Today’s newsletter is going to be longer than usual for many reasons, one being that I have been away this week and with that my attention was elsewhere. Secondly, I am going to combine the paid-for newsletter with this one - feel free to scroll down for your weekends worth of rage tweets - and thirdly, fucking hell, there is a lot to talk about. Before all that though - for those wondering, your Antifa Shirts are currently being printed and should be shipped early next week. There is a slew of new product in the pipeline waiting to be dropped but all in due time.
I want to bring your attention to this video by Antibody that was sent to me via a comrade.With election night looming in the US this portrays a very likely look into the near future.
I have two issues with this, one, being the “vote” line at the end - it sits in stark contrast to the video itself and secondly is meaningless as a whole. More importantly though, I am starting to wonder where the line is between being clear as to where we are heading, hell, where we are as a people, politically and socially, and what spreading awareness is vs. propaganda. Propaganda serves a purpose, other than the obvious and planned for emotional responses - in today’s world, enragement and fear are amplified exponentially through social media and since all content is quantified monetarily I am starting to question what the intent here, and pretty much everywhere I look - including myself - is. Do we create panic to make money or do we truly wish to share information to radicalize our readers/viewers? Whilst I know where I stand, I do think it is time we all start asking that question when we see anything that triggers an emotional response - are we being played or awakened?
The second larger issue I want to bring your attention to is something I touched upon earlier in the week but having had a few hours to catch up the scope of it is demanding more attention from all of us. It, of course, has to deal with the NY Post story on Hunter Biden and the censorship via Facebook and Twitter.
Glenn Greenwald via The Intercept wrote an excellent article about the issues at play here and explains why this should genuinely be talked about much more than the farce of last nights town hall meetings. Not only is it important to talk about corporate censorship, not only is it vitally important to talk about these monopolies and the power they wield in the information sphere, not only is it important to talk about the DNC’s vehement support of this information fascism-let’s call it what it is- but also:
The company added that their policy “prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization” because, they said, they “don’t want to incentivize hacking by allowing Twitter to be used as distribution for possibly illegally obtained materials.”
That, my friends, is the key point I am taking away from this one. What it means is that information monopolies like Facebook/Twitter are saying that if the information in any published worked is “leaked” it supports hackers and thus needs to be censored. If you are wondering why no major news agency is covering the trial of Julian Assange, here you have it. “Leaked” materials gave us the Panama Papers, the uncovering of the NSA spy scandal via Edward Snowden, the War Crimes committed by the US Army via Chelsea Manning and so on. I’ve linked the article above. Do read it.
There are lot of raging tweeting talking points to cover today and they hopefully will last you through the weekend. Unlike normally, I will comment on the ones that engage me the most as I would in the paid-for newsletter which you can always subscribe to here:
This is pretty much the biggest WTF I had all week and again, it didn’t really make the news here at all. The Republican Party in CA are putting up fake ballot boxes for people to drop off their votes so that they cannot or will not be counted? That in itself is pure North Korean Style Mental Asylum stuff but when they get caught, they admit it and the President urges them to continue this? I mean, what more do you need to run up every government building with pitch forks and oust these corrupt motherfuckers? I am seriously still scratching my head over this one.
Whilst I haven’t watched the hearings for the new Supreme Court Judge in person, there has been enough chatter online about it for me to want to hit my head against a brick wall - I won’t but you know what I am getting at. RBG’s death ultimately was nothing but a convenient event to sell merch for, generating money for the DNC to roll over as per usual. It should genuinely be clear as pie at this point that both parties are ultimately the same and that your interests play little to no role in their existence.
To make up for that round up of severe fuckery here is this weeks playlist
That’s it for this week folks, I’ll be back here next week. Have a think, share this newsletter with your friends so we can get more people on this train, have a drink, call a loved one and take a deep breath. The beginning is near. Cheers.
Steven - once again thank you for the insight, which I share with my 79 year old father(he agrees with the content too). In regards to the video, myself and a very, very small group of friends feel the same way. Some have started looking at moving out of the country, but even that will take a couple of years. I have other friends, who may not say it, but I can tell they're just trying to ride things out, which won't help when shit goes sideways.
The article from The Intercept is great and falls in line with what I've read in Mindf*ck, watched in The Social Dilemma, and your research regarding Palantir. The proposition here in California about ending cash bail is to replace it with a computer system that will determine, who will or will not receive bail while using algorithms to see what people MIGHT do.
On the video -
If the product is free, you are the product. I think those of us in the communications/media world always think about provoking a response, and that response is too frequently an emotional one.
The video is playing out a scenario lots of us are thinking about in the US. I was on the phone with someone the other day who's holed up in Utah with a bunch of .1 percenters and they are expecting civil unrest, if not civil war.
The rest of us, and I say this with someone who has a lot more privilege and options than the average American, are approaching this election as harm reduction therapy for our country. We're going to try to ride out the next several weeks, and stay engaged and focused.