|
Zeitgeist Addendum
|
| 00:00:25 |
"The old appeals to racial, sexual or religious chauvinism, |
| 00:00:30 |
to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work." |
| 00:00:34 |
"The business of who I am and whether I'm good or bad, or achieving or not, |
| 00:00:39 |
all that's learned along the way." |
| 00:00:40 |
"It's just a ride |
| 00:00:42 |
and we can change it anytime we want. |
| 00:00:44 |
It's only the choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money." |
| 00:00:48 |
"I realised I had the game wrong. |
| 00:00:51 |
The game was to find out what I already was." |
| 00:01:58 |
"We were seeing |
| 00:02:02 |
how very important it is |
| 00:02:05 |
to bring about, in the human mind, |
| 00:02:09 |
the radical revolution. |
| 00:02:13 |
The crisis is a crisis in consciousness. |
| 00:02:23 |
A crisis that cannot, anymore, |
| 00:02:29 |
accept the old norms, |
| 00:02:32 |
the old patterns, |
| 00:02:36 |
the ancient traditions. |
| 00:02:39 |
And, considering what the world is now, |
| 00:02:47 |
with all the misery, |
| 00:02:49 |
conflict, |
| 00:02:52 |
destructive brutality, |
| 00:02:54 |
aggression, |
| 00:02:56 |
and so on... |
| 00:03:00 |
Man |
| 00:03:02 |
is still as he was. |
| 00:03:05 |
Is still brutal, |
| 00:03:07 |
violent, |
| 00:03:08 |
aggressive, |
| 00:03:10 |
acquisitive, |
| 00:03:11 |
competitive. |
| 00:03:13 |
And, he's built a society |
| 00:03:18 |
along these lines." |
| 00:04:04 |
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. J. Krishnamurti |
| 00:04:25 |
Society today, |
| 00:04:27 |
is composed of a series of institutions. |
| 00:04:30 |
From political institutions, |
| 00:04:32 |
legal institutions, |
| 00:04:34 |
religious institutions. |
| 00:04:36 |
To institutions of social class, |
| 00:04:38 |
familiar values, |
| 00:04:40 |
and occupational specialization. |
| 00:04:42 |
It is obvious, the profound influence these traditionalized structures have |
| 00:04:46 |
in shaping our understandings and perspectives. |
| 00:04:51 |
Yet, of all the social institutions, we are born into, |
| 00:04:54 |
directed by and conditioned upon, |
| 00:04:57 |
there seems to be no system as taken for granted, |
| 00:05:00 |
and misunderstood, |
| 00:05:02 |
as the monetary system. |
| 00:05:04 |
Taking on nearly religious proportions, |
| 00:05:07 |
the established monetary institution exists as one of the most unquestioned forms of faith there is. |
| 00:05:13 |
How money is created, |
| 00:05:15 |
the policies by which it is governed, |
| 00:05:17 |
and how it truly affects society, |
| 00:05:19 |
are unregistered interests of the great majority of the population. |
| 00:05:33 |
In a world where 1% of the population owns 40% of the planets wealth. |
| 00:05:38 |
In a world where 34.000 children die every single day |
| 00:05:42 |
from poverty and preventable diseases, |
| 00:05:45 |
and, where 50% of the world's population lives on less than 2 dollars a day... |
| 00:05:51 |
One thing is clear. |
| 00:05:53 |
Something is very wrong. |
| 00:05:55 |
And, whether we are aware of it or not, the lifeblood of all of our established institutions, |
| 00:06:00 |
and thus society itself, |
| 00:06:02 |
is money. |
| 00:06:05 |
Therefore, understanding this institution of monetary policy |
| 00:06:08 |
is critical to understanding why our lives are the way they are. |
| 00:06:13 |
Unfortunately, economics is often viewed with confusion and boredom. |
| 00:06:17 |
Endless streams of financial jargon, coupled with intimidating mathematics, |
| 00:06:21 |
quickly deters people from attempts at understanding it. |
| 00:06:25 |
However, the fact is: |
| 00:06:27 |
The complexity associated with the financial system is a mere mask. |
| 00:06:31 |
Designed to conceal one of the most socially paralyzing structures, |
| 00:06:35 |
humanity has ever endured. |
| 00:06:46 |
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1749-1832 |
| 00:06:57 |
A number of years ago, the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, |
| 00:07:02 |
produced a document entitled "Modern Money Mechanics". |
| 00:07:06 |
This publication detailed the institutionalized practice of money creation |
| 00:07:10 |
as utilized by the Federal Reserve and the web of global commercial banks it supports. |
| 00:07:16 |
On the opening page the document states its objective. |
| 00:07:19 |
"The purpose of this booklet is to describe the basic process of money creation |
| 00:07:23 |
in a 'fractional reserve' banking system." |
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It then precedes to describe this fractional reserve process |
| 00:07:29 |
through various banking terminology. |
| 00:07:32 |
A translation of which goes something like this: |
| 00:07:36 |
The United States government decides it needs some money. |
| 00:07:39 |
So it calls up the Federal Reserve and requests, say, 10 billion dollars. |
| 00:07:43 |
The FED replies saying: "sure, we'll buy ten billion in government bonds from you". |
| 00:07:48 |
So the government takes some pieces of paper, |
| 00:07:51 |
paints some official looking designs on them and calls them treasury bonds. |
| 00:07:55 |
Then it puts a value on these bonds to the sum of 10 billion dollars |
| 00:07:59 |
and sends them over to the FED. |
| 00:08:02 |
In turn the people of the FED drop a bunch of impressive pieces of papers themselves. |
| 00:08:07 |
Only this time, calling them Federal Reserve notes. |
| 00:08:10 |
Also designating a value of ten billion dollars to the set. |
| 00:08:14 |
The FED than takes these notes and trades them for the bonds. |
| 00:08:18 |
Once this exchange is complete, |
| 00:08:20 |
the government then takes the ten billion in federal reserve notes, |
| 00:08:23 |
and deposits it into an bank account. |
| 00:08:25 |
And, upon this deposit the paper notes officially become legal tender money. |
| 00:08:30 |
Adding ten billion to the US money supply. |
| 00:08:33 |
And there it is, ten billion in new money has been created. |
| 00:08:38 |
Of course, this example is a generalization. |
| 00:08:40 |
For, in reality, this transaction would occur electronically. With no paper used at all. |
| 00:08:46 |
In fact, only three percent of US money supply exists in physical currency. |
| 00:08:52 |
The other 97 percent essentially exists in computers alone. |
| 00:08:57 |
Now, government bonds are by design instruments of debt. |
| 00:09:02 |
And when the FED purchases these bonds |
| 00:09:04 |
with money it essentially created out of thin air, |
| 00:09:07 |
the government is actually promising to pay back |
| 00:09:10 |
that money to the FED. In other words, the money was created out of debt. |
| 00:09:17 |
This mind numbing paradox, of how money or value |
| 00:09:20 |
can be created out of debt, |
| 00:09:22 |
or liability, will become more clear as we further this exercise. |
| 00:09:27 |
So, the exchange has been made. And now, ten billion dollars sits in a commercial bank account. |
| 00:09:32 |
Here is where it gets really interesting. For, as based on the fractional reserve practice, |
| 00:09:37 |
that ten billion dollar deposit |
| 00:09:39 |
instantly becomes part of the bank's reserves. |
| 00:09:42 |
Just as all deposits do. |
| 00:09:45 |
And, regarding reserve requirements as stated in "Modern Money Mechanics": |
| 00:09:50 |
"A bank must maintain legally required reserves |
| 00:09:52 |
equal to a prescribed percentage of its deposits". |
| 00:09:56 |
It then quantifies this by stating: |
| 00:09:58 |
"Under current regulations, |
| 00:10:00 |
the reserve requirement against most transaction accounts is 10 percent". |
| 00:10:05 |
This means that with a ten billion dollar deposit, |
| 00:10:08 |
ten percent, or one billion, |
| 00:10:10 |
is held as the required reserve, |
| 00:10:12 |
while the other nine billion is considered an excessive reserve, |
| 00:10:16 |
and can be used as the basis |
| 00:10:18 |
for new loans. |
| 00:10:21 |
Now, it is logical to assume, that this nine billion |
| 00:10:24 |
is literally coming out of the existing ten billion dollar deposit. |
| 00:10:28 |
However, this is actually not the case. What really happens, is that the nine billion |
| 00:10:33 |
is simply created out of thin air |
| 00:10:35 |
on top of the existing 10 billion dollar deposit. |
| 00:10:38 |
This is how the money supply is expanded. |
| 00:10:42 |
As stated in "Modern Money Mechanics": |
| 00:10:44 |
"Of course they" - the banks - "do not really pay out loans for the money, they receive as deposits. |
| 00:10:49 |
If they did this, no additional money would be created. |
| 00:10:52 |
What they do when they make loans |
| 00:10:54 |
is to accept promissory notes" |
| 00:10:56 |
- loan contracts - |
| 00:10:57 |
"in exchange for credits" - money - "to the borrowers' transaction accounts." |
| 00:11:02 |
In other words, the nine billion can be created out of nothing. |
| 00:11:05 |
Simply because there is a demand for such a loan, |
| 00:11:08 |
and that there is a 10 billion dollar deposit to satisfy the reserve requirements. |
| 00:11:14 |
Now let's assume that somebody walks into this bank and |
| 00:11:17 |
borrows the newly available nine billion dollars. |
| 00:11:20 |
They will then most likely take that money and deposit it |
| 00:11:24 |
into their own bank account. |
| 00:11:27 |
The process then repeats. |
| 00:11:29 |
For that deposit becomes part of the bank's reserves. |
| 00:11:32 |
Ten percent is isolated and in turn 90 percent of the nine billion, |
| 00:11:36 |
or 8.1 billion is now availlable as newly created money for more loans. |
| 00:11:41 |
And, of course, that 8.1 can be loaned out and redeposited creating an additional 7.2 billion |
| 00:11:47 |
to 6.5 billion... to 5.9 billion... etc... |
| 00:11:53 |
This deposit money creation loan cycle can technically go on to infinity. |
| 00:11:58 |
The average mathematical result is that about 90 billion dollars can be created on top of the original 10 billion. |
| 00:12:06 |
In other words, for every deposit that ever occurs in the banking system, about nine times that amount can be created out of thin air. |
| 00:12:15 |
Money-Jitters. Ask the obliging Bank of America for a jar of |
| 00:12:20 |
soothing instant money. |
| 00:12:22 |
M-O-N-E-Y in the form of a convenient personal loan. |
| 00:12:28 |
So, now that we understand how money is created by this fractional reserve banking system. |
| 00:12:33 |
A logical yet illusive question might come to mind: |
| 00:12:37 |
what is actually giving this newly created money value? |
| 00:12:41 |
The answer: the money that already exists. |
| 00:12:45 |
The new money essentially steals value from the existing money supply. |
| 00:12:50 |
For the total pool of money is being increased irrespective to demand for goods and services. |
| 00:12:56 |
And, as supply and demand defines equilibrium, |
| 00:12:59 |
prices rise, diminishing the purchasing power of each individual dollar. |
| 00:13:04 |
This is generally referred to as inflation. |
| 00:13:07 |
And inflation is essentially a hidden tax on the public. |
| 00:13:12 |
What is the advice that you generally get? And that is, inflate the currency. |
| 00:13:16 |
They don't say: debase the currency. They don't say: devalue the currency. |
| 00:13:19 |
They don't say: cheat the people who are safe. They say: lower the interest rates. |
| 00:13:23 |
The real deception is when we distort the value of money. |
| 00:13:27 |
When we create money out of thin air, we have no savings. Yet there is so called "capital". |
| 00:13:32 |
So, my question boils down to this: how in the world can we expect to solve the problems of inflation? |
| 00:13:40 |
That is: increase in the supply of money, with more inflation." |
| 00:13:44 |
Of course, it can't. |
| 00:13:46 |
The fractional reserve system of monetary expansion is inherently inflationary. |
| 00:13:51 |
For the act of expanding the money supply, without there being a |
| 00:13:55 |
proportional expansion of goods and services in the economy, |
| 00:13:58 |
will always debase a currency. |
| 00:14:01 |
In fact, the quick glance of the historical values of the US dollar, versus the money supply, |
| 00:14:06 |
reflects this point definitively |
| 00:14:08 |
for inverse relationship is obvious. |
| 00:14:12 |
One dollar in 1913 required $21.60 in 2007 to match value. |
| 00:14:21 |
That is a 96% devaluation since the Federal Reserve came into existence. |
| 00:14:29 |
Now, if this reality of inherent and perpetual inflation seems absurd and economically self defeating. |
| 00:14:37 |
Hold that thought, for absurdity is an understatement in regard to how our financial system really operates. |
| 00:14:46 |
For in our financial system money is debt, |
| 00:14:50 |
and debt is money. |
| 00:14:53 |
Here is a chart of the US money supply from 1950 to 2006. |
| 00:14:59 |
Here is a chart to the US national debt for the same period. |
| 00:15:02 |
How interesting it is, that the trends, are virtually the same. |
| 00:15:06 |
For the more money there is the more debt there is. |
| 00:15:10 |
The more debt there is the more money there is. |
| 00:15:13 |
To put it a different way, every single dollar in your wallet is owed to somebody by somebody. |
| 00:15:19 |
For remember : the only way the money can come in to existence is from loans. |
| 00:15:24 |
Therefore, if everyone in the country were able to pay off all debts including the government, |
| 00:15:29 |
there would not be one dollar in circulation. |
| 00:15:34 |
"If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money." |
| 00:15:39 |
- Marriner Eccles - Governor of the Federal Reserve September 30th, 1941 |
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In fact, the last time in American history the national debt was completely paid off |
| 00:15:48 |
was in 1835 after president Andrew Jackson shut down the central bank that preceded the Federal Reserve. |
| 00:15:55 |
In fact, Jackson's entire political platform essentially revolved |
| 00:16:00 |
around his commitment to shut down the central bank. |
| 00:16:03 |
Stating that one point: "The bold efforts the present bank has made to control the government... are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people |
| 00:16:11 |
should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution |
| 00:16:15 |
or, the establishment of another like it." Unfortunately this message was short lived. |
| 00:16:20 |
And the international bankers succeeded to install another central bank in 1913, |
| 00:16:25 |
the Federal Reserve. And as long as this institution exists |
| 00:16:29 |
perpetual debt is guaranteed. |
| 00:16:34 |
Now, so far we have discussed the reality that money is created out of debt through loans. |
| 00:16:41 |
These loans are based on a banks reserves, |
| 00:16:43 |
and reserves are derived from deposits. And through this fractional reserve system, |
| 00:16:47 |
any one deposit can create 9 times its original value. |
| 00:16:51 |
In turn, debasing the existing money supply raising prices in society. |
| 00:16:56 |
And, since all this money is created out of debt, |
| 00:16:59 |
and circulated randomly through commerce, |
| 00:17:02 |
people become detached from their original debt. |
| 00:17:05 |
And a disequilibrium exists where people are forced to compete for labor |
| 00:17:10 |
in order to pull enough money out of the money supply |
| 00:17:13 |
to cover their costs of living. |
| 00:17:17 |
As dysfunctional and backwards as all of this might seem, |
| 00:17:20 |
