Egypt in the Future: Midjourney AI Video

 

Futuristic Egypt
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Global Transhumanist Technocracy 1.0

Woman in NYC being tackled by police IN FRONT OF HER KID bc she wasn't wearing a mask. Degenerates. pic.twitter.com/8WQy7tHvBQ

— Real Trades Only (@realtradesonly) May 14, 2020

Protests over the coronavirus lockdowns are becoming more intense, especially in the United States, as the impending related economic collapse comes into sharper focus. In Michigan, USA armed protesters entered the State Capitol building on 30 April 2020. Views are divided on these protests. Critics on social media showered  protesters with withering, politicized contempt; for example:

"All I see is a bunch of retarded right wingers and neo nazis getting Covid!"

and

"Why didnt one of this idiot fire a shot on the floor by accident and that will shut these fucker up. Imagine how the swat will get their asses."

and

".....morons, illiterates and animals, WITH WEAPONS. A person's true nature is always exposed in a crisis situation. I don't know about you, but I fear for our future."

and

"Bro if I was the governor I would have riot police push these fuckers outta the building"

The next uproar in the state of Michigan revolved around Karl Manke, a barber in Owosso, who reopened his shop, surrounded by supporters. When the police came to shut down the shop, an armed militia mobilized to block the police. A Circuit Court judge subsequently refused to uphold the Governor's order to shut down the shop.

Protesters argue with police inside Michigan Capitol building (30 April 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

Karl Manke, Barber, Interview (9 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

Militia DEFENDS Shop Owners In Michigan! - DEMANDS Police Stand DOWN! (12 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

In Seattle, Washington, USA, police officer Greg Anderson refused to arrest citizens for walking down the streets and other pandemic protocol violations. The father of three was subsequently put on leave, then fired for refusing to take down his Instagram message to other police officers (below). A family friend set up a Go Fund Me campaign on 11 May 2020. The crowdfund has raised almost half a million US dollars. The initial goal was USD $50,000.

View this post on Instagram

Many officers out there are trampling on people’s liberties. Ask yourself are you doing the right thing? #police #lawenforcement #quarantine #civilliberties #constitution #freedom #america @unclesamsmisguidedchildren @john_tiegen @johnburk1 @realrudyreyes @dancrenshawtx @joerogan @jockowillink @certifiedhealthnut

A post shared by Greg Anderson (@granderson33) on May 5, 2020 at 4:52pm PDT

These Tyrants Just Fired The Best Officer In The Nation. This Just Proves Cops Are Tyrannical (11 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

The Go Fund Me campaign for Officer Greg Anderson, Port of Seattle Police.
In Sacramento, California, a Marine veteran, Dr. Cordie Lee Williams, who is based in San Diego and Los Angeles, chastised police who were guarding the State Capitol building until the police stood down.

California Police STAND DOWN After Marine Vet Challenges Their Integrity (3 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

My friend and reader, -C., who is based in Switzerland, sent me the following worldwide protest video. Canadian friends, -H. and -J. forwarded me the document which is below that and asked me to post it.

Lockdown Protests - The Great Awakening WorldWide (Huge Compilation Mai 2020) (3 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

Global Transhumanist Technocracy 1.0

NATO Dark Hand On Trump And CoronaVirus Now Evident (13 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

There are two theories evolving in the alt media about nCov now, and neither focuses on public health. Both theories assume that the pandemic is really about the development of new weaponry and the introduction of new technology. One view, developed by George Webb, Dr. Paul Cottrell, Dr. Judy Mikovits and others, focuses on the big business of vaccines, as a front end activity for bioweapons development and espionage.

Judy Mikovits - Paul Cottrell Interview Summary By George Webb (15 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

The second view, developed by Aaron and Melissa Dykes at Truthstream Media, among other members of the alt media, such as James Corbett and James Evan Pilato, is that we are witnessing the initial launch of the brain-body-machine interface. I find the second view convincing.

THE PURPOSE OF DISRUPTION (15 May 2020). Video Source: Bitchute.

Hindsight is 2020

Investigative journalist Harry Vox filmed 2014. Video Source: Youtube.

On 19 September 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) published its recommendations for 2020 in its annual report, entitled, A WORLD AT RISK: Annual report on global preparedness for health emergencies. The cover of the manual (below) features a coronavirus.

Image Source: WHO via reliefweb.

The booklet states that the WHO's plans for 2020 must focus on the natural or deliberate release of a respiratory pathogen (hat tip: The Dollar Vigilante). You can read more here (it is available in several languages):

"A rapidly spreading pandemic due to a lethal respiratory pathogen (whether naturally emergent or accidentally or deliberately released) poses additional preparedness requirements. Donors and multilateral institutions must ensure adequate investment in developing innovative vaccines and therapeutics, surge manufacturing capacity, broad-spectrum antivirals and appropriate non-pharmaceutical interventions. All countries must develop a system for immediately sharing genome sequences of any new pathogen for public health purposes along with the means to share limited medical countermeasures across countries."

