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Collective Consciousness vs. AI

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ALTERNATIVE NEWS

Elon Musk And Over 2400 AI Scientists Sign Pledge Against Killer Robots

By.

IN BRIEF

  • The Facts:More than 2,400 AI scientists and researchers have signed a pledge which intends to deter military firms and nations from building lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS).
  • Reflect On:Are we as individuals, working together on shared concerns for all humans on the planet, starting to see the power we have to effect positive change?

It is not an uncommon story in the history of science and technology: the most brilliant and innovative minds of their time discover, create, and invent technologies that can have hugely positive benefits for mankind as a whole. Inevitably, the largest and wealthiest ‘consumer’ of such technologies is the Military-Industrial Complex, and the main ways these technologies are produced in our world are as tools of control, warfare, and human suffering.

In earlier times scientists and inventors didn’t have much say in how their work was used, and could often be persuaded that their use in military applications was actually for the benefit of humankind. Today, those naive days are gone, and the landscape is different. Some of the most prominent minds that are creating advanced technologies are starting to speak out more and more about how their work is being used in the world.

More Than 2400 Signatories

Elon Musk of SpaceX and Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind are among more than 2,400 signatories to the pledge which intends to deter military firms and nations from building lethal autonomous weapon systems, also known as LAWS. The signatories are scientists who specialize in artificial intelligence, (AI) and have declared that they will not participate in the development or manufacture of robots that can identify and attack people without human oversight. The pledge was created by the Future of Life Institute:

LETHAL AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS PLEDGE

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to play an increasing role in military systems. There is an urgent opportunity and necessity for citizens, policymakers, and leaders to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable uses of AI.

In this light, we the undersigned agree that the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine. There is a moral component to this position, that we should not allow machines to make life-taking decisions for which others – or nobody – will be culpable. There is also a powerful pragmatic argument: lethal autonomous weapons, selecting and engaging targets without human intervention, would be dangerously destabilizing for every country and individual. Thousands of AI researchers agree that by removing the risk, attributability, and difficulty of taking human lives, lethal autonomous weapons could become powerful instruments of violence and oppression, especially when linked to surveillance and data systems. Moreover, lethal autonomous weapons have characteristics quite different from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the unilateral actions of a single group could too easily spark an arms race that the international community lacks the technical tools and global governance systems to manage. Stigmatizing and preventing such an arms race should be a high priority for national and global security.

We, the undersigned, call upon governments and government leaders to create a future with strong international norms, regulations and laws against lethal autonomous weapons. These currently being absent, we opt to hold ourselves to a high standard: we will neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons. We ask that technology companies and organizations, as well as leaders, policymakers, and other individuals, join us in this pledge.

The Power Of Public Shaming

The pledge hopes to amount to more than just words. In calling on countries to legislate laws, technology companies to not accept contracts, and individuals to voice their support against lethal autonomous weapons, they hope to sway public opinion overwhelmingly against LAWS, and in doing so shame any person or group who would go ahead with its development. There is some precedent for this approach working, according to Yoshua Bengio, an AI pioneer at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms:

This approach actually worked for land mines, thanks to international treaties and public shaming, even though major countries like the US did not sign the treaty banning landmines. American companies have stopped building landmines

The timing of this pledge is crucial. The military is one of the largest funders and adopters of AI technology. With advanced computer systems, robots can fly missions over hostile terrain, navigate on the ground, and patrol under seas. More sophisticated weapon systems are in the pipeline. Toby Walsh, a professor of AI at the University of New South Wales in Sydney who signed the pledge, had this to say about it:

We need to make it the international norm that autonomous weapons are not acceptable. A human must always be in the loop.

We cannot stop a determined person from building autonomous weapons, just as we cannot stop a determined person from building a chemical weapon. But if we don’t want rogue states or terrorists to have easy access to autonomous weapons, we must ensure they are not sold openly by arms companies.

Collective Consciousness Rising

This pledge is but one example of how people are implicating themselves in the future of the planet. No longer are we waiting on the sidelines and leaving decisions up to corporations, the military, or our political leaders. When we identify ourselves not as a race, culture or nation but as a planet, where all of humankind is considered part of the family, then we get to have greater access to the power of our collective consciousness. Once we harness that power, no initiative that is for the benefit of humanity is beyond our abilities.

from:    https://www.collective-evolution.com/2018/07/22/elon-musk-and-over-2400-ai-scientists-sign-pledge-against-killer-robots/

You Have a Right to Know – The X ((10) Factor

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Actually, You Can Fight City Hall—Even On Surveillance Issues

JULY 2, 2018

By Michael Maharrey

You’ve probably heard the old adage, “You can’t fight city hall!” Well, I did. And I won.

Last October, the city of Lexington, Kentucky, sued me in an attempt to keep its “mobile surveillance cameras” secret. Last week, in a major victory for government transparency, Fayette Circuit Judge John Reynolds issued an order granting my appeal for summary judgment. In simple terms, the judge rejected the city’s arguments for keeping its surveillance cameras secret and ordered the Lexington Police Department to release all relevant records.

An Initial Victory

My legal saga started last summer. After surveillance cameras appeared in a local skateboard park, I submitted an open records request to the LPD in an effort to determine what other surveillance programs it operates in Lexington. The police department admitted to using 29 mobile surveillance cameras “available for a variety of video surveillance operations.”

“Cameras are deployed as needed in support of active investigations in accordance with SOP BOI 93-46A, Criteria for Surveillance Conducted by Special Investigations Section,” they said.

While the police department acknowledged the existence of these cameras, it refused to provide any additional information other than redacted documents disclosing costs. The police claimed information about the types of cameras used and the policies surrounding their use were exempt under the state’s open records laws. The LPD cited a statute that exempts certain documents relating to homeland security, along with a second statute exempting certain “investigative reports.”