there is still one thing we have omitted from this equation. |
| 00:17:24 |
And it is this element of the structure |
| 00:17:27 |
which reveals the truly fraudulent nature of the system itself. |
| 00:17:33 |
The application of interest. |
| 00:17:38 |
When the government borrows money from the FED, or when a person borrows money from a bank, |
| 00:17:42 |
it almost always has to be payed back with a crude interest. |
| 00:17:47 |
In other words, almost every single dollar that exists |
| 00:17:50 |
must be eventually returned to a bank with interest payed as well. |
| 00:17:55 |
But, |
| 00:17:56 |
if all money is borrowed from the Central Bank and is expanded by commercial banks through loans, |
| 00:18:02 |
only what would be refered to as the "principal" |
| 00:18:05 |
is been created in the money supply. |
| 00:18:08 |
So then, where is the money to cover all of the interest that is charged? |
| 00:18:14 |
Nowhere. |
| 00:18:15 |
It doesn't exist. |
| 00:18:17 |
The ramifications of this are staggering, |
| 00:18:20 |
for the amount of money owed back to the banks will always exceed the amount of money that is available in circulation. |
| 00:18:27 |
This is why inflation is a constant in the economy, |
| 00:18:30 |
for new money is always needed to help cover the perpetual deficit build into the system, |
| 00:18:37 |
caused by the need to pay the interest. |
| 00:18:39 |
What this also means, is that mathematically defaults and bankruptcy |
| 00:18:44 |
are literally built into the system. |
| 00:18:46 |
And there will always be poor pockets of society that get the short end of the stick. |
| 00:18:51 |
An analogy would be a game of musical chairs, |
| 00:18:54 |
for the once music stops, somebody is left out to dry. |
| 00:18:58 |
And that is the point. |
| 00:19:00 |
It invariably transfers true wealth for the individual to the banks. |
| 00:19:04 |
For, if you are unable to pay for your mortgage, they will take your property. |
| 00:19:09 |
This is particularly enraging when you realize, that not only is such a default inevitable |
| 00:19:14 |
due to the fractional reserve practice. But, also because of the fact |
| 00:19:18 |
that the money that the bank loaned to you |
| 00:19:21 |
didn't even legally exist in the first place. |
| 00:19:24 |
In 1969 there was a Minnesota court case involving a man named Jerome Daly |
| 00:19:30 |
who was challenging the foreclosure of his home by the bank, which provided the loan to purchase it. |
| 00:19:35 |
His argument was that the mortgage contract required both parties, |
| 00:19:39 |
being he and the bank, each put up a legitimate form of property for the exchange. |
| 00:19:45 |
In legal language this is called |
| 00:19:48 |
consideration [a contract's basis. a contract is founded on an exchange of one form of consideration for another.] |
| 00:19:53 |
Mr. Daly explained that the money was, in fact, not the property of the bank. |
| 00:19:58 |
For it was created out of nothing as soon as the loan agreement was signed. |
| 00:20:03 |
Remember what "Modern Money Mechanics" stated about loans? |
| 00:20:06 |
"What they do, when they make loans, is to accept promissory notes in exchange for credits". |
| 00:20:11 |
"Reserves are unchanged by the loan transactions. |
| 00:20:14 |
But, deposit credits constitute new additions to the total deposits of the banking system." |
| 00:20:20 |
In other words, the money doesn't come out of their existing assets. The bank is simply inventing it, putting up nothing of it's own, |
| 00:20:27 |
except for a theoratical liability on paper. |
| 00:20:30 |
As the court case progressed, the bank's president Mr. Morgan took the stand. |
| 00:20:35 |
And in the judge's personal memorandum, he recalled that the Plaintiff - bank's president - admitted that, in combination with the Federal Reserve Bank did create the money |
| 00:20:45 |
and credits upon its books by bookkeeping entry. |
| 00:20:48 |
The money and credit first came into existence when they created it. Mr. Morgan admitted that |
| 00:20:53 |
no United States Law or Statute existed which gave him the right to do this. |
| 00:20:58 |
A lawful consideration must exist and be tendered to support the Note. |
| 00:21:02 |
The Jury found that there was no lawful consideration and I agree. |
| 00:21:06 |
He also poetically added, "Only God can create something of value out of nothing". |
| 00:21:11 |
And, upon this revelation the court rejected the bank's claim for foreclosure and Daly kept his home. |
| 00:21:19 |
The implications of this court decision are immense. |
| 00:21:22 |
For every time you borrow money from a bank, whether it is a mortgage loan or a credit card charge, |
| 00:21:28 |
the money given to you is not only counterfeit, it is a illegitimate form of consideration. |
| 00:21:34 |
And hence, voids the contract to repay. For the bank never had the money as property to begin with. |
| 00:21:41 |
Unfortunately such legal realizations are suppressed and ignored. |
| 00:21:45 |
And the game of perpetual wealth transfer and perpetual debt continues. |
| 00:21:50 |
And this brings us to the ultimate question: |
| 00:21:53 |
Why? |
| 00:21:56 |
During the American Civil War President Lincoln bypassed the high interest loans |
| 00:22:01 |
offered by the European banks and decided to do what the founding fathers advocated. |
| 00:22:06 |
Which was to create an independent and inherently debt-free currency. |
| 00:22:11 |
It was called "The Greenback". |
| 00:22:15 |
Shortly after this measure was taken, an internal document |
| 00:22:18 |
circulated between private British and American banking interests, stated: |
| 00:22:23 |
"...slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, |
| 00:22:29 |
while the European plan... is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages. |
| 00:22:34 |
This can be done by controlling the money. |
| 00:22:37 |
It will not do to allow the Greenback... as we cannot control that." |
| 00:22:43 |
The fractional reserve policy, |
| 00:22:45 |
perpetrated by the Federal Reserve |
| 00:22:47 |
which has spread in practice to the great majority of banks in the world, |
| 00:22:51 |
is, in fact, a system of modern slavery. |
| 00:22:59 |
Think about it, money is created out of debt. |
| 00:23:03 |
And what the people do when they are in debt? |
| 00:23:05 |
They submit to employment to pay it off. |
| 00:23:08 |
But if money only can only be created out of loans, |
| 00:23:12 |
how can society ever be debt free? |
| 00:23:15 |
It can't and that's the point. |
| 00:23:18 |
And it is the fear of loosing assets, coupled with the struggle to keep up |
| 00:23:22 |
with the perpetual debt and inflation inherent in the system, |
| 00:23:26 |
compounded by the inescapable scarcity within in the money supply itself, |
| 00:23:31 |
created by the interest that can never be re-payed, |
| 00:23:35 |
that keeps the wage-slave in line, |
| 00:23:39 |
running on a hamster wheel, with millions of others, |
| 00:23:42 |
in effect powering an empire |
| 00:23:45 |
that truly benefits only the elite at the top of the pyramid. |
| 00:23:50 |
For, at the end of the day, |
| 00:23:52 |
who are you really working for? |
| 00:23:55 |
The banks. |
| 00:23:57 |
Money is created in the bank and invariably ends up in a bank. |
| 00:24:00 |
They are the true masters, along with the corporations and governments they support. |
| 00:24:07 |
Physical slavery requires people to be housed and fed. |
| 00:24:11 |
Economic slavery requires people to feed and house themselves. |
| 00:24:18 |
It is one of the most ingenious scams for social manipulation ever created. |
| 00:24:22 |
And at its core, |
| 00:24:24 |
it is an invisible war against the population. |
| 00:24:27 |
Debt is the weapon used to conquer and enslave societies, |
| 00:24:31 |
and interest is its prime ammunition. |
| 00:24:36 |
And, as the majority walks around oblivious to this reality, |
| 00:24:40 |
the banks in collusion with governments and corporations |
| 00:24:44 |
continue to perfect and expand their tactics of economic warfare, |
| 00:24:49 |
spawning new bases, such as the World Bank |
| 00:24:52 |
and International Monetary Fund [IMF], |
| 00:24:54 |
while also inventing a new type of soldier. |
| 00:24:58 |
The birth of the economic hitman. |
| 00:25:08 |
There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword. The other is by debt. |
| 00:25:12 |
- John Adams - 1735-1826 |
| 00:25:14 |
We, economic hit men, really have been the ones responsible for creating this first truly global empire |
| 00:25:19 |
and we work many different ways. |
| 00:25:26 |
But perhaps the most common is that we will identify a country that has resources our corporations covet, like oil, |
| 00:25:33 |
and then, arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of it's sister organizations. |
| 00:25:39 |
But the money never actually goes to the country. |
| 00:25:42 |
Instead it goes to our big corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country. |
| 00:25:45 |
Power plants, industrial parks, ports... |
| 00:25:48 |
Things that benefit a few rich people in that country. |
| 00:25:51 |
In addition to our corporations. |
| 00:25:53 |
But really don't help a majority of the people at all. However, those people, |
| 00:25:57 |
the whole country is left holding the huge debt. |
| 00:26:00 |
It's such a big debt they can't repay and that's part of the plan... |
| 00:26:03 |
They can't repay it. |
| 00:26:04 |
And so, in some point, we economic hit men, go back to them and say, "Listen, |
| 00:26:07 |
you owe us a lot of money. You can't pay your debt. So, sell your oil |
| 00:26:11 |
real cheap to our oil companies", |
| 00:26:13 |
"allow us to build a military base in your country", |
| 00:26:16 |
or "send troops in support of ours to someplace in the world like Iraq", or "vote with us in the next UN vote", |
| 00:26:23 |
to have their electric utility company privatized |
| 00:26:26 |
and their water and sewage system privatized and sold to US corporations or other |
| 00:26:31 |
multinational corporations." |
| 00:26:33 |
So there is a whole mushrooming thing and it's so typical the way the IMF and the World Bank work. |
| 00:26:38 |
They put a country in debt and it's such a big debt it can't pay it, |
| 00:26:42 |
And then you offer to refinance that debt and pay even more interest. |
| 00:26:46 |
And you demand |
| 00:26:49 |
this quid pro quo what you call a "conditionality" or "good governance" |
| 00:26:53 |
which means basically that they got to sell off their resources, |
| 00:26:57 |
including many of their social services, their utility companies, their school systems sometimes, |
| 00:27:03 |
their penal systems, |
| 00:27:05 |
their insurance systems, to foreign corporations. |
| 00:27:08 |
So it's a double - triple - quadruple whammy! |
| 00:27:15 |
The precedent for economic hit men really began back in the early 50's |
| 00:27:19 |
when the democratically elected Mossadegh |
| 00:27:22 |
who was elected in Iran... He was considered to be the hope for democracy |
| 00:27:26 |
in the middle east and around the world. He was in Time-Magazine's "Man of the year". |
| 00:27:29 |
But... one of the things that he brought on and began to implement was the idea that |
| 00:27:34 |
foreign oil companies needed to pay the Iranian people a lot more for the oil that they were taking out of Iran |
| 00:27:39 |
and the Iranian people should benefit from their own oil. Strange policy. |
| 00:27:44 |
We didn't like that of course. But we were afraid to do what we normally were doing, which was to send in the military. |
| 00:27:50 |
Instead we sent in one CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's relative. |
| 00:27:57 |
And Kermit went in with a few million dollars and was very very effective and efficient and in a short amount of time, |
| 00:28:03 |
he managed to get Mossadeg overthrown |
| 00:28:07 |
and brought in the shah of Iran to replace him, who always was favorable to oil. And it was extremely effective. |
| 00:28:17 |
"Mobs over through Tehran. |
| 00:28:19 |
Army officers shout that Mossadeg has surrendered and his regime as virtual dictator of Iran is ended. |
| 00:28:25 |
Pictures of the shah are paraded through the streets as sentiment reverses. |
| 00:28:31 |
The shah is welcome home." |
| 00:28:33 |
So back here in the United States, in Washington, people looked around and said: "wow, that was easy and cheap". |
| 00:28:40 |
So this established a whole new way of manipulating countries, of creating empire. |
| 00:28:46 |
The only problem with Roosevelt was that he was a card carrying CIA agent |
| 00:28:51 |
and if he'd been caught, the ramifications could have been pretty serious. |
| 00:28:55 |
So very quickly, at that point, the decision was made to use private consultants |
| 00:29:00 |
to channel the money through the world bank or the IMF or one of the other such agencies, |
| 00:29:04 |
to bring in people like me, who work for private companies. |
| 00:29:08 |
So that if we got caught, there would be no governmental ramifications. |
| 00:29:21 |
When Ãrbenz became president of Guatemala, the country was very much under the thumbs of United Fruit company, |
| 00:29:27 |
the big international corporation. And Ãrbenz ran on this ticket that said: "you know, we want to give the land back to the people". |
| 00:29:34 |
And once he took power, he was implementing policies that would do exactly that, |
| 00:29:40 |
give the land rights back to the people. "United Fruit" didn't like that very much. |
| 00:29:44 |
And so, they hired a public relations firm, launched a huge campaign in the United States, |
| 00:29:48 |
to convince the United States people, the citizens of the United States, |
| 00:29:52 |
the press of the United States and the congress of the United States, |
| 00:29:54 |
that Ãrbenz was a soviet puppet |
| 00:29:57 |
and that if we allowed him to stay in power, the Soviets would have a foothold in this hemisphere. |
| 00:30:02 |
And at that point in time there was a huge fear on everybody's mind, of the red terror, the communist terror. |
| 00:30:08 |
And so, to make a long story short, out of this public relations campaign |
| 00:30:13 |
came a commitment on the part of the CIA and the military to take this man out. |
| 00:30:17 |
And in fact, we did. We sent in planes, we sent in soldiers, we sent in jackals, |
| 00:30:22 |
we sent everything in to take him out. And did take him out. |
| 00:30:25 |
And as soon as he was removed from office, |
| 00:30:28 |
the new guy that took over after him basically reinstated everything to the big international corporations, |
| 00:30:33 |
including United Fruit. |
| 00:30:39 |
Ecuador, for many many years had been ruled by pro-US dictators, often relatively brutal. |
| 00:30:46 |
Then it was decided they will have a truely democratic election. |
| 00:30:49 |
Jaime Roldos ran for office and his main goal, he said, as president would be |
| 00:30:55 |
to make sure that Ecuador's resources were used to help the people. |
| 00:31:00 |
And he won. Overwhelming. |
| 00:31:02 |
By more votes than anybody had ever won anything in Ecuador. |
| 00:31:05 |
And he began to implement these policies. |
| 00:31:08 |
To make sure that the profits from oil went to help the people. |
| 00:31:11 |
Well... We didn't like that in the United States. |
| 00:31:14 |
I was send down as one of several Economic Hitman to change Roldos. |
| 00:31:19 |
To corrupt him. To bring 'em around... To let him know... You know. |
| 00:31:22 |