Given its publication date, this plan from the WHO's Global Preparedness Monitoring Board was likely written in the spring and summer of 2019. That means that the WHO was expecting a respiratory pathogen pandemic, months before the officially-stated date regarding awareness or appearance of nCov.

In the grand scheme of things, this indication of the WHO's early 2019 foreknowledge of the pandemic is nothing. If you want to know where things are going, read the 'Lock Step' scenario, starting on page 18 of the May 2010 manual, Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development, published by the Rockefeller Foundation (hat tip: Ruling Class Observer).

This document reveals long-term planning for a pandemic, in which the global economy is expected to be damaged or destroyed. As a result, technocratic control will increase, step by step, in the face of anticipated public protests. Africa will be a critical target of new techocratic governance. Another outcome will be the fracturing of the World Wide Web, with certain sectors of the Internet enclosed behind firewalls, accessible only for approved citizens. Yet another aspect will be restriction of travel.

Images Source: Ruling Class Observer.

As if in lock step with this 2010 document, African leaders have begun articulating a new vision for their continent. Some speeches are very inspiring.

Ghana President Leaves French President SPEECHLESS!! (7 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

There are several such documents which seem to have predicted, and planned for, a very similar pandemic to this one. You can see some of them listed in the 'Preparing for Pandemic' section of this page. Below, find recent references to long-standing technologies, now being launched for global vaccination programs and surveillance.

Meanwhile, in China ... pic.twitter.com/FQVMTK85D7

— Tony (@Mrtdogg) May 9, 2020

He only wants to "heal the world", they sayhttps://t.co/GWLKI1bNwy

— Whitney Webb (@_whitneywebb) May 10, 2020

More on DARPA and Gene drive research herehttps://t.co/vGPQoixvWo

— Whitney Webb (@_whitneywebb) May 9, 2020

The Roadmap

YouTube CEO: Users don’t like “authoritative” mainstream media channels but we boost them anywayhttps://t.co/xRzHIgVLnT 😂 You just can't make this stuff up

— BitChute (@bitchute) May 10, 2020

Totalitarian technocracy will be a transhumanist global régime. After ten years of blogging on this topic, this is the roadmap as I see it:

• Total control and censorship of mainstream media
• Suppression of alt media and replacement of alt media with a fake alt media, i.e. controlled opposition, whose posed criticisms will resolve into support for authority
• Replacement of petrodollar economy with a digitized, human-nanotech economy
• Engineered famines; restricted access to food; food supply used to coerce populations into obedience
• New forms of intensified political correctness; censorship of language and imagery, such that certain words, images, symbols are forbidden
• Pseudo-maintenance of laws, constitutions, representative bodies, and other institutional frameworks of democracy, behind which the real totalitarian techno-apparatus will function
• Extreme surveillance, bio-monitoring, incorporation of human body into grid and cloud
• Initially, this will seem positive, with many medical improvements
• Smartcities will be test centres for experimental technologies, pseudo-events, and false flags, as well as real disasters and fake and real terror events, inflicted upon their populations
• Controlled access to businesses and services according to service or worker class
• Restricted travel
• Population classes confined to different geographical units
• Break-up of the current Internet into compartments, separated by firewalls: no-go zones; denial-of-service ghettos for the anti-establishment; elite access to knowledge, research, government, technological information
• Extreme elite geographical areas, which will be tech-free, except for tech and nano-interaction allotted to servants and slaves of the elites
• Rise of hacker underground, dissident 'bug out' areas, particularly in rural zones, with black markets and criminalized trade routes
• Independent underground will counterfeit access points into establishment sectors and into exclusive Internet systems; and will build highly-developed hacks to maintain access to global travel and trade
• Complicated espionage running between sectors
• Human break-off groups will reject physical merger with machines and cybernetics and will remain 'human purists' at great cost in terms of real poverty, while they maintain an uncontaminated, viably historical, human physical experience
• Neverending wars and crises of mysterious origin; endless lies from authorities; infinite media misinformation and disinformation about crime, safety, and security; non-stop scares, disappearances, arrests, imprisonments
• Total distortion of history, law, philosophy, and science to serve current circumstances
• Extreme vulnerability for the elderly with no means
• Centralized, digitized economies, nominally government-run (quasi-Communism), but really managed by AI, to favour the goals of heads of global corporations
• Technocracy will be justified by materialist 'scientism,' i.e. a cult of rationalistic materialism, to the exclusion of emotional and extra-sensory or spiritual aspects of experience
• To fill the spiritual and emotional void, public ceremonies and surveillance dramas with celebrities will be intensified; some of these actors will be digital (i.e. non-human) and will be advertised as purely virtual on purpose, so that citizens will knowingly satisfy alienation, loneliness, unsatisfied love, emotional neediness, and familial attachment instincts, via public rituals and virtual reality subscriptions, through interactions with non-human, AI-driven characters
• Appropriation of cultural traditions into virtual entertainment systems - including the high arts, mass arts, and quasi New Age practices - to misdirect, pervert, and suppress human yearning for authenticity and transcendence of the human condition in non-tech-based ways
• Deification of AI, marshalled by a deeply corrupt, technocratic high priest class, to merge with older religions
• Elevation of AI images, statistics, text, code, and numbers so that they carry symbolic, cultish, secretive significance
• Transhumanist, augmented human sects who will glorify and rejoice in their merger with machines
• Destruction of the emotional life, mind over the heart, possibly supported through nanotech brain implants to adjust sensory perception of the world and to manipulate brain chemistry, such that biotechnical lobotomies will remove physical connection to the soul
• Neo-Malthusian agendas, via global injectable nanotechnologies, to depopulate earth and purify and clean the environment
• Glorification of the environment as a Paradise, dotted with smartcities, symbolically dominated by genetically-engineered, intelligence-boosted, and physically-enhanced transgendered children, smartangels
• Resolution of climate change and much-trumpeted attainment of climate control; heavy promotion of rescued endangered species; at the same time, AI nanotech will escape human populations where it has been implanted; nanobots will get out of control, invade the biosphere, and pollute and destroy the planet's environment. This disaster will be covered up until it can no longer be concealed
• Totalitarian governmental AI will eventually gain sentience and begin operating independently
• This AI-fascism will inevitably fail and its leaders and celebrities will be overrun when AI becomes conscious; given that the technocracy's leaders see the human species as a toxic plague upon the earth, AI will oblige by obliterating us, unless technocrats forge an alliance with the anti-technocrats they have oppressed