On appeal, the attorney general’s office rejected both exemptions claimed by the LPD and ordered the city to release the documents.

The City Retaliates—and Fails

On Oct. 2, 2017, a constable served me with a summons. The lawsuit was clearly intended to intimidate me into going away. The initial complaint even asked the judge to award the city court costs. Think about that for a moment. I simply asked for information relating to government activity. In response, the city sued me–a taxpayer–and demanded I foot the legal bill. So much for transparent government that serves “we the people.”

It was a shrewd strategy on the city’s part. City officials likely assumed I wouldn’t have the resources to pursue a court case, and I would just drop the matter. They were correct about the first assumption, but fortunately, the ACLU of Kentucky agreed to represent me in this case.

In court, the police basically argued that disclosing information about their cameras would render them ineffective and potentially jeopardize officer safety. It remains unclear how knowing what kind of “hidden” cameras the police own would make them ineffective. They also asserted that providing information about their surveillance activities would create an “undue burden.” In a nutshell, the city claimed that the investigation of crimes facilitated by the cameras constitutes “an important government interest” that warrants denial of the information.

While these may sound like compelling arguments on the surface, the city of Lexington failed to provide any basis for their assertions. On June 19, Judge Reynolds ruled that the city did not meet the standard of clear and convincing evidence required by the statute.

“In sum, this Court finds that the plaintiff, LFUCG, has failed to assert an applicable provision of the KRS or other binding precedent which would allow the denial of the information requested by Maharrey,” he wrote. “Therefore, LFUCG has failed to meet its burden of proof, and pursuant to ORA [Open Records Act] the requested information should be released for review by Maharrey.”

The city has 30 days to appeal or ask the circuit court for reconsideration. Otherwise, it must release the requested documents.

“We are the government”—or are we?

I’m not particularly comfortable casting myself as a little guy fighting the system. As the national communications director here at the Tenth Amendment Center (TAC), I had some firepower of my own and some resources at my disposal. Still, I could not have won this battle without the help of the ACLU of Kentucky and attorneys Clay Barkley and Heather Gatnarek. If I had been an average Lexingtonian, the city probably would have gotten its wish. I would have dropped the matter and gone away.

Make no mistake—this is a huge win for the people of Lexington. Those of us who live in this city have a right to know what our government does in our name. We have a right to weigh in and decide whether or not the benefit of surveillance technology outweighs the potential for abuse and violation of our basic privacy rights. We have a right to insist government agencies operate potentially invasive technology with oversight and transparency in a manner that respects our civil liberties.

Government secrecy steals power from the people. As the saying goes, sunlight is the best antiseptic. The city’s default position was to maintain secrecy, to keep the blinds closed, to slam the door in our face. Don’t let the fundamental nature of what happened to me escape you. When you boil it all down, the city sued me because I asked questions it didn’t want to answer. It kind of makes you wonder about the old adage, “We are the government,” doesn’t it?

Now, hopefully, we will get the kind of transparency we deserve. Whenever I talk about surveillance, people always ask me, ‘What do you have to hide?’ Well, I’ve been asking the city that question for nearly a year. I don’t think a little transparency and oversight is too much to ask for.

Building the Momentum of Accountability

I started a local group called We See You Watching Lexington to establish oversight and transparency of surveillance programs in this city. People shouldn’t have to get sued in order to find out what kind of surveillance programs the city operates. Furthermore, the city should not operate this kind of potentially invasive technology without firm policies in place directing how, when, and where it is used and establishing how information is stored and shared.

This is actually part of a broader movement of privacy localism that is taking on the surveillance state. The TAC has been involved in the Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS)initiative from the beginning and helped draft model legislation for a local surveillance ordinance that creates some level of transparency and oversight over local surveillance programs.

This is more than just a victory for me or even the people of Lexington. This is a win for all of us who care about liberty because it proves an important point. We can fight the government and win. Our efforts aren’t in vain. If I can do this, anybody can.

Here’s my challenge to you. Take what I’ve done and build on it. Get involved in your local community. Fight. If you don’t know how, we’ve got some resources to help. I put together a series of short podcasts called Activism 101. They offer simple step-by-step advice for starting activism in your own town. You can check out that series HERE.

Michael Maharrey is the national communications director at the Tenth Amendment Center. This article was sourced from FEE.org.

from:    https://www.activistpost.com/2018/07/actually-you-can-fight-city-hall-even-on-surveillance-issues.html

NOTE: In a nutshell, “The Tenth Amendment, or Amendment X of the United States Constitution is the section of the Bill of Rights that basically says that any power that is not given to the federal government is given to the people or the states.” (https://kids.laws.com/tenth-amendment)

Edward Snowden On The Big Screen

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Big screen whistleblower: Edward Snowden to appear in Oliver Stone film about himself

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American whistleblower Edward Snowden © Andrew Kelly
American whistleblower Edward Snowden © Andrew Kelly / Reuters
Being stranded in Moscow seems to come with certain opportunities – just ask Edward Snowden. The NSA whistleblower will appear in the upcoming film “Snowden,” which was partly filmed in the Russian capital, according to the movie’s executive producer.

Although actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt will play Snowden in the upcoming film, the NSA whistleblower will be making an appearance on the silver screen, executive producer Igor Lopatenok told RIA Novosti.

“Edward will appear in the film; he had one day of shooting in Moscow. We shot mostly in Munich, as well as in Hawaii, Hong Kong, and in Washington, where he could not come…,” Lopatenok said.

The executive producer went on to say that Snowden took part in around ten meetings in Moscow for the Oliver Stone film, and that Gordon-Levitt also met with the whistleblower. In fact, one particular scene in the movie will show the real-life Snowden in the same frame as the actor portraying him.

“…We have a moment when they were both in the frame… and I think Joseph was able to convey the character of Edward, he did it,” Lopatenok said.

The film is set to be released in Russia on September 15, and in the US one day later, but Russian viewers will be treated to an extra four minutes of the film, which US viewers won’t see.

