Matrix creep: Mind Trip Intel wants into your brain. (Image Warner Bros.)

Researchers expect brain waves to operate computers, TVs and cell phones

PopSci | Nov 20, 2009

By Jeremy Hsu

If the idea of turning consumers into true cyborgs sounds creepy, don’t tell Intel researchers. Intel’s Pittsburgh lab aims to develop brain implants that can control all sorts of gadgets directly via brain waves by 2020.

The scientists anticipate that consumers will adapt quickly to the idea, and indeed crave the freedom of not requiring a keyboard, mouse, or remote control for surfing the Web or changing channels. They also predict that people will tire of multi-touch devices such as our precious iPhones, Android smart phones and even Microsoft’s wacky Surface Table.

Turning brain waves into real-world tech action still requires some heavy decoding of brain activity. The Intel team has already made use of fMRI brain scans to match brain patterns with similar thoughts across many test subjects.

Plenty of other researchers have also tinkered in this area. Toyota recently demoed a wheelchair controlled with brainwaves, and University of Utah researchers have created a wireless brain transmitter that allows monkeys to control robotic arms.

There are still more implications to creating a seamless brain interface, besides having more cyborgs running around. If scientists can translate brain waves into specific actions, there’s no reason they could not create a virtual world with a full spectrum of activity tied to those brain waves. That’s right — we’re seeing Matrix creep.

The telepathic abilities that feature in the film X2 are a step closer to reality

It could herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that envisaged in the Hollywood film Minority Report, in which an individual’s private thoughts can be readily accessed by the authorities.

Psychic computer shows your thoughts on screen

London Times | Nov 1, 2009

by Chris Gourlay

Scientists have discovered how to “read” minds by scanning brain activity and reproducing images of what people are seeing — or even remembering.

Researchers have been able to convert into crude video footage the brain activity stimulated by what a person is watching or recalling.

The breakthrough raises the prospect of significant benefits, such as allowing people who are unable to move or speak to communicate via visualisation of their thoughts; recording people’s dreams; or allowing police to identify criminals by recalling the memories of a witness.

However, it could also herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that envisaged in the Hollywood film Minority Report, in which an individual’s private thoughts can be readily accessed by the authorities.

Jack Gallant and Shinji Nishimoto, two neurologists from the University of California, Berkeley, last year managed to correlate activity in the brain’s visual cortex with static images seen by the person. Last week they went one step further by revealing that it is possible to “decode” signals generated in the brain by moving scenes.

In an experiment which has yet to be peer reviewed, Gallant and Nishimoto, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, scanned the brains of two patients as they watched videos.

A computer programme was used to search for links between the configuration of shapes, colours and movements in the videos, and patterns of activity in the patients’ visual cortex.

It was later fed more than 200 days’ worth of YouTube internet clips and asked to predict which areas of the brain the clips would stimulate if people were watching them.

Finally, the software was used to monitor the two patients’ brains as they watched a new film and to reproduce what they were seeing based on their neural activity alone.

Remarkably, the computer programme was able to display continuous footage of the films they were watching — albeit with blurred images.

In one scene which featured the actor Steve Martin wearing a white shirt, the software recreated his rough shape and white torso but missed other details, such as his facial features.

Another scene, showing a plane flying towards the camera against a city skyline, was less successfully reproduced. The computer recreated the image of the skyline but omitted the plane altogether.

“Some scenes decode better than others,” said Gallant. “We can decode talking heads really well. But a camera panning quickly across a scene confuses the algorithm.

“You can use a device like this to do some pretty cool things. At the moment when you see something and want to describe it to someone you have to use words or draw it and it doesn’t work very well.

“You could use this technology to transmit the image to someone. It might be useful for artists or to allow you to recover an eyewitness’s memory of a crime.”

Such technology may not be confined to the here and now. Scientists at University College London have conducted separate tests that detect, with an accuracy of about 50%, memories recalled by patients.

The discoveries come amid a flurry of developments in the field of brain science. Researchers have also used scanning technology to measure academic ability, detect early signs of Alzheimer’s and other degenerative conditions, and even predict the decision a person is about to make before they are conscious of making it.

Such developments may have controversial ramifications. In Britain, fMRI scanning technology has been sold to multinational companies, such as Unilever and McDonald’s, enabling them to see how we subconsciously react to brands.