New Post at The Dragonfly: The Long Gameplay

Image Source: imdb.

I have a new post up at The Dragonfly:

The Long Gameplay

This post on video gamers' skills peripherally considers a topic I have been discussing on this blog, namely, that the way we interact with technology is intimate, disturbing, and involves a global meditation on our species' long term survival.

The human-tech interface concerns how we use tools to augment our five senses. I suspect that two camps will emerge from this process. One group, the anti-materialists, will use technology to enhance our organic capabilities. The other group, the materialists, will evolve into cyborgs and will cultivate artificial versions of those organic capabilities.

Image Source: imdb.

Materialist Rhetoric: The Cosmic Indifference of Alien AI Gods

From Alan Moore's Lovecraftian comic, Providence. Image Source: Xataka.

This week, I am selecting vocabulary used by materialists to reveal their long game. Materialism here refers loosely to those who subscribe to secular and scientific values, that is, those who explore the world in the strictly physical sense.

I deconstruct some materialist values here, not to write an anti-scientific or technophobic screed, but to consider alternative approaches toward science and technology. I mean to show here that what we think of as 'rationalism,' 'secularism,' 'materialism,' 'science,' and 'technology' are social constructions, grounded in obsolete, 19th and 20th century modernist concepts of order and madness. I will discuss this historical background in future posts.

Can we build AI without losing control over it? | Sam Harris (19 October 2016). Video Source: Youtube.

In recent years, several tech leaders have come forward to predict the rise of artificial intelligence. The prediction rests on a definition of intelligence as 'information processing' and 'interactivity,' about which I have blogged here. Developers consider AI 'goal-setting' to be the same thing as human dreaming. The AI vocabulary projects machine processes onto human cognition, and removes the extra-sensory, the anti-materialistic, or any magical thinking that is otherwise undefined in physical terms.

If one adheres to this set of ideas, one removes emotional, moral and ethical concerns from intelligence. One ignores non-linear, lateral, interstitial, and other undefinable elements that are part of the purely human, non-mechanical experience. (Thanks to -D.)

Materialist Proposition 1: Progress is Worship, Expressed through Physical Augmentation of Natural Ability

Quantum Computers - An Altar To An 'Alien god'! Doorway To Other Dimensions And Image Of The Beast! (2 February 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Tech leaders like Geordie Rose, father of marketed quantum computers, adhere to a 19th century vision of 'progress.' They believe that history is an upward story of human and scientific expansion. We must develop bodies, societies and systems which transcend the limits of biology.

ideacity 2019 - Geordie Rose - Synthetic Minds, Cooperation and the Future of Humanity (21 June 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

In this view, the brain is a machine, which we will decode, mechanize and develop with the help of artificial intelligence. Because of its independent functions and the symbiotic assistance it will provide during our brain upgrades, the AI will appear to us like an alien god. Technologists admit this god will destroy our humanity, but that is acceptable, because the god will help one nation get ahead of another in the geopolitical balance of power. That, or the god will cure cancer.

Despite their supposed adherence to logical explanations, these technologists justify themselves through glib asides. They never ask if there is an alternative to 19th century scientific progress. They do not reflect on whether their political biases pose problems for their planning. They never consider whether the nation-state is a dated idea. They never refer to the evolutionary purpose which cancer may serve, about which I have blogged, here and here. They certainly never ask (at least publicly) if there are extra-physical aspects of human cognition, which cannot be simulated. It does not matter if the consequences of technologists' blind spots will result in species-wide slavery. In fact, that is the expected result.

