"Is it possible, to totally bring about a mutation in what is?" "To go into this question of bringing about a total revolution, one must have an extraordinary sense of awareness." "The crisis especially now, is a crisis in consciousness." "A crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms." "It seems to me, though man has cultivated the external world and has more or less mastered it" "Inwardly, he is still as he was." "We want happiness." "We do not want suffering." "Now we are actually creating more unnecessary suffering." "That "one-million dollars" will not bring inner peace." "This money brings more frustration, more suspicion, more anxiety but people do not understand." "I see all this potential, and I see it squandered." "God damnit an entire generation pumping gas, and waiting tables." "...slaves with white collars." "Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need." "We're the middle-children of history, man." "No purpose or place." "We have no great war..." "no great depression..." "Our "great war" is the spiritual war." "Our "great depression", is our lives." "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact and we're very, very pissed off." "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." " Victor Hugo" "When you're born in this world you're given a ticket to the freak-show and when you're born in America you're given a front row seat." "Everybody's got a cellphone that'll make pancakes and rub their balls so nobody want's to rock the boat." "Nobody wants to change." "We're in a nice downward glide." "I call it "circling the drain"." "I think we squandered great gifts." "I think humans were given great, great gifts." "We polluted it with this STUFF things, material goods, games, gizmos, toys, gadgets having possessions" ""He's got a bigger truck!" "Did you see his truck?" "It's bigger than mine!" "I'm gettin' a new truck!"" "Part 1" " The Freakshow" ""Here's a big truck!" "Oooh, I'm gettin that one!" "That's what, you got a video in there?" "DVD too?"" "Hi Eric, thank you so much for being with us today." "Thanks for sliding on" "We are here to talk to Eric about black-friday, it has come early this year." " That's right." "With the economy the way it is retailers are doing everything they can to pry dollars out of reluctant customers hands." "So, you know this is a very important season to retailers it could be 25 to 40 percent of their years total sales." "So if they can expand the shopping season by a little bit, by advancing it..." "Anything in this economy helps." " Well I mean, at this point though last year people were pinching pennies just as much as this year so why are we seeing this now?" " Well we're seeing it now because it's a way to expand the shopping season and give retailers that many more chances to you know, sink their hooks into you." "This is the world I grew up in." "Like many others I born with this bright, flashing, shiney promise shoved right in my face that true happiness was just a credit card swipe away." "When I was a kid the world told me that the coolest kids wore the coolest sneakers." "When I got a little older it convinced me that my success was defined by a college degree, and a job with benefits." "Today it reminds me endlessly that I should have another drink and buy a new car." "But I gotta tell you, the only real message I've heard through the noise is that this world knows, better than I do what's best for me." "Itseemsto me thatmostAmericans have internalized the propaganda that consumerism pummles and plies them with daily." "So, we internalize this system, we can't envisage anything different." "A number of people were speaking about, "Well why do people break windows and steal consumer goods?"" "The poor have been pummeled with this propaganda." "What do you expect them to do, go out and loot a good job and good education?" "CaptainCapitalism!" "Wow!" "What are you doing here?" "Ithinkthebetterquestionssonis , just what do you think YOU'RE doing here?" "Puttingmoneyin my piggybank!" "Cripplingournationbystagnatingtheeconomyand throwing us into another recession is more like it!" "Heygirl!" "Canyou say "bling-bling"?" "Whydowe consumetosuch acrazy level ?" "A level that the research shows over and over is undermining our health, our societal well-being, and the environment." "We have to step back from before even starting this to recognize that most of what we do, most of what we see as "normal"" "is actually shaped by our cultural norms." "And unfortunately, where we are today is that culture has made Consumerism feel "normal", or "natural"." "So that watching 5 hours of television a day as a child or drinking huge caffeinated beverages at 5 years old as this picture here suggests is ok..." "We don't even question it anymore." "You know, and a strong illustration of that for me is this series of pictures." "Now if you can't see, up at the top-right there's a little girl surrounded by all of her pink toys." "This is a little Korean girl." "The artist actually was more interested in the genderfication process of children" "Just look from how young we are brought into the consumer culture where we define our well-being, our happiness, our leisure through the stuff we have." "Through the stuff that surrounds us." "And here's a picture of an American little girl of course, with the princess outfit which I've discovered from my own four nieces that... well, it's big business." "Disney makes multiple billions of dollars a year selling their Disney princess fantasies to little girls." "So around the industrial world and increasingly in developing countries consumerism, is becoming the default cultural pattern." "Inthe1950s..." "late50s, early60s... a bunch of advertising guys got together in Madison avenue, and decided that what they were trying to do was sell products to younger people" "They thought "we should try and sell products to younger people because then they'll buy things their whole life."" "So they'll try and sell them soft drinks, or bread, or cigars or whatever the hell they were selling them, and they thought..." ""We'll try and appeal to young people."" "because the youth was the place where you were going to be able to sell things and what happened was that, in a strange kind of quirk of fate youth began to be celebrated by society in a way that it had never been at any time in human history" "because what used to be celebrated was experience and cleverness but what happened was that what became valuable was youth the quality of youth which made you a consumer so what happened is that they started concentrating on all of these people" "society started to turn on its head because with the deification of youth..." "Youth has a byproduct." "The byproduct of youth is inexperience." "By the nature of having youth, you don't have any experience, you're too young to have it." "It became fashionable and desirable to be young and to be stupid!" "And it started to be a fashion, and that grew, and that grew and that grew, and that grew... and now, that's what all the kids want to be." "and this terrible movement..." "nobody meant it!" "EverytimethatIopenmymouth critically, with regards to this country everytime I feel like I want to criticize this country" "There's this little nagging voice in the back of my head that says..." ""How dare you Paul. "" ""Do you know how fat and lazy you are?" "Do you know how priviledged you are?"" ""How dare you criticize this country."" ""How dare you sit there, in your life of abject luxury and criticize this great country!"" ""How dare you."" "But you know what, ladies and gentlemen?" "I cannot carry the torch anymore for this country." "America is not the "land of the free", nor is it the "home of the brave"..." "It is neither of those things." "America is a country of aggressively ignorant fucking cowards." "People that are just willing to hand over their civil liberties lock, stock and barrel without even taking the time to inform themselves." "They're so stupid and so diluted and so caught in the quagmire that is there empty info-tainment filled lives that they just line up for somebody to tell them how they should feel." "The real problem is us." "We're the problem because we're too distracted by bullshit that's on the fucking T.V." "to stand up for what's in our best interests." "What's the answer to that?" "How do you stop that?" "Individually,theyearn about $12 a week in allowance." "But collectively, 8 to 12 year old kids in the U.S, 20 million strong wield 43 billion dollars of their parents money in annual spending power and they've got the stars to prove it." "Whatmakesherasuperstaronthe launch-pad?" "Whenshewalkedinandsaid,  "Hi I'm Victoria Justice and I'm 12 years old."" "I was like, "Alright, this kid has real charisma."" "I'm thinking, "This is a kid I want to probably develop a T.V. show for. "" "Doyouwanttobeamovie star?" "Or, a singing star?" "Iwannado both" "Youwantit all." "Iwannado both." "I want it all!" "Why not?" "Thisseasonpremiere got almost 9 million viewers making it the highest rated season premiere in MTV's history." "Season 4 follows the cast as they head to their homeland, Italy in what can only be described as the beginnings of a global takeover." "Canwegetthe LindseyLohan D.U.I. arrest out of the teleprompter and put my script in it." "Is that possible?" "Astothechargeoffirst degreemurder ..." "Verdict as to count one, we the jury..." "Pressassociationis reporting that singer Amy Winehouse has been found dead in her London apartment." "...andI 'm,I 'mdonewiththe ParisHiltonstory ." "Inthiscountry,beingstupidisno longer considered to be a detriment." "Being stupid is considered to be a virtue in this country." "We reward the stupid in this country." "That's exactly the opposite thing that we should do." "There should be social pressure on people that are willfully ignorant to not be stupid, and instead we reward people..." "We reward stupidity in this country!" "We reward people with multi-million dollar T.V. contracts so that all the other stupid people can sit around and watch how stupid these people are." "It breaks my heart to see a place like this that has so much potential absolutely fucking wasted." "Butthere'sareason." "There'sareason ." "There's a reason for this." "There's a reason education sucks and it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed." "Because the owners of this country don't want that." "I'm talking about the real owners now." "The real owners." "The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions." "They own YOU." "They own everything." "They own and control the corporations, they've long since bought and paid for the senate the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they've got the judges in their back pocket and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear" "They got you by the balls!" "They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying." "Lobbying, to get what they want." "Well we know what they want." "They want more for themselves and