In America, security agencies are researching the use of brain scanners for interrogating prisoners, and Lockheed Martin, the US defence contractor, is reported to have studied the possibility of scanning brains at a distance.

This would allow an individual’s thoughts and anxieties to be examined without their knowledge in sensitive locations such as airports.

Russell Foster, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, said rapid advances in the field were throwing up ethical dilemmas.

“It’s absolutely critical for scientists to inform the public about what we are doing so they can engage in the debate about how this knowledge should be used,” he said.

“It’s the age-old problem: knowledge is power and it can be used for both good and evil.”

moviescopemag.com | Oct 21, 2009

by Nikki Baughan

A Chinese-made movie that has become the biggest homegrown film of all time at the country’s box office – and it’s a government-funded propaganda film about the birth of modern China under communist rule.

The Founding of a Republic is directed by Han Sanping and Huang Jianxin features an all star cast, including Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Ziyi Zhang, some of whom appear in fleeting cameos as political figures. Even director John Woo filmed some scenes, although they have seemingly not ended up in the final cut. Having taken more than 406m yuan (£36m) since it opened on September 16, The Founding of a Republic is currently the third highest grossing film in China’s history, with only Titanic and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen having taken more money at the box office.

Its business was undoubtedly helped by an aggressive marketing campaign backed by the country’s government. Trailers for the film have been screened in front of every single movie released in recent months, and was also released on the highest ever number of screens in Chinese history during an extended national holiday period when no big Hollywood movies were being shown.

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Related

Communist China’s founding lauded in film

US Dept of Defense – DARPA Program Brings Sci-fi Capability to Warfighters

ISRIA | Oct 16, 2009

Moviegoers were captivated as they watched a metallic assassin morph before their eyes in “Terminator 2.” The villain turned to liquid before assuming new forms capable of squeezing through narrow openings and transforming its arms into bladed weapons and solid metal tools.

Scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency were wowed too. Now they’re working to deliver that same kind of technology to support the good guys: warfighters on the battlefield.

Mitchell R. Zakin, program manager for DARPA’s Programmable Matter division, said he’s convinced the concept depicted for decades in blockbuster movies and comic books has real-life applications.

He’s leading up the effort to develop “programmable matter,” which he calls “the ultimate adaptable material.” It will be capable of changing size and shape and taking on new properties for one use, he explained, then adapting to a whole different form for another use.

Zakin clarified that he’s not out to change warfighters themselves, just the equipment they use, the clothing they wear and the loads they carry.

“Warfighters carry an incredible amount of stuff and they don’t have any more room to carry more,” he said. “Yet they are facing much more complicated battle spaces. They’re going into caves and working in cities. They need more sophisticated tools to deal with these environments, yet they can’t carry them.”

The logistical challenge of getting equipment to remote areas such as Afghanistan exacerbates the problem, he said.

Enter the concept of programmable matter, a convergence of the fields of chemistry, information, mathematical theory and engineering.

Zakin envisions a day when warfighters will be able to reach into their kit, pull out a lump of programmable matter and form it into whatever they need.

Think of it as carrying a paint can with a bunch of particles inside, he advises anyone struggling to understand how it all would work. The particles could be different shapes and sizes, be made up of different materials and have different functions.

Depending on the requirement, the warfighter would instruct the particles to become whatever was needed at the moment — a wrench, a hammer, a spare part. The particles would then organize themselves to form it. After using the device, the warfighter would return it to the bucket, where it once again would become a bunch of particles until instructed to become something else.

The same principle would work for uniforms, which could change their thermal insulating properties according to the climate: the deep freeze of the Afghan mountains, the blast furnace of summertime in the Middle East.

Fantastic as this all sounds, it’s on its way to becoming a reality.

Five university-led teams are participating in DARPA’s Programmable Matter program, and by the middle of next year, at least one is expected to emerge with a demonstration project. Halfway through the program’s second and final phase, all five teams are making convincing progress that it’s all possible.

The teams began the first phase of the program doing computer modeling, but got so excited by the project that they jumped headfirst into the second phase and began building actual prototypes, Zakin said.

By the end of the second phase, they’re expected to demonstrate that they can take a single set of building blocks and create five different geometric shapes with the strength of engineering plastic.

“Everyone is making progress toward meeting these goals in a very meaningful way,” Zakin said. “I’m confident that most, if not all the teams, will succeed.”