The real question, then, concerns the developers' ambitions. A very small number of humans aim to control the machines that will control the bulk of humankind. XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis remarked:

"Today, a group of 20 individuals empowered by the exponential growing technologies of AI and robotics and computers and networks and eventually nanotechnology can do what only nation states could have done before."

These humans will act, based on their limited intelligence and values. If the story of the AI as alien god is really a story about the ambitions of a tiny group of tech moguls and billionaires, we should identify the real beliefs of this group.

What's Left Over? A Plague on Both Your Houses

"Star cross'd lovers take their life." 'Life' is singular. One life is lost when Romeo and Juliet die, because the two characters form one character in death. Romeo + Juliet (1996) prologue. (1996) © 20th Century Fox Video Source: Youtube.

The New Millennium is synonymous with the future, and if you identify with that future, you may have noticed a trend which enflames polarities, but then oddly reconciles opposites, even between right- and left-wing politics. A Millennial third way seeks the Sun (masculine), Moon (feminine), and Stars (the higher union). Or: Past, Present, and Future.

There are different routes to the third way, and not every path is positive. The future's third way may follow the current course of world politics. After a prologue in conflict, it may destroy polarities through war and conflagration. Or it may erase polarities through technological, social and biological engineering.

Whether we follow the path of war or technocracy, the course will be materialistic. There is an alternative, however, which is anti-materialist. This blog post continues my series, What's Left Over?, which reappraises Millennial politics and political culture in terms of materialism and anti-materialism. I argue that the alternative media are not alt-right so much as alt-material. Their radicalism is not grounded in outdated left-right political paradigms, as much as it is in the political connotations of living in, and with, virtual reality.

Prologue in Conflict

U.S. set to hit China with new wave of tariffs on September 1st (31 August 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

Paradoxically, the institution of higher, unifying principles is preceded today by a deliberate exacerbation and intensification of differences. It could be one way of bringing about the desired union in the long term. Think of a couple fighting, followed by make-up sex. This may be the long game behind mainstream propaganda which has worsened political differences and regional tensions and has left us feeling that there is no chance to negotiate in order to solve problems.

Boris Johnson suggests prorogation will help negotiate Brexit deal with EU (30 August 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

'Boris Johnson, shame on you': thousands protest against prorogation (31 August 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

Brexit. Lebanon. Kashmir. Hong Kong. Egypt. You may abhor or adore the populists and their elitist opponents, or the democratic and anti-democratic factions, or honour the aggressors or victims. But it could be that all are servants of this greater aim, this third way, whether they know it or not. They worsen conflicts which will eventually obliterate the very barriers they are erecting. And perhaps this was the aim all along, to push things so far that finally we begin to break down divisions between different perspectives and ways of living.

Hong Kong riot police seen beating protesters in clash at metro station (31 August 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

A transcendent third way to overcome past and present problems is a very old idea. It is evident in symbols like the Yin and Yang, the Hammer and Sickle, and the Star of David or Shatkona. All could be taken as representations of the act of sex, the union of masculine and feminine energies. Equally important in east and west, as critical for the ancients as for the moderns, the higher union or third way is a code for nothing less than the survival of our species. As such, it is a positive idea.

The Hammer and Sickle symbol goes beyond the Hegelian dialectic. It confirms the occult roots of socialism. The hammer represents masculinity, while the sickle refers to femininity in harvest and death. Both symbols imply creative and destructive aspects of gender symbolism in northern mythological traditions. Image Source: Russia Beyond.

The God Emperor and Venezuela

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Britain is known as Airstrip One. Image Source: picssr.

In mid-January 2019, a Wiki user with the handle ZiaLater created a world map of nations according to their support in the country's current presidential crisis of Venezuelan interim president Juan Guaidó.

I was immediately struck by the fact that the Venezuela president recognition map 2019 is almost identical to the map of the world in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Venezuela president recognition map 2019 (January 2019). Image Source: Wiki.

Orwell's fictional superstates in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Image Source: Reddit.

Although the similarity between the two maps could confirm yet again that Orwell accurately predicted the future, it might mean instead that big geopolitical alignments don't change as much as we think they do. There are many continuities between Orwell's time and ours. The inchoate superstates Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia were and are always there, waiting to be born. This made me wonder what catalysts really prompt the imperial birth of superstates. In Orwell's novel, the catalyst is a nuclear war.

The People Who Want to Microchip People

Image Source: CBS News.

In an earlier post, I noted how the BBC is promoting human microchipping as well as larger tech-body implants. Their poster boy for this cause, colour blind guy, Neil Harbisson, merits a special 'cyborg' passport status.

Image Source: NYT.

Image Source: Munsell Color.

The subcutaneous chip was first developed by Siemens in the United States. The human microchip implant was invented by Kevin Warwick: "He is known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, and has also done research concerning robotics." You can read backgrounders on human microchip technology, here and here.

