They Live - We Sleep, Deeply!

[Phoenixx]

This one needs no intro or explanations, just watch it, think about it, and then think about it again.

The only question: Could something be ANY more true - and how many people actually realize that?

Part I of III
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Part II of III
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Part III of III
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​

 

[sleepy]

I'm still on dial-up, don't ask me why, but the video will not cooperate.
I get as far as "Are we being marketed...?" and it quits.
Does the video have anything to do with the subject of public manipulations by the industrial complex?

 

[Phoenixx]

Does the video have anything to do with the subject of public manipulations by the industrial complex?

Yes, but it goes way beyond that.

Industry, Politics, Religion, Marriage, Military, even Medicine,...definitely one of the best clips i have seen to date.

The guy who made that clip must be highly intelligent because he analyzes the movie perfectly (the symbols, metaphors, figurative speech, etc.), and then he brings it all into focus with the real world, a.k.a. the world we live in.

Very well done in my opinion,...


P.S.: The clips are working fine here, so im afraid it has to be your internet connection.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

i finally shook off the stone ages today and bought myself an ipod-type mp3 player refurbished on sale (sansa sandisk). it doesn't look like it can play FLV's, though, so i will need to transfer these into a podcast-friendly format. any advice on that, kevin?

i'm interested in listening to this stuff while i'm riding my exercycle. might be a good way to get back into my chomsky, who is the master at these types of observances IMO.

 

[sleepy]

Given that Thomas Edison founded Hollywood and the movie industry and General Electric, along with the existence in this town of other characters like Howard Hughes, I'm not at all surprised.
In fact, given the emphasis of defense contractors in this area like Rocketdyne and Lockheed and that these industries wouldn't be anywhere near here without the approval of the community leaders and their associations with the industries founded by Edison and Hughes, again, I'm not at all surprised.

 

[sleepy]

I forgot something. Before Hughes bought it, RKO Motion Picture Studios was owned by Joe Kennedy. He also owned RCA at one time.

 

[mrschultz]

i finally shook off the stone ages today and bought myself an ipod-type mp3 player refurbished on sale (sansa sandisk). it doesn't look like it can play FLV's, though, so i will need to transfer these into a podcast-friendly format. any advice on that, kevin?

i'm interested in listening to this stuff while i'm riding my exercycle. might be a good way to get back into my chomsky, who is the master at these types of observances IMO.

Try "Super" to convert, it's freeware. I use it to convert different media file types all the time. Never tried FLV but it is listed as one of the supported file types. The interface takes a little getting used to, but once you know what you are doing it usually does a good job converting.

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html


As for the analysis of They Live, some good stuff mixed with some total insanity and paranoia. I'd go more with A Clockwork Orange or V as good movies about government trying to exercise control over the masses of sheeple out there. V is more straight up about mass control and trying to get people to wake up, A Clockwork Orange takes a more subtle approach. For a good science fiction example Serenity is also somewhat blatant in it's portrayal of a controlling government run amok.

The guy really goes off the deep end in several areas. Promoting a hollow earth theory? Wow, just, wow...

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Try "Super" to convert, it's freeware. I use it to convert different media file types all the time. Never tried FLV but it is listed as one of the supported file types. The interface takes a little getting used to, but once you know what you are doing it usually does a good job converting.

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

excellent... thank you.
it took me about 5 minutes to hunt down the download button amidst the wall of text, but only about one minute to convert the FLV successfully to an MP3.

just gotta grab the next two segments, then i'll have a nice little 30-minute podcast to listen to soon.

 

[Phoenixx]

Promoting a hollow earth theory? Wow, just, wow...

That was one of the two or three things in the clip which were a little too heavy for my taste too. Of course i could see where hes coming from principle-wise, (that if everything else is a carefully constructed lie, why would we think that the science we learned is true), but all in all this seems a little too 'Alien-Conspiracy', too 'Little Green Men', too far out. But then again, if what he says were true then this would obviously be by design as well. I guess in the end the only thing you can really trust is what you see with your own two eyes. Though, on second thought probably not even necessarily that, since there are people out there who are masters at pulling the wool over your eyes. Gee what a mess. Aint life grand?



@nic: Glad you have already found a solution. I myself dont have an ipod, (no idea what exact format they work with), so i probably hadnt been able to give you any reliable tips here anyway. If the device supports AVI i myself would have simply used XVID though. I have converted all my StarTrek DVDs with it, (via AutoGordianKnot), and thanks to the good defaults of AGK the results were by all standards excellent. In fact so far i have seen only three better videos, ('better' as in same excellent picture quality but way smaller filesize with regards to overall film-length), and those were Rambo 1-3 encoded with the H.264 codec. When that sucker is well tweaked the results are nothing short of remarkable. Unfortunately i kind of suxorzed at tweaking it so XVID it was. The smaller filesize would have been nice, though,...

