The film “Pi” is a study in madness and its partner, genius. A tortured, driven man believes (1) that mathematics is the language of the universe, (2) nature can be expressed in numbers, and (3) there are patterns everywhere in nature. If he can find the patterns, if he can find the key to the chaos, then he can predict anything–the stock market, for example. If the man is right, the mystery of existence is unlocked. If he is wrong, the inside of his brain begins to resemble a jammed stock ticker.
The movie, written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, is a study in mental obsession. His hero, named Maximillian Cohen, lives barricaded behind a triple-locked door, in a room filled with high-powered, customized computer equipment. He wants nothing to do with anybody. He writes programs, tests them, looks for the pattern, gets a 216-digit bug, stomps on his chips in a rage, and then begins to wonder about that bug. Exactly 216 digits. There is a theory among some Jewish scholars, he learns, that the name of God has 216 letters.
The movie is shot in rough, high-contrast black and white. Max, played by Sean Gullette, is balding, restless, paranoid and brilliant. He has debilitating headaches and nosebleeds. Symptoms of high blood pressure–or of the mental torment he’s putting himself through. He’s suspicious of everyone. The friendly Indian woman next door puts food by his door. He avoids her. He trusts only his old teacher, Sol (Mark Margolis). They play Go, a game deeper than chess, and Sol tells him to stop with the key to the universe business, already. He warns that he’s spinning away from science and toward numerology.
Not everybody thinks so. His phone rings with the entreaties of Marcy (Pamela Hart), who works for a high-powered Wall Street analysis firm. They want to hire him as a consultant. They think he’s onto something. He has predicted some prices correctly. At the deli, he runs into a Hasidic Jew named Lenny (Ben Shenkman), who seems casual and friendly but has a hidden mission: His group believes the Torah may be a code sent from God and may contain God’s name.
Of course if one finds the mathematical key to everything, that would include God, stock prices, the weather, history, the future, baseball scores and the response to all moves in Go. That assumes there is a key. When you’re looking for something that doesn’t exist, it makes you crazier the closer you get to it.
The seductive thing about Aronofsky’s film is that it is halfway plausible in terms of modern physics and math. What was numerology a century ago now has now been simplified into a very, very vast problem. Chaos theory looks for patterns where common sense says there are none. A computer might be able to give you the answer to anything, if (1) it is powerful enough, and (2) it has all the data. Of course, you might need a computer the size of the universe and containing everything in it, but we’re talking theory here.
“Pi” is a thriller. I am not very thrilled these days by whether the bad guys will get shot or the chase scene will end one way instead of another. You have to make a movie like that pretty skillfully before I care. But I am thrilled when a man risks his mind in the pursuit of a dangerous obsession. Max is out on a limb. There are hungry people circling him. He may be on to something. They want it, too. For both the stock market people and the Hasidic cabal, Max’s formula represents all they believe in and everything they care about.
And then there is a level at which Max may simply be insane, or physically ill. There are people who work out complicated theories involving long, impenetrable columns of numbers. Newspapers get envelopes filled with their proofs every day. And other people who sit in their rooms, wrapping themselves in the webs of chess or numbers theory, addicted to their fixes. And game players, gamblers, horseplayers–people bewitched by the mirage of a system.
The beautiful thing about mathematics is that you can’t prove it except by its own terms. There’s no way to put some math in a test tube and see if it turns purple or heats up. It sits there smugly in its own perfect cocoon, letting people like Max find anything he wants in it–or to think that he has.
[This article is derived from a speech I made at the July 23rd Peace and Freedom Rally in Kingston New York]
There are some things that I believe to be true about the anarchy that purports to be US foreign policy. First, and most important, I do not believe that any voter cast a ballot for Joe Biden because he or she wanted him to relentlessly pursue a needless conflict with Russia that could easily escalate into a nuclear war with unimaginable consequences for all parties. Biden has recently declared that the US will support Ukraine “until we win” and, as there are already tens of billions of dollars of weapons going to Ukraine plus American “advisers” on the ground, it constitutes a scenario in which American and Russian soldiers will soon likely be shooting at each other. The President of Serbia and columnists like Pat Buchanan and Tulsi Gabbard believe that we are already de facto in World War 3 and one has to wonder how the White House is getting away with ignoring the War Powers mandates in the US Constitution.
Second, I believe that the Russians approached the United States and its allies with some quite reasonable requests regarding their own national security given that a hostile military alliance was about to land on its doorsteps. The issues at stake were fully negotiable but the US refused to budge on anything and Russia felt compelled to take military action. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a good war. I categorically reject anyone invading anyone else unless there is a dire and immediate threat, but the onus on how the Ukraine situation developed the way it did is on Washington.
Third, I believe that the US and British governments in particularly have been relentlessly lying to the people and that the media in most of west is party to the dissemination of the lies to sustain the war effort against Russia in Ukraine. The lies include both the genesis and progress of the war and there has also been a sustained effort to demonize President Vladimir Putin and anything Russian, including food, drinks, the Russian language and culture and even professional athletes. The latest victim is a Tchaikovsky symphony banned in Canada. Putin is being personally blamed for inflation, food shortages and energy problems which more properly are the fault of the Washington-led ill-thought-out reaction to him. There is considerable irony in the fact that Biden is giving Ukraine $1.7 billion for healthcare, while healthcare in the US is generally considered among the poorest in the developed world.