"Ok, you know, you can get very rich, you and your family, if you play our game." |
| 00:31:27 |
"But if you continue to try to keep this policy you've promised, you're gonna go." |
| 00:31:33 |
He woudn't listen... |
| 00:31:35 |
He was assassinated... |
| 00:31:39 |
As soon as the plane crashed the whole area was cordoned off. |
| 00:31:42 |
The only people allowed there were US military from a nearby base |
| 00:31:46 |
and some of the Ecuadorian military. |
| 00:31:48 |
When an investigation was launched, |
| 00:31:50 |
two of the key witnesses died in a car accidents |
| 00:31:54 |
before they have a chance to testify. |
| 00:31:56 |
A lot of very-very strange things that went on around |
| 00:31:59 |
the assassination of Jaime Roldos. |
| 00:32:01 |
I, like most of people who've really looked at this case, |
| 00:32:05 |
have absolutely no doubt that it was an assassination. |
| 00:32:08 |
And, of course, in my position as an economic hitman, |
| 00:32:11 |
i was always expecting something to happen to Jaime, |
| 00:32:13 |
whether it'd be a coup or assassination, i wasn't sure, but that he would be taken down, because |
| 00:32:17 |
he was not beeing corrupted, he would not allow himself to be corrupted the way we wanted to corrupt him. |
| 00:32:27 |
Omar Torrijos, the president of Panama, |
| 00:32:29 |
was, you know, one of my favorite people. I really really liked him. |
| 00:32:32 |
He was very charasmatic. He was a guy who really wanted to help his country. |
| 00:32:36 |
And when I tried to bribe him or corrupt him, he said: "Look, John" |
| 00:32:40 |
- he called me Juanito - |
| 00:32:41 |
He said: "Look Juanito, I don't need the money. What I really need is for my country |
| 00:32:48 |
to be treated fairly. |
| 00:32:50 |
I need for the US to repay the depts that you owe my people for all the destruction you've done here. |
| 00:32:55 |
I need to be in a position where I can help other latin american countries |
| 00:32:59 |
win their independence and be free of this, |
| 00:33:02 |
of this terrible presence from the north. |
| 00:33:05 |
You people are exploiting us so badly. |
| 00:33:07 |
I need to have the Panama Canal back in the hands of the Panamian people. |
| 00:33:12 |
That's what I want. |
| 00:33:13 |
And so, leave me alone, you known, don't try to bribe me". |
| 00:33:17 |
It was 1981 and, in May, Jaime Roldos was assassinated. |
| 00:33:24 |
And Omar was very aware of this. |
| 00:33:26 |
Torrijos got his family together and he said: |
| 00:33:29 |
"I'm probably next, but that's OK, |
| 00:33:32 |
because I've done what I came here to do |
| 00:33:35 |
I renegotiated the Canal. |
| 00:33:37 |
The Canal will now be in our hands, we just finished negotiating the treaty with Jimmy Carter. |
| 00:33:45 |
In June of that same year, just a couple of month later, |
| 00:33:48 |
he also went down in an airplane crash, |
| 00:33:51 |
which, there's no question, was executed by CIA sponsored jackals. |
| 00:33:56 |
A tremendous amount of evidence that |
| 00:33:58 |
one of Torijjos' security guards handed him, at the last moment, |
| 00:34:02 |
as he was getting on the plane, a tape recorder. |
| 00:34:04 |
A small tape recorder that contained a bomb. |
| 00:34:14 |
It is intersting to me how this |
| 00:34:16 |
system has continued pretty much the same way |
| 00:34:19 |
for years, and years, and years, except the economic hit men have gotten better and better and better. |
| 00:34:23 |
Then we coped with, very recently, what happened in Venezuela. |
| 00:34:28 |
In 1998, Hugo Chavez gets elected president, |
| 00:34:31 |
following a long line of presidents |
| 00:34:34 |
who'd been very corrupt and basically destroyed the economy of the country. |
| 00:34:38 |
And Chavez was elected amidst all that. |
| 00:34:41 |
Chavez stood up to the United States |
| 00:34:44 |
and he's done it primarily demanding that Venezuelian oil |
| 00:34:48 |
be used to help Venezuelian people. |
| 00:34:51 |
Well... we didn't like that in United States. |
| 00:34:54 |
So, in 2002, |
| 00:34:57 |
a coup was staged, which was no question in my mind, in most |
| 00:35:00 |
other peoples minds, that the CIA was behind that coup. |
| 00:35:08 |
The way, that that coup was fomented |
| 00:35:10 |
was very reflective of what Kermit Roosevelt had done in Iran. |
| 00:35:13 |
Of paying people to go out onto the streets, |
| 00:35:16 |
to riot, to protest, to say that Chavez was very unpopular. |
| 00:35:20 |
You know, if you can get a few thousand people |
| 00:35:23 |
to do that, Television can make it look like |
| 00:35:27 |
it's the whole country and things start to mushroom. |
| 00:35:31 |
Except in the case of Chavez, he was |
| 00:35:34 |
smart enough and the people were so strongly behind him, |
| 00:35:37 |
that they overcame it. |
| 00:35:40 |
Which was a phenomenal moment in the history of Latin America. |
| 00:35:49 |
Iraq, actually, is a perfect example of the way |
| 00:35:52 |
the whole system works. So, we, economic hit men, are the first line defense. |
| 00:35:56 |
We go in, we try to corrupt the governments |
| 00:35:59 |
and get them to accept this huge loans, |
| 00:36:01 |
which we then use as leverage to basically own them. |
| 00:36:04 |
If we fail, as I failed in Panama with Omar Torrijos and Ecuador with Jaime Roldos, |
| 00:36:11 |
men who refuse to be corrupted, |
| 00:36:13 |
then the second line of defense is we send in the Jackals. |
| 00:36:16 |
And the jackals either overthrow governments or they assassinate. |
| 00:36:19 |
And, once that happens and a new goverment comes in it, |
| 00:36:22 |
boy it's gonna toe the line |
| 00:36:23 |
because that new president knows what will happen if he doesn't. |
| 00:36:26 |
In the case of Iraq, both of those things failed. |
| 00:36:30 |
The economic hit men were not able to get through to Saddam Hussein. |
| 00:36:33 |
We tried very hard, we tried to get him to accept a deal very similar to what the House of Saud had accepted in |
| 00:36:38 |
Saudi Arabia, but he wouldn't accept it. |
| 00:36:41 |
And so the jackals went in to take him out. |
| 00:36:43 |
They couldn't do it. His security was very good. |
| 00:36:46 |
After all, he, at one time, had worked for CIA. |
| 00:36:49 |
He'd been hired to assassinate a former president of Iraq and failed, |
| 00:36:54 |
but he knew the system. |
| 00:36:55 |
So, in '91, we send in the troops |
| 00:36:58 |
and we take out the Iraqi military. |
| 00:37:01 |
So, we assumed at that point that |
| 00:37:03 |
Saddam Hussein is gonna come around. |
| 00:37:05 |
We could have take him out of course at that time, |
| 00:37:08 |
but we didn't want it. He's the kind of strong man we like. |
| 00:37:11 |
He controls his people. We thought he could control Kurds, |
| 00:37:14 |
and keep the Iranians in their border and keep pumping oil for us. And that once we took this military, |
| 00:37:19 |
now he's gonna come around. |
| 00:37:21 |
So, the economic hit men go back in in the 90's |
| 00:37:24 |
without success. |
| 00:37:26 |
If they'd had success |
| 00:37:27 |
he'd still be running the country. We'd be selling him all the jet fighters he wants, |
| 00:37:31 |
and everything he wants, but they couldn't, they didn't have success. |
| 00:37:34 |
The jackals couldn't take him out again, so we sent the military |
| 00:37:38 |
in once again and this time we did the complete job |
| 00:37:40 |
and took him out. And in the process, created for ourselves some |
| 00:37:43 |
very-very lucrative construction |
| 00:37:45 |
deals to reconstruct the country that we'd |
| 00:37:48 |
essentially destroyed. Which is a pretty good deal if you own |
| 00:37:51 |
consturction companies, big ones. |
| 00:37:54 |
So, Iraq showes the three stages. |
| 00:37:58 |
The economic hit men failed there. |
| 00:38:00 |
The Jackals failed there. And as final mesure the military goes in. |
| 00:38:08 |
And in that way we've really created an empire, |
| 00:38:10 |
but we've done it very very subtly. It's clandestine. |
| 00:38:14 |
All empires of the past were built on the military, |
| 00:38:16 |
and everybody knew they were building them. |
| 00:38:18 |
The British knew they were building them, the French, the Germans, the Romans, the Greeks, |
| 00:38:23 |
and they were proud of it. They always had some excuse like |
| 00:38:26 |
spreading civilization, spreading some religion, something like that, |
| 00:38:30 |
but they knew they were doing it. |
| 00:38:32 |
We don't. |
| 00:38:33 |
The majority of the people, in the United States, |
| 00:38:36 |
have no idea that we're living off the benefits of the clandestine empire. |
| 00:38:41 |
That today there is more slavery in the world than ever before. |
| 00:38:47 |
Then you have to ask yourself, well, if it's an empire, then who is the emperor? |
| 00:38:51 |
Obviously our presidents of the United States are not emperors. |
| 00:38:55 |
An emperor is someone who is not elected, doesn't serve a limited term, |
| 00:38:59 |
and doesn't report to anyone, essentially. |
| 00:39:01 |
So you can't classify our presidents that way. |
| 00:39:05 |
But we do have what I consider to be the equivalent of the emperor and it's what I call the corporatocracy. |
| 00:39:12 |
The corporatocracy is this group of individuals |
| 00:39:15 |
who run our biggest corporations. |
| 00:39:17 |
And they really act as the emperor of this empire. |
| 00:39:20 |
They control our media, |
| 00:39:23 |
either through direct ownership or advertising. |
| 00:39:26 |
They control most of our politicians |
| 00:39:29 |
because the finance their campaigns, |
| 00:39:31 |
either through the corporations |
| 00:39:32 |
or through personal contributions |
| 00:39:33 |
that come out of the the corporations. |
| 00:39:35 |
They're not elected, |
| 00:39:36 |
then don't serve a limited term, |
| 00:39:38 |
they don't report to anybody, |
| 00:39:40 |
and at the very top of the corporatocracy you really can't tell |
| 00:39:44 |
whether the person is working for a private corporation |
| 00:39:46 |
or the government because their always moving back and forth. |
| 00:39:48 |
So you've got a guy who is one moment is the president of |
| 00:39:53 |
a big construction company like Haliburton, |
| 00:39:56 |
and the next moment he's Vice President of the United States. |
| 00:39:58 |
Or the President who was in the oil business. |
| 00:40:00 |
And this is true whether you get Democrats or Republicans in the office. |
| 00:40:03 |
You have this moving back and forth through a revolving door. |
| 00:40:07 |
And in a way, our government is invisible a lot of the time, |
| 00:40:12 |
and his policies are carried out by our corporations |
| 00:40:15 |
on one level or another. And then again, |
| 00:40:18 |
the policies of the government are basically |
| 00:40:21 |
forged by the corporatocracy, |
| 00:40:24 |
and then presented to the government |
| 00:40:25 |
and they become government policy. |
| 00:40:26 |
So, there's an incredibly cozy relationship. |
| 00:40:29 |
This isn't a conspiracy theory type of thing. |
| 00:40:31 |
These people don't have to get together |
| 00:40:34 |
an plot to do things. They all |
| 00:40:36 |
basically work under one primary assumption, |
| 00:40:39 |
and that is that they must maximize profits |
| 00:40:42 |
regardless of the social and environmental costs. |
| 00:40:50 |
This process of manipulation by the corporatocracy |
| 00:40:54 |
through the use of debt, bribery and political overthrow is called : |
| 00:40:58 |
Globalisation |
| 00:41:00 |
Just as the Federal Reserve keeps the american public in a postion |
| 00:41:04 |
of indentured servetude, though perpetual debt, inflation and interest, |
| 00:41:09 |
the Worldbank and IMF serve this role on a global scale. |
| 00:41:13 |
The basic scam is simple. |
| 00:41:15 |
Put a country in debt you divide is own in disgression, |
| 00:41:18 |
or through corrupting the leader of that country, |
| 00:41:21 |
then impose "conditionalities" or "structual adjustment policies" |
| 00:41:25 |
often consisting of the following. |
| 00:41:29 |
Currency devaluation. |
| 00:41:31 |
When the value of a currency drops, so does everything valued in it. |
| 00:41:35 |
This makes indigenes resources available to predator countries |
| 00:41:38 |
at a fraction of their worth. |
| 00:41:42 |
Large funding cuts for social programs, |
| 00:41:44 |
these usually include education and healthcare, |
| 00:41:47 |
compromising the well-being and integrity of the society leaving the public vulnerable |
| 00:41:52 |
to exploitation. |
| 00:41:54 |
Privatization of state-owned enterprises. |
| 00:41:57 |
This means that socially important systems can be purchased and regulated |
| 00:42:01 |
by foreign corporations for profit. |
| 00:42:04 |
For example, in 1999, the Worldbank insisted that the bolivian government sell |
| 00:42:09 |
the public watersystem of it's third-largest city to a subsidy of the US-corporation "Bechtel". |
| 00:42:16 |
As soon as this occured waterbills for the allready impoverished local residents |
| 00:42:20 |
skyrocketed. |
| 00:42:22 |
It wasn't until after full-blown revolt by the people that the Bechtel-contract was nullified. |
| 00:42:31 |
Then there is trade liberalization |
| 00:42:34 |
or the opening up of the economy through removing any restrictions on foreign trade. |
| 00:42:39 |
This allows for a number of abusive economic manifestations, |
| 00:42:42 |
such as transnational corporations bringing in their own mass-produced products |
| 00:42:48 |
undercutting the indigenes production and ruining local economies. |
| 00:42:52 |
An example is Jamaica, |
| 00:42:54 |
which after accepting loans and conditionalities from the Worldbank |
| 00:42:58 |
lost it's largest cash crop markets due to competition with western imports. |
| 00:43:04 |
Today countless farmers are out of work for they're unable to compete |
| 00:43:08 |
with the large corporations. |
| 00:43:11 |
Another variation is the creation of numerous, seemingly unnoticed, unregulated, inhuman |
| 00:43:17 |
sweetshop-factorys, which take advantage of the imposed economic hardship. |
| 00:43:23 |
Additionally, due to production-deregulation, environmental destruction is perpetual |
| 00:43:28 |
as a country's resources are often exploited by the indifferent corporations |
| 00:43:33 |
while outputting large amounts of deliberate pollution. |
| 00:43:38 |
The largest environmental lawsuit in the history of the world, today is being brought on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorian and Amazonian people against |
| 00:43:46 |
Texaco, which is now owned by Chevron so it's against Chevron, but for activities conducted by Texaco. |
| 00:43:53 |
They're estimated to be more than 18 times what the Exxon Valdez dumped into the Coast of Alaska. |
| 00:44:00 |
In the case of Ecuador it wasn't an accident. The oil companies did it intentionally; they knew they were doing it to save money rather than arranging for proper disposal. |
| 00:44:11 |
Furthermore, a cursory glance at the performance record of the World Bank reveals that the institution, which publicly claims to |
| 00:44:18 |
help poor countries develop and alleviate poverty, has done nothing but increase poverty and the wealth-gap, |
| 00:44:24 |
while corporate profits soar. |
| 00:44:27 |
In 1960 the income-gap between the fifth of the world's people and the richest countries, versus the fifth in the poorest countries was thirty to one. |
| 00:44:37 |
By 1998, it was seventy-four to one. |
| 00:44:41 |
While global GNP rose 40% between 1970 and 1985, those in poverty actually increased, by 17%. |
