includes leading Project 2025, a transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power. The lesson of Trump’s first year in office, Roberts told me, is that “the Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.” I agree with Roberts’ last sentence. If Trump wins in 2024, he will lean on the folks at Claremont and Heritage to staff out his administration. And at this point, both think tanks have discarded the pretense that they care about anything other than acquiring raw political power and using it to punish their enemies. © 2024 Daniel W. Drezner 160 Packard Ave. Medford, MA 02155

How To Renew Your US Passport

The inspiration represented by the American passport, in contrast with the incompetence and demoralization represented by the American government Comrades: The best stories are found between the pages of a passport. Passport. United States passport front cover , #Sponsored, #States, # ... After a decade, the time had arrived to renew my passport. I felt nostalgic flipping through the pages and recalling the adventures that each stamp represented. That nostalgia was shattered by rage: Why does it cost $130 and take 8 weeks to renew a passport?! The federal government steals a third of our income, collects $5 trillion in taxes, and is $34 trillion in debt while employing 4 million people. Millions of illegal immigrants with no documentation are allowed to stroll across the border without ID, get free flights, buses, and hotels around the country, and receive free IDs in deep blue Karenland FUPAZ. 40% of Americans can't cover an unexpected $400 expense. Consoomers have collectively racked up a record $1 trillion+ in credit card debt. Yet we must endure this demoralization of $130 (+$10 for registered mail) and 8 weeks. ~150 million people have the privilege to travel with an American passport, which is only 1.9% of the world’s population. We are the fortunate 1% in that regard. That means ~15 million people renew their passports every year, which generates $2 billion in revenue for the government. That is a drop in the bucket for the federal budget and could also help fund the wall, yet Congress argues it’s too expensive while the Supreme Court rules that the Feds can take down Texas’ barriers to try to stop the invasion. The quotations found throughout American passport books remind us why we must subvert subversion and reclaim the Republic. If not, it is only a matter of time until the passport is “reimagined” with vaccine passports, retina scanners, chips, CBDCs, and Ibram X Kendi quotes. This humble samizdat now reaches people in all 50 states and 127 countries. Although I haven’t left the country since Baby Yulia was born, I am itching to explore again. Brazil is a frontrunner because it is the #2 biggest reader base thanks to Allan Dos Santos, who I hope to interview for a podcast soon. Which passport quote is your favorite? What is the passport renewal process like in other countries? What are the best and worst countries that you have visited? Sound off in the comments! a passport with a picture of an eagle and buffalo We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[note 1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” -Preamble of the US Constitution, which has been removed from the "reimagined” passport “…And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth”. -Abraham Lincoln “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.” -George Washington “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.” -Thomas Jefferson “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” -Declaration of Independence “This is a new nation based on a mighty continent, of boundless possibilities.” Theodore Roosevelt “…That this nation. under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” -Abraham Lincoln How To Repeat History (Part 6) - Statues and Monuments YURI BEZMENOV · JAN 9 How To Repeat History (Part 6) - Statues and Monuments Comrades: Orwell tried to warn us. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Mao’s Red Guards destroyed countless cultural artifacts. They were indoctrinated to attack anything that represented the “Four Olds”: Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits. The Red Guards wrecked museums, renamed streets, and chanted Mao quotes while hanging up agitp… Read full story “We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.” -Martin Luther King, Jr. How To Deliver an Inspiring Speech YURI BEZMENOV · JAN 14 How To Deliver an Inspiring Speech Comrades: Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. MLK’s “I Have a Dream” is one of the most iconic speeches in history. The man’s life and legacy are complicated, but he inspired the world with his words. 60 years later, the most famous line of his speech has been twisted upside down through demoralization: Read full story “Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America. -Dwight D. Eisenhower How To Deliver a Farewell Address YURI BEZMENOV · AUGUST 23, 2023 How To Deliver a Farewell Address Comrades: Dwight Eisenhower is one of America’s most underrated Presidents. His 1961 farewell address was a masterpiece. Like Yuri Bezmenov in 1984, he tried to warn us. Today, I will provide commentary on his speech and how it foreshadowed our modern technocracy. Read full story “The principle of free governments adhere to the American soil. It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains.” -Daniel Webster “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” -John F. Kennedy “For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say “Farewell.” Is a new world coming? We welcome it–and we will bend it to the hopes of man." -Lyndon B. Johnson “What a glorious morning for our country.” -Samuel Adams “We live in a world that is lit by lightning. So much is changing and will change, but so much endures and transcends time.” -Ronald Reagan “May God continue the unity of our country as the railroad unites the two great oceans of the world.” -inscribed on the Golden Spike. Promontory Point, 1869. “We send thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us people. We are glad they are still here and we hope it will always be so.” -Excerpt from the Thanksgiving Address, Mohawk version “Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.” -E.B. White “We are covered by the American banner; let us cling to it, and if required, sacrifice our lives defending it.” -Jose Antonio Navarro “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” -Horace Greeley “Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.” -Harry Emerson Fosdick “A big iron needle stitching the country together.” -Jesamyn West “It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win.” -John Paul Jones “It is immigrants who brought to this land the skills of their hands and brains to make it a beacon of opportunity and hope for all men.” -Herbert H. Lehman “This nation has a banner…it is the banner of Dawn. It means Liberty…Every color means liberty; every thread means liberty.” -Henry Ward Beecher “Every generation has the obligation to free men’s minds for a look at new worlds…to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.” -Ellison S. Onizuka “The cause of freedom is not the case of a race or a sect or a party or a class — it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.” -Anna Julia Cooper You're currently a free subscriber to How To Subvert Subversion with Yuri Bezmenov. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. Upgrade to paid SHARE LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2024 Yuri Bezmenov 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe

Making money stick Lessons from the Brixton Pound SAFAR FIERTZE JAN 23

How do you make money stick? This week we take a peek into inner city life and what we can learn from its local economy. For some readers this letter will be cut short by your email provider! Please follow this link to the website where you will be able to read without interruption. It’s also pretty ☺️ Thank you! I emerge from the Brixton Underground station just as the sun is setting. My senses are assaulted by dank city pollution, the drone of traffic dotted with red buses, and the garish signage of a Pound Shop. The road, flanked on both sides by chain stores, extends further than I am able to see. It wasn’t quite what I’d expected. My friend had given a different picture of life in Brixton. She’s not expecting me for another hour and although she’s making us dinner, I know that whatever time she says it’ll be served, it’ll be three hours later. By then, we invariably will have drunk a bottle of wine between us. Experience tells my hungry body to get myself a snack. I shun a Café Nero in the hope of finding an independent shop. Already my nervous system is rejecting the sudden sensory overload; I turn the corner in the hope of a semblance of tranquility in the chaos. The road is equally busy, but the chain stores give way to independent businesses. I’m about to go into a café, but hesitate when I realise it’s no ordinary coffee shop. A group of people tumble out into the cooler night, followed by a member of staff who ushers me in. “Don’t mind the prices on the sign, we close in half an hour, but we’ve still got coffee going, as much as you can drink, and if you need a workstation, plug in.” “Do you have anything to eat?” “Light snacks, sarnies, panini…” I agree to stay. It’s warm, it’s friendly and it’s not a Starbucks. I hang my coat on the back of a chair, sit down and plug in my laptop. As I wait for it boot up I peruse the menu and their information. The café is called Caya and has only recently opened. It provides individual and group workstations, providing “an office without the politics, a kitchen table without the procrastination”. It’s owned and run by a cooperative and for £9 for a morning or afternoon (or £16 for the whole day), you get all the coffee you can drink while working. Food is extra, but cheaply priced for a London venue. I sip on good coffee while I google how far my friend’s home is from where I am, trying to decide whether to walk or taxi the last part of the journey. When the staff member comes back with my panini he offers to call a taxi should I need one. The service they link to is community owned - it operates like a carpool and is a way of getting local people around the city village more conveniently and cheaply. I had planned to walk off the effect of sitting on a train for the last few hours, but am curious. This is more like the Brixton my friend had told me about. Brixton is a transition town and eight years earlier had set up its own currency, the Brixton pound, worth the same as a British pound. Its mantra was “money that sticks to Brixton”. They want to preserve the area's unique identity, foster community spirit, strengthen local bonds, and defend local businesses from the onslaught of chain stores by paying for goods and services with the local money. They also want to cut down on food miles and would like their traders to source goods locally.¹ Caya is one of those operations which makes use of local produce in the lunches it offers. The Brixton pound was ailing even a short while after its launch. The notes were difficult to bank, few people used them, and buying local was more problematic than conceived. Inner-city London isn’t rural Totnes, Lewes or Stroud, which also have their own currencies, but where most goods could be sourced from the local area. How do you offer locally-produced coffee? While the Totnes currency stabilised and enjoyed longevity, one researcher stated he’d be reluctant to recommend a repeat of the Totnes trial. However, he wasn’t against the concept of local currencies per se, just the paper-notes version. Shortly after the launch of the Brixton pound, the first international study into the ‘new economics’, i.e. grassroots currencies, was underway, with a view to learning about their role in more sustainable economies. These took the form of mutual exchange, service credit, local currency and barter economies. In 2012, half were growing, but more than a quarter were in decline. The highest growth rates were in North America and Europe. They were all used in the context of sustainable development, though their aims differ. For example, in South America, the vision was empowerment and social justice, in Europe and America, to reduce food miles, support local business and build social networks. Some were more technologically advanced and others worked with existing political structures to widen participation.² While local notes, are symbolic and help organise a town around a common identity (Brixton notes feature the portraits of historic local residents such as Vincent Van Gogh), digital currencies have more scope. Brixton never gave up on its pound. It instead established a digital platform to work across the mobile phone network and in 2021 it planned to: “… reinvent the Brixton Pound, layering all we have learned in the last decade onto Algorand’s unique blockchain. Open source, trustless³ and inclusive, it’s an ecosystem developed solely to deliver public good.”