I believe that Russia is winning the war comfortably and Ukraine will be forced to give up territory while the American taxpayer gets the bill for the reckless spending policies, currently totaling more than $60 billion, while also looking forward to runaway inflation, energy shortages, and, in a worst-case scenario, a possible collapse of the dollar.
All of the above and the politics behind it has led me to believe that the United States, assisted by some of its allies, has become addicted to war as an excuse for domestic failures as well as a replacement for diplomacy to settle international disputes. The White House hypocritically describes its role as “global leadership” or maintaining a “rules based international order” or even defending “democracy against authoritarianism.” But at the same time the Biden Administration has just completed a fiasco evacuation that ended a twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan. Not having learned anything from Afghanistan, there are now US troops illegally present in Syria and Iraq and Washington is conniving to attack Iran over false claims made by Israel that the Iranians are developing a nuclear weapon. Neither Syria nor Iraq nor Iran in any way threaten the United States, just as the Russians did not threaten Americans prior to a regime change intervention in Ukraine starting in 2014, when the US arranged the overthrow of a government that was friendly to Moscow. The US has also begun to energize NATO to start looking at steps to take to confront the alleged Chinese threat.
The toll coming from constant warfare and fearmongering has also enabled a steady erosion of the liberties that Americans once enjoyed, including free speech and freedom to associate. I would like to discuss what the ordinary concerned citizen can do to cut through all the lies surrounding what is currently taking place, which might well be described as the most aggressive propaganda campaign the world has ever seen, far more extensive than the lying and dissimulation by the White House and Pentagon officials that preceded the disastrous Iraq war. It is an information plus propaganda war that sustains the actual fighting on the ground, and it is in some senses far more dangerous as it seeks to involve more countries in the carnage while also creating a global threat perception that will be used to justify further military interventions.
Part of the problem is that the US government is awash with bad information that it does not know how to manage so it makes it hard to identify anything that might actually be true. Back in my time as an intelligence officer operating overseas, there were a number of short cuts that were used to categorize and evaluate information. For example, if one were hanging out in a local bar and overheard two apparent government officials discussing something of interest that might be happening in the next week, one might report it to Washington with a source description FNU/LNU, which stood for “first name unknown” and “last name unknown.” In other words, it was unverifiable hearsay coming from two individuals who could not be identified. As such it was pretty much worthless, but it clogged up the system and invited speculation.
My personal favorite, however, was the more precise source descriptions developed by military intelligence using an alphabet letter followed by a number in a sequence running from A-1 to F-6. At the top of an intelligence report there would be an assessment of the source, or agent. A-1 meant a piece of information that was both credible and had been confirmed by other sources and that was also produced by an agent that had actual access to the information in question. At the other end of the scale, an F-6 was information that was dubious produced by a source that appeared to have no actual access to the information.
By that standard, we Americans have been fed a lot of largely fabricated F-6 “fake information” coming from both the government and the media to justify the Ukraine disaster. Here is how you can spot it. If it is a newspaper or magazine article skim all the way down the text until you reach a point towards the end where the sourcing of the information is generally hidden. If it is attributed to a named individual who indeed indisputably had direct access to the information it would at least suggest that the reporting contains a kernel of truth. But that is almost never the case, and one normally sees the source described as an “anonymous source” or a “government official” or even, in many cases, there is no source attribution at all. That generally means that the information conveyed in the reporting is completely unreliable and should be considered the product of a fabricator or a government and media propaganda mill. When a story is written by a journalist who claims to be on the scene it is also important to check out whether he or she is actually on site or working from a pool operating safely in Poland to produce the reporting. Yahoo News takes the prize in spreading propaganda as it currently reproduces press releases originating with the Ukrainian government and posts them as if they are unbiased reporting on what is taking place on the ground.
Another trick to making fake news look real is to route it through a third country. When I was in Turkey we in CIA never placed a story in the media there directly. Instead, a journalist on our payroll in France would do the story and the Turkish media would pick it up, believing that because it had appeared in Paris it must be true even though it was not. Currently, I have noted that a lot of apparently MI-6 produced fake stories on Ukraine have been appearing in the British media, most notably the Telegraph and Guardian. They are then replayed in the US media and elsewhere to validate stories that are essentially fabricated.
Television and radio media is even worse than print media as it almost never identifies the sources for the stories that it carries. So my advice is to be skeptical of what you read or hear regarding wars and rumors of wars. The war party is bipartisan in the United States and it is just itching to seize the opportunity to get a new venture going, and they are oblivious to the fact that they might in the process be about to destroy the world as we know it. We must expose their lies and unite and fight to make sure that they can’t get away with it!
On Tuesday in response to Pelosi’s affront to Chinese sovereignty, the PLA began conducting live-fire maritime and aerial drills around Taiwan — surrounding the island.
According to China’s Global Times, they feature “J-20 stealth fighter jets and test-firing of conventional missiles…with additional important drills announced for days to come.”
Beginning moments after Pelosi arrived in Taipei, they’re ongoing in waters and airspace “north, southwest and southeast of the island…”
They include “live-fire shooting…in the Taiwan Strait and…missile test launches…east of the island.”
While ongoing for a number of days, “Taiwan will be surrounded by PLA drills in five directions.”
Drills are likely designed to develop PLA capabilities to seize the island militarily if unable to do it peacefully.
According to PLA Eastern Theater Command deputy chief of staff, Gu Zhong, as reported by GT:
Drills involve “courses like joint blockade, sea assault, land attack and air superiority seizing plus live-fire shooting of precision weapons.”
They’re “comprehensively test(ing) the performance of weapons and equipment as well as the troops’ joint operational capabilities, making preparations for all crises.”