The ultimate benefit to warfighters would be mind-boggling. “Imagine the possibilities: an entire toolbox originating from a single material form, or flexible clothing or equipment that can adapt to the immediate and changing needs of the warfighter, perhaps even ’smart’ bandages embedded with diagnostic sensing capabilities,” Zakin said. “The possibilities are endless.”

In the simplest terms, programmable matter would bring warfighters “maximum capabilities with minimum carry weight,” he said. “It would give them the ability to carry a little amount of stuff and do a lot with it. It creates a whole new paradigm in flexibility for the warfighter.”

But the implications go far beyond warfighting, Zakin said. Aircraft wings built of programmable matter could change in flight to provide the best aerodynamic properties. Everything from computers to televisions to cars could be programmed to automatically update themselves with the newest features and configurations. Clothing could morph into the latest fashion styles.

In a nutshell, nothing would ever have to become obsolete.

“This is not fantasy, actually,” Zakin said. “Aspects of this already are being done in this project.”

Programmable matter also has the potential of turning the entire manufacturing process on its head. No longer would one design and one manufacturing process be needed for every single consumer product.

“Personal manufacturing” could take over. Consumers could go online, buy a blueprint for whatever they need, download the instructions, then feed them into a personal assembler that makes the product before their eyes, he said.

In some ways, Zakin said he’s been preparing for the Programmable Matter program since he first saw as a young boy the concept depicted in the 1950s sci-fi movie, “The Blob.”

“Most of my programs come out of the movies or comic books,” he said. “It’s what I do for a living.”

Decades later, he said, it’s gratifying to be at DARPA, where he’s on the leading edge of helping bring fantasy to life.

“It allows us to do something very, very important, and something no one else has ever done before,” he said. “It’s very DARPA-like.”

In Surrogates, Bruce Willis plays a cop who loses control of his robotic counterpart. Photo courtesy Disney

Wired | Sep 25, 2009

By Hugh Hart

HOLLYWOOD — Taken at face value, Bruce Willis’ new sci-fi thriller Surrogates sports a premise every bit as outlandish as the wig he wears during much of the movie. In the film’s near-future setting, humans have withdrawn from everyday life almost completely. Instead, they hole up in their homes and send robotic versions of themselves, called “surrogates,” into the real world.

The remote-control androids, which look vaguely like the robots from 1973’s Westworld, perform the operators’ jobs and interact with other surrogates. Willis stars as both a fresh-faced surrogate and its worn-out operator, who chafes at the lack of personal interaction in his life.

“In this movie, people stay at home in their underwear wired into this fantastic massagelike chair device for 16 hours at a stretch and operate this idealized version of themselves that they can control like a puppet,” said Surrogates director Jonathan Mostow as he previewed snippets of the film in his editing bay on the Disney lot last month.

During the Wired.com video interview above, Mostow expounds on surrogate technology and elaborates on the human/machine dynamic in the PG-13 film, which opens Friday. “If your brain waves say, ‘OK, raise your hand up like this,’ then that’s what the robot does,” he said.

Human-machine interfaces have been explored before in movies, from Sleep Dealer’s node workers, who jack in to a network to operate machines remotely, to The Matrix’s humans-as-batteries paradigm.

Pure sci-fi, right? Not entirely. Chad Cohen, science producer for Discovery Studio’s upcoming Discovery Channel series Curiosity, says Surrogates draws from real-world technology to sell its central concept.

“There is certainly a lot of research out there relating to neural interfaces that would help audiences make the leap and buy the premise,” he said. In fact, as the movie starts, it uses news clips citing real scientific experiments to set up its story line.

Case in point: Last May, University of Pittsburgh scientists implanted a monkey with electrodes that empowered the subject to move a mechanical arm and grab food using willpower alone.

“It’s almost like Luke Skywalker using the force to grab his lightsaber,” said Cohen. “From there, it’s not such a stretch to think that one day researchers might help paralyzed people control prosthetic arms.”

Another real-world example of brain-wave-activated robotics comes from Duke University Medical Center scientists, who wired a rhesus monkey with electrodes. When the monkey strode on a treadmill in North Carolina, its cortex prompted a 5-foot humanoid in Japan to start walking.

“We can read signals from the motor and sensory areas of the brain, decode them, and send them this bipedal robot that actually starts walking like a monkey,” Duke neuroscientist Miguel A. L. Nicolelis told Scientific American.