less for everybody else." "But I'll tell you what they don't want." "They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking." "They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking." "They're not interested in that." "That doesn't help them." "That's against their interests." "That's right." "They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago." "They don't want that." "You know what they want?" "They want obedient workers." "Obedient workers." "People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime" "and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it and now they're coming for your Social Security money." "They want your fucking retirement money." "They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street." "And you know something?" "They'll get it." "They'll get it all from you, sooner or later because they own this fucking place." "It's a big club." "and you ain't in it!" "Part 2" " The Big Club" "Thinkstarsarehavingallofthe fun?" "Uh... no." "Nopressuretonight." "Thesedays,nobodiesmakingmore  and spending more than the button-down badasses of Wall Street." "We'll tour the hedgerow mega-homes they're buying with all that hedge fund cash..." "WadeCarrington'sthelargestestate in Grenitch, and it's 25 million dollars." "...showyoutheinsanemega-yachtsandjumbo jets paid for with their mind-boggling bonuses..." "I'mjustwonderingnow ,whatdoyou need a commercial size airliner for?" "...andrevealhowbig namecharitiesare just another excuse to flash their cash." "Theyraisedin onenight, 71 million dollars." "Wearetakingfromworkingfamilies who are struggling to survive taking hundreds of billions of dollars, and giving it to millionaires and billionaires." "Ithinkwe haveaclasswar." "I think Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats they're very, very wealthy, they're rich and they're very powerful are using the Republican party to actually escalate a war against the poor and working class of all colors" "but it's more a "class war" than a "civil war" that really has to do with organized greed at the top, and disorganized poor and working people on the bottom." "Weneedto buildabeautifulgranite and bronze monument in our nation's capital to honor American heros." "Unsung American heros and those unsung American heros are, the rich." "Manyhavejobsand workhard , yet they're struggling to survive." "Some people showing up at a homeless shelter in Woodland don't necessarily fit the mold of your typical homeless person." "Theshelterplannedfor  an increase in homeless." "Just not this much, this fast." "She says the slow economy has put many in dire straits." "TrytoimagineanAmerica without rich people." "Rich people contribute a lot to this country." "They pay a disproportionate amount, for all sorts of things that help poor people whether it's food, or whether it's medicine, or whether it's helping send other kids to college." "The rich do a lot of good." "Andwhat'sgoingonnowis, there's this philosophical myth that has been taking Washington by storm." "It's always been around but for some reason recently it's been inflamed." "That, somehow, if these companies that have shirked tax law that have taken a lot of their money offshore so that profits can't even be judged let alone taxed... are somehow, if they get a lower tax rate, going to bring it all back" "create more jobs and, I don't know, fire their accounting staffs and take back their loopholes." "Canyoupindownexactlywhatwouldkeep investors happy, make them feel more confident?" "Uh,that'satoughone." "Um... see, I'm a trader." "I don't really care about that kind of stuff." "I go with what the... if I see an oportunity to make money, I go with that." "So, for most traders it's not about... we don't really care that much how they're going to fix the economy how they're going to fix the whole situation." "Our job is to make money from it." "If a man has an apartment, stacked to the ceiling with newspapers, we call him crazy." "If a woman has a trailer house, full of cats, we call her nuts." "But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish the entire nation we put them on the cover of Fortune magazine and pretend that they're role models." " B. Lester" "Therackingup of wealth...you wouldhave  thought the crisis would have stopped that" "Actually more billionaires emerged in India last year, than ever!" "The doubled last year." "The wealth of the rich in this country has accelerated just last year." "What happened was that leading hedgefund owners got personal remunerations of three billion dollars each in one year." "Now, I thought it was obscene and insane a few years ago when they got 250 million." "But they're now hauling in three billion." "And as a famous statement, I think by Andrew Mellon, was way back..." ""In a crisis" he said, "asset's return to their rightful owners"" "i. e. him" "And that in effect is the plug of the finacial world right now." "NewRule;" "Televisionnetworkshave tostop making shows that try and put a happy ending on America's enormous wealth disparity and instead make a show called "Shine my Shoes, Fuckface"." "Come on!" "This is America where the top 400 people have more money than the bottom 150 million combined!" "If ABC can make a show where millionaires give their money to poor people" "Animal Planet can make a show where pigs grow wings and fly out of Donald Trump's ass." "AmI supposeto be honored?" "Americaricharen'tgivingyou money, they're taking your money." "Between the years 1980 and 2005, 80% of all new income generated in this country went to the richest 1%." "Let me put that in terms that even you fat-ass teabaggers can understand." "Say 100 Americans get together and order a 100 slice pizza." "The pizza arrives, they open the box and the first guy takes 80 slices." "And if someone suggests, "Why don't you just take 79 slices?"" "That's Socialism!" "I know, I know, it's just a T.V. show." "But it does reinforce the stupid idea people have that rich people would love us and share with us if only they got to walk a mile in our cheap, plastic shoes." "But they're the reason the shoe factory moved to China." "We have this fantasy that our interests and the interest of the super-rich are the same." "Like, somehow the rich will eventually get so full that they'll explode and the candy will rain down on the rest of us." "Like they're some kind of pińata of benevolence." "But here's the thing about a pińata, it doesn't open on it's own you have to beat it with a stick." "Therichdo alot of good, and what I'm saying Bill is they don't need to be vilified the way they are in America today." "ThisisWallStreetbitch, you don't belong here!" "I'm your greatest fear!" "The shit that you wish you could be, but are too weak to get here!" "Is it starting to make sense?" "Is it starting to become clear?" "Ourfinancialmarketactively rewards being a giant cunt." "Like a radioactive Ann Coulter who's grown to Godzilla proportions." "Does that not freak anyone out?" "... Pfizer sales reps promoted it illegally, for surgical pain in higher doses." "Uses the FDA had rejected due to safety concerns." "Doctors responded." "Instead of prescribing Ibuprofen at pennies a pill they prescribed Bextra at nearly $3 a pill." "Saleswereverygood." "Youmighthaveheardof"TheYesMen "" "They do social activism pranks on corporations." "For example, last week they announced that General Electric which uses loopholes to avoid taxes was going to give back the 3.2 billion dollars in refunds it got from the government or another time they told the media that Dow Chemical" "would finally be paying the victims of a massive chemical spill millions of dollars in restitution." "Or another time they annouced that director Michael Bay would be giving us all 2 hours of our lives back." "So after these hoaxes, the corporations have to come out and go" ""Oh, actually... that good thing you heard about?" "Yeah, we're totally NOT doing that." "No." "Not at all. "" "Now here's the interesting part." "During the half hour when everyone thinks the hoax is true the company's stock tumbles like crazy." "G.E. lost billions." "Dow lost billions." "This means, we've created a system where companies get massively punished for doing good things for humanity." "So if a corporation announces it will hostilely take over a 50 year old, locally owned company and fire all their employees." "It's given the financial equivelant of a high-five and a reach-around." "If on the other hand it anounces it will give free AIDS medication to the dying people of Ghana then Wall Street knocks it unconscious and draws the word "queer" on its forehead." "Inthisgrainyseminarvideo posted on the file sharing site YouTube a Pittsburg lawfirm, on how to use loopholes to ensure foreign workes can get the jobs instead of Americans." "... and our goal is clearly, NOT to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker." "Here'sthething." "If Wall Street weren't around yet would you create it to be this way?" "Would you say, "Lets make a financial system wherein companies are rewarded"" ""for being piping hot douche-holes."" ""and if one of them does something good for humanity"" ""we'll treat that with suspicion."" ""You announced you're gonna pay the victims of a horrific oil spill?"" ""What are you, Sean Penn?"" ""You're a multi-national." "You can't go around caring about people!"" ""Could you imagine if every company did that?"" ""The whole system would break down!"" ""People would have food and clean water." "There'd be fewer wars, death and hardship!"" ""What kind of world that be!" "?"" ""Not one I want MY trust-fund babies to grow up in... "" "I'mMatthewLeskoand the government's giving away more money than ever before!" "85 billion dollars, to help bank executives take a vacation!" "25 billion dollars to make cars that people don't want to buy!" "600 billion dollars to subsidise sub-prime lending practices that got us in this mess in the first place!" "Who cares about hyper-inflation, crippling debt or a massive tax burden on your grand kids!" "JackAbramhoffmaybethemostnotorious and crooked lobbyist of our time." "He was at the center of a massive scandal of brazen corruption and influence peddling." "As a Republican lobbyist starting in the mid 1990s he became a master at showering gifts on lawmakers in return for their votes on legislation and tax breaks favorable to his clients." "He was so good at it, he took home 20 million dollars a year." "It all came crashing down 5 years ago when Jack Abramhoff pled guilty to corrupting public officials, tax evasion, and fraud and served three and a half years in prison." "Today he's a symbol of how money corrupts Washington." "In our interview tonight, he opens up his playbook for the first time and explains exactly how he used his clients' money to buy powerful friends and influence legislation." "Iwasactuallythinkingofwritingabook,  "The Idiot's Guide to Buying a Congressman"" "as a way to put this all down, but..." "First, I think most congressmen don't feel they're