“…The Russian audience is lucky to see a little more,” Lopatenok said, adding that some scenes were cut from the US version.

However, regardless of which country the movie is viewed in, it will make film-goers re-evaluate their views on internet privacy and social media, Lopatonok told Sputnik.

“For us, it is not the box office that matters, but the audience’s reaction. Looking at Stone’s previous films, they work for a long time; people keep revisiting them. In this case, we have a big Oliver Stone film, made in his style,” Lopatenok said.

Snowden has approved the film and its story, Lopatenok said, while praising Gordon-Levitt’s portrayal of the whistleblower.

‘The topic of Snowden is very controlled’

The entire topic of Snowden is “controlled,” according to Lopatenok. By way of example, he described a situation involving BMW, which used to sponsor almost all the films shot in Germany produced by Moritz Borman, a famous producer credited for Alexander and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, who is involved in the Snowden film production as well.
However, when BMW learned that Borman was producing a film about Snowden this time, it asked him to return the cars, Lopatenok claims.

“We were shooting in Munich, [BMW] gave us cars, and then we got a call from their representatives who asked us to return the cars because their American shareholders were against the story. The subject of Snowden is very controlled,” he said.

The producers feared that American special services might try to hack into the computers being used in the film production process, but Lopatenok believes that they took all possible precautions.

“We were able to take all the precautions [against hacking], however, we haven’t noticed direct intervention of [US] security services. Either we haven’t seen them, or they worked really great,” he joked.

Lopatenok added that the team learned how to use encrypted messenger applications, non-traceable browsers protected by cloud storage, and even how to cover their cameras.

“After this film, people will perceive security of their e-mails and social networks differently,” he concluded.

In 2013, Snowden – a former contractor for the US National Security Agency (NSA) – revealed that the personal communications of dozens of world leaders had been monitored by US intelligence agencies. He has been living in Russia ever since, after being granted asylum on the grounds that he would face espionage charges in the US.

 

from:    https://www.rt.com/news/358785-snowden-film-oliver-stone/

What’s A Crime Now?

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You’re Likely Committing a Crime Right Now in “The Land of the Free”

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August 26, 2016

crime

By Mark Nestmann, The Nestmann Group

Do you own a dog? You could face six months in federal prison if you walk it on federal lands and your leash is longer than six feet.

Do you have a bank account? If you deposit or withdraw more than $10,000 in cash over multiple transactions, you could be imprisoned for up to five years. Plus, they could take every penny in the account, under the theory it “facilitated” your crime.

Do you have foreign investments? Neglect to tell Uncle Sam about them, and the penalties will be brutal. Forget to file just one form? You could face a $10,000 penalty per account per year.

There’s no requirement that you know any of these crimes exist for you to be found guilty of violating them. After all, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

Given this, you might think Uncle Sam would make it easy to understand exactly what’s legal and what’s not. Think again.

In 1790, the first set of federal criminal laws contained a grand total of 20 crimes. Since then, the number of federal crimes listed has bloated beyond recognition. No one knows how many federal crimes exist, although a 1998 study from the American Bar Association concluded the total was likely “much higher” than 3,000.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Federal agencies have the power to “make” laws called “Administrative Laws” out of thin air. Violate one of these, you will end up in a cell. Indeed, the number of federal regulations carrying criminal penalties may be as high as 300,000.

And don’t forget about state and local laws. In Arizona, you face 25 years imprisonment for cutting down a cactus. In Mississippi, it is illegal for a male to be sexually aroused in a public place. In Pennsylvania, a woman was arrested for swearing at a clogged toilet.

It’s no wonder the US has the world’s largest prison population. More people rot in local, county, state, and federal prisons in the US than in all other developed countries combined. Over 2.2 million Americans currently live in some type of jail.Given these facts, you could be forgiven for thinking that Congress might put the brakes on penning new federal criminal law. Unfortunately, that’s not happening. Indeed, the pace of federal “criminalization” is accelerating. A 2008 study concluded that since the start of 2000, Congress created at least 452 new crimes. That’s more than one a week.

Since then, there has been no indication this trend will slow down, in fact the opposite is the case. For instance, last year, I learned US persons with certain international investments are now required to report them to the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Until 2014, you needed to file this form only if the BEA “invited” you to do so. But in November 2014, the BEA issued final regulations making it mandatory to file this form – and imposing civil and criminal penalties if you don’t.

When was the last time you received an official notification from the BEA inviting you to file this form? I’ve never received one – I only learned about this requirement when my accountant warned me about it.

Anyone can inadvertently run afoul of America’s far-reaching network of criminal laws. Depositing or withdrawing lawfully-earned funds from your own bank account is hardly what most people would consider a criminal offense. Neither is walking a dog with a six-and-a-half-foot leash.

Fortunately, America is nearly unique in criminalizing so many offenses. The world prison population rate, based on United Nations estimates, is 144 per 100,000. By comparison, it’s 698 per 100,000 in the US – nearly five times as high. A statistic like this must make us all ask, why? And beyond that, why do we stick around? A second passport, or even expatriation will provide some relief from the American cancer of criminalization.

If you have any interest in setting up a second home overseas, don’t wait until some inadvertent slipup results in an arrest and possible felony conviction. Once you have a criminal record, you’ll find it much more difficult to acquire legal residence anywhere else.

There couldn’t be a better time than now to begin, while the coast is clear.

from:   http://www.activistpost.com/2016/08/youre-likely-committing-crime-right-now.html

Pokemon Gotcha!

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Pokémon Go, the CIA, “Totalitarianism” and the Future of Surveillance

July 29, 2016

pokemon ciaBy Steven MacMillan

If anyone doubted that a percentage of the global population are akin to zombies, the incidents following the release of Pokémon Go have surely convinced you. Despite the game only being released in early July, we have already seen a man driving into a tree and a women getting locked in a graveyard whilst chasing these furry little creatures.