Separately, Xinhua reported that live-fire drills are being conducted in six maritime and air space areas around Taiwan — north, northeast, east, south, southwest and northwest of the island.
Entry into areas where they’re ongoing is prohibited.
Last Sunday, China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier embarked from its Qingdao homeport to waters near Taiwan — accompanied by “a Type 075 amphibious assault ship.”
Chinese military expert, Song Zhongping, said the purpose of ongoing drills is to enhance the PLA’s military preparedness in light of Pelosi’s unacceptable visit to Taiwan.
During her meeting with Taiwan’s so-called president Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday — in a display of imperial arrogance — Pelosi assaulted China’s sovereignty again as follows, saying:
Hegemon USA’s vow to preserve (fantasy) democracy in Taiwan and around the world (is) ironclad.”
She barely stopped short of vowing to defend the island if China uses military force to reunite it with the mainland.
In cahoots with dominant Biden regime and congressional hardliners, Pelosi is pushing things recklessly for possible direct confrontation between two nuclear powers — ones able to transform cities of targeted nations into smoldering rubble.
Indeed, hostile-to-peace-and-stability Pelosi and the Biden regime are playing with fire against Russia, China and Iran — humanity’s fate hanging in the balance.
Separately in response to Taiwan’s complicity with Pelosi’s effrontery, Beijing retaliated by suspending exports of certain food products to the island.
According to Bloomberg News, the suspension includes “some fish and fruit imports,” as well as “natural sand used in construction.”
The Financial Times said that China “suspend(ed) (imports of) 2,000 food products,” along with “suspend(ing) exports of natural sand” to Taiwan.
Beijing’s Mainland Affairs Council deputy chair, Chiu Chui-cheng, said the following:
“In the past, China hit single products from the primary sector such as specific fruit or fish.”
In “that way, (it) kept the overall macroeconomic impact on Taiwan limited but could target regions where the (ruling) Democratic Progressive party is strong.”
“But now (Beijing is) broadening this immensely as (it’s) targeting processed foods, so what’s going on is much more broad-based.
“This is probably only the beginning.”
“We are certain that (China) will further step up (its) economic coercion measures.”
According to the FT, Beijing’s suspension “cover(s) 35 categories including fish and seafood, edible oils, citrus fruits and biscuits and cakes, hitting publicly listed companies such as instant noodle and soy sauce producer Ve Wong and Chi Mei, which makes frozen foods.”
At this time, China’s likely short-term import and export suspensions are largely shots across the bow warnings to Taiwan.
Economist Ma Tieying said the following:
“What needs to be watched is whether Beijing will broaden the trade bans into the manufacturing sector, particularly semiconductors/electronics going forward.”
China is Taiwan’s largest trade partner, bilateral volume last year totaling $328.3 billion, around 52% from the island to the mainland.
Beijing relies on imports of Taiwanese semiconductors.
The island exports about one-fifth of its agricultural products to the mainland.
Chinese media reported that the country’s General Administration of Customs suspended imports of “refrigerated large-head hair-tail and frozen Japanese horse mackerel from Taiwan.”
Taiwan’s state-controlled CNA said that the mainland temporarily halted imports of from “over 100 Taiwanese food manufacturers, including the well-known brands I-Mei Foods, Wei Chuan and Kuai Kuai Co.”
According to Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture (COA):
Hundreds of temporarily “blacklisted companies include producers of tea leaves, dried fruits, honey, cocoa beans, and vegetables, as well as catches from around 700 fishing vessels.”
Separately, CNA said China largely, but not entirely, suspended imports of coffee beans, stuffed pasta and bread, health foods and supplements, baby food and formula, foods for medicinal purposes, plant based oil, candy, beverages, cereal-based products, seasonings and condiments.
Center for Counter Hegemonic Studies’ director, Tim Anderson, believes that Pelosi’s provocative visit was planned to trigger US confrontation with China in similar fashion to its proxy war on Russia, adding:
“Imagine if the Chinese military went into Puerto Rico or some other part of the US territories.”
“It’s unacceptable, and I can’t say that any good would come out of it.”
The Biden regime provoked Russia to launch its SMO in self-defense.
When major events impact millions, and even billions, of people, there will, inevitably, be a wide range of opinions put forth to explain the crisis. From political explanations to religious testimony, thinkers from all walks of life seek to deconstruct those events which alter the lives of the masses.
When it comes to what I will call the “conspiracy research community”, one theory often proposed as an explanation to the chaos of our world is known as predictive programming. When searching for specific definitions of this theory you find derogatory analyses, true believers, and the curious.
“Predictive Programming is theory that the government or other higher-ups are using fictional movies or books as a mass mind control tool to make the population more accepting of planned future events. This was described by researcher Alan Watt who defines Predictive programming as “Predictive programming is a subtle form of psychological conditioning provided by the media to acquaint the public with planned societal changes to be implemented by our leaders. If and when these changes are put through, the public will already be familiarized with them and will accept them as natural progressions, thus lessening possible public resistance and commotion.”
Essentially, the idea is that operations being conducted by a hidden elite are shown to the public in advance via popular media such as books and films. These clues and references are meant to “soften” the public to the ideas presented. By introducing concepts that seem fantastic and then constantly reintroducing the concepts they appear more likely, or at the least, acceptable.
The belief is that the “predictive programming” in media can speak to the subconscious in a way that causes the public to passively accept the events when they unfold in real life, rather than offering resistance or opposition.