being bought." "Most congressmen I think can, in their own mind, justify the system." "Rationalize..." "Rationalizeit." "Andbythewaywe wanted , as lobbyists, for them to feel that way." "Abramhoffwould provide freebees and gifts looking for favors for his clients, in return." "He'd lavish certain congressmen and senators with access to private jets and junkets to the world's great golf destinations like Saint Andrews in Scotland." "Free meals at his own upscale Washington restaurant and access to the best tickets to all the areas sporting events including two skyboxes at Washington Redskins games." "Ispentoveramilliondollars a year on tickets to sporting events and concerts and what-not at all the venues." "Amilliondollars?" "Yea." "Forthebestseats?" "THEbestseats." "Butthebestway togeta congressional office to do his bidding, he says was to offer a staffer a job that could triple his salary." "Whenwewouldbecomefriendlywith an office and they were important to us and the Chief of Staff was a competent person" "I would say, or my staff would say to him or her at some point" ""You know, when you're done working on the hill"" ""we'd very much like for you to consider coming to work for us."" "Now the moment I said that to them, or any of our staff said that to them" "That was it." "We owned them." "You'reaskingme to trustthe top  one tenth of one percent of wage earners and the politicians that they outright purchase with stewardship of the economy." "You're asking me to trust them to run the economy in such a way that not only benefits them but benefits me and everyone else besides." "Howmanycongressional offices did you actually own?" "Weprobablyhadverystronginfluencein 100 offices at a time." "Comeon..." "No 100offices?" "InthosedaysIwould view that as a failure because that leaves 335 offices that we didn't." "WhenBarackObamaand Iwere literally sitting at a desk in a high rise in Chicago beginning to plan how we would try to get this economy out the ditch literally the first guy I called, was Jon Corzine." "Jon Corzine - 54th Governor of New Jersey former CEO at Goldman Sachs and MF Global" "Net Worth approximately $300 million." "Thesepeoplehavenevergiven me any reason to trust them." "Use a little Google Fu, go and look up white collar corporate crime statistics you know, from 1980 on." "These names show up over, and over, and over and over again for the same shit." "Embezzlement, bribery of public officials, outright theft, tax evasion, misstatements of profits and they do it again, and again, and again and again, and pay billions of dollars in fines and they do it again, and again, and again..." "This is not just an isolated incident or two, this is a pattern." "This is a part of the way they do business." "Part of doing business in America, is breaking the law over and over and over again... and getting caught over and over and over again... and you're asking me to trust these people." "I'mnotheretotalk about plans to deal with this till 2017." "I'm saying we've got a real problem and I'm tired of Republicans and Democrats who either..." "Republians who want to burn the place to the ground and Democrats with all due respect, who want to offer a plan that gets it through the end of their second term of their presidency and then screws me and my kids when it's over." "And until we do that we have to deal with the extraction that is at foot it is the reason the financial markets are behaving the way their behaving that is a mathematical fact!" "This is not some opinion!" "This is a mathematical fact!" "Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America." "Democrats aren't dong it." "Republicans are not doing it." "An entire integrated system; financial system, trading system, taxing system that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now!" "And we're sitting here arguing about whether we should do the four trillion dollar plan that kicks the can down the road for the president for 2017 or burn the place to the ground." "Atthispointinhistory,youcannolonger afford to live in blissful ignorance of the facts." "You can no longer afford to be wrong about this." "The decisions that these people make, the laws that these people break, the money that these people extract from the global economy illegally ...and in some cases legally... everything that they do affects every aspect of your life." "...and, you know the joke is if you want to talk to someone from Goldman Sachs call the treasury department." "I mean, it's just staffed with people who are from Wall Street." "So, it's an area where they really do control both ends of the debate." "You don't really have much choice between the Republicans and Democrats." "You know, you get the Democrats in, you have as many people from Wall Street as with the Republicans." "Maybe more." "So it's certainly a very, very big problem." "Here'sthewayitworks." "It's 10:14 PM, eastern time." "You're gonna get up at 5:30 in the morning tomorrow." "If the kids are sick, forget about it." "I don't care." "Get somebody to take care of them." "That lousy commute that takes you an hour and a half..." "Suck up and do it, don't give me any bologna." "Go to work at a job that you hate, but you're taking the job because you need the money and your boss is a jerk, and you can't stand your coworkers" "I don't wanna hear any complaining." "You have to stay late." "And then make that commute back." "And then feed your kids some garbage that you have that you call food." "And then call it a night and start the next day." "I don't want any back-talk but I want your money." "I'm gonna take your money, and I'm gonna give it to my friends!" "Thereisacapacity to basically fire a politician who disagrees with me by taking funding away from him." "People of the United States of America, your congress is bought!" "Your congress is incapable of making legislation on healthcare, banking, trade or taxes because if they do it they will lose their political funding, and they won't do it!" "And I won't have a country that is run by a bought-congress!" "Whyaren'twe directlyhelping home owners with their debt burden?" "Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy?" "Is this the United States congress, or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs!" "?" "Mynameis MitchMcConnell" "My name is Boehner" "My name is Bush" "My name is Clinton" "My name is Obama" "My name is Reid, Pelosi, Frank, Dodd..." "I'll tell you want to think, what to believe." "You just turn over your money!" "And I'm gonna give it to my buddy over there, Bernanke." "And he's gonna distribute it to all the banks and all the businesses and all the hedge funds." "And they're gonna borrow billions and trillions at zero interest rate." "Part 3" " The Iron Fist" "Doesthegovernmentworkforus or do we work for the government?" "How has the United States changed from a humble, peaceful republic into a police state?" "Tonight, "Freedom vs. Security"." "This past week the United States supreme court told police that they could break down the door of your home if they smell what they think is smoke from the use of Marijuana coming from inside." "Last week the Indiana supreme court told police in that state that they can enter a private home even if they're not looking for evidence of a crime." "And yesterday the Justice Department revealed that" "FBI and local police are executing "sneak and peek" warrants." "They break into your home, seize an item and don't tell you that they've done this for over 18 months." "And they are doing this in ordinary criminal prosecutions not just for the persuit of terrorists, as the law requires." "This is all about the slow loss of personal libery." "Thenumberonepriority of this government and future governments will be to protect the American people against terrorist attack." "Aftertheeventsof9 /11, the Department of Justice came to us in the congress and said..." ""These terrorist succeeded, because we didn't have (we in the government)"" ""did not have sufficient power to have stopped them"" ""and we, therefore need the congress to pass legislation"" ""correcting these deficiencies in previous law"" ""and giving us (the government) more power."" "Sojust6weeksafterthe attack on the World Trade Center congress passed a new law called" ""The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools"" ""Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" act of 2001" "The PATRIOT act." "Sure is the "Axis of Evil" for bad acronyms." "The PATRIOT act is, "An act to deter and punish terrorist acts"" ""in the United States and around the world."" ""to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools,"" ""and for other purposes."" "Other purposes?" "UndertheUSAPATRIOT act, among other things you can now have people who are tried on a military barge off the coast, a U.S. military barge off our coast or some other country." "They could be tried by a military tribunal." "We wouldn't know the charges against them let alone the evidence" "They could be convicted..." "They could be sentanced to death by this military tribunal and thrown overboard and we wouldn't even know their names." "WhenthePATRIOTact was firstsent  to the congress by the Bush administration it came with a request that we hold no hearings on it so that there would be no public input or public discourse." "Imagineifyourfamilywas awakened in the middle of the night by a team of federal officers." "Well that's exactly what happened to a woman and her children in Grandville county." "AmandaLambis in the news room joining us now and Amanda, we understand that because this case falls under the PATRIOT act a lot of the usual rights for defendants, not available here." "That'srightDavid." "The PATRIOT act was created after 9/11." "It allows federal agents to investigate suspected cases of terrorism, swiftly in order to better protect our country." "But one Grandville county mother says it gives the federal government too much leeway." "Her son was taken into federal custody 2 months ago she can't get him out, and she can't get any answers." "According to the United States government this 10th grader who has never been in trouble with the law before is now a suspected terrorist." "Theysaidthathe was being arrested for making bomb threats." "AnnetteLundeby told the officers that someone stole her son's I.P. address and used it to make crank calls through the internet making it look like the calls had originated from her home." "She says the FBI's extensive search of her home turned up nothing." "Quitelyandquickly, congress reauthorized the PATRIOT act last week just before ducking out for the holiday weekend." "The senate passed the bill, 72 to 23." "The house followed suit just hours later passing it 250 to 153." "All in all, more than 80 Democrats supported the bill." "We're going to bring in Jeffery Rosen." "He's a law professor at George Washington University he's also the legal affairs editor at the New Republic." "Jeffery, thanks so much for joining us, really appreciate it." "Let me start