Pokémon describes the game on their website in the following way:

Travel between the real world and the virtual world of Pokémon with Pokémon GO for iPhone and Android devices. With Pokémon GO, you’ll discover Pokémon in a whole new world—your own! Pokémon GO is built on Niantic’s Real World Gaming Platform and will use real locations to encourage players to search far and wide in the real world to discover Pokémon… In Pokémon GO, the real world will be the setting!

Pokémon Go, Google, the State Department, the CIA and the DoD

The company behind Pokémon Go is a San Francisco software developer called Niantic, Inc, which was formed in 2010 as an internal startup at Google. The founder and current CEO of Niantic is John Hanke, a man who has connections both to the State Department and the CIA.

Before moving to San Francisco to study at the University of California, Hanke previously worked for the US State Department in Myanmar. Hanke also founded Keyhole, Inc in 2001, a company which specialized in geospatial data visualization applications. Google acquired the company in 2004, with many of the applications developed by Keyhole being instrumental in Google Maps and Earth. In 2003, the CIA’s venture-capitalist firm, In-Q-Tel, invested in Keyhole, with the CIA’s own website proudly detailing this investment:

The CIA-assisted technology probably most familiar to you is one many of us use on a regular basis: Google Earth. In February 2003, the CIA-funded venture-capitalist firm In-Q-Tel made a strategic investment in Keyhole, Inc., a pioneer of interactive 3-D earth visualization and creator of the groundbreaking rich-mapping EarthViewer 3D system. CIA worked closely with other Intelligence Community organizations to tailor Keyhole’s systems to meet their needs. The finished product transformed the way intelligence officers interacted with geographic information and earth imagery.

One of the other intelligence organizations the CIA worked alongside was the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which is partly under the control of the US Department of Defense (DoD).

So we have a somewhat enigmatic former State Department employee with connections to the CIA and the DoD, being the CEO of a company that created what seems to be a silly, harmless game. What’s going on?

Selling and Sharing Your Data

Like so many new technologies in our digital age, Pokémon Go is constantly gathering information on the user and then openly admitting that they will share this data with anyone who wants it.

As James Corbett pointed out in his article titled: “The CIA’s ‘Pokémon Go’ App is Doing What the Patriot Act Can’t,” the privacy policy of the app states that Niantic will share all the information they gather (which is a lot) with the state and private organizations:

We cooperate with government and law enforcement officials or private parties to enforce and comply with the law. We may disclose any information about you (or your authorized child) that is in our possession or control to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate.

Corbett also details how the game requires the user to give excessive access to Niantic/CIA/NGA/DoD (including access to the users’ Google account and camera).

Oliver Stone on PG: “Totalitarianism” and a “New Level of Invasion”

Speaking at this year’s Comic-Con, Oliver Stone – the award winning filmmaker and director of the new film on Edward Snowden – had some very insightful views on the new craze and the growing business of data-mining. As Vulture magazine reported in a recent article, Stone denounced the game as a “new level of invasion” and a new form of “totalitarianism:”

I’m hearing about it too; it’s a new level of invasion. Once the government had been hounded by Snowden, of course the corporations went into encryption, because they had to for survival, right? But the search for profits is enormous. Nobody has ever seen, in the history of the world, something like Google – ever! It’s the fastest-growing business ever, and they have invested huge amounts of money into what surveillance is; which is data-mining.

Stone continues:

They’re data-mining every person in this room for information as to what you’re buying, what it is you like, and above all, your behavior. Pokémon Go kicks into that. It’s everywhere. It’s what some people call surveillance capitalism; it’s the newest stage. You’ll see a new form of, frankly, a robot society, where they will know how you want to behave and they will make the mockup that matches how you behave and feed you. It’s what they call totalitarianism.

Predicting Human Behavior

It is interesting that Stone doesn’t just warn about the commercial aspect of data-mining, but the fact that the more data governments and private corporations collect on the citizens of the world, the easier it becomes to predict their behavior. It is not just Stone that is warning about this reality, however. At the start of last year, the UK governments own surveillance commissioner, Tony Porter, revealed how data obtained from CCTV cameras can be used to “predict behavior.”

As we progress through the 21st century and more advanced algorithmic systems are developed to process the tsunami of data, intelligence agencies and governments will increasingly be able to predict (and manipulate) the behavior of their populations and the populations of foreign countries. We are already far along this path, will the trajectory for the future heading straight towards levels of surveillance far beyond even what George Orwell envisaged; with the fight for digital privacy being a major battleground in this century for those who value freedom.

Pokémon Go looks more like a Trojan horse of the CIA and the wider intelligence-security-data-mining-Big-Brother complex, than just a silly, innocent game. With all these connections to the State Department, the CIA and the DoD, no wonder some countries are reportedly considering banning the game.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

from:    http://www.activistpost.com/2016/07/pokemon-go-cia-totalitarianism-future-surveillance.html

Check Out Your Thinking

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Several Signs That You Are A Slave To The Matrix

Filed in Matrix Articles by on July 18, 2016

matrix-big2From bibliotecapleyades.net

Today’s world is a strange place.

 We are inundated with signals from early on in life, encouraging each of us to walk a particular path, establishing blinders on us along the way to discourage us from looking for alternatives to what the herd is doing or thinking.

 Life is so complex that overtime, if we are paying attention, we realize that there are an infinite number of possibilities to what the human experience could be, and we come see that the world is on fire because individuals all too infrequently question why things are the way they are, failing to notice that their mindset or behavior needs adjustment in favor of more intelligent, common sensical, or sustainable patterns of existence.

 Not meant to be overtly critical of anyone’s lifestyle choices or personal situation, the following signs that you’re a slave to the Matrix are meant purely as an observational approach to helping you identify the areas of your life where you may be missing an opportunity to liberate yourself from someone else’s self-destructive design for your life.