And not unlike Surrogates‘ humans who operate their robotic counterparts from the comfort of home, Hiroshi Ishiguro has built a neuromechanical replica of himself that lets him engage the real world by proxy. Ishiguro’s doppelgänger, dubbed Geminoid, gives lectures in venues thousands of miles from the scientist’s Osaka home office.

The type of advanced remote-control robots imagined in Surrogates likely won’t materialize in the real world for decades, if at all. Yet on a metaphorical level, Mostow, who earlier delved into big-screen robotics when he directed Terminator 3, believes people have already become overly attached to technologies that threaten to make in-person face time obsolete.

Pointing to the near-addictive quality of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Mostow says: “What this movie is really about is what it means to live in a digital age where we’re connected to all these machines, yet we’re also so isolated from each other.”

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Related

“Within ten years, you’re gonna have the world of the surrogates…”

Surrogates – Official Trailer

Surrogates – Official Science Fact Teaser

Reuters | Sep 21, 2009

By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks were given a copy of a Hollywood movie about a U.S. massacre of Vietnamese civilians to help them prepare their defense in their mass murder trial, a prosecutor said on Monday.

Self-described 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants, who are acting as their own attorneys, asked for and were given copies of several movies, prosecutor Robert Swann told the Guantanamo war crimes court.

Among them were “Judgment: The Court Martial of Lt. William Calley,” a 1975 Stanley Kramer film about a U.S. soldier held responsible for the murder of Vietnamese civilians in what came to be known as the My Lai massacre. Harrison Ford played the title character’s superior officer in the movie.

“The camp provided them,” Swann told the court, referring to the movie request. Also provided were copies of the National Geographic films “Inside Mecca” and “Inside the Vatican.”

It was unclear why the defendants wanted the films, though they could be trying to equate the killing of U.S. civilians with the killing of civilians by the U.S. military at My Lai.

Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged al Qaeda co-conspirators are charged with 2,973 counts of murder and could be executed if convicted.

President Barack Obama asked last week for a 60-day freeze in the proceedings and said he would decide by November 16 whether to try them in a revised version of the much-maligned military tribunals or move the cases to regular civilian courts.

The U.S. military judge granted the freeze in the 9-11 case shortly before Monday’s hearing at the U.S. naval base in southeast Cuba. But he held the hearing anyway to hear outstanding requests from the defendants, who opted not to attend.

The chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo tribunals, Navy Captain John Murphy, said federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., New York and Virginia were already reviewing the case files and vying to try the accused September 11 plotters if the cases are moved into the civilian courts.

FRUSTRATED BY DELAYS

The Obama administration has ordered the Guantanamo detention camp shut down by January 22 and is still debating what to do with the 226 detainees it holds. Murphy said he still hopes to try 65 of them in military tribunals and that “We are ready to prosecute this case in this court, now.”

Obama has said he considers military tribunals to be an appropriate forum for terrorism trials of Guantanamo captives but would prefer to try them in federal courts if feasible.

The delays frustrated September 11 victims’ relatives who came to Guantanamo to watch the hearing. Several said they felt their loved ones had been forgotten as the years dragged on without trials.

“We are just damned disgusted with the whole business,” said Bob Hemenway, whose son Ronald was killed when a hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon. “We need some justice. We need it now.”

Talat Hamdani, whose paramedic son Salman Hamdani was killed in the World Trade Center, said she was disappointed at not being able to see the defendants she called “those demented people who distorted the faith of Islam.”

Full Story

thirdfactor.com | Sep 16, 2009

In the movie District 9, an alien race utilizes weaponry that samples the users DNA and will only operate when used by specified species. While fantastic, similar technology is entirely possible due to advances in biometrics, according to a Discover Magazine article.

Looking at other common technologies that have incorporated biometrics for security purposes lends credence to the possibility. Technologies including fingerprint scans, vascular scans, iris scans, voice recognition and face recognition have all seen huge steps forward in recent years in acceptance, use and capability. Utilizing these technologies to lock a weapon is entirely plausible with each of them as well.

The problem some see, however, is that no mode of biometrics has been developed to be foolproof enough to trust with securing deadly weapons. The hope for those involved in national governments and biometric security companies is to move towards a DNA-based solution once science is capable.