with that fundamental question." "Is there something significantly different about this PATRIOT act as opposed to the one during the Bush years?" "Absolutelynot,in factthe threemost  controversial provisions of the PATRIOT act were reauthorized with barely any debate." "These are the provisions that authorize roving wire-taps, the infamous section 215 which allows the government to seize "any tangible thing"" "data, cellphone records, what have you... merely by saying that it's "relevant to a terrorism investigation"." "And then finally, the secret national security letters that also allow the government to seize any data and if you receive this letter you're not even allowed to mention it to anyone else and an investigation in 2007 found" "serious and wide-spread abuse of these letters." "It found there were 140,000 of them issued between 2003 and 2005 many with people with no connection to terrorism." "These are very provisions that Harry Reid and other Democrats properly denounced during the Bush years and this past week as you said, with barely any debate the same people just voted to reauthorize these terrible provisions." "Governmentwasgivingus,  kind of a running tally..." "Therehavebeena total of over 480 people arrested or detained we've arrested or detained, 614 persons we've detained nearly 1000 individuals..." "Hesweptbroadly,hesweptblindly until the number was over 1000 and people started asking questions." "They said "How many of these 1000 people"" ""have been charged with the crimes of September 11th?"" "and the answer was zero." "Then people asked "Well, how many of these people, these suspected terroristists"" ""have been charged with any crime related to terrorism?"" "and the answer was zero." "Those were not good answers from the government's perspective so what did the government do?" "In early November it annouced" ""We no longer will give out a daily tally."" ""It's too difficult for us to give out a daily tally."" "It wasn't difficult for them, when they thought it sent the message that, "We're doing something to fight terrorism"" "but when it started to send the message" ""We're locking up lots of people who aren't even charged with terrorism"" "they just stopped telling us how many people were detained." "Mostcongressmembersadmitthat  they never even read it." "Itisan immutable law of the universe that if you give government power it uses it." "Butinreality,our  liberties have been on decline from almost the moment of the conception of this great country." "The hateful "Alien and Sedition" acts, which criminalized free speech that was critical of the government were inacted in the 18th century by the same generation indeed, in some cases the same people who adopted the first admendment with its iconic language that" ""congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech"" "Those laws expired, when Jefferson refused to enforce them but two generations later another president would argue that he could arrest state officials and newspaper editors with whom he had political differences and two generations after that the government enacted the espionage act of 1917" "which made it a crime to speak out against World War 1 or to oppose the draft." "And two generations after that" "F.D.R. arrested Japanese Americans and Italian Americans just because of their nationalities and the supreme court let them get away with it." "And two generations after that the war on drugs was prosecuted to distract us from the disaster in Vietnam and the economic destruction brought about by wage and price controls and the rejection of the gold standard." "Each of these assaults on freedom used the previous assault as a legal justification." "Thewarin Iraqmay beover  but America is still fighting its so-called "war on terror"." "U.S. president Barack Obama says he wouldn't block a new security bill, which for the first time writes into law the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay even American citizens." "It'svery,verynoxious..." "Very, very reminiscent of the "Emergency Regulations"" "introduced in Nazi Germany in 1933." "It goes way beyond the "War Powers" act and it's meant to intimidate people to make sure that people don't act up or speak out." "U.S.congresspassedabill  which repeals "Posse Comitatus"" "which means, that we have now institutionalized and codified marial law." "Right now, the battle against terrorism involves all of us." "Everybody in the country is a potential terrorist." "And the words that they used in there to bring everybody in as a potential terrorist is "any associated forces"" "which means that if you happen to visit a website or happen to attend a meeting... happen to do one association you can be accused of being a terrorist and the bill says you have "no right to a lawyer"." "And this president, just about a year ago announced that some of these "bad people", even though they're American citizens don't deserve even charges that they can now be assassinated." "Thevotewas93to7." "So only 7 senators object to the literal evisceration of the fifth amendment." "Someonemissingfingers on their hands, is a suspect." "Someone who has guns..." "Somebody who has ammunition..." "Someone who has more than 7 days of food in their house..." "We'retalkingaboutthe  military arresting citizens and then you disappear forever with no trial for no reason." "And they say they can kill you if they want and torture you or have a military trial." "Whatever they want." "I mean this is, this is..." "This is the royal flush." "This is the "crčme de la crčme"." "This is the Mike Tyson in his prime of boxers." "The Babe Ruth of Baseball." "You sit here and you look at this and it is so mind blowing" "and it's happened, and now they're just going to slowly roll it out, and they'll use it on examples of "turbaned brown people" so it'll be ok..." "Radicalchangeis immediatelynoticeable not just when it is radical but when it is disruptive." "But if it happens slowly, and in steps if it happens in degrees eventually the radical change will have happened and we will not have noticed it at all." "Theinternetis oneof the United States most robust and growing industries." "It enables free and open communication among billions and it's been the backbone of protests around the world." "But a new bill proposes we give the power to censor the internet to the entertainment industry." "Yougotto careabout this because SOPA is next." "It's coming." "What that is, if you don't know it's corporate censorship." "That's what it is." "It means if they see fit the government can shut down your entire website." "because you have copyrighted material on it including links." "They can sue you." "You will technically be a felon." "If your daughter posts a video of her lip-syncing to Michael Jackson, or whatever she can be sued for millions of dollars and is now a felon." "Federallawenforcement and national security aiming to get new regulations that would make it easier for them to wire-tap internet communications." "So that includes email, facebook, skype, and other sites so how can the U.S. promote internet freedom in other countries yet restrict those same freedoms here at home?" "Someamongstthosewho had been campaigning against SOPA and PIPA did not know the U.S. government already had the authority to shut down entire websites, and in fact has excersised that authority on numerous occasions." "Late last year, a number of nations signed a new global copyright agreement known as "The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement"" "or ACTA signatories include the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea and 22 member states of the European Union." "Theproblemis thatit'svaugeenough that abuses can happen." "Theseactshavepotentially disastrous consequences for things that we enjoy doing." "It's not just about taking down "rogue sites"." "It has far more dangerous implications." "The fact of the matter is the vast majority of people debating it have no idea what it is." "They don't have any idea how to use the internet, for one thing" "They have freely admitted that!" "It's like putting toddlers at the controls of a 747 but not just "a" 747 EVERY 747, 777, Airbus A320, every aircraft in the world." "Do you think that's a good idea?" "NO!" "Nowit'stempting to stop the story here and conclude that the problem is that lawmakers are either clueless or evil or possibly evilly clueless and just leave it there which is not a very satisfying place to go because it's fundamentally a council of dispair." "Peoplewhoseenothingwrong with restricting internet freedoms" "I don't think their primary interest right now is being able to shut down access." "In fact, I think they actually like the idea of us using as many social networks as possible." "Because what they want to do is, they want to eavesdrop." "Actually let people say as much as they want then let us watch, let us collect it and then let us do whatever we want with that information whether that's indefinite detention or whether that's shutting down websites" "Iftherewastrust throughout the system" "ACTA wouldn't be scary." "There's no trust, that's why it's scary." "Thepreponentsof SOPA,the  "Motion Picture Association of America"" "circulated a memo citing research that" "SOPA would probably work because it uses the same measures as are used in" "Syria," "China, and Uzbekistan..." "These measures are effective in those countries and so they would work in America too." "The fact that this will be a dismal failure over and over and over again will just make them try harder at ineffective remedies." "Andallthesepeoplethat donotcare they say they don't care well guess what, mush-head..." "It's your fault we're in this predicament to begin with." "We can't afford to talk about football anymore, ok?" "But you have to let them know, and they're going to start caring when their wife dissappears and their friends are gone and their kid is a felon and their business website was taken down..." "They're going to care." "This is something we have to care about." "We have to wake up." "Itisan immutable law of the universe that if you give government power it uses it." "Wakeupstupid,oryour fucked!" "Haveyouevernoticed that the government always claims that when it does these things, it does so in the name of" ""safety"" "When is the last time you heard the government give as a basis for its behavior" ""personal freedom"?" "Some will say "Come on Judge, this is America." "We're free."" "And I would say "There are none who are so enslaved..."" ""...as those who falsely believe themselves to be free."" "Thisisan openmessagetopolice to the military to TSA" "Homeland Security and to members of every other enforcement arm of the government." "I know that most of you chose the life in uniform because you love your country." "Because you believed in what that uniform stood for." "Because you genuinely wanted to serve and protect." "But I also know that deep down inside you sense that something has gone terribly wrong." "You've