The Ohio University writer states, “I found that most commonly people believe the government creates a problem so the population will look to the government for a solution. However, because the government planned for the crisis the government will offer a solution that has been planned long before the crisis ever happened.” What they are describing is often known as “problem-reaction-solution”.
The TV show The Simpsons is often a source for such predictive programming claims. Various episodes show Donald Trump running for President, and references to September 11, 2001. For example, The Simpsons 1997 episode titled “The City of New York vs Homer Simpson” features the Simpson family visiting Manhattan where the World Trade Center factors heavily into the story. In one often touted scene, Lisa holds a brochure for a $9 bus fare with the World Trade Center shown in the background. Together the $9 and the twin towers make 9/11, a reference to the 9/11 attacks.
In 2010, Bill Oakley, an executive producer on the show at the time, told The New York Observer, “$9 was picked as a comically cheap fare,” he said. “And I will grant that it’s eerie, given that it’s on the only episode of any series ever that had an entire act of World Trade Center jokes.”
Another example of this alleged predictive programming comes from the pilot episode of “The Lone Gunmen,” a short-lived spinoff of the popular “The X-Files”. The pilot for The Lone Gunmen — which aired aired six months before the September 11th attacks — includes a plot where a hijacked plane is aimed at the World Trade Center. The terrorist attack is averted in the end and the towers are not hit.
Here is a sample of the dialogue from one scene of The Lone Gunmen pilot:
“Your saying our government plans to commit a terrorist act against a domestic airline – “
“There you go, indicting the entire government as usual. A faction, a small faction. “
“For what possible gain?”
“The Cold War is over, John, but with no clear enemy to stockpile against, the arms market is flat. But bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City and you’ll find a dozen tin-pot dictators all over the world just clamoring to take responsibility and begging to be smart bombed.”
The lazy response to claims of predictive programming is to dismiss them as the workings of a paranoid, tinfoil hat wearing, “conspiracy theorist”. Numerous theories have been proposed to explain predictive programming.
Some researchers dismiss the claims as simple coincidences. The Simpsons has been on air for 30 plus years now and some of their thousands of episodes are bound to reflect reality at some point, they say. Others contend that there are some eerie examples of art “predicting” reality, but they believe theorists are suffering from Pareidolia, the phenomenon of seeing patterns in random stimuli. Those who are looking for patterns are more likely to see them because of this, as well as confirmation bias.
Revelation of the Method
Another theory which has been proposed by believers of predictive programming is the idea that these so-called elites must show the public their plans for one reason or another. This theory has come to be known as “Revelation of the Method”. The first person who appears to have popularized the use of this term was researcher James Shelby Downard.
Downard’s claim to infamy came as a result of his writing the controversial essay King-Kill 33, which accuses a network of Freemasons of being involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In subsequent writings, Downard further explored his ideas around revelation of the method. In Sorcery, Sex, Assassination, and the Science of Symbolism, he writes, “acts concerning the assassination are on ice and will be be revealed in the future in the so-called ‘Revelation of the Method.’”
He continues, “this method and process of Masonic machinations is summed up in the principle of the “Making Manifest of All That is Hidden.”
Michael A. Hoffman II, was a student and friend of Downard and continued to write about the concept. Writing in the book Apocalypse Culture, Hoffman says, “We come to the current unfoldment in “Must Be,” an alchemic term Mr. Downard translates as “the Revelation of the Method.” This alludes to the process wherein murderous deeds and hair-raising conspiracies involving wars, revolutions, decapitations and every manner of horror-show are first buried beneath a cloak of secrecy and Harpocrates’ hushed- finger, and then, when finally accomplished and secured, slowly revealed to the un- suspecting populace who watch in deep-frozen apathy as the hidden history is unveiled.”
“The Revelation of the Method actually comes from my mentor, James Shelby Downard. I met him in Saint Petersburg, Florida in the mid-1970s and he was a very unusual man. He walked the razor edge between genius and eccentricity, but he had a mind where he was able to see and detect patterns. And also, he had an historian’s mind in terms of the research that he did, and he was the one that set me on this path of the Revelation of the Method. He also called it “Must Be” or “The Making Manifest of All that is Hidden.”
Some researchers of the so-called “Revelation of the Method” also believe there is a spiritual or religious element of the practice. They believe that by sharing clues or foreknowledge of their plans, the elitists somehow absolve themselves of wrong doing in the eyes of their Creator.
COVID-19
This bring us full circle to COVID-19 and claims of predictive programming in various media which foreshadowed the claims of a worldwide pandemic, and the subsequent authoritarian measures.
For example, the 1981 novel “The Eyes of Darkness” by Dean Koontz talks about a deadly virus used as a biological weapon named Wuhan-400. There’s also the 2011 film Contagion with a story of a deadly pandemic involving a virus originating from a bat and social distancing.
In an interview withThe Washington Post, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns said, “It is sad, and it is frustrating… It is also surreal to me that people from all over the world write to me asking how I knew it would involve a bat or how I knew the term “social distancing.” I didn’t have a crystal ball — I had access to great expertise. So, if people find the movie to be accurate, it should give them confidence in the public health experts who are out there right now trying to guide us.”
Perhaps the most striking example of potential predictive programming, or a coincidence, if you prefer, is the film Songbird. The film’s IMDB description states:
“In 2024 a pandemic ravages the world and its cities. Centering on a handful of people as they navigate the obstacles currently hindering society: disease, martial law, quarantine, and vigilantes.”
