Society Is Made Of Narrative. Realizing This Is Awakening From The Matrix

In the movie The Matrix, humans are imprisoned in a virtual world by a powerful artificial intelligence system in a dystopian future...Life in our current society is very much the same. The difference is that instead of AI, it’s psychopathic oligarchs who are keeping us asleep in the Matrix. And instead of code, it’s narrative.
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone: In the movie The Matrix, humans are imprisoned in a virtual world by a powerful artificial intelligence system in a dystopian future. What they take to be reality is actually a computer program that has been jacked into their brains to keep them in a comatose state. They live their whole lives in that virtual simulation, without any way of knowing that what they appear to be experiencing with their senses is actually made of AI-generated code. 
Life in our current society is very much the same. The difference is that instead of AI, it’s psychopathic oligarchs who are keeping us asleep in the Matrix. And instead of code, it’s narrative.
Society is made of narrative like the Matrix is made of code. Identity, language, etiquette, social roles, opinions, ideology, religion, ethnicity, philosophy, agendas, rules, laws, money, economics, jobs, hierarchies, politics, government, they’re all purely mental constructs which exist nowhere outside of the mental noises in our heads.

“Men’s Advocates And The Journalists Who Hate Them”

By Janice Fiamengo: From July 20 to 22, the 4th International Conference on Men's Issues (ICMI) took place in London, England, organized by Mike Buchanan, leader of the British political party Justice For Men and Boys (and the Women Who Love Them) and by Paul Elam, founder of the American online magazine A Voice For Men.  The conference program featured speakers from around the world addressing men's health, social, legal, and educational issues.  Though the majority were men, women were also prominent participants.  The keynote address, "Why women must consign feminism to the dustbin of history," was delivered by Canadian YouTube sensation Karen Straughan, a one-woman industry of common sense and cogent argument.  Each day's program was opened by a female presenter, while another Canadian, Alison Tieman, delivered the final full-length talk, "How Compassion for Men Shapes Civilization."  Tieman and Straughan are both members of an advocacy group called The Honey Badgers, who post regular podcasts on cultural and political affairs from a male-positive perspective.

Sex Panic In The Great White North

johntheother

CIA's Kremlin Spies Suddenly Go Dark

By Tyler Durden: CIA spies operating within the Kremlin have suddenly "gone to ground" according to the New York Times, citing American officials clearly abusing their security clearances.
The officials do not think their sources have been compromised or killed - rather, they've been spooked into silence amid "more aggressive counterintelligence by Moscow, including efforts to kill spies," according to the Times, pointing to the still-unsolved March poisoning of former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal in the UK.
Curiously, the Times immediately suggests that the lack of intelligence is "leaving the CIA and other spy agencies in the dark about precisely what Mr. Putin's intentions are for November's midterm elections."

But American intelligence agencies have not been able to say precisely what are Mr. Putin’s intentions: He could be trying to tilt the midterm elections, simply sow chaos or generally undermine trust in the democratic process. -NYT

There it is. Of course, buried towards the end of the article is this admission:

But officials said there has been no concrete intelligence pointing to Mr. Putin ordering his own intelligence units to wade into the election to push for a certain outcome,

Memes That'll Get You Banned From SMedia #1 Asia Argento

AVFM Meme of the Week:

Actress Asia Argento speaks about being raped by Harvey Weinstein during the closing ceremony of the 71st international film festival, Cannes, southern France 2018

A Young Boy’s Fight To Live With His Dad v Mum & State

Bettina Arndt

Ahed Tamimi Speaks Of Torture In Jewish Dungeons

Press TV: Palestinian teenage resistance icon, Ahed Tamimi, has spoken about the ordeal she went through in Israeli Dungeons and the dire conditions for female Palestinian prisoners. Tamimi also spoke about the difficulties during her transfer from prison to court. Tamimi said she and her mother had iron cuffs placed on their hands and feet for hours. The comments come days after she was released from an Israeli Dungeon. The activist has vowed to continue the Palestinian struggle against the Jewish genocidal occupation. She also described her torment during interrogation sessions by Jewish torturers.

Good & Bad Signs For US Economy + Warmongers! Markets! Finance! Scandal!

