“The infamous NASA Blue Beam Project has four different steps in order to implement the new age religion with the Antichrist at its head… The first step concerns the breakdown [re-evaluation] of all archaeological [and scientific] knowledge… It deals with the set-up, with artificially created earthquakes at certain precise locations on the planet, of supposedly new discoveries which will finally explain to all people the “error” of all fundamental religious doctrines… The second step involves a gigantic ’space show’ with three-dimensional optical holograms and sounds, laser projection of multiple holographic images to different parts of the world, each receiving a different image according to predominating regional national religious faith… The third step is to feed artificial thought into the multigenic field via satellite, the mind control of the entire planet. The fourth step concerns the universal supernatural manifestation with electronic means… to make mankind believe that an alien (off-world) invasion is about to occur at every major city on earth in order to provoke each major nation to use its nuclear weapons in order to strike back… to make the Christians/New Agers believe that the Rapture/Ascension is going to occur with the supposed divine intervention of an alien (off-world) civilization coming to rescue mankind from the first invading group of aliens… Its goal will be to dispose of all significant opposition to the implementation of the New World Order in one major stroke, actually within hours of the beginning of the sky show, with a mixture of electronic and supernatural forces to holographically project worldwide the Anti-Christ as the Messiah to re-establish order and peace…”

If you read Part II, this is partially what it’s about – the story of someone with extra-sensory powers who’s accused of being the Anti-Christ. But if you follow exo-politicians’ logic, I’m part of the conspiracy to condition people to the “coming of Maitreya” or somesuch. I’ve actually argued that movies like Skyline condition people – but to war, not alien invasion. Maybe I really am playing into the puppet-masters’ hands. If I ever become really successful, it will be proof that demonic powers are guiding my progress. They’re taking their time.

We talked about how Obama’s been a disappointment and how maybe he’s not unable to get things done because of the climate, but basically he’s getting what he wants.  So while he is to the left of Dick Cheney, there is still indefinite detention, the Patriot Act was quietly extended another year last week, the big Pharma deal, the lack of new financial regulation, on and on.  For some reason, those in highest power are right-leaning corporatists – Clinton was basically a Republican president and Obama’s of the same mold.  A “progressive” these days is just what a regular average Democrat used to be and the Democratic party has gone rightward.  For all the talk of a Democratic majority, it’s a ridiculous assertion, as there are only a handful of true Democrats and then a bunch of Republican-style corporatists.

Me, as the conspiracy theorizing sort, sees the possibility of a nefarious plot in all this – that there’s some purpose to all this pro-corporate anti-humanist legislation being passed.  I just cannot buy the assertion that it’s just for profit.  My brother mentioned that the Rubin crowd thought they were doing good: with the regulations stripped in the nineties via complicated derivatives equations, they thought they were giving the economy a good boost.  Makes enough sense, except regulations are put in there so people don’t abuse the system. So you strip the regulations and abuse is a given.  Were they really that short-sighted that they couldn’t see the obvious?  Or is this a nefarious plot to bring down the financial system to usher in something new?

When you break it down, it doesn’t matter.  Whether or not the Bilderberg/Trilateral Commission decided to destroy the economy and told Robert Rubin to do its bidding, or it was accomplished due to blind, abject stupidity, the result is the same.  The attraction of conspiracy theory is that it gives a purpose to society’s breakdown, which actually feels better than the realization that there is no grand purpose to civilization’s demise – it’s just that humans are fuck-ups and given the opportunity to fuck up (deregulation) they’ll take it.  Greed is just such a boring reason for the financial meltdown.  Really, people just wanted more money?  They’re just a bunch of addicts?  Maybe – and that makes me think even less about the human race than if there was some kind of machination behind all these recent events.

Except there still might be.  Even if all the recent events are totally arbitrary and not planned beforehand, it’s still leading to systemic collapse.  So there’s still a conspiracy to destroy the system – even if it’s unconscious.  In my novel I pontificate about humanity’s seeming death wish and how this plays into prophecy.  Although the battles in the Middle East, the decline of the financial system, the melting of the environment, et al. aren’t necessarily proof that the Book of Revelation  is real, it is very curious that world events seem to be mirroring end of the world prophecy regardless if it’s intentional.  Either way, we’re heading towards collapse – our current structure is unsustainable, and it’s eerie that we seem to be acting out prophecy, even if that prophecy wasn’t a literal prediction.

I take a more esoteric approach to the possibility that people are bringing these events to life – an unconscious conspiracy that is acting out a grand “design,” whether it’s bringing a Jungian archetype to life or something else, is as valid as a secret meeting at Bohemian Grove.  People might not know why they’re doing it, but they’re still doing it.  The shadowy group in control might just be the unconscious. In that sense, the New World Orderites might be taking things a shade too literally.