| 00:44:50 |
While from 1985 to 2000, those living on less than one dollar a day increased by 18%. |
| 00:44:59 |
Even the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress admitted that there is a mere 40% success rate of all World Bank projects. |
| 00:45:09 |
In the late 1960's, the World Bank intervened in Ecuador with large loans. During the next 30 years, poverty grew from 50% to 70%. |
| 00:45:19 |
Under or unemployment grew from 15% to 70%. Public debt increased from 240 million to 16 billion, |
| 00:45:28 |
while the share of resources allocated to the poor went from 20% to 6%. |
| 00:45:35 |
In fact, by the year 2000, 50% of Ecuador's national budget had to be allocated for paying its debts. |
| 00:45:46 |
It is important to understand: the World Bank is, in fact, a U.S. bank, supporting U.S. interests. |
| 00:45:53 |
For the United States holds veto-power over decisions, as it is the largest provider of capital. |
| 00:45:59 |
And where did it get this money? You guessed it: it made it out of thin air through the fractional reserve banking system. |
| 00:46:08 |
Of the world's top 100 economies, as based on annual GDP, 51 are corporations. And 47 of that 51 are U.S.-based. |
| 00:46:19 |
Walmart, General Motors and Exxon, are more economically powerful than Saudi Arabia, Poland, Norway, South Africa, Finland, Indonesia and many others. |
| 00:46:32 |
And, as protective trade-barriers are broken down, currencies tossed together and manipulated in floating markets and State economies overturned |
| 00:46:41 |
in favor of open competition in global capitalism, the empire expands. |
| 00:46:49 |
You get up on your little 21 inch screen and howl about America and democracy. |
| 00:46:59 |
There is no America, there is no democracy. |
| 00:47:04 |
There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. |
| 00:47:15 |
Those are the nations of the world today. |
| 00:47:19 |
What do you think the Russians talk about in their counsels of state - Karl Marx? |
| 00:47:24 |
They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, |
| 00:47:28 |
min and max solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. |
| 00:47:34 |
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. |
| 00:47:39 |
The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable |
| 00:47:48 |
bylaws of business. |
| 00:47:53 |
The world is a business, Mr. Beale. |
| 00:47:58 |
Taken cummulatively, the integration of the world as a whole, |
| 00:48:01 |
particularly in terms of economic globalization |
| 00:48:03 |
and the mythic qualities of "free market" capitalism, |
| 00:48:06 |
represents a veritable "empire" in its own right... |
| 00:48:09 |
Few have been able to escape the "structural adjustment" and "conditionalities" |
| 00:48:12 |
of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, |
| 00:48:15 |
or the World Trade Organization, those international financial institutions that, |
| 00:48:18 |
however inadequate, still determine what economic globalization means... |
| 00:48:21 |
Such is the power of globalization that within our lifetime we are likely to see the integration, |
| 00:48:24 |
even if unevenly, of all national economies in the world into a single global, free market system. |
| 00:48:27 |
The World is being taken over by a hand-full of business powers who dominate the natural resources we need to live, |
| 00:48:33 |
while controlling the money we need to obtain these resources. |
| 00:48:37 |
The end result will be world monopoly based not on human life but financial and corporate power. |
| 00:48:46 |
And, as the inequality grows, naturally, more and more people are becoming desperate. |
| 00:48:52 |
So the establishment was forced to come up with a new way to deal |
| 00:48:56 |
with anyone who challenges the system. So they gave birth to the 'Terrorist'. |
| 00:49:02 |
The term 'terrorist' is an empty distinction designed for any person or group who chooses to challenge the establishment. |
| 00:49:11 |
This isn't to be confused with the fictional 'Al Qaida', which was actually the name of a computer database of the U.S.-supported Mujahideen |
| 00:49:20 |
in the 1980's. |
| 00:49:21 |
"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Quaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. |
| 00:49:27 |
But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity... |
| 00:49:30 |
The country behind this propaganda is the US" - Pierre-Henri Bunel - Former French Military Intelligence |
| 00:49:32 |
In 2007, the Department of Defense received 161.8 billion dollars for the so-called global war on terrorism. |
| 00:49:42 |
According to the national counter-terrorism center, in 2004 roughly 2000 people were killed internationally due to supposed terrorist acts. |
| 00:49:52 |
Of that number, 70 were American. |
| 00:49:55 |
Using this number as a general average, which is extremely generous, it is interesting to note that twice as many |
| 00:50:03 |
people die from peanut allergies a year than from terrorist acts. |
| 00:50:09 |
Concurrently, the leading cause of death in America is coronary heart disease, killing roughly 450,000 each year. |
| 00:50:17 |
And in 2007, the government's allocation of funds for research on this issue was about three billion dollars. |
| 00:50:25 |
This means, that the US government, in 2007, spent 54 times the amount for preventing terrorism, |
| 00:50:33 |
than it spent for preventing for the disease, which kills 6600 times more people annually, than terrorism does. |
| 00:50:45 |
Yet, as the name terrorism and Al Qaida |
| 00:50:48 |
are arbitrarilly stamped on every news report relating to any action taken against US interests |
| 00:50:54 |
the myth grows wider. |
| 00:50:56 |
In mid 2008 the "US Attorney General" |
| 00:50:59 |
actually proposed, that the US congress |
| 00:51:02 |
officially declare war against the fantasy. |
| 00:51:06 |
Not to mention, as of July 2008, there are now over 1 million people |
| 00:51:11 |
currently on the US terrorist watch list. |
| 00:51:16 |
These so called "Counter-Terrorism Measures" of course had nothing to do with social protection |
| 00:51:21 |
and everything to do with preserving the establishment |
| 00:51:25 |
amongst the growing anti-American sentiment |
| 00:51:28 |
both domestically and internationally |
| 00:51:31 |
which is legitimately founded on the greed based corporate empire expansion |
| 00:51:36 |
that is exploiting the world. |
| 00:51:40 |
The true terrorists of our world, do not meet at the darks at midnight |
| 00:51:45 |
or scream "Allah Akbar" before some violent action. |
| 00:51:49 |
The true terrorists of our world, wear 5000 dollar suits |
| 00:51:53 |
and work in the highest positions of finance, government and business. |
| 00:52:02 |
So, what do we do? |
| 00:52:05 |
How do we stop a system of greed and corruption, that has so much power and momentum. |
| 00:52:09 |
How do we stop this aberrant group behavior, which feels no compassion |
| 00:52:14 |
for say, the millions slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan, |
| 00:52:17 |
so the corporatocracy can control energy resources and opium production for Wall St. profit. |
| 00:52:27 |
Before 1980, Afghanistan produced 0% of the world's opium. |
| 00:52:31 |
After the US/CIA backed Mujahideen won the Soviet/Afghan war, by 1986 they were producing 40% of the world's heroin supply. |
| 00:52:38 |
By 1988, they were producing 80% of the total market supply. |
| 00:52:43 |
But then, something unexpected happened. |
| 00:52:48 |
The Taliban rose to power and by 2000 they had destroyed most of the opium fields. Production dropped from 3.000+ tons to only 185 tons, a 94% reduction. |
| 00:52:56 |
On Sept. 9th 2001, the full Afghanistan invasion plans were on President Bush's Desk |
| 00:53:02 |
Two days later they had their excuse |
| 00:53:08 |
Today, opium productions in US controlled Afghanistan, |
| 00:53:11 |
which now provides more than 90% of the world's heroin, breakes new production records nearly every year. |
| 00:53:16 |
How do we stop a system of greed and corruption |
| 00:53:19 |
that condemns poor populations to "Sweatshop-Slavery" for the benefit of Madison Avenue? |
| 00:53:25 |
Or that engineers false-flag terror attacks for the sake of manipulation? |
| 00:53:31 |
Or that generates built-in modes of social operation, wich are inherently exploited? |
| 00:53:37 |
Or that systematicly reduces several libertys and violates human rights, |
| 00:53:42 |
in order to protect itself, from it's own shortcomings. |
| 00:53:47 |
How do we deal with the numerous covert institutions, |
| 00:53:50 |
such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group and the other undemocratically elected groups |
| 00:53:57 |
which behind closed doors collude to control the political, financial, social and environmental elements of our lives? |
| 00:54:06 |
In order to find the answer, we must first find, the true underlying cause. |
| 00:54:12 |
For the fact is, the selfish, corrupt power and profit based groups are not the true source of the problem. |
| 00:54:22 |
They are symptoms. |
| 00:54:25 |
"Greed and Competition are not the result of immutable human temperament... |
| 00:54:29 |
...greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being created and amplified... |
| 00:54:33 |
the direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive. |
| 00:54:37 |
- Bernard Liertaer - Founder of the EU Currency System |
| 00:54:40 |
My name is Jacque Fresco. |
| 00:54:43 |
I'm an industrial designer and a social engineer. |
| 00:54:48 |
I'm very much interested in society and developing a system that might be sustainable, for all people. |
| 00:54:58 |
First of all, the word "corruption" is a monetary invention, that aberrant behavior, behavior that's disruptive for the well-being of people. |
| 00:55:07 |
Well you're dealing with human behavior. And human behavior appears to be environmentally determined. |
| 00:55:16 |
Meaning, if you were raised by the Seminole indians as a baby, never saw anything else |
| 00:55:22 |
you'd hold that value system. |
| 00:55:24 |
And this goes for nations, for individuals, for families they try to indoctrinate their children |
| 00:55:31 |
to their particular faith and their country and make them feel like their are part of that. |
| 00:55:38 |
And they built a society, which they call established. |
| 00:55:43 |
They established a workable point of view and tend to perpetuate that. |
| 00:55:48 |
Whereas, all societies are really emergent, not established. |
| 00:55:54 |
And so they fight new ideas, that would interfere with the establishment. |
| 00:56:01 |
Goverments try to perpetuate that which keeps them in power. People are not elected to political office to change things. |
| 00:56:11 |
They are put there, to keep things the way they are. |
| 00:56:14 |
So you see, the bases of corruption is in our society. |
| 00:56:19 |
Let me make it clear. All nations then are basically corrupt because they tend to uphold existing institutons. |
| 00:56:27 |
I don't mean to uphold or downgrade all nations, but communism, socialism, fascism, the free enterprise-system and all other sub-cultures are the same. |
| 00:56:39 |
They are all basically corrupt. |
| 00:56:43 |
The most fundamental characteristic of our social institutions |
| 00:56:47 |
is the necessity for self-preservation. |
| 00:56:50 |
Whether dealing with a corporation, a religion or a government, |
| 00:56:54 |
the foremost interest is to preserve the institution itself. |
| 00:56:58 |
For instance, the last thing an oil company would ever want is the utilization of energy that was outside of it's control. |
| 00:57:05 |
For it makes that company less relevant to society. |
| 00:57:09 |
Likewise the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union was, in reality, |
| 00:57:14 |
a way to preserve and perpetuate the established economic and global hegemony of the United States. |
| 00:57:22 |
Similarly, religions condition people to feel guilty for natural inclination, |
| 00:57:27 |
each claiming to offer the only path to forgiveness and salvation. |
| 00:57:32 |
At the heart of this institutional self-preservation lies the monetary system. |
| 00:57:37 |
For it is money that provides the means for power and survival. |
| 00:57:42 |
Therefore, just as a poor person might be forced to steal in order to survive, |
| 00:57:47 |
it is a natural inclination to do whatever is needed to continue an institution's profitability. |
| 00:57:53 |
This makes it inherently difficult for profit-based institutions to change, |
| 00:57:57 |
for it puts in jeopardy not only the survival of large groups of people, |
| 00:58:02 |
but also the coveted materialistic lifestyle associated with affluence and power. |
| 00:58:08 |
Therefore, the paralyzing necessity to preserve an institution |
| 00:58:12 |
regardless of it's social relevance is largely rooted in the need for money or profit. |
| 00:58:23 |
"What's in it for me?", is why people think. |
| 00:58:27 |
And so if a man makes money selling a certain product, |
| 00:58:31 |
that's where he's going to fight the existence of another product that may threaten his institution. |
| 00:58:39 |
Therefore, people cannot be fair. And people do not trust each other. |
| 00:58:44 |
A guy will come over to you and say "I've got just the house you're looking for", |
| 00:58:48 |
he's a salesman. |
| 00:58:50 |
When a doctor says, "I think your kidney has to come out", |
| 00:58:53 |
I don't know if he's trying to pay off a yacht or that my kidney has to come out. |
| 00:58:58 |
It's hard in a monetary system to trust people. |
| 00:59:02 |
If you came into my store and I said |
| 00:59:04 |
"this lamp that I've got is pretty good, but the lamp next door is much better", |
| 00:59:09 |
I wouldn't be in business very long. It wouldn't work. |
| 00:59:12 |
If I were ethical, it wouldn't work. |
| 00:59:15 |
So when you say industry cares for people, that's not true. |
| 00:59:20 |
They can't afford to be ethical. |
| 00:59:23 |
So your system is not designed to serve the well-being of people. |
| 00:59:28 |
If you still don't understand that there would be no outsourcing of jobs |
| 00:59:33 |
if they cared about people. |
| 00:59:35 |
Industry does not care. |
| 00:59:36 |
They only hire people because it hasn't been automated yet. |
| 00:59:41 |
So don't talk about decency and ethics, we cannot afford it and remain in business. |
| 00:59:49 |
It is important to point out that regardless of the social system - |
| 00:59:53 |
whether fascist, socialist, capitalist or communist - |
| 00:59:57 |
the underlying mechanism is still money, labor and competition. |
| 01:00:02 |
Communist China is no less capitalistic than the United States. |
| 01:00:07 |
The only difference is the degree by which the state intervenes in enterprise. |
| 01:00:12 |
The reality is that "Monetary-ism", so to speak, is the true mechanism, |
| 01:00:17 |
that guides the interests of all the countries on the planet. |
| 01:00:21 |
The most agressive and hence dominant variation of this monetary-ism |
| 01:00:25 |
is the free enterprise system. |
| 01:00:27 |
The fundamental perspective as put forth by early free market economists, |
| 01:00:31 |
like Adam Smith, |
| 01:00:33 |
is that self interest and competition leads to social prosperity, |
| 01:00:37 |
as the act of competition creates incentive, which motivates people to persevere. |
| 01:00:44 |
However, what isn't talked about, is how a competition based economy |