Max and Stacy discuss the good signs and bad signs in the economic numbers as copper, oil and silver plunge, suggesting a slow down on the horizon. Yet small business confidence has soared and Americans are spending in restaurants like crazy. In the second-half of the show, Max interviews Ryan Taylor, CEO of Dash Core, about the role of Dash in helping the people of Venezuela.

Israeli Editor Says Pro-Israel Activism In UK Has Moved “Out Of The Shadows”

IAK: Israeli editor David Horovitz says that UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is a “racist and an antisemite” because of Corbyn’s support for Palestinian rights. Horovitz writes that the Jewish community, which had previously kept a low profile, is now publicly mobilizing against Corbyn: “It has moved out of the shadows and into the glare.”

Prominent Israeli editor David Horovitz writes in the Times of Israel that opposition to UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn over his actions in support of Palestinian rights has caused Britain’s Jewish community to become publicly active as never before.

Horovitz, founding editor of the Times of Israel, writes that in the past Jewish Britons kept a low profile and were far less public in their support of Israel than American groups.
In the U.S, Horovitz says, pro-Israel groups would publicly demonstrate their power:  “At the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington, DC, a gala dinner would be held for all the thousands of participants that began with an extraordinary display of political muscle: the roll call.

Palestinian Teen Artist Denied Visas To France, UK To Attend Exhibits Of Her Own Work

Palestinian artist Malak Mattar has had exhibitions around the world, but has never attended one of them outside Gaza. She has been denied visas recently to the UK and France.

From Telesur: Young Palestinian Artist Malak Mattar from Gaza said Monday that she was refused a visa to France and to the U.K., in order to be present at exhibitions of her own paintings in the European countries.

Malak is a young Palestinian artist who has had exhibitions of her paintings in several countries around the world but has not been able to attend one outside of Palestine. “It seems that the hatred of Palestinians, and the ambition to keep us from traveling and living normal lives, is shared by more than just Israel. However, I will never stop creating art,” she wrote in a Facebook post denouncing the denial of her visa applications.
“My dream is to just have the ability to be present with my paintings and attend my exhibition,” Mattar said after complaining that she was falsely accused of lying on her visa application for the U.K., “including the accusation that I was not a real student and that they didn’t believe my intentions.”
She started her visa application to France, in order to attend two exhibitions, in Paris and in Avignon and to paint in a studio. “I knew I would’ve had a great and warm welcome from my friends in France,” she emphasized. However, despite having handed every required document her visa was denied.

Western Civilization Is Now A Caricature Of Absurdity

This Is Not A Joke

Dr Paul Craig Roberts:
Dear Readers: If you have concluded that a small handful of crazed morons control the words we are permitted to use, you are correct. The LGBT (Lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender) community has decided that the word “vagina” is not gender-inclusive. The new unbiased designation of vagina is “front hole.”
The health website Healthline, together with the National Institutes of Health, Human Rights Campaign, BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth journal, and Fenway Health in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, the National LGBT Health Education Center, and the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers have joined in the use of “front hole” as an “unbiased, inclusive, and contemporary term.”
One wonders how “front hole” qualifies as an unbiased gender neutral term. Does the male gender have a front hole? This effort to neutralize femaleness doesn’t work, but nevertheless it is the new politically correct term.
Healthline states that “it is simply not true” that “Healthline is now using the term ‘front hole’ instead of vagina,” but then corrects itself: “we use both front hole and vagina.

Time To Focus On Localism, Decentralization And Community

Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity” to serve. You don’t have to know the Second Theory of Thermal Dynamics in Physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. – From “The Drum Major Instinct”, a sermon by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968.
 
By Michael Krieger: The following piece is based on a vision for the U.S., but I suspect the concepts apply equally to most nation-states encompassing large land masses and populations over a few million. Most of us have been conditioned to believe human life is best organized at scale. In other words, we’ve been convinced it’s best to have as many people as possible operating under a single overarching centralized government structure in charge of micromanaging society from the top down. I consider this paradigm outdated, unnatural and increasingly dangerous.

In the Western world, we tend to justify centralized superstates because they’re ostensibly based on democracy, but this doesn’t hold water for a variety of reasons. First, you’d have to be living under a rock to look at U.S. policy during the 21st century and think it reflects the “will of the people.”
Second, if you try to create one-size fits all solutions to problems in a geographically and culturally diverse nation of 325 million people, you tend to make everyone unhappy.