I take a similar leap with something like crop circles.  It is possible that even hoaxes are revealing some kind of coded message.  Couldn’t an advanced alien race – conceivably – act through hoaxers to create the same messages as they could do themselves?  We’re talking a race a million years more advanced than ourselves – why not?  What made those hoaxers decide on that particular design?  Even a hoax has possible meaning.  Whatever the case, they’re beautiful, and shouldn’t be laughed off just because they’re so cool:

There’s still a lot we do not understand about consciousness, and the potential of collective consciousness, so people may be creating an apocalyptic future without total intent.  Just as it’s eerie that our world seems to be acting out 2012 prophecy, it also seems to be acting out New World Order conspiracies (Patriot Act, globalization…).  Whether it’s a literal plot to end the world or a plot comprised of humans’ worst instincts may not actually matter.

To sum up the video – it’s saying that Zeitgeist, which is anti-Christian, advocates a New Age New World Order in which Christianity is supplanted, even as the film attacks the New World Order which is coming through globalization. So Peter Joseph is an agent of the New Age agenda, even if he also warns against the NWO. God, I love this stuff. The New World Order is the new apocalypse, with everyone having a theory about how and when it’s going to arise (including myself, albeit in fiction).

In a recent video, Darryl Sloan talks about the occult symbolism in the U.S. and the U.K., such as the dollar bill and the MI5 logo, and wonders if that means there’s an occult influence in government.  It should be mentioned that just because MI5 or the Information Awareness Office uses occult symbolism does not mean they’re run on occult principles.  It’s just that occult symbolism has become a common motif.  Even so, the Information Awareness Office symbol is absurd:

I heard more than one person say, “Wait, that’s real? I thought it was a joke.”  The symbol is ridiculous on so many levels. If they are not really occult practitioners, how could they be so stupid as to not know what sort of paranoia this would inspire?  The fact is they had to know, which is enough to make you paranoid for other reasons – even if they aren’t practicing occultists, they are at least in the practice of inspiring paranoia.  They’ve discontinued the logo, with this explanation:

DARPA offices have traditionally designed and adopted logos. However. because the IAO logo has become a lightning rod and is needlessly diverting time and attention from the critical tasks of executing that office’s mission effectively and openly, we have decided to discontinue the use of the original logo.

For the record, the IAO logo was designed to convey the mission of that office; i.e., to imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate, and transition information technologies, components, and prototype, closed-loop information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness useful for preemption, national security warning, and national security decision making. On an elemental level, the logo is the representation of the office acronym (IAO) the eye above the pyramid represents “I” the pyramid represents “A,” and the globe represents “O.” In the detail, the eye scans the globe for evidence of terrorist planning and is focused on the part of the world that was the source of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “Scientia est polentia” means “Knowledge is power.” With the enabling technologies being developed by the office, the United States will be empowered to implement operational systems to thwart terrorist attacks like those of September 11, 2001.

The unfinished pyramid and the eye depicted in the logo were taken directly from the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States of America (for a history of the seal, see http://www.heraldica.org/topics/usa/usheroff.htm). Both sides of the seal also appear on the back of the U.S. $1 bill.

It may just be that the person who designed the logo is a total idiot with no sense of perspective or history.  When considering the human race, that explanation is just as likely as something nefarious.

Meanwhile, there’s outrage about the Missile Defense logo looking like the Obama symbol from the election and the crescent and star of the flag of Islam:

People on the left are mocking this – which it deserves – but also there’s no denying that it looks similar to the Obama symbol.  And if anything it’s probably better politics if they don’t look alike, given the right’s proclivity for total paranoia.  There’s nothing to infer about the Information Awareness Office logo – that’s occult symbolism without having to interpret it.  More evidence that the justified paranoia about the Bush administration has morphed into the less justified paranoia of the right.   It points out, though, that if Obama was running an Islamist plot inside the American government, why would he be so obvious about it?  He wouldn’t – and the same concept could hold true for the Information Awareness Office.   In the end, it turns out that the Missile Defense logo was designed during the Bush Administration. Of course, that’s what they would want you to think.