The wikipedia description further outlines the similarities to what would unfold in 2020 and 2021:
“By 2024, the COVID-19 Coronavirus has been mutated into COVID-23 and the world is in its fourth Quarantine year. In the United States, the nation’s government is converted into a fascist police state and the people are required to take temperature checks on their cell phones while those infected with COVID-23 are taken from their homes against their will and forced into quarantine camps, also known as “Q-Zones” or concentration camps, where some fight back against the brutal restrictions. In these camps, the infected are left to die or forcibly get better. “
While it’s odd enough that a film came out in 2020 “inspired” by the COVID-19 event, it’s even more unnerving knowing the film included scenes of “immunity passports” using cell phones, forced quarantines and lockdowns of the vast majority of the population, and even a black market for the digital passports.
The timing of the filming is also a bit difficult to understand considering the fact that most of the world was experiencing lockdowns. The film makers claim they had their first call about the project on March 14, 2020, around the time the world was learning about the COVID-19 situation. They claim by June, major actors like Demi Moore had been cast in their roles, with production beginning in Los Angeles on July 8, 2020.
By August 3, 2020, the film wrapped, making it the first film to be shot in L.A. during lockdown. While the public was forced to stay inside, and work from home, Hollywood actors and a crew of 40 people were allowed to continue working on their film. The film was eventually released on December 11, 2020 and has received very poor reviews.
If there is any predictive programming in Songbird, it might relate to events yet to come. For example, the movie takes place in 2024, with a virus known as COVID-23 rampaging the planet.
What does this mean for our future? Should we live in fear of what might come?
In the film’s version of events, things do not end well. While the young couple in love manages to acquire blackmarket passports and escape to somewhere more free, the rest of their family and friends remain prisoners of their governments. The rest of the people shown in the film continue to live in the bio-fascist tyrannical nightmare.
Whether predictive programming is true, or simply a matter of coincidence and confirmation bias, we should not allow ourselves to live in fear. However, we should do everything in our power to make sure these fantasy worlds do not become our reality.
The US financial sector has long looted other countries. A number of participants have described the process. First a country is enticed with bribes to the leaders to take out loans that cannot be serviced or repaid. Then in comes the IMF. Austerity is imposed on the population. Public services and employment are cut to free resources for debt service, and public assets are sold to repay the loan. Living standards fall, and US corporations take over the country’s economy.
As foreign governments, having experienced or witnessed the economic carnage and fearing accountability, are less willing to be bribed into indebting their countries, American finance is now applying this technique to Americans. Contrary to the narrative in the financial press, the Federal Reserve is not raising interest rates in order to fight inflation. It is ludicrous to think that a three-quarters of one percent rise in a very low interest rate is going to have any impact on a 9.1% rate of consumer inflation or that speculation that the Federal Reserve has in mind another three-quarters of one percent possibly followed by one half of one percent comprise an anti-inflation policy. If all these increases occur, it still leaves the interest rate below the inflation rate.
Moreover, as I have previously explained, the inflation is not monetary. The higher prices are the result of supply disruptions caused by Washington’s Covid lockdowns and Russian sanctions. Production was stopped and supply chains are broken.
The Federal Reserve’s rise in interest rates is just a continuation of its policy of concentrating income and wealth in the hands of the One Percent. Quantitative Easing was the cloak for the Federal Reserve to print $8.2 trillion in new money which was directed or found its way into the prices of stocks and bonds, thus enriching the small number who own most of these financial instruments. Having maxed out this avenue of wealth concentration, the Federal Reserve is now raising interest rates in order to drive up mortgage costs to aspiring home owners. The Federal Reserve is driving individuals out of the housing market in order to free up properties for “private equity” firms to purchase homes for their rental values. That private equity firms see rental income from the existing stock of houses as the best investment opportunity tells us that the US economy has played out. When investment goes into existing assets, not into producing new assets, the economy ceases to grow.
The Obama regimes policy of bailing out the financial fraudsters responsible for the 2008 crash while foreclosing on their victims, reduced American homeownership from 70% to 63 percent. The Urban Institute predicts further declines. Today homeowners’ equity has declined from 85% after World War II to one-third, leaving two-thirds of homeowner equity in the hands of creditors. This makes it completely clear that a financialized economy indebts the people for the sake of rentier income to the One Percent. Indeed, the financialized economy created by the Federal Reserve has reimposed a class system akin to the landed British aristocracy that was overthrown. Indeed, we have an economically far worst class system. The landed British aristocrats produced food that fed the nation. The American class system produces interest and fees for the financial system.
As Michael Hudson has shown us, a no-growth economy is the end result of a financialized economy. A financialized economy is one in which consumer income is diverted by debt expansion away from the purchase of new goods and services into debt service and fees–interest on mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, student loan debt. With such a large share of household income spent on debt service, little is left for driving the economy forward.
If American economists were capable of escaping from their neoliberal junk economics, they would realize that “the world’s largest economy” they attribute to the United States is total fiction. The fact is that the United States does not have an economy. Corporations driven by Wall Street located American manufacturing in Asia so that the One Percent could benefit from higher profits from lower labor costs, while the deserted city and states had to sell their income streams, such as Chicago’s parking meter revenues for 75 years, to foreigners for one lump sum payment to solve one year’s budget crisis.
The offshoring of American production, carried out under the cloak of “globalism,” destroyed the American economy and the tax bases of cities and states. While the real economy declines, the Democrat Party, seeking permanent power, has imposed a policy of open borders for immigrant-invaders. How are these millions of peoples to support themselves in an economy whose manufacturing has been moved abroad? How can a population, deserted by American corporations, that is experiencing debt deflation absorb the costs of support and social infrastructure for tens of millions of third world immigrant-invaders?
