left home at 18 and got a job
in a coffeehouse, burned cars
walked the streets with a moon
met men and women on the make
trying to escape, comfortable
In the dark under the sky;
Zacharias crashed in laundry rooms
or with punk hippie girls whose moms
were gone skiing in Colorado with dentists.
WE CRACK OPEN
THE SECRET CODE
SURVEILLANCE
CAPITALISM...
TAKE BACK OUR MENTAL SPACE
BY FORCE.
AS TRUE WARRIORS OF THE MLF
We call on you to do righteous battle against the powers of Big Tech — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, all the rest — to take back your mind by force.
Every one of us is endowed with the power to reason. We can see our way out of psychological servitude — but only if we can think for ourselves.
No company has your best interest at heart. Only you can decide what to believe and what to ignore. Take that power back into your hands. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. Disregard the Almighty Algorithm.
Do you have the will to win? Or will you lay down and quit? Will you just sip another latte, scrolling mindlessly through your Instabook feed while your every twitch or swipe is tracked, logged, sold, bought, manipulated, and used to exploit your credulity? Will you become another unwitting cog in the tyrannical surveillance-capitalist machinery?
A different kind of life is possible. But we have to push harder to break our habits.
AS A TRUE WARRIOR OF THE MLF
I will refrain from using social media. Read the news critically and elsewhere. Switch to an alternative, open-source email service, like Tutanota, that exempts me from relentless surveillance. Use a search engine other than Google.
I will buy nothing on Amazon. Never allow Alexa into my home. Refuse to install anything to make my home or my life "smart."
Everyday, I will strive to use my smartphone with a little more discretion and thoughtfulness. Everyday, I will find something in the real world to marvel at.
Crisis of Confidence
I don’t know the history of confidence. There are no data from which to make inferences about the evolution of human self-assurance. Did doubt plague the early agriculturalists of the Levant the way it does the youth of today? On waking, did they peer into a puddle and think, You look like trash? Did others regard their own reflection with the audacity of Snow White’s evil stepmother or Dorian Gray?
Syria's Assad (torturer, murderer), India's Modi (vicious zealot), Brazil's Bolsonaro (total madman), Saudi Arabia's MBJ (killer thug), Israel's Netanyahu (moral midget), America's Trump (idiotic climate-change denier), China's Xi (merciless enslaver) - we cannot allow these monsters to...
Adbusters #149!
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Nation against Nation
On the northern bank of the Ottawa River, amid the hurling of stun grenades and tear-gas cannisters, police and Indigenous militants exchanged gunfire, killing one. It was widely reported that Corporal Marcel Lemay of the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), the provincial police force, was shot in the face.
Read MoreNow, for the first time, we pity USA
"Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity." — Fintan O'Toole
Read MoreThe Re-Enchantment
“All of them means all of them” — so said the people of Lebanon, demanding that their leaders be sacked. Belonging to every one of the eighteen officially recognized faiths (and more, one expects, that are not), masses of protestors called for an end to corruption, an end to mismanagement, an end to disparity, and an end to sectarian division; in short, a total overhaul of the country’s political class.
Read MoreInformation Wants to be Free
Data is the most consequential commodity in the world. If you have access to it, but don’t need it, it has little value. But if you have no access to it, and desperately need it, it is priceless.
Read MoreSurveillance State / Surveillance Capitalism
The authorities can see everything people do, every move they make. This situation is comparable to George Orwell’s 1984 — except this is a more extreme version. The corporations know everything people do, every move they make. This situation is comparable to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
— except this is a more extreme version.
The New Face of Surveillance
“Big data” is above all the foundational component in a deeply intentional and highly consequential new logic of accumulation that I call surveillance capitalism. This new form of information capitalism aims to predict and modify human behavior as a means to produce revenue and market control.
Read MoreDark Pools of Money
Dark pools of dark money roam the financial ecosystem looking for quick kills. Using sophisticated computer algorithms, traders place thousands of orders per second, only to reverse them a few moments later. Sometimes these...
Read MoreSpoof Ads
UNDERLAND
Take the JourneyCurrent Issue
The greatest trick technology companies ever played was persuading society to surveil itself. These corporations know everything you do, every move you make, every post you share, every “friend” you make. Your every click and scroll is recorded, then used to encourage any behavior, from shopping habits to voting patterns. This situation is comparable to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World — except this is a more extreme version.
We didn't sign up for this. Did you?
Now, before it's too late, we have to act. In the face of rampant techno-tyranny, we must openly mount a resistance ...
... and unleash a force to liberate us from the chains of technocracy gone totalitarian: the Mental Liberation Front.
Digital citizens of the world! Join the fight against the scourge of surveillance capitalism. Crack open its secret code — and take back your mental space by force.
Join Us