watched with the rest of us as elected officials have legislated our constitutional rights away piece by piece." "You've watched as the state surveillance apparatus has expanded like a cancer through the heart of the nation." "And you've seen the corruption that become more blatant with every passing year." "I can understand why you haven't wanted to acknowledge the implications of what you're witnessing." "To face the reality of what's happening would mean admitting that you've been betrayed." "And it would mean coming to terms with the fact that you are working for criminals." "I don't envy your position." "I know your job depends on following orders." "And I know you have families to support and bills to pay and I know that if you stand up you could lose everything." "But what you need to understand is that, continuing to submit to unconstitutional and immoral orders will not protect you from whats coming." "You may tell yourself that you can draw your line in the sand later that there's a certain point where you'll say no." "But in reality, you crossed the line a long time ago." "You're standing on the wrong side of history right now." "You are already participating in the destruction of this country and the trampling of our rights... of your childrens' rights... and your grandchildrens' rights." "You are the enforcement arm of a criminal enterprise." "You are a servant of a rapidly expanding police state and you DO have a choice." "I'm not telling you this to condemn you." "I'm telling you this because we, the people desperately need you to take a stand." "We desperately need you to have the courage to face your commanding officers and tell them, "No, I didn't sign up for this."" ""No, this isn't right."" ""No, I will not obey these unlawful orders."" "You took an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." "It's time to start taking that oath seriously." "Whyareyouhuringthesepeople!" "?" "It doesn't make any sense!" "It doesn't make any sense!" "How do you sleep at night?" "!" "There is no honor in this!" "There is no honor in this!" "There is no honor in this, man!" "Solookman,that'sthefuckingjob." "The job is, we agreed, that guy gets the gun and the flashing lights and you listen to him. "Yes sir / No Sir"" "and that means you're a good citizen and you're not trying to cause any trouble." "And in turn, he doesn't take advantage of this power that's presented to him by this willingness for people to obey and he doesn't automatically assume that everybody OWES it to him... and that's the problem with older cops that you see" "punching people in these Occupy Wall Street crowds." "They've been involved in law enforcement for 30 years and you have to listen to them." "You know..." "The whole things disgusting." "It's really disgusting." "It's like, these cops are forced everyday to go out there and try to combat this ever growing thing that shows no signs of weakening." "In fact, shows signs of gaining momentum and strength." "And that's why all these actions are being taken to try to supress it because they go, "Well, we've got to stop this now"" ""because right now it's 30,000 people."" ""What the fuck do we do when it's 300,000 people out there?"" ""Guess what, 300,000 people are going to come through those doors"" ""and they're going to start throwing people out windows."" "You know, and I don't think they will." "I mean, it hasn't been a violent movement so far but that's what they would do if they had 300,000 people." "If you're Mayor Bloomberg or if you're one of these guys that owns some giant hedge fund and you've made billions of dollars just raping people your whole life and then all of the sudden, you know" "you picture what you would do if you were all those people." "You would think, "those people are going to get me."" ""They're going to come get me."" "They'regoingto stormthe gates." "Eveniftheystaynon-violent these people are never going to accept that because they're always going to assume that human nature is always violent so they're going to push these people back before it ever gets to a point where they can't control it." "You know that Chase paid the cops $4.6 million made a huge donation to the cops." "Ofcourse." "Isn'tthatridiculous?" "Doyouthinkthat all this is leading up to a protest, or getting the troops back here or, like, all of this is just going to lead to something like a new "Hands Accross America" or a new "We Are the World"?" "That'ssonotwhat'sgoingonhere." "What's going on here is some "overthrow the government" type shit." "That's what's going on here." "You know.. this is the only time in our life that I've ever seen this." "Never seen anything even remotely close to it." "People saying "Hey, this system right now doesn't work AT ALL."" "Part 4" " The Awakening" "Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world." "For indeed, that's all who ever have." " Margaret Mead" "Wewillnotbesilent!" "We will not obey!" "We will not let our government destroy our humanity!" "Ifyoulookedatyoungblacks and young whites with a discerning eye... and careful hearing... they have been telling us and we would not listen!" "Ayearago,thousandsof Egyptians shocked the world when they took to Cairo's Tahrir Square." "Fast forward 365 days and the iconic square is packed again." "Youknow,they'rebeginingto understand that the game is up." "And yet, in their desperation to preserve their dream" "They want to remove any remaining traces of Democracy from the system." "Yearsofangerand frustration spilling over in the Romanian capital." "What began as a protest against healthcare reform has widened into mass protests against the government." "Friday'sprotestsculinates a week of numerous mass-rallies accross Poland arevolution." "Thesepeople are also standing for change." "Mywagesdidn'tgoup, but prices went up!" "Gas goes up!" "Milk goes up!" "Trains go up!" "How am I suppose to live?" "WallStreet,andthe bankerclass,the people who actually run this country... they have a blueprint." "And it's written in all of their Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman textbooks." "Their blueprint, is the destruction of the future of this generation." "Thousandsofpeopleare out  marching here in Santiago today." "It's about people fed up with the inequalities of the current economic system." "ItishappeninginSyria." "It is happening in Clapham." "It's happening in Liverpool, and that is the nature of the historical moment!" "Myinterestsis in  reclaiming human consciousness that's autonomous." "That is our organic, natural, evolutionary place." "We are not designed to be following orders." "We are not designed to have authority figures above us or submissive people below us." "That is not natural." "It is not normal and it's certainly not healthy." "Weareat apivotal,pivotal evolutionary moment in human history." "And, we're clearly witnessing biological and cultural evolutionary collisions." "I don't know how it's going to shake out." "Thewealthyin theUnitedStates are worried about global unrest." "They're investing in arming their yachts." "They have planes and cars with military-style security features..." "They'restartingto buyPredators." "Drones." "Ok?" "They're not armed yet, they're just for spying..." "Oh that's great." "Thiswasmeanttobethefirst post-ideological generation, right?" "This was meant to be the generation that never thought of anything bigger than our facebook profiles and our T.V. screens." "This was meant to be the generation where the only thing Saturday night meant was X-Factor." "I think now, that claim is quite ridiculous." "We are now the generation at the heart of the fight back." "We are now the generation that will stand with everyone whose fighting back!" "Humanitymarcheson !" "You can fight it, or fight for it." "When we say "revolution"" "we say it with love." "They'regivingout leaflets to the public where they say that they want to see the money market system replaced" "By a Resource Based Economy where everyones needs are provided for, free." "BecauseWE'VEgottositaroundin this shit for the next 70 years, alright?" "Who do you think has to sit here breathing the tained air eating the mutated fish watching the vetted reality shit on T.V." "create a nation of malignant imaginations..." "It's us, alright?" "We've got to sit here in this rancid bathwater..." "You know, this is a revolution." "This may not be a revolution in the traditional sense but this is a revolution of the mind." "Wehaveto thinkasa humanspecies." "We have to think as homosapiens." "We have to create global consciousness if we're going to move this through an industrial revolution and create a new civilization... an empathic civilization." "Maybe it's not always about trying to fix something broken." "Maybe it's about starting over and creating something better." "What we're seeing here is a defining moment for the human race." "Wewillnotwaitanothermomentinfear  to stand up for what we know to be right." "It is time we start meeting oppression, with resistance." "Hellocitizensof theworld." "We are Anonymous." "Thehackergroup Anonymous is fighting back temporarily taking out several government websites butthehacker group called Anonymous was secretly listening and recording the hackivist organization Anonymous has announced plans to..." "TheycallthemselvesAnonymous." "They are hackers on steriods callsitselfAnonymous..." "So who are these people?" "Anonymoushasno  leaders to be targeted." "Anonymous has no headquarters to maintain." "And to become a member you will not be required to fill out a questionnaire." "They'rethisshadowyand motleygroup group of hackers and activists who answer to no one, drawn together by a love of internet mischief." "Nowthey'reevolvinginto this movement of social change a real driving force behind the Wall Street occupiers." "No surprise, they're hated by corporate security but also, hunted by the FBI." "Thelabel,Anonymous, is only a symbol that embodies the collective actions of many autonomous intividuals fighting against the injustice of the current system and any individuals or organizations that hide in its shadow and exploit the world." "Anonymous,andalot ofother movements, regard the internet as sort of independant from any government and they regard governments interfering in the free flow of the internet as stepping outside of their jurisdiction." "Wearethe21stcenturymilitia." "We are a part of humanity's developing social immune system." "We are those who have taken up arms to defend ourselves and others, against those who abuse their positions of power people who do not yet understand that there are no individuals there is only humanity." "If you believe, as we do, that the current system is a burden to humanity then you are already a member." "Wearen'tagroup, we're an idea." "We're an expression of the anger that every person feels when they see injustice." "It'sa darkanddisturbingvision." "A world where riot police attack with impunity." "Where democracy is corrupted by greed and dissent is crushed." "That's