  1. You pay taxes to people you’d like to see locked up in jail

    This is perhaps the biggest indicator that we are slaves to the Matrix. The traditional notion of slavery conjures up images of people in shackles forced to work on plantations to support rich plantation owners.

    The modern day version of this is forced taxation, where our incomes are automatically docked before we ever see the money, regardless of whether or not we approve of how the money is spent.

  2. You go to the doctor, but you’re still sick

    Modern medical care, for all of it’s scientific progress, has sadly become sick care, where we are rarely advised to eat well and tend to our mental and physical health, but instead are routinely advised to consume expensive medications and procedures that are pushed by the for-profit healthcare Matrix.

  3. You’ve picked Team Democrat or Team Republican and argue with your friends, family and co-workers about politics

    This is what the control strategy of divide and conquer looks like in our society.

     Both of the major parties are corrupt through and through, and independent candidates are not even allowed to participate in public debates.

     By believing in one of these parties and burning your personal energy on arguing with other ordinary people you are turning over your soul the Matrix, and doing your share in making sure that ‘we the people’ will never be united against corruption.

  4. You work hard doing something you hate to earn fiat dollars

    Work is important and money does pay the bills, however, so many people lose the best years of their lives doing things they hate, just for money.

     The truth about money today is that we do not have money, but instead, inflationary fiat currency that is privately owned and manipulated. Since it is still necessary to get by in this world, it is best that you get more value for your time by doing something you enjoy or by working with people you do not despise.

    It is easier than you may think to live on less money than we believe we need, we just have to be willing to go against the grain realize this.

  5. You’re willing to accrue personal debt to fund the acquisition of a consumer oriented lifestyle

    Each time a credit card is swiped it creates digits on the balance sheets of the banks that are most involved with the financial looting of the world today.

     These digits are then multiplied electronically by the fractional reserve system, which exponentially increases the power of these institutions.

     To participate in this, and by agreeing to pay this fake money back with interest, in order to maintain a certain lifestyle, is a strong indication that you are bound by one of the main tenets of the Matrix – consumerism.

  6. You converse with real people about the ongoing happenings of TV shows

    TV is the most potent tool used for mind control, and the ‘programming’ that is available, while certainly cool, fun, or entertaining is geared to reinforce certain behaviors amongst the masses.

     Dramatizing the ego’s importance, over sexualizing everything, glorifying violence, and teaching submissiveness to phony authority are the main features of modern TV.

     By taking what is happening onscreen and making it a part of your real life, you are doing your job of supporting the matrix’s desire to confuse us about the nature of reality, proving that something doesn’t have to actually happen in order for it to feel real to people.

  7. You don’t have anything to hide from total surveillance

    If it does not bother you that someone, somewhere, working for somebody is watching you, listening to your conversations, and monitoring your movements, then, you are a good slave to the Matrix.

     Invisible surveillance is an insidious form of thought control, and by using the logic of, ‘I have nothing to hide, therefore, it will do me no harm to be surveilled,’ then you are mindlessly admitting that you have an earthly master and are not of sovereign mind and body.

  8. You think the world would be safer if only governments had guns

    This is a violent world, and criminals engage in criminality against honest people at every level of society, including from within the government.

     Sure, in a perfect world, weapons wouldn’t be necessary for anyone but, sadly, our world is anything but perfect, and firearms are indeed a very effective form of protection against common criminals and abusive governments alike.

     The willingness to forego your right to self-defense is a sign that you’ve relegated personal responsibility to someone else. Having the masses abdicate personal responsibility is one of the most important aspects of controlling them.

     Welcome to the Matrix.

  9. You knowingly drink fluoridated water

    Of all the health debates taking place today, the topic of fluoridated water is the easiest to understand, for it is a toxic by-product of an industrial process… poison.

     Water is supposedly fluoridated to aid in dental health, which is debatable in itself, but if this were so, then the involuntary fluoridation of public water is a medication without your consent… a form of slavery. Knowing this and continuing to drink fluoridated water is a sign that you’re content with your slavery to the Matrix.

     Here are scientifically validated reasons to end public water fluoridation.

  10. You knowingly consume toxic poisons like MSG and Aspartame

    These two chemicals are widely known to be toxic to the human body.

     Knowing this and continuing to poison yourself with tasty, but chemical-laden processed foods is a sign that the Matrix has programmed you to place less value on your health and future than on your immediate gratification.

  11. You depend on the pharmaceutical industrial complex for the management of your own mental health

    The use of psychotropic medicines is rising rapidly in our society because people have been convinced that mental and emotional states can be classified as diseases, while the truth about natural mental health has been obfuscated by corporate media and a for-profit medical establishment.

     If you’re taking psychotropic medications, then you are under one of the most potent forms of mind control available. Part of this control is to convince you that you have no authority over your own mind.

     This is perhaps the matrix’s most terrible lie, and by willingly taking these psychotropic medications you are conforming to the worst kind of slavery, and inhibiting your natural mental and emotional responses to the life stressors that are signaling to you that you need to change your behavior and habits.

  12. You haven’t yet stopped watching your local and national news programming

    The mainstream news media is a tool of control and manipulation, and by continuing to support their ideas and world views by giving them your attention you are volunteering to be a slave to this not-so-subtle form of mental programming.

     Even the local news is scripted at the national level by agents of the handful of corporations tasked with shaping our opinions of events.

  13. You’re more concerned with televised sports or other mindless distractions than you are with the quality of your natural environment

    The Deepwater Horizon, Alberta Tar Sands, the rise of Fracking, the sacrifice of the Amazon, and Fukushima are all life-changing events that will severely impact our future on planet earth.

     To be unconcerned with all of this while tuning into a never-ending stream of sports trivia and distraction-based living is a sign that your sense of self-preservation has been stolen and replaced with an impulsive tendency for triviality and escapism.