| 01:00:48 |
invariably leads to strategic corruption, power and wealth consolidation, |
| 01:00:54 |
social stratification, technological paralysis, labor abuse |
| 01:00:59 |
and ultimately a covert form of government dictatorship |
| 01:01:03 |
by the rich elite. |
| 01:01:07 |
The word "corruption" is often defined as moral perversion. |
| 01:01:11 |
If a company dumps toxic waste into the ocean to save money, |
| 01:01:15 |
most people recognize this as "corrupt behavior". |
| 01:01:19 |
On a more subtle level, |
| 01:01:21 |
when Walmart moves into a small town and forces small businesses to shut down for they are unable to compete, |
| 01:01:27 |
a grey area emerges. |
| 01:01:29 |
For what exactly is Walmart doing wrong? |
| 01:01:32 |
Why should they care about the Mom and Pop organizations they destroy? |
| 01:01:36 |
Yet even more subtly, |
| 01:01:39 |
when a person get's fired from their job, because a new machine has been created, |
| 01:01:43 |
which can do the work for less money, |
| 01:01:45 |
people tend to just accept that as |
| 01:01:47 |
"the way it is", |
| 01:01:49 |
not seen the inherent corrupt inhumanity of such an action. |
| 01:01:54 |
Because the fact is, |
| 01:01:56 |
whether it is dumping toxic waste, having a monopoly enterprise or downsizing the workforce, |
| 01:02:02 |
the motive is the same : |
| 01:02:04 |
profit. |
| 01:02:06 |
They are all different degrees of the same self-preserving mechanism, |
| 01:02:10 |
which always put's the well-being of people second to monetary gain. |
| 01:02:15 |
Therefore, corruption is not some byproduct of monetary-ism, |
| 01:02:21 |
it is the very foundation. |
| 01:02:24 |
And while most people acknowledge this tendency on one level or another, |
| 01:02:28 |
majority remains naive as to the broad ramifications |
| 01:02:32 |
of having such a selfish mechanism as the guiding mentality in society. |
| 01:02:38 |
Internal documents show that after this company positively absolutely knew that |
| 01:02:43 |
they had a medication that was infected with the AIDS virus, |
| 01:02:46 |
they took the product off the market in the US, |
| 01:02:48 |
and then they dumped it in France, Europe, Asia and Latin America. |
| 01:02:51 |
The US government allowed it to happen. |
| 01:02:54 |
The FDA allowed this to happen and now the government is completely looking the other way. |
| 01:02:59 |
Thousands of innocent hemophiliacs have died from the AIDS virus. |
| 01:03:04 |
This company knew absolutely that it was infected with AIDS, |
| 01:03:07 |
they dumped it because they wanted to turn this disaster into a profit. |
| 01:03:14 |
So you see, you have built-in corruption. |
| 01:03:18 |
We're all chiseling off each other, |
| 01:03:21 |
and you can't expect decency in that sort of thing. |
| 01:03:28 |
...a feeling that they don't know who to elect. |
| 01:03:31 |
They think in terms of a democracy, |
| 01:03:33 |
which is not possible in a monetary based economy. |
| 01:03:38 |
If you have more money to advertise your position, |
| 01:03:41 |
the position you desire in government, |
| 01:03:44 |
that isn't a democracy. |
| 01:03:46 |
It serves those in positions of differential advantage. |
| 01:03:50 |
So it's always a dictatorship of the elitist, |
| 01:03:54 |
the financially wealthy. |
| 01:03:57 |
"We can either have democracy in this country or |
| 01:03:59 |
we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, |
| 01:04:02 |
but we can't have both." - Louis Brandeis - Supreme Court Justice |
| 01:04:04 |
It is an interesting observation to note how seemingly unknown personalities |
| 01:04:09 |
magically appear on the scene as presidential candidates. |
| 01:04:12 |
Then before you know it, |
| 01:04:14 |
somehow you are left to choose from a small group of extremely wealthy people |
| 01:04:19 |
who suspiciously have the same broad social view. |
| 01:04:24 |
Obviously it's a joke. |
| 01:04:26 |
The people placed on the ballot are done so |
| 00:00:03 |
by the established financial powers who actually run the show. |
| 00:00:08 |
Yet many who understand this illusion of democracy, often think |
| 00:00:13 |
"If only we could just get our honest, ethical politicians in power", |
| 00:00:18 |
then we would be okay. |
| 00:00:20 |
Well, while this idea of course seems reasonable |
| 00:00:23 |
in our established oriented world view, |
| 00:00:26 |
it is unfortunately another fallacy. |
| 00:00:30 |
For when it really comes down to what is actually important, |
| 00:00:34 |
the institution of politics and thus politicians themselves, |
| 00:00:38 |
have absolutely no true relevance as to what makes our world and society function. |
| 00:00:46 |
It's not politicians that can solve problems. |
| 00:00:49 |
They have no technical capabilities. |
| 00:00:52 |
They don't know how to solve problems. |
| 00:00:54 |
Even if they were sincere, they don't know how to solve problems. |
| 00:00:58 |
It's the technicians that produce the desalinization plants. |
| 00:01:03 |
It's the technicians that give you electricity. |
| 00:01:06 |
That give you motor vehicles. |
| 00:01:08 |
That heat your house and cool it in the summer time. |
| 00:01:11 |
It's technology that solves problems, not politics. |
| 00:01:15 |
Politics cannot solve problems 'cause they are not trained to do so. |
| 00:01:20 |
Very few people today stop and consider |
| 00:01:23 |
what it is that actually improves their lives. |
| 00:01:27 |
Is it money? Obviously not. |
| 00:01:30 |
One cannot eat money or stuff money into their car to get it to run. |
| 00:01:34 |
Is it politics? |
| 00:01:36 |
All politicians can do is create laws, |
| 00:01:39 |
establish budgets and declare war. |
| 00:01:43 |
Is it religion? |
| 00:01:44 |
Of course not, religion creates nothing except |
| 00:01:47 |
intangible emotional solace for those who require it. |
| 00:01:51 |
The true gift that we as human beings have, |
| 00:01:55 |
which has been solely responsible for everything that has improved our lives, |
| 00:02:00 |
is technology. |
| 00:02:03 |
What is technology? |
| 00:02:04 |
Technology is a pencil, |
| 00:02:06 |
which allows one to solidify ideas on paper for communication. |
| 00:02:10 |
Technology is an automobile, which allows one to travel faster than feet would allow. |
| 00:02:16 |
Technology is a pair of eye glasses, which enables sight for those who need it. |
| 00:02:22 |
Applied technology itself is merely and extension of human attributes, |
| 00:02:28 |
which reduces human effort, freeing humans from a particular chore or problem. |
| 00:02:33 |
Imagine what your life would be like today without a telephone, |
| 00:02:37 |
or an oven, |
| 00:02:38 |
or a computer, |
| 00:02:39 |
or an airplane. |
| 00:02:41 |
Everything in your home, which you take for granted, from a doorbell, |
| 00:02:45 |
to a table, |
| 00:02:46 |
to a dishwasher, |
| 00:02:47 |
is technology, generated from the creative scientific ingenuity of human technicians. |
| 00:02:54 |
Not money, politics or religion. |
| 00:02:58 |
These are false institutions. |
| 00:03:01 |
...and writing your congressman is fantastic. |
| 00:03:05 |
They tell you, "write your congressman if you want something done". |
| 00:03:08 |
The men in Washington should be at the forefront of technology. |
| 00:03:12 |
The forefront of human study. |
| 00:03:14 |
The forefront of crime. |
| 00:03:16 |
All the factors that shape human behavior. |
| 00:03:19 |
You don't have to write your congressman. |
| 00:03:21 |
What kind of people are they that are appointed to do that job? |
| 00:03:25 |
The future will have great difficulty... |
| 00:03:28 |
and the question that's raised by politicians is: |
| 00:03:32 |
How much will a project cost? |
| 00:03:34 |
The question is not "how much will it cost". |
| 00:03:37 |
Do we have the resources? |
| 00:03:40 |
And we have the resources today to house everyone, |
| 00:03:44 |
build hospitals all over the world, |
| 00:03:47 |
build schools all over the world, |
| 00:03:49 |
the finest equipment in labs for teaching and doing medical research. |
| 00:03:54 |
So you see, we have all that, but we're in a monetary system, |
| 00:03:59 |
and in a monetary system there's profit. |
| 00:04:03 |
And what is the fundamental mechanism that drives the profit system |
| 00:04:07 |
besides self-interest? |
| 00:04:09 |
What is it exactly that maintains that competitive edge at it's core? |
| 00:04:13 |
Is it high efficiency and sustainability? |
| 00:04:17 |
No. That isn't part of their design. |
| 00:04:20 |
Nothing produced in our profit based society is even remotely sustainable or efficient. |
| 00:04:25 |
If it was, there wouldn't be a multi-million dollar a year service industry for automobiles. |
| 00:04:30 |
Nor would the average lifespan for most electronics be less than three months |
| 00:04:34 |
before they're obsolete. |
| 00:04:37 |
Is it abundance? |
| 00:04:39 |
Absolutely not. |
| 00:04:40 |
Abundance, as based on the laws of supply and demand, |
| 00:04:43 |
is actually a negative thing. |
| 00:04:45 |
If a diamond company finds ten times the usual amount of diamonds during their mining, |
| 00:04:50 |
it means the supply of diamonds has increased, |
| 00:04:53 |
which means the cost and profit per diamond drops. |
| 00:04:57 |
The fact is: efficiency, sustainability and abundance |
| 00:05:01 |
are enemies of profit. |
| 00:05:03 |
To put it into a word, |
| 00:05:05 |
it is the mechanism of scarcity that increases profits. |
| 00:05:12 |
What is scarcity? |
| 00:05:14 |
Based on keeping products valuable. |
| 00:05:16 |
Slowing up production on oil raises the price. |
| 00:05:20 |
Maintaining scarcity of diamonds keeps the price high. |
| 00:05:24 |
They burn diamonds at the Kimberly Diamond Mine. They're made of carbon. |
| 00:05:28 |
That keeps the price up. |
| 00:05:30 |
So then, what does it mean for society when scarcity, |
| 00:05:34 |
either produced naturally or through manipulation |
| 00:05:38 |
is a beneficial condition for industry? |
| 00:05:42 |
It means that sustainability and abundance will never ever occur in profit system. |
| 00:05:49 |
For it simply goes against the very nature of the structure. |
| 00:05:53 |
Therefore, it is impossible to have a world without war or poverty. |
| 00:05:59 |
It is impossible to continually advance technology |
| 00:06:03 |
to its most efficient and productive states. |
| 00:06:06 |
And most dramatically, |
| 00:06:08 |
it is impossible to expect human beings |
| 00:06:11 |
to behave |
| 00:06:12 |
in truly ethical or decent ways. |
| 00:06:22 |
People use the word instinct because they can't account for the behavior. |
| 00:06:28 |
They sit back and they evaluate with their lack of knowledge, you know, |
| 00:06:34 |
and they say things like |
| 00:06:36 |
"humans are built a certain way", "greed is a natural thing", |
| 00:06:40 |
as though they'd worked for years on it. |
| 00:06:41 |
And it's no more natural than wearing clothing. |
| 00:06:45 |
What we want to do is to eliminate |
| 00:06:49 |
the causes of the problems. |
| 00:06:51 |
Eliminate the processes that |
| 00:06:54 |
produce greed, and bigotry, and prejudice, |
| 00:06:58 |
and people taking advantage of one another, and elitism. |
| 00:07:02 |
Eliminating the need for prisons and welfare. |
| 00:07:07 |
We have always had these problems because we have always lived within scarcity, |
| 00:07:11 |
and barter, and monetary systems that produce scarcity. |
| 00:07:17 |
If you eradicate the conditions that generate |
| 00:07:21 |
what you call socially offensive behavior, |
| 00:07:23 |
it does not exist. |
| 00:07:25 |
A guy says: "well listen, are they in-born?" |
| 00:07:28 |
No it's not. |
| 00:07:29 |
There is no human nature, there's human behavior, |
| 00:07:32 |
and that's always been changed throughout history. |
| 00:07:35 |
You're not born with bigotry, and greed, and corruption, and hatred. |
| 00:07:41 |
You pick that up within the society. |
| 00:07:45 |
War, poverty, corruption, hunger, misery, human suffering |
| 00:07:49 |
will not change in a monetary system. |
| 00:07:52 |
That is, there will be very little significant change. |
| 00:07:55 |
It's going to take the redesigning of our culture, |
| 00:07:59 |
our values, |
| 00:08:00 |
and it has to be related to the carrying capacity of the earth, |
| 00:08:04 |
not some human opinion or some politicians notions |
| 00:08:09 |
of the way the world ought to be. |
| 00:08:11 |
Or some religion's notion of the conduct of human affairs. |
| 00:08:16 |
And that's what The Venus Project is about. |
| 00:08:21 |
The society, that we're about to talk about, |
| 00:08:24 |
is a society that is free of all the old superstitions, |
| 00:08:29 |
incarceration, prisons, police cruelty and law. |
| 00:08:34 |
All laws will disappear |
| 00:08:37 |
and the professions will disappear, that are no longer valid, |
| 00:08:41 |
such as stockbrokers, bankers advertising. |
| 00:08:44 |
Gone! Forever! |
| 00:08:46 |
Because it's no longer relevant. |
| 00:08:52 |
When we understand that it is technology |
| 00:08:54 |
devised by human ingenuity |
| 00:08:56 |
which frees humanity and increases our quality of life |
| 00:08:59 |
we then realize, that the most important focus we can have |
| 00:09:03 |
is on the intelligent management of the earth's resources. |
| 00:09:08 |
For, it is from these natural resources, we gain the materials to continue our path of prosperity |
| 00:09:14 |
Understanding this we then see, |
| 00:09:16 |
that money fundamentally exists as a barrier to these resources, |
| 00:09:21 |
for virtually everything has a financial cause. |
| 00:09:24 |
And why do we need money to obtain these resources? |
| 00:09:27 |
Because of real or assumed scarcity. |
| 00:09:32 |
We don't usually pay for air and tap water, |
| 00:09:35 |
because it is in such high abundance, |
| 00:09:37 |
selling it would be pointless. |
| 00:09:39 |
So then, logically speaking, |
| 00:09:42 |
if resources and technologies, applicable to creating everything in our societies |
| 00:09:47 |
such as houses, cities and transportation, were in high enough abundance, |
| 00:09:51 |
there would be no reason to sell anything. |
| 00:09:55 |
Likewise, if automation and machinery was so technologically advanced, |
| 00:10:00 |
as to relieve human beings of labor |
| 00:10:02 |
there would be no reason to have a job. |
| 00:10:05 |
And with these social aspects taking care of, |
| 00:10:08 |
there would be no reason to have money at all. |
| 00:10:12 |
So the ultimate question remains: |
| 00:10:14 |
Do we on earth have enough resources |
| 00:10:17 |
and technological understanding |
| 00:10:19 |
to create a society of such abundance, |
| 00:10:21 |
that everything we have now could be available without a price tag |
| 00:10:25 |
and without the need for submission through employment? |
| 00:10:30 |
Yes, we do. |
| 00:10:32 |
We have the resources and technology |
| 00:10:35 |
to enable this at a minimum |
| 00:10:37 |
along with the ability to raise the standards of living so high |
| 00:10:41 |
that people in the future will look back at our civilisation now |
| 00:10:44 |
and gawk how primitive and immature our society was. |
| 00:10:50 |
What the Venus Project proposes |
| 00:10:52 |
is an entirely different system |
| 00:10:55 |
that's updated to present day knowledge |
| 00:10:58 |
We've never given scientists the problem of |
| 00:11:01 |
how do you design a society that would eliminate boring and monotonous jobs, |
| 00:11:05 |