However, the last hurdle before getting to this point would be privacy advocates who are already fighting many of the biometric system implementation across the globe.

LA Times | Aug 10, 2009

EXCLUSIVE: PART 1 of the HERO COMPLEX interview

“Go ahead, fire away, I’m your guy.” That’s the first thing James Cameron said to me, and I had to smile – I certainly had plenty to ask him about. I had just sat down and watched about 35 minutes of footage from “Avatar” and, to put it bluntly, I was dazzled. I saw more footage than fans at Comic-Con International (I saw, for instance, a tense scene toward the end of the film as Sam Worthington’s character, Jake Sully, is made a prisoner on the alien world of Pandora) and even found out how the film ends (don’t worry, no spoilers here). But let’s get to it — this is Part 1 of the Hero Complex interview with Oscar-winner Cameron, the 54-year-old Canadian filmmaker whose 20th Century Fox sci-fi epic “Avatar” reaches theaters on Dec. 18.

GB: Jim, congratulations on the film, it’s very, very compelling. I’m excited to see it in its entirety and even more excited to talk to you about it.

JC: Well, thanks; I’m really glad you liked it. And that’s what we were hoping for. We’ve been working like crazy on this for a long time. And what we want is for people to like it, so that’s nice to hear.

GB: I have to say it was refreshing to see a big, special effects film that was not based on a bestselling novel, a comic book, toy, old television show. That’s rare these days, and it’s a treat to go in, sit down and have no idea where the plot and the characters were going to go.

JC: It’s simultaneously one of the great strengths and one of the potential weaknesses. We have no brand value. We have to create that brand value. “Avatar” means something to that group of fans that know this film is coming, but to the other 99% of the public it’s a nonsense word and we have to hope we can educate them. Well, I shouldn’t say a nonsense word – it doesn’t mean anything specific in terms of a brand association. And in fact there may be even a slight negative one because more people know about the Saturday morning cartoon, the anime, than about this particular film. We’ve got to create that [brand] from scratch. On the other hand, ultimately, it is probably the film’s greatest strength in the long run. We’ve had these big, money-making franchise films for a long time, “Star Trek” and “Star Wars,” you know, “Harry Potter,” and there’s a certain sort of comfort factor in that; you know what you’re going to get. But there’s no kind of shock of the new that’s possible with that. It’s been a while since something that took us on a journey, something that grabbed us by the lapels and dragged us out the door and took us on a journey of surprise.

AVATAR – International Teaser Trailer

GB: “The Matrix” immediately springs to mind…

JC: Yes, yes, that’s a very, very good example. That’s something where we had no real way of knowing what that film was going to be about and it really just took us on a great ride.

GB: And like “The Matrix,” this movie presents this immersive experience. The alien world and the technology you’re using to tell the story, it’s a big movie .

JC: The story is told very much from character. You go on Jake’s journey with him. It actually starts quite small. It starts close to him, in his apartment with him, and it just expands and expands in scope as it goes along.

GB: I smiled at the “You’re not in Kansas anymore” line when the main character reaches the alien world. There really is this “Wizard of Oz” sense of transportation when the story reaches the planet of Pandora.

JC: Yeah. It’s my favorite movie; I had to get it in there somewhere. The production designer was Rick Carter, who actually played that out. He thought how it was, in some ways, like Dorothy’s journey. I didn’t quite get as much of that [when I first wrote it]. You do things sometimes as a writer subconsciously, things you’re not even aware of. I’m always comfortable doing things instinctively because I see it as taping into this vein of archetype that works for a broader audience base. I don’t question what I’m doing if it feels right. There might be some other references there I might not be aware of.

GB: You wrote the first script for this film almost 15 years ago. While you were waiting for technology to reach the point where it could be made, I’m curious how much of that very earliest story remained intact.

JC: I had to rework to make it possible. My treatment was so expansive and novelistic that it needed to be necked down just to make it something that could be done on the screen. This film is done on an epic scale, but it’s done within the parameters of a Hollywood movie. What I found is that instead a script I had written the outline of a novel, and it was just too much story, too much back story, too many secondary characters … but look, sometimes lightning just strikes; you have write everything down, get it done. Better to weed it out later and not miss an idea. It was essentially the longest script, in terms of the amount of time it took me to get a workable draft. The first time I tried, it ended up being more than 200 pages, so I had to go back and throw out big chunks, a lot of ideas went out. But I have to say the essence of all the big ideas stayed and I felt pretty good about that.