(Come to think of it, H.264 would probably be perfect for handheld mobile devices. Quality vs. Filesize ratio is probably the best there currently is, so if a clip were to be downsized to the couple of pixels a handheld mobile device has it should be only a couple of megabytes and still have a way-above-average picture quality. Maybe an idea the manufacturers should entertain in the future.)

 

[mrschultz]

That was one of the two or three things in the clip which were a little too heavy for my taste too. Of course i could see where hes coming from principle-wise, (that if everything else is a carefully constructed lie, why would we think that the science we learned is true), but all in all this seems a little too 'Alien-Conspiracy', too 'Little Green Men', too far out. But then again, if what he says were true then this would obviously be by design as well. I guess in the end the only thing you can really trust is what you see with your own two eyes. Though, on second thought probably not even necessarily that, since there are people out there who are masters at pulling the wool over your eyes. Gee what a mess. Aint life grand?

Most of the experiments done by early scientists, Newton, Galileo, etc. are easy to do yourself to see the results with your own eyes. So there's no questioning the basic building blocks of everything that came later. Many of these crazy theories would have you question some fairly basic stuff. Funny how lots of these guys want you to read or listen to other guys like them, instead of telling you to go out and investigate on your own, they are no different than politicians, trying to keep their own little power base.

There comes a point where the conspiracy and cover up theory grows so large that the effort and cost needed to maintain it seems way out of proportion to whatever gain the people behind it get from it.

Edit: Then there's the smell of bigotry that often seems to come up here and there in these theories.

Edit2: Back to They Live. I don't see the marriage thing in the movie, I always took her as the seductress/assassin paid or told to deal with him, either win him over to their side or get rid of him.

 

[sleepy]

I see that the military is exploring mind reading as a silent tool of communication on the battlefield with some thought of adapting whatever they come up with to eventually serve as a telepathic weapon as well. To give you an idea of how far the scientists have come with decoding brain waves, take a look at this youtube video. The image on the left was taken from an electrode implanted into the thalmus region of a cat's brain which contains optical neurons. The image on the right is from a camera.
YouTube - Yang Dan at UC Berkeley captures images of what cat sees

And to allay any doubts about the integrity of the video, this is a report from the BBC on the same experiments which were conducted at U.C. Berkley.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/471786.stm

Note the date. The report from the BBC was posted October 11, 1999.

 

[Phoenixx]

Whats odd about that youtube clip is that the cats side is so 100% static and perfectly in sync with the cam side.

I mean no head-moving, no eyes-blinking, nothing at all,...thats rather peculiar in my opinion because i know cats,...

(Sickening method of doing scientific research, btw.)

 

[sleepy]

The cat was probably sedated and restrained with clamps so that the electrode and visual results remained stable. Check the BBC story.

I hate vivisection. Inserting an electrode into a brain assumes the animal is disposable.
The fact that a scientist would take this quick and dirty approach to analysis of biological systems only demonstrates a lack of intuitive talent and sensitivity which is consistent with such crass methods of abuse in order to compete against rival human researchers. For this reason I wouldn't trust any of them with the responsibility to preserve life. There are monetary grants up for grabs based on a race against the clock risking possible success by one's rivals among the competing groups, and as students they become the backbone of our industries and our heath care system.

Why not apply treatment to the injured animals in order to find the method instead of inflicting crass violence on healthy creatures in the name of 'science'? There are animal shelters full of injured stray dogs and cats. Heal them to find the methods.

Secondly, such research is questionable. Will it result in providing artificial sight or will it be abused for things like psychic weaponry?

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

listened to the whole "they live..." program on a train ride today. since this is a VP site, it reminded me a little of pacdude's rants except that these were far less outright obnoxious. but the lack of humor, sprinkling of insights and self-indulgent logic leading to a train wreck of wild assumptions were all there.

dude strikes me as an above-average intelligence college kid who's figured out some of the basic facts of civilisation, such as that large corporations want people to consume without questioning, govt does not want to allow so much freedom of thought or action such that it risks being toppled, TV can be a pretty insidious social conditioner, money and debt can be abused as a mechanism to improve social status and so forth...

the problem is that almost every time, "celtic rebel" takes his basic insight gained and then weaves it into his pet tapestry of truth and conspiracy, as if his each 'breakthrough of thought' allows him the freedom to connect it to whatever ridiculous premise that strikes him... as if it's okay to cease further critical thinking.

from almost the very beginning the hits just kept on coming... the pharaoh akhenaton secretly being moses (uh, no legit egyptian scholar believes that), southpark's parker and stone being shills for a zionist agenda (despite the fact that they've always mocked nearly everything, including judaism), the implication that 'everything we learned in school is wrong' and that the facts of a hollow earth are being covered up, etc.

dude is a fair propagandist, but i hope for his sake that he continues to grow up. the messed-up part is that apparently lots of internet people are hanging on his every word, presumably feeding his ego and delaying his own growth process. not to mention, there is a decidedly anti-zionist aspect to his rambles which is frankly disturbing, and which others might easily pick up on and fuel hate-thinking and hate-crimes.

so any media source which would show this kind of juvenile, flawed material is not worth taking seriously IMO.

the best thing about "they live" (the movie) is the line "i came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and i'm all out of bubble gum". but for original stories addressing the industrial political machine, you'd be far better off reading george orwell, philip k. dick or a number of great writers who recognised this stuff half a century or more ago. for educational lectures, noam chomsky.