⁴ Up until then, Brixton boasted a micro-grant scheme, a local lottery and funded a pay-as-you-feel/can surplus food café. As to how the new version of the currency will fair is now a matter of wait-and-see. One problem facing researchers is lack of hard evidence to make good recommendations for grassroots currencies in the future, recommendations that show the exact features which would enable a local currency to work in the longer term. As they arise out of informal networks, more formal track and trace systems rarely operate. However, in one town, they questioned how feasible it was to create an entirely self-sufficient town with some practical data behind the answer. A couple of years after Incredible Edible was established in Todmordon, the local food economy was investigated through a single product - eggs. The average person in Todmorden eats 3 eggs a week. With a population of 15,000, the local demand for eggs is approximately 45,000 eggs a week. That’s a lot of eggs. How do you ensure local production meets that demand? In Todmorden, a campaign was launched - Every Egg Matters, which began first with a survey, and then with an egg map of homes, small-holdings, farms and shops selling local eggs. The map showed they were meeting one sixth of the local demand for eggs. They also established a support network for those keeping or wanting to keep chickens. This included two local schools. Most eggs were available at small production sites - the farm gate. To meet local demand, they’d need to scale up and get eggs onto the aisles of local supermarket chain stores. They reasoned it was entirely possible with a mobile co-operative of five producers with about 150 hens each. To get the model implemented, however, would mean paying more for your eggs than supermarkets generally offer them for. If you are a large commercial operation, then subsidies help to keep the price down. If the same support was given to smaller, ethical producers, both the consumer and the farmer would benefit. And ethically produced eggs do not have to be more expensive. A few years ago, I read a blog about an organic farmer in the US who keeps chickens (both for meat and eggs). She calculated her own eggonomy by conducting a cost analysis of chickens raised conventionally compared to outdoor-reared chickens. Even taking loss of chickens to predators into account (a 5% higher rate of loss when free-range), it was less costly to keep free-range than conventional chickens, as she saved on the expense of feed and energy costs. The added advantages, such as less stressed chickens, garden pest control, and manure, a decrease in overall farming costs, and the result of a higher quality product to take to market. If it is feasible for town with a population of 15,000 to become self-sufficient in eggs, then what other product demands could it supply? I leave Caya Café, and take advantage of more local business recommendations to purchase a bottle of wine and a gift to bring my friend. I arrive, not in a black cab, but a community-owned car. Dinner was late - as usual. Up Next Next week, we’ll take a peek into a cooperative business as a way of thinking about a different way to be. Embers A while back, I asked if any of The Fiertzeside posts impacted on your behaviour in any way. Feedback showed that some posts had helped, in many ways, to clarify on-going thoughts which manifested in some small action. This week, I was delighted to see The Fiertzeside got a mention. Joyce Wycoff loves Mexico, so had a particular interest in my (clarion) post about the revival of chinampas for farming in Mexico City. She’s hoping to visit, and I’m hoping we get to hear about what she learns. In the post she shares a beautiful painting of Maria Féliz. If the name is unfamiliar, Joyce provides enlightening insight. I also empathise with her experience of learning to speak a different language. Thank you, Joyce! gratitude mojo community Love Letter to My Life #67: My new writer's screwdriver On this, my monthly death day, when I write a love letter to my life and acknowledge its ever-changing beauty and eventual end, I’ve decided to indulge myself in two ways … by recommending a post that struck a clarion tone with me (and making it a growing list by adding to it each month) and posting a piece of my dig… Read more 6 days ago · 14 likes · 16 comments · Joyce Wycoff 1 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/21/brixton-pound-local-currency 2 https://grassrootsinnovations.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/seyfang-and-longhurst-2012-money-money-money.pdf 3 For more on what trustless means in the context of crypto currencies see: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/trustless 4 https://brixtonpound.org The Fiertzeside will be always available to read without any paywalled restrictions. However, financial gifts are greatly appreciated. Paid subscriptions will help me to support other writers and to further the development of a forest garden project which I hope to open as a demonstration site in the future. Upgrade to paid SHARE LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2024 Safar Fiertze