that would eliminate accidents in transportation, |
| 00:11:10 |
that would enable people to have a high standard of living, |
| 00:11:13 |
that would eliminate poisons in our food, |
| 00:11:16 |
give us other sources of energy, that are clean and efficient. |
| 00:11:20 |
We can do that out there. |
| 00:11:23 |
A resource based economy. |
| 00:11:27 |
The major difference between a resource based economy and a monetary system |
| 00:11:32 |
is that a resource based economy is really concerned with people |
| 00:11:36 |
and their well-being |
| 00:11:37 |
where the monetary system has become so distorted that the concerns of the people are really secondary, it they're there at all. |
| 00:11:45 |
Products that are turned out are for: |
| 00:11:48 |
how much money you can get. |
| 00:11:49 |
If there is a problem in society and you can't earn money from solving that problem, then it won't be done. |
| 00:11:56 |
The resource based economy is really not close to anything that's been tried. |
| 00:12:01 |
And with all our technology today we can create abundance. It could be used to improve everyone's livestyle. |
| 00:12:07 |
Abundance all over the world if we use our technology wisely |
| 00:12:10 |
and maintain the environment. |
| 00:12:12 |
It's a very different system |
| 00:12:14 |
and it's very hard to talk about |
| 00:12:16 |
because the public is not that well enough informed |
| 00:12:19 |
as to the state of technology. |
| 00:12:23 |
energy |
| 00:12:27 |
At present, we don't have to burn fossil fuels. |
| 00:12:31 |
We don't have to use anything that would contaminate the environment. |
| 00:12:35 |
There are many sources of energy available. |
| 00:12:39 |
Alternative energy solutions pushed by the establishment, such as |
| 00:12:43 |
hydrogen, biomass and even nuclear are highly insufficient, dangerous |
| 00:12:48 |
and exist only to perpetuate the profit-structure the industry has created. |
| 00:12:53 |
When we look beyond the propaganda and self-serving solutions |
| 00:12:56 |
put forth by the energy companies |
| 00:12:59 |
we find a seemingly endless stream |
| 00:13:01 |
of clean abundant and renewable energy for generating power. |
| 00:13:06 |
Solar and wind energy are well known to the public. But the true potential of these mediums remains unexpressed. |
| 00:13:12 |
Solar energy, derived from the sun, |
| 00:13:15 |
has such abundance, that one hour of light at high noon |
| 00:13:19 |
contains more energy than what the entire world consumes in a year. |
| 00:13:23 |
If we could capture 1/100th of a percent of this energy, |
| 00:13:27 |
the world would never have to use oil, gas or anything else. |
| 00:13:31 |
The questioning is not availability |
| 00:13:34 |
but the technology to harnesst it. |
| 00:13:36 |
And there are many advanced mediums today |
| 00:13:38 |
which could accomplish just that, |
| 00:13:40 |
if they were not hindered by the need to compete for market share |
| 00:13:44 |
with the established energy power structures. |
| 00:13:48 |
Then there's wind energy. |
| 00:13:50 |
Wind energy has long been denounced as weak |
| 00:13:53 |
and, due to being location driven, impractical. |
| 00:13:56 |
This is simply not true. |
| 00:13:58 |
The US department of energy admitted in 2007 |
| 00:14:01 |
that if wind was fully harvested in just three of Americas 50 states |
| 00:14:06 |
it could power the entire nation. |
| 00:14:10 |
And then there are the rather unknown mediums of tidal and wave power. |
| 00:14:15 |
Tidal power is derived from tidal shifts in the ocean. |
| 00:14:18 |
Installing turbines which capture this movement, generates energy. |
| 00:14:22 |
In the United Kingdom 42 sites are currently noted as available, |
| 00:14:26 |
forecasting that 34% of all the UK's energy could come from tidal power alone. |
| 00:14:34 |
Wave power, which extracts energy from the surface motions of the ocean, |
| 00:14:39 |
is estimated to have a global potential of up to 80.000 terawatt-hours a year. |
| 00:14:45 |
This means 50% of the entire planet's energy usage could be produced from this medium alone. |
| 00:14:53 |
Now, it is important to point out that tidal, wave, solar and wind power |
| 00:14:58 |
requires virtually no preliminary energy to harness, |
| 00:15:02 |
unlike coal, oil, gas, biomass, hydrogen and all the others. |
| 00:15:07 |
In combination these four mediums alone, if efficiently harnessed through technology, |
| 00:15:12 |
could power the world forever. |
| 00:15:15 |
That being said, there happens to be another form of clean renewable energy, which trumps them all. |
| 00:15:22 |
Geothermal power. |
| 00:15:25 |
Geothermal energy utilizes what is called "heat mining". |
| 00:15:28 |
Which, through a simple process using water, is able to generate massive amounts of clean energy. |
| 00:15:34 |
In 2006, an MIT report on geothermal energy |
| 00:15:38 |
found that 13.000 zetajule of power are currently available in the earth |
| 00:15:43 |
with the possibility of 2.000 ZJ being easily tapable with improved technology. |
| 00:15:49 |
The total energy consumption of all the countries on the planet is about |
| 00:15:52 |
half of a zetajule a year. |
| 00:15:55 |
This means about 4000 years of planetary power could be harnessed |
| 00:15:59 |
in this medium alone. |
| 00:16:02 |
And when we understand that the earth's heat generation is constantly renewed, |
| 00:16:06 |
this energy is really limitless. |
| 00:16:08 |
It could be used forever. |
| 00:16:11 |
These energy sources are only a few of the clean renewable mediums available |
| 00:16:16 |
and as time goes on we will find more. |
| 00:16:19 |
The grand realization is that we have total energy abundance without the need for pollution, |
| 00:16:25 |
traditional conservation or, in fact, a price tag. |
| 00:16:31 |
And what about transportation? |
| 00:16:34 |
The prevailing means of transportation in our societies is by automobile and aircraft, |
| 00:16:39 |
both of which predominantly need fossil fuels to run. |
| 00:16:42 |
In the case of the automobile, the battery technology needed |
| 00:16:46 |
to power an electric car that can go over a hundred miles an hour |
| 00:16:49 |
for over two hundred miles on one charge, |
| 00:16:51 |
exists and has existed for many years. |
| 00:16:54 |
However, due to battery patents, controlled by the oil industry, which limits their ability to maintain market share, |
| 00:17:00 |
coupled with political pressure from the energy industry, |
| 00:17:03 |
the accessibility and affordability of this technology is limited. |
| 00:17:08 |
There is absolutely no reason, other than pure, corrupt profit interests, |
| 00:17:12 |
that every single vehicle in the world cannot be |
| 00:17:15 |
electric and utterly clean, with zero need for gasoline. |
| 00:17:20 |
As far as airplanes, |
| 00:17:21 |
it is time we realize that this means of travel is inefficient, |
| 00:17:24 |
cumbersome, slow and causes far too much pollution. |
| 00:17:29 |
This is a mag-lev train. |
| 00:17:31 |
It uses magnets for propulsion. |
| 00:17:34 |
It is fully suspended by a magnetic field |
| 00:17:37 |
and requires less then two percent of the energy used for plane travel. |
| 00:17:41 |
The train has no wheels, so nothing can wear out. |
| 00:17:44 |
The current maximum speed of versions of this technology, |
| 00:17:48 |
as used in Japan, is three hundred and sixty one miles per hour. |
| 00:17:52 |
However this version of the technology is very dated. |
| 00:17:57 |
An organisation called ET3 which has connection with the Venus project, |
| 00:18:01 |
has established a tube-based mag-lev that can travel up to 4000 miles per hour |
| 00:18:07 |
in a motionless, frictionless tube, which can go over land or under water. |
| 00:18:13 |
Imagine going from L.A to New York for an extended lunchbreak |
| 00:18:17 |
or from Washington D.C. to Beijing, China, in two hours. |
| 00:18:21 |
This is the future of continental and intercontinental travel. |
| 00:18:26 |
Fast, clean, with only a fraction of the energy usage we use today for the same means. |
| 00:18:33 |
In fact, between mag-lev technology, advanced battery storage and geothermal energy |
| 00:18:39 |
there will be no reason to ever burn fossil fuels again. |
| 00:18:42 |
And we can do this now, if we were not held back by the paralyzing profit structure. |
| 00:18:49 |
work |
| 00:18:52 |
Now America is inclined toward fascism. |
| 00:18:56 |
It has a propensity by its dominant philosophy and religion to uphold to fascist point of view. |
| 00:19:03 |
American industry is essencially a fascist institution. |
| 00:19:08 |
If you dont understand that, the minute you punch that time clock you walk into a dictatorship. |
| 00:19:13 |
We're given notions about the respectibility of work. |
| 00:19:18 |
And I realy look at it as being paid slavery. |
| 00:19:22 |
You brought up to believe that you shall earn your living by the sweat of your brow. |
| 00:19:27 |
That holds people back. |
| 00:19:29 |
Freeing people |
| 00:19:31 |
from drudgery, repetitive jobs which make them ignorant. |
| 00:19:35 |
You rob them. |
| 00:19:37 |
In our society, that is a resourced based economy, |
| 00:19:41 |
machines free people. |
| 00:19:43 |
You see, we can't imagine that because we've never known that kind of world. |
| 00:19:49 |
automation |
| 00:19:53 |
If we look back at history, we see a very clear pattern of machine automation |
| 00:19:57 |
slowly replacing human labour. |
| 00:20:01 |
From the disappearance of the elevator man |
| 00:20:03 |
to the near full automation of an automobile production plant, |
| 00:20:07 |
the fact is, as technology grows the need for humans in the work force |
| 00:20:12 |
will continually be diminished. |
| 00:20:14 |
This creates a serious clash, |
| 00:20:16 |
which proves the falsness of the monetary based labor system, |
| 00:20:21 |
for human employment is in direct competition with technological developement. |
| 00:20:27 |
Therefore, given the fundamental priority of profit by industry, |
| 00:20:32 |
people through time will be continually layed off and replaced by machine. |
| 00:20:37 |
When industry takes on a machine instead of shortening the work day, |
| 00:20:41 |
they downsize. You loose your job so you have a right to fear machines. |
| 00:20:47 |
In a high technology, resourced based economy, |
| 00:20:50 |
it is conservative to say that about 90% of all current occupations |
| 00:20:55 |
could be faced out by machines. |
| 00:20:57 |
Freeing humans to live their life without servitude. |
| 00:21:01 |
For this is the point of technology itself. |
| 00:21:04 |
And through time, with nano technology and other highly advanced forms of science, |
| 00:21:09 |
it is not far fetch to see how even complex medical procedures could be performed by machines as well. |
| 00:21:17 |
And based on the pattern with much higher success rates than humans get today. |
| 00:21:23 |
The path is clear but our monetary based structure |
| 00:21:26 |
which requires labour for income, blocks this progress, |
| 00:21:30 |
for humans need jobs in order to survive. |
| 00:21:34 |
The bottom line is that this system must go |
| 00:21:37 |
or we will never be free and technology will be constantly paralyzed. |
| 00:21:43 |
We have machines that clean out sewers and frees a human being from doing that. |
| 00:21:48 |
So look at machines as extensions of human performance. |
| 00:21:54 |
Furthermore, many occupations today will have simply no basis to exist in a resourced based economy. |
| 00:22:02 |
Such as anything assosiated with the management of money, advertising, along with a legal system itself |
| 00:22:09 |
for, without money, a great majority of the crimes that are commited today would never occur. |
| 00:22:15 |
Virtually all forms of crime are consequence in the monetary system, either directly or by nevroses inflicted through financial deprevation. |
| 00:22:25 |
Therefore laws themselves could eventually become extinct. |
| 00:22:30 |
Instead of putting up a sign "drive carefully slippery when wet" put abrasive on the highway, so it is not slippery when wet. |
| 00:22:38 |
And when a person gets in car that drunk |
| 00:22:40 |
and a car oscillates at great deal |
| 00:22:42 |
there's a little pendulum |
| 00:22:44 |
that swings up and back and that will pull the car over the side... |
| 00:22:48 |
Not a law. |
| 00:22:49 |
A solution. |
| 00:22:50 |
Put sonar and radar on automobiles so they can't hit one another. |
| 00:22:55 |
Man-made laws are attempts |
| 00:22:57 |
to deal with occuring problems |
| 00:22:59 |
and not knowing how to solve them - |
| 00:23:02 |
they make a law. |
| 00:23:04 |
In the United States, the most privatised, capitalist country on the planet, |
| 00:23:08 |
it shall come as no surprise |
| 00:23:10 |
that it also has the largest prison population in the world. |
| 00:23:14 |
Growing every year. |
| 00:23:16 |
Statistically, most of these people are uneducated |
| 00:23:19 |
and come from poor, deprived societies. |
| 00:23:23 |
And contrary to propaganda, |
| 00:23:25 |
it is this enviromental conditioning, which lures them into criminal and violent behavior. |
| 00:23:31 |
However society, looks the other way |
| 00:23:33 |
in regard to this point. |
| 00:23:35 |
The legal and prison systems are just more examples |
| 00:23:39 |
of how our society avoids examining |
| 00:23:42 |
the root-causes of behavior. |
| 00:23:44 |
Billions are spend each year |
| 00:23:46 |
on prisons and police, |
| 00:23:48 |
while only a fraction is spend on |
| 00:23:50 |
programs for poverty, |
| 00:23:52 |
which is one of the most fundamental variables responsible for crime to begin with. |
| 00:23:57 |
And, as long as we have an economic system, |
| 00:24:00 |
which preferes and infact creates |
| 00:24:02 |
scarcity and deprivation, crime will never go away. |
| 00:24:08 |
incentive |
| 00:24:12 |
If people have access to the necessities of life |
| 00:24:16 |
without survitude, debt, barter, trade, |
| 00:24:22 |
they'd behave very differently. |
| 00:24:24 |
You want all these things availabe without a price tag. |
| 00:24:28 |
Now then, you won't gonna have a price tag, what will motivate people? |
| 00:24:34 |
A man gets everything he wants, he's just lay around in the sun. |
| 00:24:38 |
This is the myth they perpetuade. |
| 00:24:40 |
People in our culture are trained to believe |
| 00:24:43 |
that the monetary system produces incentive. |
| 00:24:47 |
If they have access to things, why should they want to do anything? |
| 00:24:50 |
They would loose their incentive. |
| 00:24:52 |
That's what you're taught to support the monetary system. |
| 00:24:56 |
When you take money out of the scenario, |
| 00:24:58 |
there would be different incentives, very different incentives. |
| 00:25:03 |
When people have access to the necessities of life, |
| 00:25:06 |
their incentives change. |
| 00:25:08 |
What about the moon and the stars? |
| 00:25:10 |
New incentives arise. |
| 00:25:12 |
If you make a painting, that you enjoy, |
| 00:25:15 |
you will enjoy giving it to other people, not selling it. |
| 00:25:20 |
education |
| 00:25:23 |
I think most of the education, that I've seen today, is essentially producing a person for a job. |
| 00:25:30 |
It's very specialized. They're not generalists. |
| 00:25:32 |
People don't know a lot about a lot of different subjects. I don't think you can get people to go to war, |
| 00:25:38 |
if they knew a lot about a lot of things. |
| 00:25:41 |
I think education is mostly rote |
| 00:25:44 |