  14. You’re skeptical of any area of life that hasn’t been ‘proven’ or validated by modern science

    The very essence of science is the inquiry into the unknown, implying that until science can grasp something, it is unexplainable.

     By discrediting or ridiculing experiences that other people have, which yet evade scientific understanding, like near-death experiences, acupuncture, or the life changing effects of Ayahuasca, then you are slavishly reducing your understanding of the world to a narrow range of possibilities.

     The Matrix is made possible by the efforts of volunteer gatekeepers who are unwilling to think outside of the box.

  15. You’ve never questioned the popularized version of ancient history and the origins of our civilization

    There are many unanswered questions about the origins of the human race that point to a different version of human history than what is taught in school.

     Read ‘20 History Questions They Refuse to Answer in School‘ to discover some of the many ways in which our history has been hijacked.

     By never questioning what we’ve been told about our origin we are acquiescing to many of the imposed belief systems and narrow-banded views of human potential that the Matrix promotes.

  16. You haven’t yet realized that you are a spiritual being living a human experience

If you can relate to any of the items on this list, then the Matrix has you, and it is now your duty to engage more deeply in your liberation.

from:    http://howtoexitthematrix.com/2016/07/18/several-signs-that-you-are-a-slave-to-the-matrix/

More on Common Core

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Common Core Education: Surveillance and Sexualization of Children

Common Core Student-1Makia Freeman, Contributor
Waking Times

Common core is the set of educational standards for American children funded by Bill Gates, the very same man who is pushing GMOs, vaccines and other New World Order (NWO) Agenda 21-style schemes. In another example of blatant doublespeak, the curricula are named “Common Core State Standards”, despite the fact they were forced onto the states with bribes, came top-down from the US Federal Government and were written by the international elite. Common Core first came onto the scene in 2009, after Obama took office, using money from the $350 million stimulus package. Common Core is another manifestation of a long-held dream of the NWO manipulators to replace the family with the State, a plan laid out in novels such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which included reference to State hatcheries (i.e. State control of reproduction).

common-core-logo-hypnosis

Common Core: Of the Manipulators, By the Manipulators, For the Masses

Did you know Common Core is actually copyrighted? It’s a private set of standards. It’s of the manipulators (since it’s owned by them), written by the manipulators, but it’s for the masses – all the “common” people not wealthy enough to go rich schools where the future leaders of the New World Order will learn an entirely different curriculum … one which probably trains them to become creative thinkers rather than the “obedient workers” John D. Rockefeller wanted common Americans to become. Even the Common Core logo resembles something hypnotic and discordant.

Educator Dr. Duke Pesta has been working tirelessly to expose Common Core for what it really is ever since it was launched 7 years ago. In his presentation, Duke reveals how the Government is already pushing for “public boarding schools” to be open from 8am to 8pm, 365 days per year! He quotes 2 men who were at the forefront of American education, Horace Mann and John Dewey. The latter was an open communist:

“We are who engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.” – Horace Mann

“The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society …” – John Dewey

Is Common Core helping the school to replace the family as a surrogate parent? Is Common Core promoting the idea of collectivism, that the individual is subservient to the group, institution, system and State? It would appear so, but that’s not all it’s doing.

common-core-1-500x462Common Core: Minimally Exceptional

Common Core is now being used in 47 out of 50 US states – in almost all public schools – and even if your children are in private schools or homeschooled, as long as they want to go to university or college, they will have to pass SAT/ACT tests written by the same man (David Coleman) who wrote the main English components! Common Core is not designed for local autonomy; teachers have to strictly follow its guidelines, or risk having students do poorly on the test. Duke plays video clips of 3 key men who were involved in creating Common Core:

“It would be great if our education stuff worked (Common Core), but we’re not going to know for a decade.” – Bill Gates

“Teachers will teach towards the test; there is no force strong enough to prevent teachers from teaching towards the test” – David Coleman, chief architect of Common Core, who never taught in an elementary school and never edited a scholarly journal. He has now joined College Boards writing SAT and ACT tests.

“[Common Core meets a] minimal definition of college readiness” (i.e. not for STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) – Jason Zimba, architect of Common Core mathematics, admitting “college ready” really meant ready for a non-selective community college

“Using Common Core math standards will put American students 2 years behind their international peers by the end of 8th grade, and further behind by the end of high school.” – Dr. James Milgram, who refused to sign off on the Common Core standards

To make matters worse, the Common Core assessments are meaningless tests, because the grading process is rigged (just like the votes in American elections)! Did you know that the people running Common Core advertised on Craigslist for temporary workers (at $9/hour) to grade papers? Then, these workers were told that they needed to mark papers to fit into a bell curve with standard deviations (a certain amount of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s etc.) and “needed to learn to see more papers as a 3”. In others words, they had to fit the results into a predetermined spread and ignore the actual quality of the paper!

Common Core Surveillance

This is all bad enough, but hold on, because now it starts to get really Orwellian. Children are being spied upon more and more under Common Core. Some of the ways are stealthy, such as through devices like iPads, as this article suggests:

“Initially, in order to continue to be eligible for Obama’s “Race to the Top” federal funding, states were obligated to implement a Student Longitudinal Database System (SLDS), used to track students from preschool through college (P20-WIN). Some of us may recall the many reports about measuring 400 data points … could these one to one devices be another carefully disguised method of software-driven mass surveillance of students?”

” … all across America, more and more classrooms will be filled with children innocently using their iPads or other handheld devices. Children may be playing interactive educational games, doing interactive assignments, and writing stories that can be easily shared with the teacher and other students. These seemingly harmless activities are in fact being used to collect personal and private information without the parents’ consent or knowledge. Could that educational game be used to measure your child’s mental state? Could those interactive assignments involve morally ambiguous questions that can be used to create a psychological profile of your child? Could that shared story be used to predict violent behavior?”