 

[sleepy]

About George Orwell, has anyone ever considered that "1984" is really about "1948" and the rise of The Cold War?

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

About George Orwell, has anyone ever considered that "1984" is really about "1948" and the rise of The Cold War?

no, but it makes sense as a clever possibility, citizens being much less free to speak on challenging topics as they were at the time.

 

[Phoenixx]

Gee nic, i think you really overanalyzed this.

(Cant shake the feeling that you simply expected more?)

As for the guys intelligence, i still say hes way smarter than just 'above average' because considering that most people dont even bother to think about such stuff at all (typical reaction: science fiction) the fact that he does alone puts him 'above average' already. And he did do a rather good job at getting to the not-immediately-obvious, even if one or two of his conclusions were of course rather 'daring' or even outright odd.

 

[Phoenixx]

For those interested in the topic, heres another very interesting clip for you.

Note: I found out that multi-part ATS clips can be viewed in the same player window by using the ►| arrow in the control bar, hence im putting only one player window into the post this time. The clip has 7 parts, quality is good enough for fullscreen.

ENDGAME - BLUEPRINT FOR GLOBAL ENSLAVEMENT
THE NEW WORLD ORDER - PARTS I to VII
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[Anthias]

About George Orwell, has anyone ever considered that "1984" is really about "1948" and the rise of The Cold War?

well, yes, this has been spoken of quite extensively elsewhere. And 1984 was arrived at as the name and year for the book simply because it was a reversal of the year it was written - 1948.

 

[sleepy]

Ah yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Title

 

[Meecro Hyperion]

there is a decidedly anti-zionist aspect to his rambles which is frankly disturbing, and which others might easily pick up on and fuel hate-thinking and hate-crimes.

Ack that. Also the 'conspiracy of vaccination' is an extremely dangerous concept. In conclusion, however, he does say that the source/holders of control are irrelevant, and the greatest threat to that control is a mass political awakening. I agree that the current maintainers of the status quo inherited the reigns, and are not the architects of it. My interpretation of the 'aliens' in the film are those who benefit from the current state of the power hierarchy. However it is obvious that some clever individuals are 'tweaking' the mechanisms. Representative democracy is an advance over monarchy in allowing for popular change and political involvement by the individual, but it can be bought with enough money to purchase Neuro Linguistic Programming channels like TV.

It is up to each sentient being to question the social power structures into which they find themselves born. That journey begins with what it means to be a sentient being: What is important, and what is not - that will dictate how we spend our limited time alive, as mentioned by the blogger.

What is fascinating is that it has been shown time and time again by psychological studies that a large component of self-worth is generated by feelings of accomplishment. Unfortunately we have to overcome the powerful programming that ownership is accomplishment. We are told to own stuff we don't need. Then we need a house to put all that stuff. Then we have to build a shed to put all the new stuff we don't need that we have bought to continue the illusion of accomplishment.

I need a roof over my head. That is not the same thing as needing to own a house.

A famous psychologist Markowitz dictated that people are naturally lazy and will prefer to be idle than actually work - which has been proven false (remember Mother Theresa amongst countless others). In my volunteer work with the Mentally Ill, I work much harder and with more passion than I ever do for money. Western society implicitly accepts this falsified model by encouraging 'idle' people to work like crazy for money so that when they have enough(?) they can then be permanently idle again!!! And it is quite ok to be Machiavellian (ends justify the means) in how you do it (hello global financial crisis).

Jean Luc Picard became my hero when he said in an episode of Star Trek TNG: 'These days we all work for the betterment of humanity'.

Oh, and the 'soma' from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a class of drug called 'Anti Depressants'. Depression is the worlds number one fastest rising illness in developed nations, at a time when most of us live better than royalty of centuries past. We need to ask why.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

What is fascinating is that it has been shown time and time again by psychological studies that a large component of self-worth is generated by feelings of accomplishment.

don't i know it.

i am tempted to think that it is fully the result of societal conditioning but then again, we have such massive and capable brains that it's possible that only by engaging them in acts of creation or activity that we can feel fulfilled, which just happens to work out to being accomplishment. maybe.

