By Michael Lombardi, MBA for Profit Confidential:
As we march towards another debt ceiling limit…
The U.S. Treasury Secretary, Jacob J. Lew, wrote a letter to Congress
this week stating the U.S. government will hit the debt ceiling by
October. He wrote, “…Congress should act as soon as possible to protect
America’s good credit by extending normal borrowing authority well
before any risk of default becomes imminent.” (Source: U.S. Department
of the Treasury, August 26, 2013.)
Lew added, “Protecting the full faith and credit of the United States
is the responsibility of Congress because only Congress can extend the
nation’s borrowing authority. Failure to meet that responsibility would
cause irreparable harm to the American economy.” (Source: Ibid.)
Will Congress raise the debt ceiling again? It certainly will!
Since 1960, Congress has raised the debt ceiling 78 times—49 times
under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents.
(Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury web site, last accessed August
27, 2013.)
The debt ceiling, which is set by Congress, puts a restriction on how much the national debt can be increased.
On August 23, 2012, the U.S. national debt stood at $15.97 trillion.
Fast-forward one year to August 23, 2013, and our national debt hit
$16.73 trillion. (Source: Treasury Direct web site, last accessed August
27, 2013.) This is an increase in the national debt of 4.75% in just
one year. Of course, in all 78 times Congress raised the debt ceiling,
the new debt ceiling limit was later hit and needed to be raised again.
Our government continues to post an annual budget deficit. For the
four fiscal years from 2009 to 2012, the federal government posted a
deficit of more than $1.0 trillion annually. This year, it may be
less—but not by much.
The letter to Congress by the U.S. Treasury Secretary is a simple
request to increase the credit limit on America’s credit card—just as a
family that spends more than it earns might do.
One might think this cannot go on forever—the debt ceiling being
raised and the government subsequently hitting that new limit. But when
we look at the fact that our debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio
is only 105% and Japan’s debt-to-GDP is 205%, our national debt would
have to double to $32.0 trillion for us to match Japan’s debt-to-GDP.
But, of course, at that level of debt, instead of the U.S. dollar being
the reserve currency of the world, it would likely become the “laughing
stock” currency of the world. Michael’s Personal Notes:
So far, 487 companies in the S&P 500 have
reported their second-quarter earnings. Turns out 72% of them were able
to beat mean estimates. The blended corporate earnings growth rate for
S&P 500 companies in the second quarter was 2.1%. (Source: “Earnings
Insight,” FactSet, August 23, 2013.)
On the surface, the corporate earnings growth rate of these companies
certainly looks good. But the devil resides in the details!
While a significant number of the S&P 500 companies were able to
beat the already-lowered earnings estimates in the second quarter, only
53% of these companies reported revenues above mean estimates. Not
impressive.
The financial sector of the S&P 500 reported earnings growth of
28.1% in the second quarter—this was, hands down, the biggest
contributor to “robust” growth in corporate earnings we saw in the second quarter.
The other nine sectors of the index didn’t do as well. Sectors like
the consumer discretionary, utilities, consumer staples, health care,
and industrial sectors showed corporate earnings growth of less than
five percent. The telecom services, information technology, energy, and
material sectors had negative earnings growth.
In other words: take the financial sector out from the S&P 500
and corporate earnings for the second quarter border negative growth.
Going forward, it’s a rough road. For the third quarter, 103 S&P
500 companies have provided an earnings outlook. Of these companies, 85
of them have issued a negative outlook, while only 18 have provided
positive guidance. The number of S&P 500 companies that are
pessimistic about their corporate earnings in the current quarter makes
up more than 82% of those that have issued their earnings guidance!
All of this shouldn’t come as a surprise to readers of Profit Confidential;
in these pages, I have been talking about slowing corporate earnings
and revenues since the beginning of this year. For the second quarter,
companies in the S&P 500 only beat already-lowered expectations!
Now that we are hearing that the Federal Reserve may pull back on all
that paper money printing it’s been busy with, the stock market is
going down. The chart below clearly shows the index is falling apart.
Don’t expect corporate earnings to save it! Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com What He Said:
“The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the other
major stock market indices finished yesterday with the best two-day
showing since 2002. I’m looking at the market rally of the past two days
as a classic stock market bear trap. As the economy gets closer to
contraction, 2008 will likely be a most challenging economic year for
America.” Michael Lombardi in Profit Confidential, November 29,
2007. The Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked at 14,279 in October
2007. A “suckers” rally developed in November 2007, which Michael
quickly classified as a bear trap for his readers. By mid-November 2008,
the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 8,726. By Michael Lombardi, MBA for Profit Confidential.
Those wildly optimistic estimates of earnings growth that analysts
work on so studiously by copying and pasting what companies tell them,
or by doing channel checks and poking around the industry? Well, they
have been shrinking for 2013 – at the last moment as reality forced them
to. But they’re still boom in the fourth quarter. Read…. Deluded Optimism in Corporate Earnings Growth (Now Shriveling).
Today, once again, it feels like we're being herded into supporting a
military action in Syria that will end up, like the Iraq War, making
the world an even more dangerous place than it is now. Then, as now, we
see influential journalists tripping over themselves to fall into line.