You will never hear it from the whores in the financial press, but the United States is on the precipice of economic and social collapse. And what are the fools in Washington doing? The idiots are ginning up wars with Russia, China, and Iran.
“There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.” ― Philip K. Dick
Nothing is private.
We teeter on the cusp of a cultural, technological and societal revolution the likes of which have never been seen before.
While the political Left and Right continue to make abortion the face of the debate over the right to privacy in America, the government and its corporate partners, aided by rapidly advancing technology, are reshaping the world into one in which there is no privacy at all.
Nothing that was once private is protected.
We have not even begun to register the fallout from the tsunami bearing down upon us in the form of AI (artificial intelligence) surveillance, and yet it is already re-orienting our world into one in which freedom is almost unrecognizable.
AI surveillance harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and widespread surveillance technology to do what the police state lacks the manpower and resources to do efficiently or effectively: be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference, and collude.
Everything that was once private is now up for grabs to the right buyer.
Governments and corporations alike have heedlessly adopted AI surveillance technologies without any care or concern for their long-term impact on the rights of the citizenry.
As a special report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warns, “A growing number of states are deploying advanced AI surveillance tools to monitor, track, and surveil citizens to accomplish a range of policy objectives—some lawful, others that violate human rights, and many of which fall into a murky middle ground.”
Indeed, with every new AI surveillance technology that is adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry are being marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.
Cue the rise of digital authoritarianism.
Digital authoritarianism, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies cautions, involves the use of information technology to surveil, repress, and manipulate the populace, endangering human rights and civil liberties, and co-opting and corrupting the foundational principles of democratic and open societies, “including freedom of movement, the right to speak freely and express political dissent, and the right to personal privacy, online and off.”
The seeds of digital authoritarianism were planted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, with the passage of the USA Patriot Act. A massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA, the Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens.
It sounded the death knell for the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, especially the Fourth Amendment, and normalized the government’s mass surveillance powers.
Writing for the New York Times, Jeffrey Rosen observed that “before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity.”
Who could have predicted that 50 years after George Orwell typed the final words to his dystopian novel 1984, “He loved Big Brother,” we would come to love Big Brother.
Yet that is exactly what has come to pass.
After 9/11, Rosen found that “people were happy to give up privacy without experiencing a corresponding increase in security. More concerned about feeling safe than actually being safe, they demanded the construction of vast technological architectures of surveillance even though the most empirical studies suggested that the proliferation of surveillance cameras had ‘no effect on violent crime’ or terrorism.”
In the decades following 9/11, a massive security-industrial complex arose that was fixated on militarization, surveillance, and repression.
Surveillance is the key.
We’re being watched everywhere we go. Speed cameras. Red light cameras. Police body cameras. Cameras on public transportation. Cameras in stores. Cameras on public utility poles. Cameras in cars. Cameras in hospitals and schools. Cameras in airports.
It’s estimated that there are upwards of 85 million surveillance cameras in the U.S. alone, second only to China.
On any given day, the average American going about his daily business is monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.
Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.
Yet it’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked.
We’re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics—our faces, irises, voices, genetics, microbiomes, scent, gait, heartbeat, breathing, behaviors—runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique “identifiers,” and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses.
This is the slippery slope that leads to the thought police.
The technology is already being used “by border guards to detect threats at border checkpoints, as an aid for detection and diagnosis of patients for mood disorders, to monitor classrooms for boredom or disruption, and to monitor human behavior during video calls.”
For all intents and purposes, we now have a fourth branch of government: the surveillance state.
This fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.
The government’s “technotyranny” surveillance apparatus has become so entrenched and entangled with its police state apparatus that it’s hard to know anymore where law enforcement ends and surveillance begins.
“From cameras that identify the faces of passersby to algorithms that keep tabs on public sentiment online, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools are opening new frontiers in state surveillance around the world.” So begins the Carnegie Endowment’s report on AI surveillance note. “Law enforcement, national security, criminal justice, and border management organizations in every region are relying on these technologies—which use statistical pattern recognition, machine learning, and big data analytics—to monitor citizens.”
China, the role model for our dystopian future, has been a major force in deploying AI surveillance on its own citizens, especially by way of its social credit systems, which it employs to identify, track and segregate its “good” citizens from the “bad.”
While countries with authoritarian regimes have been eager to adopt AI surveillance, as the Carnegie Endowment’s research makes clear, liberal democracies are also “aggressively using AI tools to police borders, apprehend potential criminals, monitor citizens for bad behavior, and pull out suspected terrorists from crowds.”
Moreover, it’s easy to see how the China model for internet control has been integrated into the American police state’s efforts to flush out so-called anti-government, domestic extremists.
According to journalist Adrian Shahbaz’s in-depth report, there are nine elements to the Chinese model of digital authoritarianism when it comes to censoring speech and targeting activists: 1) dissidents suffer from persistent cyber attacks and phishing; 2) social media, websites, and messaging apps are blocked; 3) posts that criticize government officials are removed; 4) mobile and internet access are revoked as punishment for activism; 5) paid commentators drown out government criticism; 6) new laws tighten regulations on online media; 7) citizens’ behavior monitored via AI and surveillance tools; 9) individuals regularly arrested for posts critical of the government; and 9) online activists are made to disappear.