I responded to Darryl Sloan’s post by saying,

Here’s the Secret Teaching of All Ages:

Manly Palmer Hall – The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Powerful, effective.  If the issue of 9-11 truth gives you jitters, you might be put off by part 2, but you should at least investigate it before dismissing it out of hand.  But part one makes an enormously compelling case for the cross-pollination of world myths and how Jesus’s death and resurrection is nothing more than the death and resurrection of the sun during winter.  I had hints of this – Christmas is a pagan holiday – but never entirely knew what this signified.  “Oh my God,” I said out loud a few times.  At the same time, there’s always a part of you that doesn’t want to believe this – it hurts almost.  Because to find out that the entire basis of Western civilization is actually false is pretty shattering.  Even if parts of this idea are up for debate – the movie no doubt has its detractors – the connection between Christian and pagan rituals is undeniable.

The film is along the lines of a book I recently reviewed by Darryl Sloan, called Reality Check, which is more of a personal story of one person coming to terms with his Christian upbringing and the incongruities in that religion, as well as how vilified he was for his break with the church.  It’s most important message is that one must investigate something fully before decrying it as bullshit.  If you watch the movie or read Darryl’s book and still have your worldview, then fine: you’ve done the work.  But do the work.  Darryl Sloan’s book is highly recommended and can be read and downloaded for free on Scribd.

I recently did an interview with Alterati, where I get into how 9-11 was the impetus behind my writing The American Book of the Dead.  I sort of cop out when it come to the question of 9-11 truth.  I say I’ve “entertained” the idea.  Mainly because it’s fairly embarrassing – because it’s so vilified.  It’s not fun to be vilified.  On Daily Kos, if you didn’t know, they censor any mention of 9-11 truth.  This does make some sense because it would affect the credibility of the site if it the site devolved into conspiracy theory – no matter how convincing that theory might be.  But that’s the zeitgeist for the moment – the mainstream story about 9-11.

The movie could be more convincing about proving the thermite theory and the impossibility of the building’s falling how they did.  Beyond WTC 1 and 2, Building 7 really makes no fucking sense.  Nor does the fact that there’s no evidence of a plane having crashed at the Pentagon.  Those two things alone are enough to reasonably ask: What the hell? without being shouted down as a delusional idiot.  That Daily Kos can despise every act perpetrated by the Bush administration, from the Iraq war to the economy and beyond, but not think they’re capable of 9-11 is puzzling – the same vitriolic hatred for Dick Cheney is given to truthers.  Somehow, the administration was evil enough to lie their way to go to war in Iraq, but not evil enough to basically do the same thing in New York City.

I find it interesting as well that on Daily Kos (a place where I spend a fair amount of time, by the way, because I do enjoy following mainstream political debate in the same way I like following trades in baseball) that it’s mainly peopled by atheists.  As if you have to be open a bit more to something else being behind the spiritual curtain to entertain the thought of a 9-11 conspiracy.  If you don’t then you demand an impossible amount of proof for each, even if there is a lot of available proof, or at least compelling research.  Enough to say, “What if?” without condemning it out of hand.  So perhaps I should own up to what I believe: in the possibility of God and that the government is capable of terrible things.  The government, after all, goes to war.

The Fed

Part 3 gets into the Federal Reserve – something that I’ve glossed over in relation to the Ron Paul movement, mainly because he’s a Republican and Libertarian, and I’m not an advocate that small government is the answer.  In many ways what we need is more government, more regulation, more social programs.  Anarchy would be, well, anarchy.  I’m not a New World Order fanatic who sees all government as an attempt to take control of our lives.  Or, rather, I don’t think all control is necessarily a negative, because the world is a disaster area and creating a new system with a one world government and one world religion could potentially be seen as progress – if done correctly.  So the North American Union doesn’t automatically strike me as a bad idea.

Now to tie this together with other demented leanings I have.  I mention this in the interview with Alterati – I believe in the possibility that Cheney orchestrated the 9-11 attacks, or at least let them happen.  Even if he didn’t, the Iraq war was waged under false pretenses and has all the hallmarks of a perpetual war meant to enrich certain people.  What I don’t get is why they need all this money – just “to be rich” makes very little sense.  After hitting a certain level of wealth, money stops mattering.  “To be powerful” seems a little weak as well.  I’ve always been puzzled about how ties together with my other main pet belief: UFOs.  If anyone knows the secrets behind the UFO conspiracy it’s families like the Bush’s, and men like Dick Cheney.  So what on earth does the UFO phenomenon have to do with this raping the planet for profit and creating perpetual war?  What on earth does the UFO phenomenon have to do with right wing ideology?

What I came up with in my novel is that all of this degradation is by design: to lead up to the Big One, World War III, that will diminish the population to such a degree that first contact could be possible, and we could then start a technological utopia.  They want control over this uncontrollable world so that humanity can graduate to whatever’s ahead.  The plan is not necessarily 100% nefarious.  And if – as my novel pontificates – death does not exist and there is an afterlife, then war has less consequence, even if it causes so much immense pain.