and they're not taught how to solve problems. |
| 00:25:48 |
They're not given the tools, homogenly or whithin their own field, |
| 00:25:52 |
of how to do critical thinking. |
| 00:25:55 |
In a resource based economy, the education would be very different. |
| 00:25:58 |
Our society's major concern is mental development |
| 00:26:02 |
and to motivate each person |
| 00:26:05 |
to their highest potential. |
| 00:26:07 |
Because our philosophy is the smarter people are the richer the world |
| 00:26:11 |
because everybody becomes a contributor. |
| 00:26:14 |
The smarter your kids are, |
| 00:26:17 |
the better my life will be. |
| 00:26:18 |
Because they'll be contributing more constructively to the environment |
| 00:26:22 |
and to my life. Because everything that we |
| 00:26:25 |
devise within a resource based economy |
| 00:26:28 |
would be applied to society, there would be nothing |
| 00:26:30 |
to hold it back. |
| 00:26:32 |
civilization |
| 00:26:36 |
Patriotism, weapons, armies, navies, |
| 00:26:40 |
all that is a sign, |
| 00:26:41 |
that we're not civilized yet. |
| 00:26:44 |
Kids will ask their parents: |
| 00:26:46 |
"Didn't you see the necessity of the machines?" |
| 00:26:50 |
"Dad, couldn't you see that war was inevitable |
| 00:26:53 |
when you produce scarcity?" |
| 00:26:55 |
Isn't it obvious? Of course, the kid will understand |
| 00:26:58 |
that you're pinheads - raised merely to serve |
| 00:27:01 |
the established institutons. |
| 00:27:03 |
We're such in an abominable, sick society, |
| 00:27:06 |
that we won't make the history book. |
| 00:27:09 |
They'll just say that large nations took land from smaller nations, |
| 00:27:13 |
used force and violence. |
| 00:27:14 |
You'll get history talked about as |
| 00:27:17 |
corrupt behavior all the way along |
| 00:27:19 |
until the beginning of the civilized world. |
| 00:27:22 |
That's when all the nations work together. |
| 00:27:24 |
World unification, |
| 00:27:26 |
working toward common good for all human beings |
| 00:27:30 |
and without anyone being subservient to anyone else. |
| 00:27:35 |
Without social stratification |
| 00:27:38 |
whether it be technical elitism |
| 00:27:40 |
or any other kind of elitism, |
| 00:27:42 |
eradicated from the face of the earth. |
| 00:27:45 |
The "state" does nothing because there is no "state". |
| 00:27:53 |
The system I advocate, |
| 00:27:55 |
a resource based global economy is not perfect, |
| 00:27:59 |
it's just a lot better than what we have. |
| 00:28:02 |
We can never achieve perfection. |
| 00:28:13 |
"My country is the world..." |
| 00:28:16 |
and my religion is to do good." |
| 00:28:19 |
- Thomas Paine - 1737-1809 |
| 00:28:22 |
The social values of our society, |
| 00:28:24 |
which has manifested in perpetual warfare, |
| 00:28:27 |
corruption, |
| 00:28:28 |
oppressive laws, |
| 00:28:29 |
social stratification, |
| 00:28:30 |
irrelevant superstitions, |
| 00:28:32 |
environmental destruction, |
| 00:28:34 |
and a despotic, socially indifferent, profit oriented ruling class, |
| 00:28:40 |
is fundamentally the result of a collective ignorance |
| 00:28:43 |
of two of the most basic insights humans can have about reality. |
| 00:28:48 |
The emergent and symbiotic aspects of natural law. |
| 00:28:53 |
The emergent nature of reality |
| 00:28:55 |
is that all systems - whether it is knowledge, |
| 00:28:58 |
society, technology, philosophy or any other creation - |
| 00:29:03 |
will, when uninhibited, |
| 00:29:05 |
undergo fluid perpetual change. |
| 00:29:08 |
What we consider commonplace today |
| 00:29:10 |
such as modern communication and transportation, |
| 00:29:14 |
would have been unimaginable in ancient times. |
| 00:29:17 |
Likewise, the future will contain technologies, |
| 00:29:20 |
realizations and social structures |
| 00:29:23 |
that we cannot even fathom in the present. |
| 00:29:26 |
We have gone from alchemy to chemistry, |
| 00:29:29 |
from a geocentric universe to a heliocentric, |
| 00:29:32 |
from believing that demons were the cause of illness |
| 00:29:35 |
to modern medicine. |
| 00:29:37 |
This development shows no sign of ending, |
| 00:29:40 |
and it is this awareness that aligns us |
| 00:29:43 |
and leads us on a continuous path |
| 00:29:45 |
to growth and progress. |
| 00:29:48 |
Static empirical knowledge does not exist, |
| 00:29:51 |
rather it is the insight of the emergence of all systems |
| 00:29:55 |
we must recognize. |
| 00:29:58 |
This means we must be open to new information at all times, |
| 00:30:02 |
even if it threatens our current belief system and hence, |
| 00:30:05 |
identities. |
| 00:30:07 |
Sadly, society today has failed to recognize this, |
| 00:30:11 |
and the established institutions continue to paralyze growth |
| 00:30:15 |
by preserving outdated social structures. |
| 00:30:18 |
Simultaneously, the population suffers from a fear of change. |
| 00:30:22 |
For their conditioning assumes a static identity |
| 00:30:25 |
and challenging one's belief system, |
| 00:30:27 |
usually results in insult and apprehension. |
| 00:30:31 |
For being wrong is erroneously associated with failure. |
| 00:30:36 |
When in fact to be proven wrong should be celebrated. |
| 00:30:40 |
For it is elevating someone to a new level of understanding, |
| 00:30:44 |
furthering awareness. |
| 00:30:47 |
The fact is, there is no such thing as a smart human being, |
| 00:30:51 |
for it is merely a matter of time |
| 00:30:53 |
before their ideas are updated, changed or irradicated. |
| 00:30:58 |
And this tendency to blindly hold on to a belief system, |
| 00:31:02 |
sheltering it from new possibly transforming information |
| 00:31:06 |
is nothing less than a form of intellectual materialism. |
| 00:31:11 |
The monetary system perpetuates this materialism |
| 00:31:14 |
not only by it's self-preserving structures, |
| 00:31:17 |
but also throught the countless number of people |
| 00:31:20 |
who have been conditioned into blindly |
| 00:31:22 |
and thoughtlessly upholding these structures, |
| 00:31:24 |
therefore becoming self-appointed guardians of the status quo. |
| 00:31:29 |
Sheep which no longer need a sheep-dog to control them. |
| 00:31:33 |
For they control each other by ostracizing those who step out of the norm. |
| 00:31:39 |
This tendency to resist change |
| 00:31:41 |
and uphold existing institutions |
| 00:31:43 |
for the sake of identity, comfort, |
| 00:31:45 |
power and profit, |
| 00:31:47 |
is completely unsustainable. |
| 00:31:49 |
And will only produce further imbalance, |
| 00:31:52 |
fragmentation, |
| 00:31:53 |
distortion, |
| 00:31:54 |
and invariably, |
| 00:31:55 |
destruction. |
| 00:31:59 |
It's time to change. |
| 00:32:02 |
From hunters and gatherers, |
| 00:32:03 |
to the agricultural revolution, |
| 00:32:05 |
to the industrial revolution, |
| 00:32:07 |
the pattern is clear. |
| 00:32:09 |
It is time for a new social system |
| 00:32:11 |
which reflects the understandings we have today. |
| 00:32:15 |
The monetary system is a product |
| 00:32:17 |
of a period of time |
| 00:32:18 |
where scarcity was a reality. |
| 00:32:21 |
Now, with the age of technology, |
| 00:32:22 |
it is no longer relevant to society. |
| 00:32:25 |
Gone with the aberrant behavior it manifests. |
| 00:32:30 |
Likewise, dominant world views, |
| 00:32:33 |
such as theistic religion, operate with |
| 00:32:35 |
the same social irrelevancy. |
| 00:32:38 |
Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and all of the others |
| 00:32:43 |
exist as barriers to personal and social growth. |
| 00:32:47 |
For each group perpetuates a closed world view. |
| 00:32:51 |
And this finite understanding that they acknowledge |
| 00:32:54 |
is simply not possible in an emergent universe. |
| 00:33:00 |
Yet, religion has succeeded in shutting down the awareness |
| 00:33:04 |
of this emergence |
| 00:33:05 |
by instilling the psychological distortion of faith |
| 00:33:08 |
upon it's followers. |
| 00:33:10 |
Where logic and new information is rejected |
| 00:33:13 |
in favor of traditionalized outdated beliefs. |
| 00:33:17 |
The concept of god, |
| 00:33:19 |
is really a method of accounting for the nature of things. |
| 00:33:23 |
In the early days people didn't know enough |
| 00:33:26 |
about how things formed, |
| 00:33:28 |
how nature worked. |
| 00:33:30 |
So they invented their own little stories, |
| 00:33:33 |
and the made god in their own image. |
| 00:33:37 |
A guy that get's angry |
| 00:33:39 |
when people don't behave right. |
| 00:33:41 |
He creates floods and earthquakes |
| 00:33:44 |
and they say it's an act of god. |
| 00:33:48 |
A cursory glance at the suppressed history of religion |
| 00:33:51 |
reveals that even the foundational myths themselves |
| 00:33:54 |
are emergent culminations developed through influence over time. |
| 00:33:58 |
For example, a cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith |
| 00:34:02 |
is the death and resurrection of Christ. |
| 00:34:04 |
This notion is so important that the Bible itself states |
| 00:34:08 |
"And if Christ be not risen then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain" |
| 00:34:16 |
Yet it is very difficult to take this account literally, |
| 00:34:19 |
for not only is there no primary source denoting this supernatural event in secular history, |
| 00:34:25 |
awareness of the enormous number of pre-Christian saviors |
| 00:34:28 |
who also died and were resurrected |
| 00:34:31 |
immediately puts this story in mythological territory by association. |
| 00:34:36 |
Early church figures, |
| 00:34:37 |
such as Tortullian, |
| 00:34:38 |
went to great lengths to break these associations, |
| 00:34:42 |
even claiming that the devil caused the similarities to occur. |
| 00:34:46 |
Stating in the second century: |
| 00:34:48 |
"The devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, |
| 00:34:51 |
mimics the exact circumstance of the Divine Sacraments. |
| 00:34:54 |
He baptizes his believers and promises forgiveness of sins... |
| 00:34:58 |
he celebrates the oblation of bread, and brings in the symbol of the resurrection. |
| 00:35:03 |
Let us therefore acknowledge the craftiness of the devil, |
| 00:35:07 |
who copied certain things of those that be Divine." |
| 00:35:11 |
What is truly sad however, |
| 00:35:13 |
is that when we cease the idea that the stories from Christianity, |
| 00:35:16 |
Judaism, Islam and all the others |
| 00:35:19 |
are literal history, |
| 00:35:21 |
and accept them for what they really are, |
| 00:35:24 |
which are purely allegorical expressions derived from many faiths, |
| 00:35:29 |
we see that all religions share a common thread. |
| 00:35:32 |
And it is this unifying imperative |
| 00:35:35 |
that needs to be recognized and appreciated. |
| 00:35:40 |
Religious belief has caused more fragmentation and conflict |
| 00:35:43 |
than any other ideology. |
| 00:35:45 |
Christianity alone has over 34,000 different subgroups. |
| 00:35:51 |
The Bible is subject to interpretation. |
| 00:35:54 |
When you read it, you say |
| 00:35:56 |
"I think Jesus meant this. I think Job meant that. |
| 00:36:00 |
Oh No! He meant this." |
| 00:36:02 |
So you have the Lutheran, the Seventh-day Adventist, the Catholic, |
| 00:36:06 |
and a church divided is no church at all. |
| 00:36:16 |
And this point on division, |
| 00:36:19 |
which is a trademark on all theistic religions, |
| 00:36:22 |
brings us to our second failure of awareness. |
| 00:36:25 |
The false assumption of separation |
| 00:36:27 |
through the rejection of the symbiotic relationship of life. |
| 00:36:33 |
Apart from the understanding that all natural systems are emergent, |
| 00:36:37 |
where all notions of reality will be constantly developed, |
| 00:36:40 |
altered and even eradicated, |
| 00:36:43 |
we must also understand that all systems are, in fact, |
| 00:36:47 |
invented fragments, merely for sake of conversation. |
| 00:36:52 |
For there is no such thing as independence in nature. |
| 00:36:56 |
The whole of nature is a unified system of interdependent variables, |
| 00:37:01 |
each a cause and a reaction, existing only as a concentrated whole. |
| 00:37:07 |
You don't see the plug to connect to the environment, |
| 00:37:10 |
so it looks like we're free... wandering around. |
| 00:37:14 |
Take the oxygen away, we all die immediately. |
| 00:37:17 |
Take plant life away, we die. |
| 00:37:19 |
And without the sun, all the plants die. |
| 00:37:22 |
So we are connected. |
| 00:37:24 |
We really must take into account the totality. |
| 00:37:27 |
This isn't just a human experience on this planet, |
| 00:37:29 |
this is a total experience. |
| 00:37:31 |
And we know we can't survive without plants and animals. |
| 00:37:33 |
We know we can't survive without the four elements, you know? |
| 00:37:36 |
And so, when are we gonna really start taking that into account? |
| 00:37:40 |
That's what it is to be successful. |
| 00:37:42 |
Success depends on how well we're related to everything around us. |
| 00:37:47 |
I'm very aware of the fact that my grandson |
| 00:37:49 |
cannot possibly hope |
| 00:37:51 |
to inherit a sustainable, |
| 00:37:53 |
peaceful, stable, socially just world |
| 00:37:55 |
unless every child today growing up in |
| 00:37:58 |
Ethiopia, in Indonesia, in Bolivia, in Palestine, in Israel |
| 00:38:02 |
also has that same expectation. |
| 00:38:05 |
You gotta take care of the whole community |
| 00:38:08 |
or you're gonna have serious problems. |
| 00:38:10 |
And now we have to see that the whole world is the community. |
| 00:38:14 |
And we must all take care of each other that way. |
| 00:38:17 |
And it's not just a community of human beings, |
| 00:38:19 |
it's a community of plants and animals and elements. |
| 00:38:22 |
And we really need to understand that. |
| 00:38:25 |
That's what's gonna bring us joy too, |
| 00:38:27 |
and pleasure. |
| 00:38:28 |
That's what's missing in our lives right now. |
| 00:38:30 |
We can call it spirituality, |
| 00:38:32 |
but the fact of the matter is |
| 00:38:34 |
joy comes from that bliss of connectedness. |
| 00:38:38 |
That's our god spirit. |
| 00:38:39 |
That's that side of ourselves |
| 00:38:41 |
that really feels it, |
| 00:38:43 |
and you can feel it deep inside you. It's this |
| 00:38:45 |
amazing wonderful feeling and you know it when you get it. |
| 00:38:48 |
You don't get it from money, |
| 00:38:49 |
you get it from connection. |
| 00:38:53 |
"Now if that isn't a hazard to this country. |
| 00:38:58 |
How are we gonna keep building nuclear weapons, |
| 00:39:00 |
you know what I mean? |
| 00:39:02 |
What's gonna happen to the arms industry |
| 00:39:04 |
when we realize we're all one? |
| 00:39:08 |
It's gonna fuck up the economy. |
| 00:39:10 |
The economy that's fake anyway. |
| 00:39:21 |
Which would be a real bummer. |
| 00:39:23 |
You can see why the government's crackin' down... |
| 00:39:28 |
on the idea of experiencing unconditional love." |
| 00:39:33 |
"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality." |
| 00:39:37 |
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - 1929-1968 |
| 00:39:42 |
Once we understand that the integrity of our personal existences |
| 00:39:46 |
are completely dependent |
| 00:39:48 |
on the integrity of everything else in our world, |
| 00:39:51 |
we have truly understood the meaning of unconditional love. |
| 00:39:56 |
For love is extensionality and seeing everything as you |
| 00:40:00 |
and you as everything can have no conditionalities, |
| 00:40:04 |