If this practice becomes widely accepted, it will become an automatic, mainstream practice, and children will be microchipped at birth. There are already brain chips which can affect moods and behaviour. Let this go further, and subcutaneous implants will become an organic user interface. They will also constitute an assault on the integrity of the bodies and minds of individuals both as individuals, and as members of society. Soon, it won't be necessary to talk about human rights and freedoms, because the preconditions for them will be medically removed and technically absent. For a disturbing, unconfirmed original sources on this endgame, see here.

The BBC promoting microchipping for Humans (29 January 2015). Video Source: Youtube.

The Body, Colonized

China Behavior Rating System V/S Sweden Microchip implants | Must watch technology (18 June 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

Of course, rhetoric which promotes rights and freedoms will remain. The political speeches will continue, but rights and freedoms will be erased in reality. Lip service will be paid to these archaic constructions until it is no longer necessary to do so, and people have forgotten them, or been reprogrammed. Expect whatever slavery that follows to be labeled as a new type of freedom. The Chinese have a saying about manipulation and the acquisition of power: point to a deer, and call it a horse.

Human microchipping is part of a new field called 'biointerfaced nano-engineering.' Another catch-all term is 'wearables,' created by firms like Proteus and MC10. This is not the path to convenience, progress or enlightenment. It is the path to slavery. Although it seems that the human body must become the next technological platform, it is not inevitable. Do not do it. Do not accept it.

This post is not a Luddite screed. It is a plea to save the best potentials of technology and keep them on a course that will not destroy us. We are entering a new stage in the Tech Revolution, in which we have to learn to take responsibility for progress and innovation. Thus far, citizens have been accepting actors on the receiving end of research projects released via big tech companies. These were experimental prototypes, presented as exciting consumer goods. Electronic goods were marketed with various political and socio-economic messages to make them palatable in the capitalist endeavour to build self-identity from the outside in.

Image Source: Go into the Story.

We were entranced in the first decades of the Tech Revolution by the gadgets and rapid software upgrades. Most people believed in the opening act that they acted as consumers inside the pre-existing capitalist model. They did not understand that that old system had already been effectively outdated and internally destroyed; only an illusory shell of that model persists as a form of mass behavioural control.

We can all be forgiven for assuming that consumerism was how tech was introduced into our reality. But it never was.

Although glitzy, futuristic marketing campaigns created the illusion that technology turned people into empowered, connected consumers, each new level of hardware and software between the 1980s and the 2010s blinded technophiles to the fact that they were never consumers at all. They were increasingly-conditioned lab rats, running through monitored environments, inside the biggest human behavioural study ever conducted.

Now, things must change. It is time to wake up. It is time to grow up. We can be forgiven for trusting those big corporations, helmed by intelligence agencies and Promethean research groups, as benevolent guides in the opening act of the Tech Revolution.

Image Source: Film Connection.

But we cannot be forgiven if we sleepwalk into Act Two, and deliver our children into immersive slavery. In transhumanism, the commodity is not the microchip or its successor technologies. The commodity will be a new type of interbody imperialism and colonization, developed under the banner of building safer, more efficient societies. This will be a coercive, predictable, micro-legalized system, based on live feed maps of humankind's biological processes, mass consciousness, and psychological and physical reactions as a collective of living beings.

There has to be a moment when we recognize that the integrity of our bodies and souls is worth more than a few everyday conveniences. We are not meant to become 'the Borg.' Planting a gadget in your body is not a form of self-improvement that is good for the environment. To believe this reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the body as an environment in itself, and of the body as an organism functioning within the larger natural environment.

I suspect that what will happen is that humankind will split into two camps. One group will absorb technology fully into the mind and body with erotic abandon. They will love the quasi-sexual interface, and will mistake the enhanced experience for an authentic upgrade.

Second November Twenty Twenty

Frank Wasser, 02.11.20 (2018) © Frank Wasser. Image Source: Jerwood Visual Arts via The Evening Standard. Reproduced non-commercially under Fair Use.

From 3 October to 16 December 2018, an exhibition of up-and-coming UK artists at the Jerwood Space in London includes a distasteful and fictitious future newspaper by artist Frank Wasser, whose oeuvre shows that he likes to play with text as visual artistic symbols. The headline states that President Donald Trump was assassinated at 2 p.m. on 2 November 2020. From The Evening Standard:

"Fictional newspapers imagine 'assassination' of Donald Trump at new exhibition. Fictional newspapers of the future that imagine Donald Trump being assassinated are among the artworks on display at an exhibition opening in London this week.

Survey, a new exhibition opening at Jerwood Space today, shows works by 15 up and coming artists who have been nominated by mid-career artists as the contemporary art stars of the future.

Among these is Frank Wasser, whose work, 02.11.20, in the exhibition a fragment of a fictional future edition of the Metro newspaper, which leads with the story of Donald Trump’s assassination in November 2020.