GB: The heritage of the project and the mystery of it, since it’s not an adaptation, have created this fairly intense interest among the fanboy sector. That was obvious with the interest leading up to Comic-Con International. Do you feel you have to win fans over now to create the sort of success you want for this movie?

JC: I think there are no real negatives because we aren’t going to get prejudged like “Watchmen” or even a Batman or Spider-Man movie because you don’t have all that history and that huge, brand-based mythology that you have to live up to. We aren’t going to piss anybody off because they don’t know what this thing is. Nobody read the novel, nobody read the graphic novel, we’re not going to be playing against expectation. They aren’t going to be viewing us as a disappointment or letdown before the movie even starts. This is a doorway and they don’t know what’s on the other side. We’re going to open it for them.

There are a lot of fans of this kind of science fiction and fantasy film, and I think it’s pretty fertile soil for us. I don’t want to sound like, you know, ‘Pride goeth before the fall,” or too much hubris, but I think we get those fans to support this. I think our greater challenge is the wider public, which isn’t as predisposed to embrace the movie like those fantasy and sci-fi fans. We need to talk to that audience and make them believe that this is a must-see even if they aren’t sci-fi fans. And I’m not putting down Comic-Con fans. When I go down there I’m among my peeps. It’s a great place to unveil “Avatar.”

Steven Spielberg, Officer in the Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur and Knight Commander in the Order of the British Empire (KBE).

Reuters | Aug 4, 2009

LOS ANGELES (Reuters Life!) – Filmmaker Steven Spielberg is to be awarded the 2009 Liberty Medal for being a champion of freedom with “his artistic and personal commitment to the preservation of human rights.”

The National Constitution Center, which presents the Liberty Medal each year, said Spielberg had informed and inspired millions of people to better understand the call of liberty through his films in which humanity triumphs over tyranny.

His films that deal with issues like the Holocaust, slavery, and war include “The Color Purple,” “Schindler’s List,” “Amistad” and “Saving Private Ryan.”

“Spielberg has also dedicated himself to gathering and archiving the testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust, ensuring future generations will never forget the tragedy of liberty lost,” the center said in a statement on Tuesday.

The center’s president, Linda Johnson, said Spielberg had shown through his work in film and philanthropy that everyone had the power to make a difference.

“It’s truly humbling to be added to the distinguished list of past recipients, a group of men and women whom I admire deeply for their commitment to educating the world about the importance of freedom and the blessings of liberty,” Spielberg said in a statement.

After filming “Schindler’s List” in 1993, which was based on the true story of a man who risked his life to save 1,100 people from the Holocaust, Spielberg established the Shoah Foundation to chronicle and preserve video and oral histories of Holocaust survivors and witnesses.

The collection is now the largest archive of its kind in the world with 52,000 videos and 105,000 hours of testimony in 32 languages, representing 56 countries.

The foundation now intends to collect testimony from the survivors and witnesses of other genocides and is currently in the process of gathering personal histories from survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Last year the Liberty Medal, which was established in 1988, was presented to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev for his role in ending the Cold War.

Other recipients of the annual award include Nelson Mandela, Bono, Shimon Peres, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan and Leh Valensa.

Spielberg, 62, who has won three Academy awards, will be presented with the medal by former U.S. President Bill Clinton on October 8 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

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Related

Counterfeit Foe – The Ultimate Hegelian Dialectic

Every year since 1954, the secretive Bilderberg Group (named after the hotel they first met in the Netherlands), comprising elite powerbrokers from Europe and North America, has met to discuss, and influence, the changing global, political, economic and social landscape. Dotted amongst the usual suspects of Rockefeller, Kissinger and Soros etc. we see the presence of renowned Hollywood filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Spielberg attended the 1999 Bilderberg meeting held at Sintra, Portugal. What business does Spielberg, a chieftain of the ‘entertainment’ industry have secretly mingling with international bankers, military intelligence and world political leaders?