What happened to all those Saxon crosses? Destruction and re-use A CATHOLIC PILGRIM JAN 23

Last week I showed you some of best examples of surviving and standing Anglo-Saxon crosses from the 7th - 10th centuries. This week we’re looking at the bits of them that survive. Often all we have is a base. Here is a cross base from outside the church of St Mary in Stainburn. The current church is Norman (12th century) but it undoubtedly had a Saxon forebear, and in the churchyard, unnoticed by most, is this cross base: You see quite a lot of these lying around churchyards. Judging by the erosion on this, it’s ancient and most likely held a cross 1000 years ago. If you factor in that every church would have had at least one cross nearby, there must have been hundreds of them scattered across the country. What happened to them all? The answer seems to be a combination of natural damage, war and vandalism. Stone cracks - if water gets in and freezes, it can amplify natural cracks and shatter the stone. Some of the crosses, such as at Bewcastle and Hexham, have been in war zones; first the Vikings, during the 9th and 10th centuries, then later the Scottish border skirmishes. Finally it seems obvious that some succumbed during the post-Reformation period of the 16th century. It was quite common in the 16th century for artefacts to be buried to protect them from damage by the puritanical Reformers. Sometimes they went under floors, sometimes walled up in doorways, or built into walls and other times buried in the churchyards. In the early 11th century there was quite a fashion for tower building and a number of them incorporated bits of crosses in their construction. If the head of a cross survived, it was perfect for placement on the tower. Incola ego sum in terra © 2024 Incola 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

23 January 2024 PEREGRINUS JAN 23

Behold how the teachings of our Lord and Saviour, the Eternal Wisdom, are rejected, His deeds forgotten, and the price of His precious Blood lost, in a measure, considering how few there are who seek their salvation. St. Ignatius of Loyola Obedience is the true holocaust which we sacrifice to God on the altar of our hearts. St. Philip Neri The soul lets out some sighs — not great ones — because it can do no more; they are felt within. St. Teresa de Avila O Saint Aloysius, adorned with angelical manners, although I am thy unworthy servant, I recommend to thee in an especial manner the chastity of my soul and body; I conjure thee, by thy angelical purity, to commend me to Jesus Christ, the spotless Lamb, and to His most holy Mother, the Virgin of virgins. Preserve me from every grievous sin; never suffer me to sully my soul with any impurity; whenever thou seest me in temptation or danger of sin, ward off from me every impure thought and affection, and awakening in me the remembrance of eternity and of Jesus crucified, imprint deeply in my heart the sentiment of the fear of God. Inflame me with divine love, in order that by imitating thee on earth, I may merit to enjoy God with thee in heaven. Amen. © 2024 Peregrinus 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