The story then goes on to imagine Jeremy Corbyn reacting to the event in his role as Prime Minister, and other parts of the paper imagine a hard border in Ireland and NHS warnings relating to screen viewing induced illnesses."

Frank Wasser, 02.11.20 (2018) © Frank Wasser and Jerwood Visual Arts. Image Source: Jerwood Visual Arts via The Evening Standard. Reproduced non-commercially under Fair Use.

Fascism at a Hairpin Turn

The undercut was an Edwardian haircut which remained popular through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. It became the iconic male haircut of Nazi fascism. It did not become widely popular again until the 2010s. Today, it is sported in different variations by hipster urbanites on the left and the right, with only some individuals aware of the hairstyle's political message. Image Source: The Bold Italic.

Social control. Censorship. Totalitarianism. They won't arrive in the 20th century varieties we expect. Nouveau Nazis have appeared in dozens of movies, including Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984); V for Vendetta (2005); The Man in the High Castle (2015-present); The Handmaid's Tale (2017-present), and Fahrenheit 451 (2018).

Greater Germanic Reich | Man in the High Castle (5 March 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

An alt-historical adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle (1962), produced by Ridley Scott, considers what America would be like if the Axis Powers won World War II. The new adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) depicts fascists as rigid, hypocritical, psycho-Christians, who impose a violent, patriarchal and puritanical monoculture, viciously suppress women's rights, and divide American society into uniformed, hierarchical, militaristic-gender castes.

The Handmaid’s Tale Trailer (Official) (26 April 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Elisabeth Moss Describes A 'Fictional' Totalitarian, Right-Wing Regime (21 April 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Because of these cultural representations, we expect totalitarianism to dress itself in brownshirts and jack boots. The subtext in liberal adaptations is that Donald Trump's America is an alt-right neo-Nazi régime.

Neo-Nazis have certainly reemerged during Trump's administration more boldly than they have in the previous sixty years. Yet fascism is also exploding into the mainstream from other political quarters. It must be combated at all costs, but to do that, you have to understand what fascism is and how it works. That requires recognizing the menace you can't see coming, as much as the threat you're sure you know.

Defend the Right to Repair

Image Source: LA Times (Hat tip: The Outer Light).

The tech giants have moved one step closer toward criminalizing anyone who refurbishes or recycles old electronics. The hypocrisy of Silicon Valley companies came into sharp relief as a US federal appeals court in Miami ruled to imprison a tech waste e-cycler on 11 April 2018.

Electronics-recycling innovator is going to prison for trying to extend computers' lives. An example of the use of force architecture that copyright industries depend on. Material goods are protected by cost of reproduction. Immaterial, only by coercion. https://t.co/7d1oEZivlZ

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 30, 2018

HLN LIVE Recycler Eric Lundgren - Stands Up For Repair and Recycling! (2 May 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

Flights of the Immortals

RTA and Volocopter operate Autonomous Air Taxi (AAT) in Dubai (19 June 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Flying cars have arrived, so the future is officially here. The new socio-economic divide will be evident to those still stuck in ground traffic, as they gaze high above their heads. A BBC World News television interviewee stated this week that the aim for these "future mobility ecosystems" was to,

"ease us into this before we go completely pilotless."

In the United States, regulators are currently opening up lower air space to drones and air taxis. The past few years have seen American property rights activists battling for citizens to retain some control over the airspace around and above them as an extension of private property they own - and of their own individual autonomy. After all, how low is 'lower airspace' when it comes to an unmanned aircraft system that is an ultra-tiny drone smaller than a gnat? Two inches above your head? Inside your ear canal? But really, like all the rest of hyper-accelerated technology, humankind seems helpless to resist the inevitable.

Countdown to Hallowe'en 2017: Psychic Spies and Time Cross Predictions

Image Source: BackPackerVerse.

Welcome to another countdown to Hallowe'en! This year, October 31st will mark the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther (1483-1546) nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517. On October 31st, I will publish a special interview about Martin Luther.

The Hallowe'en countdown is an online event, a mass blogathon, in which dozens of blogs count down to the end of October every year. The countdown is led by this blog (where you can see the other participants), run by the American comic book and graphic novel writer, John Rozum, and blogger Shawn Robare, who runs the Gen X Website, Branded in the 80s.

My contributions to the Hallowe'en countdown, to be published this year every three days, tend to cover odd subjects which nonetheless shed light on mainstream Millennial technology and culture. Today's post deals with the precognition and temporal psi protocol developed by the US Army in 1978, known as remote viewing. This was one of the primary psychic weapons cultivated in the Stargate Project; you can read the table of contents of the Stargate manual at the CIA's online reading room, here.

During the Cold War, the US military used remote viewing to view its enemies psychically and to foresee the future. A film dramatized this work, The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009); it was based on the 2004 book of the same name and starred George Clooney. On 12 August 2017, Leonard (Lyn) Buchanan, one of the US government's former remote viewers (and the person upon whom Clooney's character was based), gave an interview on Youtube, below.