You don’t even have to be a critic of the government to get snared in the web of digital censorship and AI surveillance.
The danger posed by the surveillance state applies equally to all of us: lawbreaker and law-abider alike.
When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.
As Orwell wrote in 1984, “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”
In an age of too many laws, too many prisons, too many government spies, and too many corporations eager to make a fast buck at the expense of the American taxpayer, we are all guilty of some transgression or other.
It won’t be long before we find ourselves looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whomever we wanted, buy whatever we wanted, think whatever we wanted, go wherever we wanted, feel whatever we wanted without those thoughts, words and activities being tracked, processed and stored by corporate giants, sold to government agencies, and used against us by militarized police with their army of futuristic technologies.
“For my consciousness the whole life upon earth, including the human life and all its mentality, is a mass of vibrations, mostly vibrations of falsehood, ignorance and disorder, in which are more and more at work vibrations of Truth and Harmony coming from the higher regions and pushing their way through the resistance.” ~The Mother
“Sleep is very comfortable, but waking is very bitter.” ~G.I. Gurdjieff
It is a natural, yet incorrect, assumption to accept physical events at face value. Influences come to us upon many varied levels, and the visible, physical carrier or medium is the most superficial form. All of life is a play of forces; we may call these ‘universal forces’ for they act both within and beyond the physical. We have become accustomed to giving personal forms to many of these forces, and we believe that we are independent and free from their influence. The Greek-Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff used to say that humankind lives under 48 laws, of which they are mostly unaware or ignorant of. This is a very precise number, and it is not the numbers – the quantity – or the specifics that I wish to focus on here, but the quality. It may be necessary to have a ‘feeling’ for the forces of influence that populate our lives in the physical domain.
Most people, most of the time, are not aware of the forces acting upon them; and this is a natural condition. We all live our lives within a sea of vibrations – thoughts, suggestions, influences, etc – and we are barely aware of which ones belong to us and which we take to be our own. Let us take a common example as an illustration: information. When a person receives information, the general response is to consider the likelihood of that information in relation to their belief sets and range of accumulated opinions. The person then makes a response regarding whether the information is ‘true’ or ‘false.’ Yet this is a limited two-dimensional way to regard the relationship of the communication.
We have to also consider the background to the source of the information: what is the source; do they have an agenda; are they relaying the information from another source; what is the motivation; what are the expected outcomes? And more. We may also need to ask ourselves whether the medium of transmission is reliable or corrupted. If a technological medium is used, are there subtle subliminal messages and signalling within the transmission? Are certain frequencies being used to manipulate the hearer? Is the receiver being discreetly nudged into making desired outcomes? If this is a face-to-face communication, we may also ask whether the speaker is using specific techniques of language coercion, such as neuro-linguistic programming? These are just a very few of the potential influences that could be used in the physical communication of information. And yet, these are still those forces of influence that are limited to the physical range. It is good to be mindful that non-physical forces compete for power the same as familiar physical forces do. What is hidden to us in everyday life are the motivations behind the impulses that surface within the physical.
The human life experience conditions us to view and respond to outward aspects whilst remaining unaware of those things acting behind the veil – or behind the scenes. This disjuncture between origin and target is more than a gap; it is a gulf. As the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo remarked in relation to the hidden forces of life, ‘the only way out is through the descent of a consciousness which is not the puppet of these forces but is greater than they are and can compel them either to change or disappear.’[1] Aurobindo is saying here that the ‘way out’ is not to attempt to fight or meet these forces head on but to align with a degree of consciousness that is greater, or vibrationally beyond, the level of those forces. Rather than struggle with them, we are to resonate to a different vibrational alignment that takes us out of their spectrum of influence.
Within the general scheme of things, most people are treated as ignorant instruments; they are moved around like puppets, suspecting nothing. They live predictable lives; that is, lives that can be predicted as they move within known patterns. Often, these patterns are what have been programmed into the collective mass society. As soon as a person shifts to an inner-directed life, they begin to move away from predictability. That is, they move ‘off-pattern,’ and this is not well-liked by those of the governing forces.