The Biden Administration's Absurd Justification For Its Yemen War

On Monday the US launched its eighth wave of airstrikes in its new war against Yemeni forces, which it has now formally titled “Operation Poseidon Archer”. The strikes are aimed at breaking a Red Sea shipping blockade which the de facto authorities in Yemen have implemented to pressure Israel and its allies into ceasing the genocidal onslaught in Gaza. At a press briefing on Monday, Principal Deputy State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel uttered a now-familiar Biden administration line when asked if the war would escalate to involve US boots on the ground. “First, as it relates to the Houthis, the United States is not interested in any escalation, but it is never acceptable for malign actors to target international vessels, to target legitimate commerce that is flowing through the Red Sea,” Patel said. “We’re talking about international waters that allow 30 percent of global container shipping to flow through those waters — 15 percent of seaborne trade. This is a waterway that is vital. And we will always take appropriate steps to hold those accountable that put things like legitimate commerce, civilians, U.S. personnel, in harm’s way.” Ever since the Biden administration began bombing Yemen, its official spinmeisters have been babbling about commerce and global container shipping to justify it. The unspoken premise behind this justification is that an active genocide should be permitted to continue with zero economic repercussions of any kind, for Israel or anyone else. It’s just taken as a given by empire managers and their defenders that the money must keep flowing and the gears of capitalism must keep turning at the same rate they were turning before Israel began massacring tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, if not faster. That the horrors being unleashed in Gaza should have no material impact on the rest of the world whatsoever. The empire will permit you to think thoughts and feel feelings about the butchery in Gaza quietly in the privacy of your own head, and under the right circumstances it will even permit you to attend pro-Palestine demonstrations and share your opinions on social media. But as soon as it comes to physically interfering with the gears of the imperial machine, they’ll blow your guts out. Which is of course absurd. The horrors in Gaza should be affecting the whole world. Our lives should not be proceeding normally, and it’s freakish and obscene that they do. It’s a sign of a profoundly sick civilization that so many of us in the west are able to lose ourselves in idle entertainment and laugh and stuff our faces with snacks and go out on the town while the nightmare in Gaza continues to unfold. Gaza should be stopping us in our tracks. Hell we should be disrupting the economy ourselves — we shouldn’t have to wait for impoverished Yemenis to do it for us. We should be holding general strikes and stopping ships and disrupting everything we can possibly disrupt in order to force western civilization to look at what it’s supporting in Gaza and bring this mass atrocity to a screeching halt. Instead we’re just sleepwalking through life like we always do while people in the poorest nation in the middle east bravely fight our battle for us. https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1737923032482767223 The empire is not entitled to expect that all commerce keep flowing normally during an active genocide. Israel is not entitled to have zero consequences for its actions, and its trading partners are not entitled to be unaffected by those consequences. The idea that it’s normal and appropriate to use any and all measures to prevent Israel’s atrocities from having any material impact on commerce — up to and including starting a new American war — is self-evidently ridiculous. It’s been an incredibly draining past 100 days for those of us who’ve been following events in Gaza. There’ve been days when I couldn’t believe the sun dared to shine. The premise that there shouldn’t even be a slight economic downturn as a result of this madness, and that it’s fine to start a war to make sure there isn’t, deserves to be dismissed with extreme disdain. We live in a dystopian world where it’s completely normalized to subvert human interests to commercial interests, to toss tens of thousands of lives into the incinerator for wealth and convenience. Where war profiteers rake in vast fortunes for selling instruments of mass murder to genocidal governments, and where the most powerful empire in history declares a war to defend shipping containers at the cost of human life. Don’t ever let these sick freaks convince you that this is normal. _____________ Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Caitlin’s Newsletter © 2024 Caitlin Johnstone PO Box 378, Mentone, 3194, Victoria, Australia Unsubscribe

On deplatforming Substack and the meaning of free speech Myth and revolution, pt. 0 LAUGHLYN (JOHAN EDDEBO) JAN 23