This Truth in Media article states that:

“Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that data collection will also include critical appraisals of individuals with whom students have close family relationships. The Common Core program has been heavily scrutinized recently for the fact that its curriculum teaches young children to use emotionally charged language to manipulate others and teaches students how to become community organizers and experts of the U.N.’s agenda 21.”

Some of the Common Core surveillance is data mining, as this article explains:

“In this modern computer era, digital personal data is gold, currently being traded like currency … the CEO of Knewton explains how Education is today’s most data mined industry. He explains “the name of the game is data per user”. From Amazon or Netflix they get 1 data point per user per day. Google and Facebook 10 data points per user per day. In education, Knewton gets 5-10 million actionable data points per student per day! Apparently, every sentence of every passage in digital content has a data tag and they can tell how interested a child is in a certain topic, how difficult it was, etc., etc. Ten million data points a day! This data grab is a gold mine to companies that want to market and design products. For venture capitalists, Education is the new hot commodity.”

The NWO manipulators also have plans to introduce all sorts of devices into the classroom which intrude upon the basic privacy of children, including a “facial expression camera”, “posture analysis seat”, “pressure mouse” and “wireless skin conductance sensor”. See this report entitled Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century for more details (pg. 62).

Common Core Sexualization of Children

Introducing kids to sex, including sexual education, at too young of an age, can be confusing and detrimental. A core theme of the worldwide conspiracy is the increasing sexualization of children, which is being fueled by the NWO manipulators’ indulgence in widespread pedophilia. The article Colorado School Employing “Anti-Bias” Curriculum Has Parents Asking Questions highlights how a Common Core aligned school is teaching an anti-bias curriculum. Sounds good, but this means more tyrannical and freedom-destroying political correctness, coupled with sex ed to 4 year olds! As an aside, the organization promoting this is “Teaching Tolerance” which is aligned with the Southern Poverty Law Center – the same one which covers up the truth by falsely branding people anti-Semitic etc.

Children are being encouraged to have sex and be sexual at an early age, which may well be developmentally inappropriate and harmful, given that amount of emotional maturity that is necessary to be involved in a sexual relationship. Now it’s going one step further. Some American public schools under Common Core are already giving advanced forms of birth control to children without parental knowledge. According to Duke, under Common Core, schools now have legal capacity to take teenage girls off campus to an abortion clinic to get an abortion – without informing or consulting parents!

Conclusion: Common Core is a Tool of the NWO

The word “common” in common core really means “lowest common denominator”. Essentially, Common Core is a form of socialism, Marxism or communism that brings everyone down to an equal level. George W. Bush let Senator Teddy Kennedy write the “No Child Left Behind” Act, which had too many stupid high-stake tests, too much social ideology and propaganda being injected, too little local teacher control and too much federal intervention. Common Core is all this on steroids: the ESSA Act (Every Student Succeeds Act) enshrines Common Core at the federal level, and retroactively legalizes all the illegal things the Federal Government did to get it through.

The bottom line is this: if you want your child to have your values, don’t throw him or her away to the State. Avoid Common Core all you can! Homeschool or find a private school that doesn’t do Common Core curriculum.

from:    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/04/21/common-core-education-surveillance-sexualization-children/

So WHo’s Watching You?

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New Billboards Film You, Then Use Your Mobile Phone To Follow You

March 1, 2016

BillboardsBy Jake Anderson

Recently, Anti-Media covered the revelation that Samsung transmits audio commands recorded by their Smart TVs to a third party company, which raises all sorts of red flags regarding encryption standards and, more importantly, people’s privacy in their own homes.

Last year, Anti-Media posted a list of surprising objects endowed with surveillance or data extraction capabilities — including the Statue of Liberty, mannequins, billboards, and more. The company Immersive Labs, for instance, creates software for digital billboards that allows them to watch your face and then tailor a specific ad based on your facial features.

On Monday, the next generation of corporate surveillance was deployed — a new kind of billboard that utilizes surveillance triangulation the likes of which we’ve never seen.

According to the article entitled “See That Billboard? It May See You,” Clear Channel Outdoor Americas has partnered with a bevy of tech and data companies, including AT&T, to combine billboard surveillance and location-based mobile data in order to study people’s travel patterns and shopping behaviors. The program, called Radar, will hit 11 major markets this coming Monday. Clear Channel plans on expanding Radar to the entire nation within a year.

Billboards equipped with cameras that track consumers is not new, but tracking drivers by aggregating data from both billboards and mobile phones simultaneously is an evolution in data mining.

Information gleaned from these new billboards will include the average age and gender of people who pass by, as well as the time and what stores they subsequently visit. The info collected from the billboards will then be paired with data from the third party companies for a one-two punch that will be very valuable to advertisers.

In essence, there is a tag-team effect: the billboards identify you, then the third party companies use your mobile phone to follow and track your consumer behavior.

For instance, PlaceIQ will use mobile apps to determine location data and consumer behavior. In an article for Adweek entitled “The Future of Auto Marketing Could Be a Little Creepy – Get ready for brands to follow you everywhere,” PlaceIQ CEO and co-founder Duncan McCall discussed another campaign “designed to target in-market car buyers, one that tracks people from the moment they begin contemplating making a purchase to the moment they leave their house and head to the dealer.”

Another third party company involved in Clear Channel Outdoor’s Radar billboard campaign, Placed, will use the tracked movements of the consumer to craft customized in-store ads. Placed uses mobile phones to verify shopper movements; they sell this data to stores, online retailers, and app developers.

Between the billboards and third party companies, it sounds as if the Radar program seeks to create a consumer environment where citizens can be publicly tracked — whether in their cars or after they have parked and are shopping (or simply taking a walk) — synchronously and in perpetuity.

Both PlaceIQ and Placed claim all the data they collect is anonymized.

Clear Channel Outdoor tested the new Radar system in Orlando, Florida recently, using a billboard advertisement for Toms Shoes.