Unfortunately we have to overcome the powerful programming that ownership is accomplishment. We are told to own stuff we don't need. Then we need a house to put all that stuff. Then we have to build a shed to put all the new stuff we don't need that we have bought to continue the illusion of accomplishment.

I need a roof over my head. That is not the same thing as needing to own a house.

that reminds me of a short presentation. although i'm frequently beating the drum about GCC, it's the massive overuse, waste and pollution of resources that's another insanely out-of-control problem:
http://www.storyofstuff.com/

A famous psychologist Markowitz dictated that people are naturally lazy and will prefer to be idle than actually work - which has been proven false (remember Mother Theresa amongst countless others). In my volunteer work with the Mentally Ill, I work much harder and with more passion than I ever do for money. Western society implicitly accepts this falsified model by encouraging 'idle' people to work like crazy for money so that when they have enough(?) they can then be permanently idle again!!! And it is quite ok to be Machiavellian (ends justify the means) in how you do it (hello global financial crisis).

that video speaks very well to those points, i think. and btw, i certainly admire you for working with the mentally ill. my mom also did that as a recreation therapist for much of her adult life, and those folks can sure make some wonderful artwork! (and be fascinating pains in the ass)

Jean Luc Picard became my hero when he said in an episode of Star Trek TNG: 'These days we all work for the betterment of humanity'.

human beings are interesting, you know, because we're possibly the most amazing creation in all of earth's history, and on a personal level, compassion, love and sacrifice are well-known ways of becoming nearer the divine; while at the same time, we're a race of douchebags who have become so destructive and so numerous that we have now achieved the level of a disease, planetarily-speaking.

it seems "douchebag" is my favorite word these days. douchebag, douchebag, douchebag.

Oh, and the 'soma' from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a class of drug called 'Anti Depressants'. Depression is the worlds number one fastest rising illness in developed nations, at a time when most of us live better than royalty of centuries past. We need to ask why.

we really do!

 

[sleepy]

I think it's because we are raised to be dependent instead of self-reliant, and it isn't because we don't try. It's because the very nature of society is to require dependency, for instance, in trade, to create a working class, acceptance, etc.

And then, as we are socially dependent, we are either taken care of or rejected. Everything is pretty much done for us, which leaves us with little to do in the way of things which reassure our personal stability while providing a meaningful means to occupy our time.

I'll give you an example, though it may be crass. Which would you rather do, spend the evening playing video games or making some money for yourself? If you have enough money already then the example is perhaps not as relevant as it might be for someone who has no money. Playing the video games with the themes of a carefree existence and easy money can definitely depress you when you have none and return to reality after the games are done for the night.

 

[Meecro Hyperion]

on a personal level, compassion, love and sacrifice are well-known ways of becoming nearer the divine; while at the same time, we're a race of douchebags who have become so destructive and so numerous that we have now achieved the level of a disease

Hopefully the disease will also be the cure.... fight douchebags with douchebags, as they say....

I think it's because we are raised to be dependent instead of self-reliant...

Well, we are born dependent. And, as we grow up, we become interdependent on those around us. This is a fractally repeated pattern from families to neighbourhoods to global relations. I help you plow a field, and you babysit my kids when I go to out with my wife.
Japan has no oil to run pre-oil industry, so they effectively exchange goods manufactured using oil to get it. No-one is self-reliant - it is an illusion. We need each other for physical and/or emotional requirements.

Which would you rather do, spend the evening playing video games or making some money for yourself?

I suspect most people would prefer both. A mix of contributing to the economy, achieving some personal economic power, and enjoying recreation. Some more of one, some more of the other. Sure there are some parasites in the system, but it may be more constructive to see them as mentally ill in some way. For example: people short-circuiting their reward circuits with drugs get into a viscous cycle of non-accomplishment and resulting low self-esteem. There is a slow but sure momentum building in the world to see addiction as an illness....

Interestingly, there are people that do both at the same time! Have you heard of the 'level uppers'? Companies making millions hiring kids to play other peoples online RPG characters and getting them to higher experience levels. Some of these kids are dropping out of university because they can make more doing that than their projected income as an accountant! Wonder what they'll 'fall back on'?

 

[sleepy]

Except that interdependency without skills is meaningless. As "self-reliant" I mean as in the case of, if all of society stopped functioning tomorrow, what would you do?

Do you know how to take care of yourself, grow your own food, tend your needs, or would you be like a character in the movies "Land of the Dead" or "28 Days Later" hoping to find the next untapped store of canned goods?
Can you entertain yourself in leisure vs. sitting in front of the t.v. waiting "for something good to happen"?

Self-reliance gives our lives a sense of purpose and can still allow interdependency.
Even something to care about, like looking after pet cats and their well-being, is better than living for compensations provided in exchange for one's submissions and sacrifices under an approval system. At least when I do something for myself, I know whether I like it. There is no conflict.