for in fact, we are all everything at once. |
| 00:40:08 |
If it's true that we're all from the center of a star, |
| 00:40:10 |
every atom on each of us from the center of a star, |
| 00:40:12 |
then we're all the same thing. |
| 00:40:14 |
Even a Coke machine or a cigarette butt in the street in buffalo |
| 00:40:17 |
is made out of atoms that came from a star. |
| 00:40:19 |
They've all been recycled thousands of times, |
| 00:40:21 |
as have you and I. |
| 00:40:22 |
And therefore, it's only me out there. |
| 00:40:26 |
So what is there to be afraid of? What is there that needs solace seeking? |
| 00:40:30 |
Nothing. There's nothing to be afraid of because it's all us. |
| 00:40:33 |
The trouble is we have been separated by being born |
| 00:40:36 |
and given a name and an identity and being individuated. |
| 00:40:39 |
We've been separated from the oneness, |
| 00:40:40 |
and that's what religion exploits. |
| 00:40:41 |
That people have this yearning to be part of the overall one again. |
| 00:40:45 |
So they exploit that. They call it god, they say he has rules, |
| 00:40:49 |
and I think it's cruel. |
| 00:40:50 |
I think you can do it absent religion. |
| 00:40:53 |
...an extraterrestrial visitor examining the differences among human societies |
| 00:40:56 |
would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities... |
| 00:40:59 |
Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars... |
| 00:41:02 |
We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature |
| 00:41:05 |
and the forces that sculpted this work... |
| 00:41:07 |
And we, we who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, |
| 00:41:11 |
we have begun at least to wonder about our origins... |
| 00:41:13 |
star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, |
| 00:41:17 |
contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth... |
| 00:41:21 |
Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. We speak for earth. |
| 00:41:24 |
Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves |
| 00:41:27 |
but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring. |
| 00:41:31 |
We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light. |
| 00:41:35 |
- Carl Sagan - 1934-1996 |
| 00:41:41 |
It's time to claim the unity |
| 00:41:43 |
our outmoded social systems have broken apart, |
| 00:41:46 |
and work together to create a sustainable, |
| 00:41:49 |
global society, where everyone is taken care of |
| 00:41:52 |
and everyone is truly free. |
| 00:41:55 |
Your personal beliefs, whatever they may be, |
| 00:41:57 |
are meaningless when it comes to the necessities of life. |
| 00:42:01 |
Every human being is born naked, |
| 00:42:03 |
needing warmth, food, water, shelter. |
| 00:42:06 |
Everything else is auxiliary. |
| 00:42:08 |
Therefore, the most important issue at hand |
| 00:42:11 |
is the intelligent management of the Earth's resources. |
| 00:42:15 |
This can never be accomplished in a monetary system, |
| 00:42:18 |
for the pursuit of profit is the pursuit of self interest |
| 00:42:21 |
and therefore imbalance is inherent. |
| 00:42:25 |
Simultaneously, politicians are useless. |
| 00:42:28 |
For our true problems in life are technical not political. |
| 00:42:33 |
Furthermore, ideologies that separate humanity, |
| 00:42:36 |
such as religion, |
| 00:42:37 |
need strong reflection in the community |
| 00:42:40 |
in regard to it's value, purpose and social relevancy. |
| 00:42:44 |
Hopefully, through time, |
| 00:42:46 |
religion will loose it's materialism and basis in superstition |
| 00:42:49 |
and move into the useful field of philosophy. |
| 00:42:53 |
The fact is, society today is backwards, |
| 00:42:56 |
with politicians constantly talking about protection and security |
| 00:43:00 |
rather than creation, unity and progress. |
| 00:43:04 |
The US alone now spends about $500 billions dollars annually on defense. |
| 00:43:09 |
That is enough to send every high school senior in America to a four year college. |
| 00:43:15 |
In the 1940's the Manhattan Project |
| 00:43:17 |
produced the first true weapon of mass destruction. |
| 00:43:21 |
This program employed 130,000 people, at an extreme financial cost. |
| 00:43:27 |
Imagine what our life would be like today if that group of scientists, |
| 00:43:31 |
instead of working on a way of killing people, |
| 00:43:34 |
worked on a way to create a self-sustaining abundant world. |
| 00:43:39 |
Life today would be very very different if that was their goal. |
| 00:43:45 |
Instead of weapons of mass destruction, |
| 00:43:48 |
it is time to unleash something much more powerful. |
| 00:43:52 |
Weapons of Mass Creation (WMCs). |
| 00:43:56 |
Our true divinity is in our ability to create. |
| 00:44:00 |
And armed with the understanding of the symbiotic connections of life, |
| 00:44:04 |
while being guided by the emergent nature of reality, |
| 00:44:08 |
there is nothing we cannot do or accomplish. |
| 00:44:13 |
Of course, we face strong barriers |
| 00:44:15 |
in the form of established power structures |
| 00:44:18 |
that refuse to change. |
| 00:44:20 |
At the heart of these structures is the monetary system. |
| 00:44:23 |
As explained earlier, the fractional reserve policy |
| 00:44:25 |
is a form of slavery through debt, where |
| 00:44:28 |
it is literally impossible for society to be free. |
| 00:44:32 |
In turn, free market capitalism in the form of free trade, |
| 00:44:35 |
uses debt to imprison the world and manipulate countries |
| 00:44:39 |
into subservience to a handful of large business and political powers. |
| 00:44:43 |
Apart from these obvious amoralities, |
| 00:44:46 |
the system itself is based on competition, |
| 00:44:48 |
which immediately destroys the possibility |
| 00:44:51 |
of large scale collaborations for the common good. |
| 00:44:54 |
Hence paralyzing any attempt at true global sustainability. |
| 00:45:00 |
These financial and corporate structures are now obsolete, |
| 00:45:04 |
and they must be outgrown. |
| 00:45:08 |
Of course, we can not be naive enough to think that the business and financial elite are going to subscribe to this idea |
| 00:45:13 |
for they will lose power and control. |
| 00:45:15 |
Therefore, peacefully a highly strategic action must be taken. |
| 00:45:19 |
The most powerful course of action is simple. |
| 00:45:22 |
We have to alter our behavior to force the power structure to the will of the people. |
| 00:45:29 |
We must stop supporting the system. |
| 00:45:33 |
The only way the establishment will change |
| 00:45:35 |
is by our refusal to participate while |
| 00:45:38 |
continuously acknowledging it's endless flaws and corruptions. |
| 00:45:42 |
They're not gonna give up the monetary system, |
| 00:45:45 |
because of our designs of what we've recommend. |
| 00:45:49 |
The system has to fail, |
| 00:45:51 |
and people have to lose confidence in their elected leaders. |
| 00:45:56 |
That will be a major turning point |
| 00:45:58 |
if The Venus Project is offered as a possible alternative. |
| 00:46:03 |
If not, I fear the consequences. |
| 00:46:06 |
The trends now indicate that our country is going bankrupt. |
| 00:46:11 |
The probability is our country will move toward a military dictatorship |
| 00:46:17 |
to prevent riots and complete social breakdown. |
| 00:46:21 |
Once the US breaks down, |
| 00:46:23 |
all the other cultures will undergo similar things. |
| 00:46:27 |
As of now, the world financial system is on the brink |
| 00:46:30 |
of collapse due to it's own shortcomings. |
| 00:46:33 |
The controller of currencies stated in 2003 |
| 00:46:36 |
that the interest on the US national debt |
| 00:46:39 |
will not be affordable in less than ten years. |
| 00:46:42 |
This theoretically means total bankruptcy for the US economy |
| 00:46:46 |
and it's implications for the world are immense. |
| 00:46:49 |
In turn the fractional reserve based monetary system |
| 00:46:51 |
is reaching it's theoretical limits of expansion |
| 00:46:54 |
and the banking failures you are seeing are just the beginning. |
| 00:46:58 |
This is why inflation is skyrocketing, |
| 00:47:01 |
our debt is at record levels |
| 00:47:03 |
and the government and FED are hemorrhaging new money |
| 00:47:06 |
to bailout the corrupt system. |
| 00:47:08 |
For the only way to keep the banks going |
| 00:47:10 |
is by making more money. |
| 00:47:11 |
The only way to make more money |
| 00:47:13 |
is to create more debt and inflation. |
| 00:47:16 |
It is simply a matter of time before the tables turn |
| 00:47:19 |
and there's no one is willing to make new loans |
| 00:47:21 |
while defaults grow as people are unable to afford their current loans. |
| 00:47:26 |
Then the expansion of money will stop |
| 00:47:28 |
and contraction will begin on a scale never before seen, |
| 00:47:32 |
ending a century long pyramid scheme. |
| 00:47:36 |
This has already begun. |
| 00:47:39 |
Therefore, we need to expose this financial failure for what it is, |
| 00:47:42 |
using this weakness to our advantage. |
| 00:47:45 |
Here are some suggestions: |
| 00:47:47 |
Expose the banking fraud. |
| 00:47:49 |
Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America |
| 00:47:53 |
are the most powerful controllers within the corrupt Federal Reserve system. |
| 00:47:57 |
It's time to boycott these institutions. |
| 00:48:01 |
If you have a bank account or credit card with any of them, |
| 00:48:04 |
move your money to another bank. |
| 00:48:06 |
If you have a mortgage, refinance with another bank. |
| 00:48:10 |
If you own their stock, sell it. |
| 00:48:12 |
If you work for them, quit. |
| 00:48:14 |
This gesture will express contempt |
| 00:48:16 |
for the true powers behind the private banking cartel |
| 00:48:19 |
known as the Federal Reserve. |
| 00:48:21 |
And create awareness about the fraud of the banking system itself. |
| 00:48:26 |
Two. Turn off the TV news. |
| 00:48:28 |
Visit the emerging independent news agencies on the internet for your information. |
| 00:48:33 |
CNN, NBC, ABC, FOX and all the others |
| 00:48:38 |
present all news pre-filtered to maintain the status quo. |
| 00:48:42 |
With four corporations owning all major media outlets, |
| 00:48:46 |
objective information is impossible. |
| 00:48:48 |
This is the true beauty of the internet. |
| 00:48:51 |
And the establishment has been losing control |
| 00:48:53 |
because of this free flow of information. |
| 00:48:56 |
We must protect the internet at all times, |
| 00:48:58 |
as it is truly our savior right now. |
| 00:49:02 |
Three. |
| 00:49:03 |
Don't ever allow yourself, |
| 00:49:05 |
your family or anyone you know, to ever join the military. |
| 00:49:12 |
This is an obsolete institution |
| 00:49:15 |
now used exclusively for maintaining an establishment |
| 00:49:18 |
that is no longer relevant. |
| 00:49:20 |
US soldiers in Iraq work for US corporations, |
| 00:49:23 |
not the people. |
| 00:49:25 |
Propaganda forces us to believe that war is natural |
| 00:49:28 |
and the military is an honorable institution. |
| 00:49:31 |
Well if war is natural, |
| 00:49:32 |
why are there 18 suicides every single day |
| 00:49:35 |
by American veterans |
| 00:49:37 |
who have post-traumatic stress disorder? |
| 00:49:40 |
If our military men and women are so honored, |
| 00:49:43 |
why is it that 25% of the American homeless population |
| 00:49:46 |
are veterans? |
| 00:49:49 |
Four. |
| 00:49:50 |
Stop supporting the energy companies. |
| 00:49:53 |
If you live in a detached house, |
| 00:49:55 |
get off the grid. |
| 00:49:56 |
Investigate every means of making your home self-sustainable |
| 00:49:59 |
with clean energy. |
| 00:50:01 |
Solar, wind and other renewable energies |
| 00:50:04 |
are now affordable consumer realities, |
| 00:50:07 |
and considering the never ending rising costs of traditional energies, |
| 00:50:10 |
it will likely be a cheaper investment over time. |
| 00:50:14 |
If you drive, get the smallest car you can |
| 00:50:16 |
and consider using one of the many conversion technologies |
| 00:50:19 |
that can enable your car to be a hybrid, |
| 00:50:22 |
electric or run on anything other than establishment fuels. |
| 00:50:26 |
Five. |
| 00:50:27 |
Reject the political system. |
| 00:50:29 |
The illusion of democracy is an insult to our intelligence. |
| 00:50:33 |
In a monetary system, there is no such thing as a true democracy, |
| 00:50:37 |
and there never was. |
| 00:50:39 |
We have two political parties owned by the same set of corporate lobbyists. |
| 00:50:44 |
They are placed in their positions by the corporations, |
| 00:50:47 |
with popularity artificially projected by their media. |
| 00:50:51 |
In a system of inherent corruption |
| 00:50:53 |
the change of personnel every couple of years |
| 00:50:56 |
has very little relevance. |
| 00:50:58 |
Instead of pretending that the political game has any true meaning |
| 00:51:01 |
focus your energy on how to transcend this failed system. |
| 00:51:07 |
And six. |
| 00:51:08 |
Join the movement. |
| 00:51:10 |
Go to the thezeitgeistmovement.com |
| 00:51:13 |
and help us create the largest mass movement for social change |
| 00:51:16 |
the world has ever seen. |
| 00:51:18 |
We must mobilize and educate everyone |
| 00:51:21 |
about the inherent corruption of our current world system, |
| 00:51:24 |
along with the only true sustainable solution, |
| 00:51:28 |
declaring all the natural resources on the planet |
| 00:51:31 |
as common heritage to all people, |
| 00:51:34 |
while informing everyone as to the true state of technology |
| 00:51:38 |
and how we can all be free if the world works together rather than fights. |
| 00:51:44 |
The choice lies with you. |
| 00:51:46 |
You can continue to be a slave to the financial system |
| 00:51:48 |
and watch the continuous wars, depressions and injustice across the globe |
| 00:51:53 |
while placating yourself with vain entertainment |
| 00:51:56 |
and materialistic garbage; |
| 00:51:58 |
or, you can focus your energy on true, meaningful, lasting, holistic change |
| 00:52:03 |
which actually has the realistic ability to support |
| 00:52:07 |
and free all humans with no one left behind. |
| 00:52:12 |
But in the end, the most relevant change |
| 00:52:16 |
must occur first inside of you. |
| 00:52:19 |
The real revolution is the revolution of consciousness, |
| 00:52:23 |
and each one of us first needs to eliminate |
| 00:52:27 |
the divisionary, materialistic noise |
| 00:52:29 |
we have been conditioned to think is true; |
| 00:52:33 |
while discovering, amplifying and aligning |
| 00:52:36 |
with the signal coming from our true empirical oneness. |
| 00:52:43 |
It is up to you. |
| 00:52:47 |
"What we are trying in all these discussions and talks here |
| 00:52:52 |
is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformism of the mind. |
| 00:53:00 |
Not accept thing they are... |
| 00:53:05 |
but to understand it, to go into it, to examine it, |
| 00:53:08 |
give your heart and your mind with every thing that you have to find out. |
| 00:53:13 |
A way of living differently. |
| 00:53:20 |
But, that depends on you and not somebody else. |
| 00:53:25 |
Because in this there is no teacher, |
| 00:53:27 |
no pupil, |
| 00:53:29 |
there's no leader, |
| 00:53:32 |
there's no guru, |
| 00:53:33 |
there's no master, no savior. |
| 00:53:35 |
You yourself are the teacher and the pupil, you're the master, you're the guru, you are the leader, |
| 00:53:41 |
you are everything! |
| 00:53:44 |
And, |
| 00:53:47 |
to understand |
| 00:53:49 |
is to transform what is." |