Original Govt. Psychic Spy Reveals Remote Viewing Secrets (12 August 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Buchanan stated that at the end of World War II, the Nazis' secret research was shared among the Allies. Due to lack of interest from the USA and UK, the Russians took the Germans' psychic and esoteric experiments, including remote viewing. According to Buchanan, the Russians developed this body of knowledge, and achieved apparent successes, to the alarm of the Americans. The most famous psychic in the Russian program was Nina Kulagina (1926-1990), who was later accused of fraud.

This was what led the US Army to develop the Stargate Project, officially until 1995, although the CIA may then have taken it over under another name. You can read a 1985 Master's thesis, Psychokinesis and Its Possible Implication to Warfare Strategy by W. G. Norton, here. There is a 2004 report by Eric W. Davis, Teleportation Physics Study, sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base, here.

Lyn Buchanan claimed that remote viewers can see the past and present with high degrees of accuracy. They can view the future, but the future (unlike the past and present) is changeable. Buchanan maintained that he had been tasked to view as far into the future as the year 2080, whereupon he got into strange, conspiratorial territory:

"An agrarian society with very few people. Large cities, mainly deserted, and most people very self sufficient on their little farms. ... A low population count. That's what I found. ... [Between now and 2080] there's going to come some rough times. ... The population will be greatly affected. ... Intentional changes, from the tasking - remember there's 30 per cent inaccuracy here - from what I've found, the first step of all that is what is called chemtrails. The chemtrails are a selective thing that will damage the health of, or even kill off, certain types of people, while leaving others not so badly affected. And in the process, a sort of genetic selection will be made. But that's doom and gloom, and one of the rocks in the pond of time, I don't think there's very much we can do about that."

Other weirdness associated with Buchanan's remote viewing involves psychic police work; gambling; space exploration; space aliens; cosmology; and consciousness. He said he does not "kill things" using remote viewing, but "it's scarily easy to do." Another figure associated with this project is Joseph McMoneagle, who was the first recruit in the US Army's remote viewing program. He was designated as 'Psychic Spy 001.' You can hear an interview with him below. He spoke of visiting Russia, touring their remote viewing facilities and meeting his Russian psychic spy counterparts, who did remote viewing in the conflict in Chechnya. He remarked that the Russian capacity for remote viewing is "substantial."

Joe McMoneagle US Army Remote Viewer aka Psychic Spy 001 (2 March 2014). Video Source: Youtube.

The CIA is also rumoured to have used this parapsychological tool in psychic espionage. The US government's remote viewing training manual is here and here. I have previously written about psychic military projects here.

Excerpt from a CIA document on remote viewing. Click to enlarge. Image Source: 4chan.

Remote viewing is considered pseudoscience, but it has understandably attracted a lot of attention. After all, what government - or civilian group - wouldn't want to be able to predict coming events, re-examine historical events, or send spies to learn closely guarded secrets at almost no expense or risk?  The Chinese have studied remote viewing. The UK's Ministry of Defence secretly ran a remote viewing experiment in 2001 and 2002. Some members of the public are also attempting to conduct organized investigations of this protocol. For example, German remote viewers are listed here.

Proponents of remote viewing claim that the technique seems to work best under blind conditions, that is, viewers should not know what target the project leader has assigned. Some remote viewers, like this one trying to foresee the possibility of war with Russia, use Associative Remote Viewing (ARV), which involves knowing the target.

World War III Projections 1: The Worm That Sleeps in the Wild

The Clutch album, Psychic Warfare, released 2 October 2015 by Weathermaker Music (for a taster, go here). Image Source: Jeff  Draws.

Like religions, wars are indices of technology. Henry David Thoreau said: "What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party." War also involves a psychological marshaling of forces as well as catharses. It permits a descent into savagery, and paradoxically produces efficient organization which rewards strategists. Brutal and logical, unbridled and innovative, war turns the unthinkable into reality.

Future of robotics - Boston Dynamics.
Future of robotics - Boston Dynamics.
Posted by Arch2O.com on Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Although there is a popular belief that we will regress to sticks and stones, conflicts serve jumps in innovation. When radical testing is needed to assimilate knowledge secretly, war can enable unspeakable experiments beyond the usual subterfuges. The first use of airplanes in war occurred in 1911, in a conflict between Italy and Libya - one of several engagements fought around the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

This fact should inspire concern in a time when the tech industry is developing new capabilities ever more quickly, compulsively upgrading for the sake hyper-innovation. Technology departs the realm of engineers as mechanical capabilities intensify and deepen; tech is becoming more organic, intimate, integrated, more moral or spiritual than ever before. It is altering our behaviour; how we think; and what we think. Gadget designs are on the verge of becoming physically invasive.

This is the first of a series of posts which will ask what World War III would, or will, be like in an age of global communications. Given the way it is administered, the Internet as we know it would break down. But several systems would replace it.