how Anonymous sees America and they say, that's why they're fighting back." "Wearelegion." "We do not forgive." "We do not forget." "Ourweaponis notagun but our ability to operate with efficiency in the digital realm." "Our ammunition is not bullets but information." "And our protection comes from the fact that we have grown out of the fabric of humanity itself." "We cannot be stopped, because we are not restricted by your rules." "We cannot be beaten, because we are not playing your game." "We are the first stage of a new human evolution born out of the collective human consciousness and augmented by the technologies of our time." "Each of us has our own path." "But each of us share the same goal." "A free humanity." "The corrupt fear us." "The honest support us." "The heroic join us." "Thepeopleshouldnot  fear their government." "The government should fear the people." "We, are the people." "The people are legion." "The people will not forget." "The people will not forgive." "Expect us." "MrCruise." "Comeon, bea gentleman." "Give me a sign on it..." "Yes!" "This is cool, I love it." "Oh thank you so much!" "Thank you!" "Andnowwe havetotake that  information and that awareness and that knowledge, and build a foundation for a new way." "A new life." "Hi,mynameisMarcin." "Farmer... technologist..." "I was born in Poland." "Now in the U.S." "I started a group called "Open Source Ecology"" "We've identified the 50 most important machines that we think it takes for modern life to exist things from tractors... bread ovens... circuit makers..." "Then we set out to create an open-source, do-it-yourself version that anyone can build and maintain at a fraction of the cost." "We call this the "Global Village Construction Set"." "Problem" "Lack of freely shared information unnecessarily prohibits economic distribution and general prosperity by keeping human inovation in the hands of only a few while creating artificial material scarcity for most." "Solution" "The GVCS is an open enterprise platform that allows for true collaborative development of key productive technologies that foster the use of best-practices accessible to everyone." "We are accelerating the inevitable." "A future where everyone has access to economic best-practices." "The 'Global Village Construction Set' is an open source enterprise kernel consisting of the 50 key industrial machines that reinvent local production." "bringing wealth back to communities." "The GVCS is phase one of the Open Source Ecology platform that includes an open-source CAD/CAM solution to realize the promise of digital fabrication." "Phase two is the use of the GVCS to create open-source industries, and sustainable communities virally and world-wide in parallel to the global economic status-quo and urban sprawl." "This is brought about by ethical supporters and entrepreneurs using the GVCS platform." "Phase three is a new world of individuals and communities living beyond the constraints of artificial material scarcity." "Why Now" "We all know the world is cracking at the seams." "Despite having access to the most amazing productive technology, long hours, low job satisfaction, poor distribution of wealth remain persistant global problems." "The new paradigm requires an unprecedented level of collaboration necessary to make a comprehensive civilization starter-kit kernel which was impossible, prior to the digital age." "Market Size" "The GVCS technology spans multiple industry sectors from agraculture, construction, energy production, and industry." "Our competative advantage is a 24/7 development and improvement cycle around the world via open-source collaboration not to mention, equipment created with lifetime design and at a typical 8x cost reduction than industry standards." "Development Roadmap" "Presently, we have completed four beta product releases:" "The Automated Compressed Earth-Brick Press" "Multi-purpose Tractor" "Soil Pulveriser and Hydrolic Power Unit" "By April 1st, 2012 we will release 13 further, beta-stage products in the microfactory, energy production, and construction areas." "By the end of 2012 we will complete the remaining 33 products after an agressive field testing and product documentation campaign involving a network of remote collaborators." "By April 1st, 2012 we will recruit a project co-founder, CEO, and CTO to the core team to develop strategy, production, and to manage technological development." "The OSE Fellows Program will begin April 1st, 2012;" "Individuals who we train and fund to produce a beta product release and open business model on a time-scale of 6 months." "2012 will also be spent largely developing standards and a platform to make this one of the most collaborative projects in the world." "We are a distributive enterprise, movement entrepreneur incubator." "Movement entrepreneurs are tech-savvy individuals organizing world progress by economic development." "a distributive enterprise is an enterprise which maintains replication as one of its core values by publishing its own trade secrets openly." "At heart, we develop open source technology we train entrepeneurs via dedicated educational programs but since we are now in startup we have initial trainees participate in both research and development, and production runs." "Open source hardware is the next trillion dollar industry." "We are not saying that we will be a huge corporation to acheive this but instead, that we will generate this value as a distributed movement." "Understanding Peak Oil" "Oil is a limited resource." "Oil takes hundreds of millions of years to form." "Peak oil is when oil extraction rates max out and begin to decline." "Rob Hopkins of transition network is seeking solutions to the problem of peak oil." "ItstartedwhenIwasworking in Kinsale in Ireland at the "further education college" there and we started looking around for there must be places who are using permaculture principles and sustainability thinking, systems thinking," "to work out how cities and towns and communities are going to get through peak oil sucessfully." "And we couldn't find any, so we just improvised and did a 20 year plan for the town of Kinsale, based on the idea that where we got to in the end, could be better than where we start from now." "Today, the transition network inspires and connects thousands of people worldwide who seek to reduce carbon emissions at a local level." "Ithinkwhat'schangedforus really over the last couple of years has been, firstly, how the idea of peak oil has moved from being largely a fringe idea to something now talked about by a number of governments" "and a lot of leading organizations." "It's really moved from being considered a very odd kind of idea to part of the political mainstream now, really." "This is a process that you start, and you catalyze and you have no idea where it's going to go or what's going to come out of it." "What does a local authority look like whose development plan for the next 20 years is based on the end of the age of cheap oil?" "...on cutting carbon by 90% a year like we actually are going to need to?" "What does that look like?" "It's an enormous question." "But what's really exciting is today, I think we've sowed the seeds of people starting to ask those questions." "The transition model has spread quickly around the world." "There are now 320 official initiatives in 14 countries and thousands more in development." "Itwasreallyfascinatingwhen  about 2 years in to transition and it really started to gain some traction." "People started coming along and saying..." ""You know, Transition is really a fascinating peice of design work."" "Transition IS a design project." "When faced with with peak oil and climate change and the need for collective community responses to that maybe we need to look at this as being a collective design exercise." "How do we disign our way through from where we are now to where we want to get?" "The Transition Model" "There'sa lotof value,Ithink, in acknowledging the work that people do like this." "When you're actually doing work that comes to be seen as innovative, or pioneering, or whatever... it's generally, the people who do that have ploughed a fairly lonely furrow for quite a long time." "So when will peak oil happen?" "There is still a lot of debate on the exact date but one thing is certain..." "No matter what else happens, this is the century in which we must learn to live without fossil fuels." "It'saboutthere-writingofstories collective cultural stories." "The myth, the narratives that we tell ourselves." "The idea that we can just carry on as we are that technology can solve everything or that everything is just going to collapse and unravel very quickly" "You know, what we DON'T have are the stories about the generation, the culture, that looks something like peak oil and climate change square in the face, and responds with compassion, and creativity, and ingenuity." "That's the story that Transition is trying to tell." "Oil is conserved, demand shrinks" "Clean, renewable alternatives are put in place" "Sustainable local agriculture" "Fewer cars on the road and a sustainable and healthy future." "Rob Hopkins Transition Network" "The Zeitgeist Movement" "Hi,mynameisPeterJoseph" "I'm the founder of a social sustainability organization called the Zeitgeist Movement which, in form, has about 1000 chapeters accross 70 countries and basically we're all working together to try to bridge some differences about economic problems that are working its way accross the world" "social destabilization, unemployment, debt crisis, environmental destabilization... and this community is attempting to bring new sustainable ideas to the forefront, to revolutionize economy as we know it hence revolutionize "human values" as we know it" "so we can try to create a new way of life." "It's a grassroots movement with that basic premise." "Thismovementis essentiallyasocialmovement." "It's not..." "It's easier to describe what it isn't, really." "It's not a political movement." "We don't really recognize politics as a viable option in addressing the issues that we talk about." "It's a voluntary social movement." "A grassroots social movement that centers on ACTUAL sustainability." "We need a society that functions on a physical level that actually has advanced, intelligent, automated to the most degree you can... systems." "to enable efficient transport, efficient energy usage, efficient land usage..." "Part of our understandings are that we need sustainable city systems very much like those spoken about in the Venus Project, or by Buckminster Fuller or many other futuristic city planners." "So, that's sort of the first level." "We understand that Earth is a finite resource." "Earth is actually entirely A resource." "We think about wave, and wind, and tidal..." "It's in fact, one thing." "This is the resource we're on." "This is the rock that we're on, that's hurtling through space and we need to live on it, we need to continue to live on it and as well as