Colin Bruce Milne Jan 23 · Colin’s Substack Spread this around. As many have pointed out, Substack is facing increasing pressure from the narrative gatekeepers since it’s grown very rapidly in the last couple of years, and since it’s allowing dissident voices to make a genuine impact. For many reasons, this pressure is to be expected. By their very nature, all forms of mass communications media, from even organized recitation of verse in oral cultures, to today’s jumble of digital propaganda mainlining, are always primarily a tool of the social hierarchy. An instrument of the ruling class, the elite caste, or whatever authority structure you’re dealing with. Mass media in this most general sense, propagating itself from the centre to the periphery and from the few to the many, is at its heart the activity of the established power structure towards realizing its own intentions. But this is a double-edged sword, since historically, these kinds of tools could always be subverted and used to counteract or depart from the goals and intentions of the ruling classes. The advent of the printing press in Europe is a case in point. Even though it strengthened central authority significantly, it also enabled organized popular resistance of every conceivable kind, and its appearance coincides with the emergence of something akin to a political consciousness among the general population. The attempts to deplatform Substack is really nothing less than the ensuing repeated censorships of Voltaire’s books by the French government in the early 18th century, just ahead of the Age of Revolutions. It’s similar to the Nazi’s book burnings, or the Pinochet regime’s mass destruction of politically subversive material in the early 70s. Same thing. These are tactics for controlling actual and potential dissent that could interfere with the goals and intentions of the established power structure. They will always be employed if it’s deemed necessary, and for the very same reason, in what’s called “modern democracies”, such quaint touchstones as freedom of speech or freedom of the press have always been conditional. In other words, the press is always only free insofar its output does not meaningfully interfere with the intentions, goals and desires of the power elite. You can vote on a set of preselected candidates, parties or cliques, as long as their participation in the power structure doesn’t rock the boat too much. But there’s always counter-organizing. There’s always subversion and sabots to be thrown into the gears. Or there at least used to be. The main difference about the Substack deplatforming, and of similar contemporary attempts at tethering and controlling forums for discourse, is that they’re potentially invincible and all-encompassing. Back in the day, while the powers that be could just burn books, smash the printing presses and hang the editors, anyone and his dog could just build everything from scratch again and start over. Anywhere. Mutt the Cigarette-Delivering French Bulldog & Other Animals of World War I - World War I Centennial Mutt, the trench-running, cigarette-delivering French Bulldog of WW1 With today’s centralized internet architecture and its incredible capacity for propaganda, the necessity of digital transactions, and the push towards all-encompassing surveillance, there’s a potential to actually construct an essentially undefeatable censorship machine. For one, there’s already an effective social credit system in place, right here in the West. Big data mass surveillance already knows your face, your whereabouts, and your spending habits. Add to that organized penalties for infractions of “community guidelines” in the increasingly centralized, monolithic social media architecture that’s more or less integrated with the banking system, and you have a tacitly emergent, ubiquitous social credit system. You don’t need to intentionally and explicitly build one. The character of the technology and its design will over time reproduce the basic intentions of the power stucture. And meaningful dissent, as most of us know, is being penalized through shadowbanning or social ostracization by the useful idiots of the volunteer thought police. Information is being curated by filtering algorithms, and actively generated by large language models that are not only used for supporting approved narratives, but that due to their very structure will tend towards reproducing and permanenting the already-dominant points of view. You don’t need anything like an active conspiracy. In the very near future, all of our kids will be educated by AI shills whose only purpose is to extract surplus value from the workers and sell you things you don’t need. If the people of this period in history are blocked from avenues of subversion and dissent, that loss of access could be final. It could remain for a thousand years. That boot stamping on a human face, essentially forever. For these reasons, our contemporary struggle is more important than any similar political undertaking throughout the modern period. If we lose platforms like Substack, and if the digital architecture becomes structurally “vaccinated” against them ever emerging again, the battle is lost. Originally posted on shadowrunners shadowrunners laughlyn (johan eddebo) tribal resistance in the neo-feudal corporate dystopia © 2024 Colin Bruce Milne 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104