Unsurprisingly, privacy advocates condemn the new campaign as yet another violation of consumer trust.

“People have no idea that they’re being tracked and targeted,” says Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “It is incredibly creepy, and it’s the most recent intrusion into our privacy.”

According to Amie Stepanovich of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, corporate surveillance is especially troubling because in many cases, it paves the way for government surveillance. As the top secret military agency DARPA advances complex new war weapons, many times it relies on private contractors to move the needle. The same goes for surveillance: in creating their consumer profiles, corporations essentially run a kind of societal beta test of surveillance programs from which the government can pick and choose.

Stepanovich describes it like this:

None of the information in question would be sharable if Internet and telecommunications companies encrypted it to protect privacy. In other words, it’s not a given that corporations must collect vast amounts of information from and about us. But failing to do so wouldn’t be good for business.

Here she is referring to metadata gathered online, but the same applies to analytics collected on the street. We’re entering an era in which surveillance is essentially ubiquitous. Concurrently, privacy advocates say new guidelines and ethical contracts need to be considered.

Already, judicial actions have made an impact. Last year the Federal Trade Commission settled charges against retail-tracking company Nomi Technologies, which was found to have misled consumers regarding their practice of gathering signals from shoppers’ mobile phones.

In the meantime, besides moving to Antarctica and relinquishing all technology, what can consumers and citizens do to protect themselves from intrusive data mining and surveillance?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers a comprehensive suite of free encryption tools and tutorials for protecting your online data, including information stored on mobile phones.

There are also techniques available for camouflaging yourself from surveillance cameras. Using makeup patterns called ‘computer vision dazzle’ (or CV dazzle), it is possible to fool the facial recognition algorithms of many surveillance systems.

from:    http://www.activistpost.com/2016/03/new-billboards-film-you-then-use-your-mobile-phone-to-follow-you.html

Turning Your Home into a Faraday Cage

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Can This Material Protect Your Home From The NSA, Electromagnetic Radiation and EMP Attacks?

October 26, 2015

nsa-ops-centerBy Kevin Samson

There is nothing quite like the image of a tinfoil hat to get people chuckling over the paranoia of “the conspiracy theorist” who takes precautions against brain scanning and electronic mind control. But if one topic has gone from conspiracy theory to conspiracy fact, it is government surveillance. Even more than the “revelations” of Edward Snowden, it was the way the system came out against him, as well as the further rollout of surveillance-friendly legislation that has convinced many average people that indeed sometimes they are actually watching you.

Various solutions have been offered about how to protect your privacy while connected to the Internet or when using your mobile phone, but one new product holds the potential to protect you at the source: your home. It’s not quite tinfoil but it does claim to offer a physical shield against surveillance and attack.

Conductive Composites is a company based in Utah (home of the NSA’s mega data center interestingly), which makes small cases and enclosures for shielding electronics. The company claims that their lightweight material made by layering nickel on carbon could be scaled up and essentially turn your entire home into a Faraday cage capable of blocking efforts at snooping, while also offering protection from electromagnetic radiation and EMP attacks.

As Defense One explains, Faraday cages are in fact routinely used by the military and governments to secure their own sensitive locations:

Today, Faraday cages are all over the place. In 2013, as the College of Cardinals convened to elect a new Pope, the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel was converted into a Faraday cage so that news of the election couldn’t leak out, no matter how hard the paparazzi tried, and  how eager the cardinals were to tweet the proceedings. The military also uses Faraday cages for secure communications: Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities or SCIFs are Faraday cages. You’ll need to be in one to access the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System, or JWICS, the Defense Department’s top-secret internet.

The ongoing threat from EMP attacks, whether man-made or natural, is an additional concern that has become more grave as our society is now fundamentally dependent on computer systems.

Lightning strikes and other large electromagnetic pulse events—such as, say, a high-altitude nuclear explosion or geomagnetic storms caused by solar winds on a larger scale—can destroy electrical and electronic systems, inducing currents in conductors within them and overloading them. Just as generators create electricity by passing a wire through a magnetic field, a strong electromagnetic wave can create current within anything conductive it passes through. (Source)

This little device delivers turnkey Internet privacy and security (Ad)

A lightweight shielding material that is both flexible and scalable could be a key solution for those who wish to have the same level of security as our government and military.

A third area, which still remains somewhat controversial to the average person, is the health hazard of WiFi and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. Here, too, a flexible material that contains the properties of a Faraday cage could offer transportable protection for those who choose to shield themselves from pervasive signals.

The Conductive Composites website does show commercial-level production, but it remains to be seen how easy it will be for individuals to obtain these products – and at what cost. Interestingly, the company’s product page also lists paints, sealants, adhesives, concrete and wall paper, which suggests other protective applications.

This technology appears to be a positive step toward empowering those who have educated themselves about potential threats. Perhaps the largest hurdle, however, is to keep this type of technology legal. We have seen governments assert that the mere act of encryption should be made illegal; protecting yourself from drone surveillance has led to arrests; and sidestepping economic surveillance through technology such as Bitcoin is being viewed as potentially funding terrorism.

However, we also have learned that once technology is invented, those who demand freedom will always find a way to use it for their benefit.

H/T: ZenGardner.com

from:    http://www.activistpost.com/2015/10/material-protect-your-home-from-the-nsa-electromagnetic-radiation-and-emp-attacks.html

You ARE Being Watched!

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Do You Know Who is Watching Your Private Life?

Waking Times

Infographic – Lack of privacy on the Internet and in the real world continues to grow. Many people are becoming aware that what they share on their social networks can find its way to the furthest reaches of the Web. But did you realize that your private life at home could also become public, without your knowledge or consent? Here’s how technologies such as Google Street View and government monitoring initiatives are starting to intrude on people’s personal lives.

whoswatchingyou

from:    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/09/07/do-you-know-who-is-watching-your-private-life/