The spirit-consciousness can override the lower forces, which is why the earthly life is being increasingly pulled into a physical-material direction – a pathway to both outer as well as inner automation. Stability is based on a repetition of vibrations and frequencies that our being becomes accustomed to. A person gets entrained through vibrational alignment into a mode of stability. The question we should be asking ourselves is: what type of frequencies are we aligning with? A great deal of stability within the physical realm is of a ‘lower order’ type, based on more limited patterns. Some may wonder, what is all this talk about vibrations – isn’t that new age nonsense? It all depends on how such information is presented and conveyed. A truth can easily be made into a mockery if handled incorrectly. The Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla famously said: ‘If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.’ Again, going back to G.I. Gurdjieff, who stated:
It is necessary to regard the universe as consisting of vibrations. These vibrations proceed in all kinds, aspects, and densities of the matter which constitutes the universe, from the finest to the coarsest…In this instance the view of ancient knowledge is opposed to that of contemporary science, because at the base of the understanding of vibrations ancient knowledge places the principle of the discontinuity of vibrations. The principle of the discontinuity of vibrations means the definite and necessary characteristic of all vibrations in nature, whether ascending or descending, to develop not uniformly but with periodical accelerations and retardations.[2]
It is interesting here that Gurdjieff speaks about the ‘discontinuity of vibrations’ that develop through periodical accelerations (increases) and retardations (delays). There is not a uniformity in the influence of vibrations. The ‘energetic background’ of life, so to speak, moves through these periodic shifts. This can be seen as a macro influence upon human life. In such times, we may feel irritable, restless, frustrated, or more. Philosopher J.G. Bennett referred to this when he wrote:
In a more subtle and pervasive manner, great regions of the earth’s surface, and sometimes even the whole of the earth, become subject to a state of tension that produces in people a strong sense of dissatisfaction with their conditions of life. They become irritable or aggressive, apprehensive, nervous and highly suggestible.[3]
These impersonal forces that influence the world, and our states of being, we know only by the results they cause. We perceive only a small degree through the lens of visible events and consequences. There are forces unknown to us that are responsible for shaping our physical, psychic, and emotional environment. The human being lives ‘constantly in the midst of a whirl of unseen mind-forces and life-forces of which we know nothing, we are not even aware of their existence.’[4]
There are currently forces acting upon human consciousness and producing a great deal of pressure. We are in need of an outlet for this pressure, before it implodes/explodes through our societies in uncomfortable and disagreeable ways. There is now a contestation of forces that are so visible that they can no longer be denied by the aware (or awake) individual. At the same time, a great evolutionary (developmental) force is pushing into the earthly domain, and there is immense resistance to this. This makes the struggle – the contestation of forces – more acute, more violent, and more definitive. Yet this very visibility of the counterforces upon the physical world stage is an important sign for us – it displays their state of desperation to come out of the shadows in this way. This opens up an important path of realization for the rest of us – and possibilities too. Even if individual transformation is upon a small scale, there is the opportunity now for a general uplifting within collective humanity. And it is this general uplifting that will usher in the potentials and conditions for a new world to emerge. Again, as Bennett says,
If a new world is to come, we must first create it in ourselves. You may ask how the work of a few people can change the world. It has always been so. Ideas are powerful, not organizations. Nothing can be done by outward force; everything can be done by inner strength.[5]
We have arrived at an exceptional hour, a privileged time for the expansion of human awareness and perception, if only we can bypass those forces of hindrance. What we need now is inner certitude and to exercise discernment – especially when open to the forces of mass vibration.
The Forces of Mass Vibration
The mass exhibits a different resonance than the individual. When in a group, or crowd, an individual invariably takes on the features, thoughts, and moods of others. In this way, the individual can be inwardly polluted and corrupted by forces they are not aware of. It is important to be conscious of who we choose to be with, mix with, for each person is a point of reception/transmission, and we vibrationally align (resonate) with those we are physically close to. That is why the mob can be psychologically, and behaviourally, dangerous. And this is also why we are advised to choose our friends carefully; a lot can be said about a person according to their friends and associates. It would do us well to remember that ‘one catches the constant contagion of all desires, all the lower movements, all the small obscure reactions, all the unwanted vibrations which come to us from those around us.’[6] Life is a continual interplay of forces, a continuous alchemy in which a person is constantly absorbing various kinds of vibration that may contain all types of possible dissonance. In this, the task of the conscious and aware person is to transmute these dissonant forces so that their action and influence is disabled.
We can do this by grounding the vibration. Let us say that something, an event, a person, or a comment, has caused us frustration. We refrain from responding to it by taking an inner pause, an internal step back, and we observe the discomfort. This ‘item’ is treated as an observable object with a life of its own – it is an energy form. And it needs to be allowed to dissipate rather than find an energy source to latch onto (i.e., oneself). In this, the energy form (the ‘item’) needs to be grounded within neutral physicality – just as electricity or lightening needs to be grounded or ‘earthed.’ Similarly, we earth the dissonant energy by visualizing its transference into the ground beneath us (it doesn’t matter if you are sitting or standing). In this way, the dissonant energy vibration is transmuted. This action is the work of perceptive consciousness and does not have to be regarded as something ‘spiritual.’ On the contrary, it is part of the task of the human being during its sojourn through physical life to transmute energies. It is through the presence of conscious individuals that, according to the Mother (Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual co-worker), a ‘minimum of general harmony’ can be accomplished:
That presence, that spiritual light – which could almost be called a spiritual consciousness – is within each being and all things, and because of it, in spite of all discordance, all passion, all violence, there is a minimum of general harmony which allows Nature’s work to be accomplished.[7]
It is through such Work as this that we become aware of the intervention of forces, impulses, and influences, which are non-visible to our ordinary states of consciousness, and which seek to affect physical life circumstances.
The forces of mass vibrational dissonance are exceptionally intense in these current times. It can be said that humanity has reached a particular state of general tension. Such ‘forces of hindrance’ would delight in creating divisions by dividing friendships and social alliances. Some divisions, however, are set to occur, for these are the breakdowns in the dysfunctional external systems that perpetuate the fractures in our societies. These are such systems as politics, economy, and social trust. We can expect some cracks to appear in these systems for ‘Nature’s Work’ to operate. Yet we cannot allow these fractures to disable the human spirit – or to numb the forces of spirit-consciousness that act through us.
As stated by the Mother in the opening citation to this essay, life is mostly awash with vibrations of disorder and falsehood, in which ‘vibrations of Truth and Harmony are coming from the higher regions and pushing their way through the resistance.’ We are tasked, in these times, to assist these ‘vibrations of Truth and Harmony’ and to help them to push their way through the resistance. And in this, we are aligning with the continuation of the alchemical work by assisting in the transmutation of the dissonance (the lead) into constructive forces (the gold). And by doing this we shall also be assisting in the alchemical transmutation of the great treasure of the philosopher’s stone – ourselves.
After the Crash 