Just a theory of course, and the movie doesn’t touch on it.  I wish the movie didn’t quote from LaRouche or Lou Dobbs or Alex Jones, who’s pretty deeply conservative – and if you’re talking about peddling fear for profit, that’s his M.O.  I remember a piece he did about going behind the scenes at Bohemian Grove and decrying how everyone there worships the “occult.”  If we go back to part one of this piece, an occult “perennial philosophy” in which all religions are different versions of the same idea, is a more honest spiritual disposition.  Jones’s point was that it’s “un-Christian,” which doesn’t strike me as a bad pose to take.

Now if all this is true, and they’re doing this to eventually instigate a NWO, why all the secrecy, why all the murder?  Seems like there’s a better way of going about this than unleashing so much pain – which then makes the NWO nefarious, because the events leading up to the NWO are so destructive and anti-human.  It’s like they’re fucking things up on purpose – why would corporatists want to live in a raped, climate-changed world?  It seems to have a purpose beyond just carelessness, or even the lust for money and power. Again, this was the major impetus behind The American Book - that they’re after some kind of progress.

Maybe I’m holding on to a naive faith in people – as well as a belief that we need some order in a disordered world. The movie ends with words about how “we’re all the same,” and “one planet” which is why a one world government – absent implanting microchips in all of us, which is where the movie really lost me – could potentially be a manifestation of this idea.  Seems a pretty roundabout way of going about it, though. If industry stressed sustainability, this could have positive potential without destroying everything first.

Zeitgeist: Addendum

Also fascinating, and worth watching.  Eye-opening material on the failures of our monetary system, offering an actual solution with discussion of the Venus Project.  Ironically, it’s my theory (one possible theory) that perhaps the one world government scenario is to lay the foundation for a Venus Project type of utopia.  Otherwise, upending our current monetary system could possibly lead to its own type of apocalypse.  In this sense, you need “control” of people in order to usher in the next stage.  This system needs to fail, which may be why the current system seems almost masochisticly bent on failure, perhaps to usher in a new system.

Really, that’s the underlying hope behind all conspiracy theory – even theory that ramps up the fear: that there’s a purpose to all this, and the “elite” are out there planning something.  Nothing is just arbitrary and meaningless.  It’s the same reason that some people, including myself, want to believe in God.  A purposeless existence in which there’s more pain than light is fairly depressing.  It’s in fact more depressing than worrying about a New World Order.  At least with the NWO you feel like you’re in on a great secret, like a priest who knows what the Gods are working on.  That’s pretty exciting, and easily clouds judgment.

If you think all of this is ludicrous, please watch the movies, and then we’ll talk.  It makes me sort of nauseous to be this naked about these types of beliefs, but if this sort of fuel is still with me nine years after I got into this type of info, post 9-11 when I started doing a lot of research in the run-up to writing my novel, I may as well own up to it.

More

Zeitgeist – Orientation Presentation: more info along these lines – mostly centered around the collapse of our financial institution.  If you want to take issue with the movie’s stance on religion or 9-11, do so, but it’s hard to deny our current economic system is unsustainable.

The Zeitgeist Movement – Frankly, this creeps me out a bit. I know if things are to change dramatically, there needs to be a revolution of like-minded thinkers. But I also think this movement could inspire a religious-like cult following. Though the evidence around 9-11 is compelling, it’s not incontrovertible, so it has to be taken in part on faith. As always, faith can lead to bad motivation.  NWO paranoia seems more than a little faith-based, and tends to see connections everywhere with limited evidence, which is why I don’t find it especially interesting.  And taking the movie as irrefutable truth doesn’t make sense, especially when there are inaccuracies in the movie. It would be ironic to take everything in a movie like Zeitgeist as gospel.  The purpose of the movie is to challenge some of your current assumptions – it does that.  There’s plenty in the movie worth considering.  But check out:

A site debunking Zeitgeist. Another one at Conspiracy Science.

A video debunking the debunking (Part 1).

The Reality Sandwich review, which is pretty dead-on:

Zeitgeist may have sacrificed a measure of precision for a greater degree of suggestion, but through that act it ripped open a hole in the mythological framework of American society. Millions of minds are at this very moment pouring through the fissure. This is why Zeitgeist simply is what It Is, a reflection of this particular moment in time and space, while at the same time serving as a tool of cultural, and potentially social, transformation.

Finally, Blog Talk Radio with filmmaker Peter Joseph.  Yes, I got a little obsessed, but I think this is an important development, even if you disagree with it.