possible." "WhydoIliketheZeitgeistmovement?" "Why do I advocate for the Zeitgeist Movement?" "It's very simple." "I love this." "Whatwecurrentlyrefertoas Capitalism under various guises around the world and suggested in various doses and concoctions in the prescripted manuals and political philosophy and economic texts the monetary based price system is a means of coordinating and organizing so-called economic activity" "of consumers, producers, and owners of resources is ultimately unsustainable." "The reason for this is that it's essentially predicated upon linear consumption and you cannot run a linear system on a finite planet." "JointheZeitgeistMovement, it is exciting the people that you meet are fantastic, they think like you and we're out to make a difference on something that really matters." "...itwas,whateveryou neededtodo to getmoney." "and what's happened now with the value system disorder is that, since that's the persuit, that's the devine drive of the system... that's what status is defined by, that's what your success is defined by... that everyone can blindly look the other way with how much destruction is occuring in the world" "AndwhenIlookatourspecies, I just see one that's divided." "We're SO in our infancy." "We're having to learn the most basic lessons in the 21st century." "The Zeitgeist Movement and the Resource Based Economy doesn't go like that." "It advocates that the Earth is the common heritage of everyone to share." "And not for us to all just dive in and take what we want but for us to intelligently manage the planet." "Themonetarysystemhas cometoan end." "It was very useful for a while, I've not been anti-money in all of history." "It's changed its usage in history." "You can't be "blanket anti-money" and still understand the history of money." "But we've obviously come to the end of that paradigm now because now it isn't serving us anymore and that was the goal to begin with." "It was to ensure that there was enough labor, so there were enough resources, so that we have the system, so that people are ok." "TheZeitgeistMovement, from my perspective it's all about equality, it's all about preserving our planet and it's all about thriving on human creativity and innovation." "Infact,thetruthisthisentire sytem of cyclical consumption that we have in this country is the cause of all of our problems." "Zeitgeist:" "Addendumwasmindboggling." "Dots began to connect." "Nowisthattime, to move to that next level." "IadvocatetheZeitgeistMovement, the Venus Project and a Resource Based Economy because they represent the only viable alternatives to the corrupt and unsustainable system that we have today." "Peoplearen'tfollowingthisbecause Jacque Fresco is their version of Jesus or because Peter Joseph is a good public speaker..." "They have looked at it, and decided that it makes sense to them." "...basicallytryingto getpeoplefrom aroundtheworld to discuss why, in a very concise manner they advocate the Zeitgeist Movement, the Venus Project, and of course a Resource Based Economy." "Todayaroundtheworld, many people often say" ""I wish we could live like Americans."" "I know you've heard this before." "Well, no." "Conspicuous consumption patterns of the American culture should be despised by all other countries on this planet." "We have 5% of the population and we consume 30% of the worlds resources." "It's insane." "In a resource based economy, where be base our production and distribution on physical references starting with the carrying capacity of the Earth... where we streamline our labor expression towards things that have a long-term social return... where we get rid of the cancer known as the financial system" "and start to share our resources in a diligent way working togther, avoiding the false values of materialism and consumption pushed upon our culture we find that we can provide a high quality of life for everyone on this planet" "while eliminating all of the central reasons for war, poverty, destitution, violence, criminal behavior, neurosis..." "It would be the dawn of a world we could actually label a civilization and if that isn't a goal worth working towards" "I don't know what is." "Thefuturerestsinourhands ." "Yours and mine." "It rests in the capacity, which we totally have as a species to make radical shifts when our survival is necessary." "And maybe WE are the people who will emerge to create an alternative that enables our species to survive in peace on the planet otherwise we WILL NOT survive." "The Venus Project Beyond Politics, Poverty and War" "TheVenusProject is the redesign of a culture in which the elements that comprise the culture are different." "What the Venus Project has to offer is a way of life without ambiguity to change the relationship between people." "When you break the patterns that have been established by existing society you begin to move people in a new direction." "As long as there are prisons, police, armies, navies... we are not civilized." "When the world joins together and agrees to use the Earth intelligently that'll be the beginning of the civilized age." "People say "Well, the trouble with you Jacque, is you want to give people things for nothing."" "Let me tell you a little about "things for nothing"." "Just being born in any technical country today you've got the lights, the telephone, the washing machine, air transportation..." "You had nothing to do with that." "You got it for nothing." "To build a way of life, worthy of man to humanize society it is neither Communist, Fascist, nor Socialist nor Democratic." "To break away from the artificiality, the regimentation... that dominates our society today we feel that machines ought to do the filthy, or the repetitious, or the boring jobs." "That man has to be free to persue the higher things." "The higher possibilities of man." "All of the marvels of science and technology all of the electronic and mechanical wonders are just so many millions of tons of junk unless it enhances the lives of men." "The reason we emphasize machines and technologies is to free man, to find the meaning of their own existence and lives." "Our problems today are not political." "Our problems are technical." "Everything that you have... your radio, your telephone, your airplanes, your transportation... is all technical." "If it wasn't for technology, you'd be pulling boats along the Volga river." "It's technology that moves things forward." "Human beings are not self-operating entities." "We are operated by many resonant forces." "Of course many of us are not aware of that." "It looks like we're perfectly free making our own decisions." "I know I think for myself." "I'm sure you do." "That's an illusion." "You're indoctrinated to a set of values that are unreal." "Indoctrination continuously!" "And then all of us together sing "we are free"" "..let's go, "we are free"." "Whatweareintroducingisanewmethod of organizing and running society based on the methods of science and technology applied to the social system." "Youhaveasociety that's a predatory society." "If you get your car banged up, somebody makes money." "You get a toothache, the Dentist makes $1500." "So everybody makes money on every form of misery." "There's no final architecture, or final frontiers, or final city." "Even the best city I design will be a straight-jacket to the kids of the future." "They'll design their own cities." "I don't want to follow anybody and I don't want anybody to follow me." "If what I say makes sense, do it." "If it doesn't, get off." "To build a following where people admire you, that's dangerous." "Trying to solve your problems politically by electing this political party or that political party..." "ALL politics is immersed in corruption." "We have the brains, the know-how, the technology, and the feasibility to build an entirely new civilization." "The choice lies with you." "There are no negro problems, or Polish problems, or Jewish problems, or Greek problems or Women's problems... they're human problems." "We could either develop paradise on Earth or oblivion... wipe ourselves out." "Only the future will tell." "What you do to make the future." "Part 5" " The Future" "There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind." " C.S. Lewis" "Thetremendousprogress we've made over the last century by a series of forces, are in fact accelerating!" "To a point that we have the potential in the next three decades to create a world of abundance." "Now, I'm not saying we don't have our set of problems..." "Climate crisis, species extinction, water and energy shortage we surely do." "And as humans, we are far better at seeing the problems way in advance but ultimately, we knock them down." "Underpinning much of this is technology and of late, exponentially growing technologies." "We truly are living in an extraordinary time and many people forget this!" "This is Moore's Law over the last hundred years." "I want you to notice two things from this curve." "Number one, how smooth it is." "Through good time and bad time, war time and peace time, recession, depression, and boom time..." "This is the result of faster computers being used to build faster computers." "It doesn't slow for any of our grand challenges." "And also, even though it's plotted on a logarithm curve on the left it's curving upward." "The rate at which the technology is getting faster is itself, getting faster." "And on this curve, riding on Moore's Law are a set of extraordinarily powerful technologies available to all of us." ""Cloud Computing", what my friends at Autodesk call "Infinite Computing"..." "Sensors and networks..." "Robotics... 