Fiction as a Precursor to Fact: Sci-fi “Predictive Programming” and the Emergent World Religion

One of the most significant pieces of messianic sci-fi predictive programming is Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The central theme of the film E.T. is most succinctly encapsulated in the familiar shot that also adorned many of the movie’s publicity posters. Of course, this is the shot of the outstretched hand of the movie’s human protagonist touching the glowing fingertip of an alien hand reaching downward.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The Russian commander is responsible for promoting the idea that the Hived Mind, a mind from a collective of interconnected beings, has a higher potency than the sum of its parts. She states that the Hived Mind defined by some group of people is “more powerful together than they [the group] can ever be apart.” I expect this to be precisely consistent with the propagandistic future sales-gospel for the brain-chip. I anticipate it to be marketed as being no less than God’s gift on Earth. The idea will be peddled to the public that it offers only benefits to you as you are being absorbed into a more supremely (read: divinely) intelligent collective. The viewer is thus drawn a little closer towards acceptance of the brain-chip, all the while not realizing that it will actually make him or her rather like an insignificant little workerbee, barren of any kind of mental, spiritual and physical freedom.

Minority Report

After all, in the movie it is being advertised and bragged about that, through pre-crime, murder-rates have plummeted to negligible levels. Therefore, of and by itself, the notion of pre-crime is presented to the viewer as being not something that is altogether disadvantageous to society. What the viewer is not made aware of however, is the type of intrusion and indeed the violation of privacy associated with the imposition of a pre-crime system onto the public. The realization of a pre-crime system therefore ultimately boils down to increases in control for the government and less freedom for its citizens. The mantra never changes, sadly.

Covert Iris Scanner Close To Minority Report Future

Transformers

Another predictive programming theme surfaces in a scene where a seemingly unannounced search and seizure operation by the federal police takes place. The FBI simply come barge through the door of some house, ransacks it and without notice arrest its inhabitants. No search-warrant is provided and no Miranda rights are read to the promptly arrested civilians. In other words, the viewer is further familiarized with Police State antics and scenery.

Hoodwinked: Watching Movies with Eyes Wide Open by Uri Dowbenko

ABOUT THE LIBERTY MEDAL

Some Notable LIberty Medal recipients

“Further global progress is now possible only through a quest for universal consensus in the movement towards a New World Order.

- Mikhail Gorbachev

“We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a New World Order.”

- George Herbert Walker Bush

* 2008 – Mikhail Gorbachev
* 2007 – Bono & DATA
* 2006 – George H.W. Bush & William J. Clinton
* 2004 – Hamid Karzai
* 2002 – Colin Powell
* 2001 – Kofi Annan
* 1997 – CNN International
* 1996 – King Hussein & Shimon Peres
* 1993 – Nelson Mandela & F.W. de Klerk
* 1990 – Jimmy Carter

STEVEN SPIELBERG
2009 Liberty Medal Recipient

The National Constitution Center’s 2009 Liberty Medal will be awarded to filmmaker and humanitarian Steven Spielberg for his artistic and personal commitment to the preservation of human rights.

In 1998 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit ( Bundesverdienstkreuz ) with Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Spielberg was also awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service by Secretary of Defense William Cohen at the Pentagon on August 11, 1999.

In 2001, he was honored as an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II.

In 2004 he was admitted as knight of the Légion d’honneur from president Jacques Chirac.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Spielberg

Wired | Aug 3, 2009

By Charlie Sorrel

As an ex-Brit, I’m well aware of the authorities’ love of surveillance and snooping, but even I, a pessimistic cynic, am amazed by the governments latest plan: to install Orwell’s telescreens in 20,000 homes.

£400 million ($668 million) will be spend on installing and monitoring CCTV cameras in the homes of private citizens. Why? To make sure the kids are doing their homework, going to bed early and eating their vegetables. The scheme has, astonishingly, already been running in 2,000 family homes. The government’s “children’s secretary” Ed Balls is behind the plan, which is aimed at problem, antisocial families. The idea is that, if a child has a more stable home life, he or she will be less likely to stray into crime and drugs.

It gets worse. The government is also maintaining a private army, incredibly not called “Thought Police”, which will “be sent round to carry out home checks,” according to the Sunday Express. And in a scheme which firmly cements the nation’s reputation as a “nanny state”, the kids and their families will be forced to sign “behavior contracts” which will “set out parents’ duties to ensure children behave and do their homework.”

And remember, this is the left-wing government. The Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling, batting for the conservatives, thinks these plans are “too little, and too late,” implying that even more obtrusive work needs to be done. Rumors that a new detention center, named Room 101, is being constructed inside the Ministry of Love are unconfirmed.