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Ben Ewing
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Replying to Avatar Stella Assange

Julian Assange explains the 2025 USAID debacle, eleven years ago:

‘The received wisdom in advanced capitalist societies is that there still exists an organic “civil society sector” in which institutions form autonomously and come together to manifest the interests and will of citizens. The fable has it that the boundaries of this sector are respected by actors from government and the “private sector,” leaving a safe space for NGOs and nonprofits to advocate for things like human rights, free speech, and accountable government.

This sounds like a great idea. But if it was ever true, it has not been for decades.

Since at least the 1970s, authentic actors like unions and churches have folded under a sustained assault by free-market statism, transforming "civil society" into a buyer's market for political factions and corporate interests looking to exert influence at arm's length. The last forty years have seen a huge proliferation of think tanks and political NGOs whose purpose, beneath all the verbiage, is to execute political agendas by proxy.

It is not just obvious neocon front groups like Foreign Policy Initiative. It also includes fatuous Western NGOs like Freedom House, where naïve but well-meaning career nonprofit workers are twisted in knots by political funding streams, denouncing non-Western human rights violations while keeping local abuses firmly in their blind spots.

The civil society conference circuit—which flies developing-world activists across the globe hundreds of times a year to bless the unholy union between "government and private stakeholders" at geopoliticized events like the "Stockholm Internet Forum"—simply could not exist if it were not blasted with millions of dollars in political funding annually…’

Text from Sep 2014, before he was imprisoned in Belmarsh. Extracted from his book, “When Google Met WikiLeaks”. Full text and images for the first chapter are available for free here:

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

I thought I liked Assange but this is a mess

I have a feeling we might be saying the same thing about another coin in a few monthd

Ok well then I’ll assume I’m right. Bitcoin to $5

It is pretty cool you can zap people. I live for moments when you get to do something that most people think is impossible

It’s actually kinda cool- I imagine that if I die maybe I will have said some interesting stuff on here and so it might be kind of like when an artist dies and there are all these paintings found in his attic

No idea- i’ve been nostr only for years

Nostr is kind of like twitter except almost devoid of people

‘Countries can’t ban bitcoin’

Source: University of Cambridge Bitcoin Mining Study (2021-2023)

The notion that Putin has some grand plan to conquer Europe is largely pushed by NATO expansionists who need to justify their own existence.

You’re assuming adoption happens equally at the same rate everywhere. What about if, as you say, the US government is unable to fund it’s military because it’s citizens and defence contractors only accept bitcoin, but lets say (hypothetically of course) Chinese or Russian citizens or contractors are more than happy to fight for payment in rubles or yuan, because let’s say, adoption has been slower in those countries? Not that this is actually based on, I don’t know, actual adoption rates between these countries or anything…

Any country that adopts bitcoin and has enemies and no allies would get invaded by a fiat country. I’ll keep saying it until people start listening

Maybe I just credit women with enough wear withal to broadcast their relationship status, approximate location and last seen and you know, not be raped? Maybe it’s an Australian thing? What country are you in?

What’s Really in Your Breakfast Bowl?

Last week at our Orange Hatter meeting, we dug into Chapters 2 and 3 of Fiat Food by

Matthew Lydian

and

nostr:npub1gdu7w6l6w65qhrdeaf6eyywepwe7v7ezqtugsrxy7hl7ypjsvxksd76nak

.

Let me just say—what we learned about the history of cornflakes completely blew our minds.

Did you know that the Kellogg cereal many of us grew up associating with a "healthy breakfast" was originally designed as a purposefully bland food meant to curb carnal desires? I know, it sounds crazy.

Here’s the story:

John Harvey Kellogg, a devout Seventh-Day Adventist, and others within the movement believed that red meat was the root cause of carnal desires, including the urge to masturbate.

Their solution? A vegetarian, tasteless diet to suppress these urges.

The extent of their beliefs included horrific measures, like the mutilation of children's bodies and caging their sexual organs.

Over decades, the Adventists infiltrated government systems and schools under the guise of "diet and nutrition education," fundamentally shaping U.S. food policies to reflect their vision of an anti-masturbatorial vegetarian utopia.

This whole thing isn’t just a bizarre piece of history—it’s a huge lesson in the power of influence and especially in the power of money.

None of us knew the cereal lining grocery store shelves was born of religious zealotry aimed at controlling human desires.

It’s a jaw-dropping example of how marketing and money can rewrite the narrative of a product and reshape public perception on a massive scale.

Think about it: with a smart marketing campaign, an entire nation was convinced to embrace a food product with a purpose most of us would never have imagined.

So, what else don’t we know about the food we eat?

If you’re curious, let’s keep the conversation going.

Join the Orange Hatter Reading Club by visiting http://orangehatter.com/reading-club.

This Wednesday night at 8:30 PM EST, we’ll be diving into the next chapters.

Join us as we keep asking questions and learning together.

#FiatFood #OrangeHatter

His reasoning also forgot to consider that maybe it was satiety that increased these feelings, and therefore the particular macronutrient wouldn’t matter…

No government that has relied on being able to print money to fund war efforts like France has done throughout history would ever relinquish that power by allowing hard currency. And they’d be right not to- any modern power that gave this up would be unable to reliably fund it’s military, leaving its people open to invasion.

What’s Really in Your Breakfast Bowl?

Last week at our Orange Hatter meeting, we dug into Chapters 2 and 3 of Fiat Food by

Matthew Lydian

and

nostr:npub1gdu7w6l6w65qhrdeaf6eyywepwe7v7ezqtugsrxy7hl7ypjsvxksd76nak

.

Let me just say—what we learned about the history of cornflakes completely blew our minds.

Did you know that the Kellogg cereal many of us grew up associating with a "healthy breakfast" was originally designed as a purposefully bland food meant to curb carnal desires? I know, it sounds crazy.

Here’s the story:

John Harvey Kellogg, a devout Seventh-Day Adventist, and others within the movement believed that red meat was the root cause of carnal desires, including the urge to masturbate.

Their solution? A vegetarian, tasteless diet to suppress these urges.

The extent of their beliefs included horrific measures, like the mutilation of children's bodies and caging their sexual organs.

Over decades, the Adventists infiltrated government systems and schools under the guise of "diet and nutrition education," fundamentally shaping U.S. food policies to reflect their vision of an anti-masturbatorial vegetarian utopia.

This whole thing isn’t just a bizarre piece of history—it’s a huge lesson in the power of influence and especially in the power of money.

None of us knew the cereal lining grocery store shelves was born of religious zealotry aimed at controlling human desires.

It’s a jaw-dropping example of how marketing and money can rewrite the narrative of a product and reshape public perception on a massive scale.

Think about it: with a smart marketing campaign, an entire nation was convinced to embrace a food product with a purpose most of us would never have imagined.

So, what else don’t we know about the food we eat?

If you’re curious, let’s keep the conversation going.

Join the Orange Hatter Reading Club by visiting http://orangehatter.com/reading-club.

This Wednesday night at 8:30 PM EST, we’ll be diving into the next chapters.

Join us as we keep asking questions and learning together.

#FiatFood #OrangeHatter

Just because cornflakes were created by someone for some reason doesn’t make them lack nutrition. You’re assuming that the motive determines their nutritional value. In fact corn is a pretty nutritious staple (more-so than rice or wheat).