3D Printing, which is the ability to democratize and distribute personalized production around the planet." "Synthetic biology..." "fuels, vaccines and foods..." "Digital medicine..." "nanomaterials... and A.I." "The world is going to change with or without you... get ready." "Scienceandtechnologyare  propelling us forward at accelerating rates" "That'sright,andifwedon't understandit and by "we" I mean the general public" "If it's something that... "Oh, I'm not good at that." "I don't know anything about it."" "Then who is making all of the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children live in?" "Just some members of congress?" "Science is more than a body of knowledge." "It's a way of thinking." "A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility." "If we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us that something is true to be skeptical of those in authority then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along." "It's a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on." "It wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a constitution ...or a Bill of Rights..." "The people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education otherwise we don't run the government." "The government runs us." "Mysenseis , the problem lies with the fact that our business leaders, our government leaders and for that matter the rest of us we are continuing to rely on 18th and 19th century ideas about human nature and the human journey" "that were spawned at the begining of the market era the nation-state era and at that period of time we had a great discussion" "The Enlightenment." "John Locke, the great political philosopher of the Enlightenment" "He said "Look, babies are born tabula rasa." "Blank slates."" ""They're not born in sin."" "But he did leave a little opening." "He said "However, there is a predisposition to acquire property."" "Somebody should have caught him on that." "Scarcityiscontextual and technology is a resource liberating force." "The cost of solar dropped 50% last year." "Last month MIT put out a study showing that by the end of this decade in the sunny parts of the United States solar electricity will be 6 cents per kilowatt hour compared to 15 cents as a national average." "And if we have abundant energy we also have abundant water because we live on a water planet." "We live on a planet 70% covered by water." "Yes, 97.5% is salt water, 2% is ice and we fight over a half of a percent of the water on this planet but here too, there is hope and there is technology coming online" "NOT 10-20 years from now, right now." "and the conversation I had with Dean Kamen this morning one of the great D.I.Y. innovators, I'd like to share with you..." "His technology called SlingShot that many of you may have heard of it's the size of a small dorm room refrigerator." "It's able to generate 1000 liters of clean drinking water a day out of ANY source." "Salt water, polluted water, latrine... at less than 2 cents a liter." "This is the kind of innovation that exists today." "Ishouldliketohelp everyoneifpossible." "Jew, Gentile... black man, white..." "We all want to help one another, humans beings are like that." "We want to live by each others happiness, not be each others misery." "We don't want to hate and despise one another." "In this world there's room for every one, and the good Earth is rich and can provide for every one." "A way of life could be free and beautiful." "But we have lost the way." "Greed has poisoned mens' souls." "Has barricaded the world with hate." "Has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed." "Inthelast10years under the radar there's been some very interesting developments in evolutionary biology, neurocognitive science, child development research, and many other fields which is beginning to challenge some of these long-held shibboleths that we have" "about human nature and the meaning of the human journey." "This was the dominant frame of reference:" "Utilitarian, self-interested, materialistic." "It really challenges these assumptions." "And with that, the institutions that we have created based on those assumptions." "Our educational institutions, our business practices, our governing instituions, etcetera..." "So here's the question." "We know that consciousness changes in history." "The way our brain is wired today is not the way a medieval serf's brain would be wired and their brain wouldn't be the same as the wiring of a forager/hunter 30 thousand years ago." "So the question I asked at the beginning of this study 6 years ago or this book is, how does consciousness change in history?" "Is it possible that we human beings, who are soft-wired for empathic distress is it possible we could actually extend our empathy to the entire human race as an extended family and to our fellow creatures as part of our evolutionary family" "and to the biosphere as our common community?" "We'regoingto hit70% penetrationofcellphones  in the developing world by the end of 2013." "Think about it." "That a Masai warrior on a cell phone in the middle of Kenya has better mobile com than president Reagan did 25 years ago." "And if they're on a smart phone on Google they've got access to more knowledge and information than president Clinton did 15 years ago." "They're living in a world of information and communication abundance that no one could have ever predicted!" "Here is the biggest force for bringing about a world of abundance." "I call it, the rising billion." "In 2010 we had just short of 2 billion people online, connected." "By 2020, that's going from 2 billion to 5 billion internet users." "3 billion new minds who have never been heard from before are connecting to the global conversation." "And they will get healthier by using a tricorder and they'll become better educated by using the Khan Academy a by literally being able to use 3D printing and infinite computing more productive than ever before." "So what could 3 billion rising, healthy, educated, productive members of humanity bring to us?" "How about a set of voices that have never been heard from before." "What about giving the oppressed, wherever they might be the voice to be heard and the voice to act for the first time ever" "What will these 3 billion people bring?" "What about contributions we can't even predict." "Butifwe havegonefrom  empathy in blood ties to empathy in religious associational ties to empathy based on national identification is it really a big stretch to imagine the new technologies allow us to connect our empathy to the human race at large, in a single biosphere?" "Today we're in a globally connected world." "Our youngsters can begin to empathize across all the traditional lines." "We almost can grasp the possibility of global empathy." "The new communications the ICT revolution, is open-source, flat, peer to peer, here's the key word..." "It's distributed." "Meaning 2 billion people can put a little utensil in their hand and they can send their own video, audio, text, to all the other 2 billion people at the same time, at the speed of light, with more power than the centralized BBC" "and we did it all in 15 years." "Wehaveheardthe rationalsoffered by the superpowers." "We know who speaks for the nations but who speaks for the human species?" "Who speaks for Earth?" "Our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure in the most important task it faces;" "Preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens and the future habitability of the planet." "Shouldn't we consider, in every nation major changes in the traditional ways of doing things?" "A fundamental restructure, of economic, political, social, and religious institutions?" "Fundamental changes in society are sometimes labeled impractical or contrary to human nature as if there were only ONE human nature." "But fundamental changes can clearly be made." "We're surrounded by them." "In the last two centuries, abject slavery which was with us for thousands of years has almost entirely been eliminated in a stirring, world-wide revolution." "Women, systematically mistreated for millenia are gradually gaining the political and economic power traditionally denied them." "And some wars of aggression have recently been stopped or curtailed because of a revulsion felt by the people in the aggressor nations." "Whatgivesme tremendousconfidence in the future is the fact that we are now more empowered as individuals to take on the grand challenges of this planet." "We have the tools, with this exponential technology" "We have the passion of the D.I.Y. innovator" "And we have 3 billion new minds coming online to work with us to solve the grand challenges to do that which WE MUST do!" "Ourchildrenarebeingrevolutionized, in terms of their consciousness to fit the new tempral-spacial orientation of the biosphere." "The kids in 1st grade are learning that everything they do..." "The clothes they wear, the food they eat, the electricity they use, the car the family drives..." "All of that affects their carbon footprint and impacts some other human being, or some other creature somewhere else in the biosphere because we're all connected." "THAT's a revolution." "We have the technology that allows us to extend the central nervous system and to think viscerally as a family, not just intellectually." "It's not going to give us utopia." "It's not going to eliminate the fragilities and the inconsistencies, and the imperfections and the struggle of being alive." "But it will give us a sense of our stewardship of this planet." "And we know at the end of our life when we look back we don't look back at our life, and we don't say..." ""Gee, that momement where I made a new deal..."" ""I felt really impregnable as an island to myself..."" ""I felt really detached and rational, and really objective..."" ""I was able to extinguish my libido, and enjoy my utility..."" "I just don't think..." "There may be some pathalogical person that does that but, as my wife said, it's the death bed chest." "When we look back at our life we look back and its the moments where we had that empathic connection where we transcended ourselves and could actually FEEL a loved one, or someone else as if we were experiencing it ourself." "We feel super-alive." "It's of those moments where we actually feel transcendence." "You don't have to be religious." "And we felt, we're connected." "We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us." " Joseph Campbell" "Youthepeople,havethepower !" "The power to create happiness!" "You the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful!" "To make this life a wonderful adventure!" "Let us use that power!" "Let us all unite!" "Let us fight for a new world a decent world that will give men a chance to work that will you the future and old-age a security." "By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power." "But they lie, they do not fulfill their promise they never will!" "Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise!" "Let us fight to free the world!" "To do away with national barriers!" "To do away with greed!" "...with hate, and intolerance!" "Let us fight for a world of reason!" "A world where science and progress will lead to ALL mens' happiness." "Theoldappeals to racial, sexual, and religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist ferver are beginning not to work." "A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed." "We are one planet." "A film by RELIC final mix and master by THE VOICE OF REASON all footage provided by The Interwebz" "Those who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt the people doing it. - unknown" "More powerful than the will to win, is the courage to begin. - unknown" "Man is free the instant he wants to be." " Voltaire" "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." " Horace Mann" "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." " Frederick Douglass" "All limitations are self-imposed. - unknown" "Iwantto livemylife takingtheriskallthetime that I don't know anything like enough yet." "That I haven't understood enough." "That I CAN'T know enough." "That I'm always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom." "I wouldn't have it any other way." "Take the risk of thinking for yourself." "Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way." "This presentation was brought to you by Crackin Films." "Subtitles by the Amara.org community"