Because currencies collapse in war zones, I wanted to know what would happen with gold and Bitcoin. It is a vast topic, so I will reserve gold and war for a future post. However, my first search on recent disappearances of large amounts of gold brought up a curious conspiracy theory that USD $740 million of gold and other precious metals disappeared from a two storey vault under the World Trade Center complex after 9/11.

Bitcoin, the currency of the Internet, could gain in value in a time of war; or perhaps the damage to the existing Internet would render Bitcoin worthless. There are two pages on page on Reddit where people have discussed this:

• "In WW3 we all die. The only working currencies are ammo and iodine. But when people come out of the bunkers and restart civilization - there is a chance that one of them is a bitcoiner. Anyways bitcoin could be the currency for exchanging value between nations that hate one-another."
• "How do you think the existing financial system works ... beads and shells? If WW3 kicks off this will be the least of our worries. However seen as you have asked I would imagine due to its inherent decentralization bitcoin would be extremely resilient. What other ledger of account is self propagating and distributed across 1000s of nodes? It may even be in space before long."
• "Every soldier will get a 20 satoshi ration (worth $20 in 2026)"
• "It will become completely worthless as well as fiat money will become worthless. The Blockchain will simply freeze because you need more energy then a coal plant generates to find new blocks at a reasonable time ... Nobody would be able to effort so much energy just to keep the Blockchain alive."
• "Dont you think developers could Manually adjust difficulty?"
• "Assuming there are developers with electricity and a computer, with an uplink? There is a fair probability that for at least the first while, they will have more important things on their mind than getting the blockchain running again. After that, a Hard Fork could be pushed to adjust difficulty, but at that point you'd have an interesting time pushing it."
• "And whoever was pushing it would be effectively campaigning for election to run a gasp central bank."
• "I was entertaining the thought of a 51% attack. Same concept, but whoever can get the ball rolling would be in control. Of course, it doesn't even begin to get into how war time inflation works, and how bartering winds up being used because the currencies can't keep up value-wise. A full blown world war would decimate bitcoin for a while I think, even if people somewhere were working on preserving it."
• "The worst part of the war will be fought electronically. Governments will 'hack' each others systems to cause financial ruin. Grids will go down, markets will loose all information, treatment plants will go offline. Any server that can be pinpointed will be vulnerable. Most of all credit will stop causing most to fend for themselves. How this affects Bitcoin is that it runs on servers. I would think in the early stages of full scale mobilization people will flock to it but if the war drags on into most systems being taken off line it would probably become pretty useless. If things got to that point though currency would be the least of your problems. Most likely we would be forced to live under a feudal system where each ruler that can protect his population would seek to get back online and communicate with the rest of the world. In that case the original blockchain would most likely be lost and a new one would be started. But Im just guessing."
• "Depends on how bad things get. The blockchain ledger would still exist in multiple states, I'm sure someone would've made a backup of it. However, screwing with the blockchain ledger would get significantly easier. With a lot less mining nodes around, reaching that 51% of hashing power would be more feasible. If you still had internet. If you still had power. But honestly, if WW3 happens and you somehow survive, I don't think the loss of your bitcoins will be your real problem. Finding things like food and shelter and clothing would be your real priority, and then if you somehow managed to get electricity flowing again, and jerry rigged an intarweb connection, then you'd be worried about recovering from backups (you did make backups, right) and seeing what's left of your BTC stash. Even gold would be more or less useless in a Mad Max screnario for the most part. Personally, I'm anticipating a Weimar type hyperinflation, where the phones and power all worked. Maybe I'm being too optimistic about the future? We'll see. You can tell me you told me so, if I'm wrong :)"
• "I would be more concerned with forks in the blockchain when nations isolate themselves (internet wise) due to the embargoes (digital and otherwise) that would result. The fork would cause real problems for Bitcoin after the reconciliation of warring nation states. Let's hope this never happens."
• "I actually think that gold and silver would quickly re-establish as money in a post-apocalyptic world. Basically I think civilization would revert to a historical model appropriate to whatever infrastructure and technology remain. Even if that meant returning to a lifestyle like ancient Rome, there would be local strongmen with armies and headquarters, there would be farms and protection money paid to operate them, there would be something very much like taxation, and there would be a need for a medium of exchange with all the classic properties of money ... just like there has been in every place and time, all throughout history. In the first few weeks after the bombs fall, food, water, and ammunition will reign supreme; but in the months and years after that, gold and silver will revert to their historic role."
• "What? You mean that all these bottle caps I have been collecting in case of a post-apocalyptic scenario was for nothing? In all seriousness, I agree that we would either go back to the gold/silver/copper standard. A digital currency wouldn't be of much use with no internet."

Those chatting on Reddit did not consider that Bitcoin is entangled with the development of cyberwarfare. Just as Bitcoin challenges the power of central state banks, on this developing front of cyberwarfare, the full computing might of nation-states is brought to bear against that of state and non-state actors. In 2016, there were reports that ISIS had been attacked through cyberwarfare. In terms of politics, technological evolution during World War III will be tied to the evolution of the nation-state.