The British parliament's vote against going along
with the United States' attack on Syria is a direct result of that
country's attempts to come to terms with the lies of the Iraq War.
Unlike the United States, the people in the United Kingdom forced their
government to convene a commission where former Prime Minister Tony
Blair and other Iraq War luminaries were asked some uncomfortable
questions. (When was the last time you saw George W. Bush or Dick
Cheney grilled for their roles in fomenting the Iraq War?) The vote in the U.K.
shows that there are just enough people there who have apparently wised
up to make a difference and aren't willing to let their elected
representatives hoodwink them into another precipitous military action
based on dubious "intelligence."
In 2008 (and in 2012) the American people rejected the neo-con, John
Bolton view of the world, where the U.S. acts as the world's
"indispensible" nation meting out "justice" through its awe-inspiring
military power. Yet President Barack Obama is apparently preparing to
bomb Syria unilaterally without even the pathetic "coalition of the
willing" that had backed George W. Bush's attack on Iraq.
President Obama is moving us into another "national security" area
where neo-con belligerence is considered the "new normal." He has
already normalized executive branch assassinations, warrantless NSA
surveillance, and cracking down on whistle blowers. Now, if he goes
through with his unilateral bombing of Syria without a Congressional
resolution or a United Nations mandate we'll be right back in the bad
old days when George W. Bush set loose John Yoo to interpret the legal
"limits" to presidential power. While claiming the moral high ground
Obama is losing the moral high ground.
In the 21st century launching wars willy-nilly is far too perilous
given the destructive power and widespread distribution of high-tech
weaponry. When initiating something like this no one can be certain
which act of military violence might set off a chain of events that
plunges the region or the world into catastrophe. There are far too
many variables to Obama's promised cruise missile barrage against Syria
to fall into a neat and predictable outcome. Not even the Svengalis
among our nation's most esteemed pundits can tell you how many "Friedman Units" will have to pass before the wreckage of this pending attack on Syria is cleared away.
The President just got done celebrating the 50th anniversary
of the March on Washington, but this month also marks the 60th
anniversary of the CIA's coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran
that contributed mightily to the subsequent failures of American policy
in the Middle East. If one considers the record of the United States:
the assistance in Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War; or U.S. forces' use of depleted uranium and white phosphorous in the 1991 and the 2003 Iraq Wars; or giving its blessing to Israel when it dropped about a million cluster bombs
in southern Lebanon as a parting shot in its war with Hezbollah in the
summer of 2006, (not to mention the Agent Orange dropped in Vietnam),
and what we see is a government whose expressions of moral outrage, at
least internationally, lack credibility. And from the moment President
Obama drew his "red line" against the use of chemical weapons we've been
told that U.S. "credibility" is at stake if he doesn't bomb the shit
out of Syria.
To have legitimacy what the Obama Administration should do is go through the proper channels of the United Nations,
allow the U.N. investigators to do their work in Syria, bring their
findings to the General Assembly, and have a vote on the use of military
force to re-establish the "norm" of punitive action against states that
use chemical weapons. After those conditions have been met if Russia
and China veto the measure in the Security Council it will show the
world that two major powers are not willing to punish the Syrian regime
for gassing its own people. In the eyes of "world opinion" (if there is
such a thing) the United States then could be seen as being slightly
less hypocritical than if it plows ahead with this ill-advised
unilateral military operation.
As it stands right now, the kind of strikes Obama is promising are
illegal both at home (if Congress doesn't pass a resolution approving
them) and abroad (if it doesn't have the imprimatur of the United
Nations). Obama's "shot across the bow"
against Syria (which is a terrible analogy) will only serve to
de-legitimize America's aims in the Middle East. And by building on
George W. Bush's precedent of saying "fuck you" to the United Nations,
it will simply normalize the dangerous neo-con policies that the
American people rejected in two presidential elections.
On the domestic political front, Karl Rove and Reince Priebus must
be thrilled because the Democratic Senate candidates in 2014 are going
to have to campaign apologizing for yet another unpopular war in the
Middle East. The Democratic faithful are already fatigued by Obama's
lack of action on a number of fronts relating to jobs and education, NSA
spying, and drone policies. Add to this disillusioning mix the U.S.
partaking in another bloodbath in the Middle East and the Democratic
base is going to limp into 2014 just as it had limped into 2010.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could then complete his long-term
project of turning Obama into a lame duck, thereby setting back the
struggles for greater unionization of low-wage workers, dealing with
climate change, protecting women's rights, and every other piece of the
progressive agenda.
War might be the "health of the State," but historically it has been fatal for those who value progressive reform. And with Raytheon's stock now ticking upward
anticipating the billions of dollars worth of Tomahawk cruise missiles
going up in smoke, war is the "health of the Corporation" too.
There's a reason why the United Nations Charter requires the
Security Council to approve any military operation. It was designed to
try to keep little wars from growing into larger ones by providing an
off-ramp before the big powers are drawn in. President Obama sounds
overconfident that the Syrian regime and its allies will not respond in
any way to a unilateral attack against them.
But what if there are Russians or other third country nationals or
technicians killed around some of the sites the U.S. decides to "take
out?" What if any number of freelance groups allied with the Syrians
and Iranians decide to launch some attacks on their own giving the
governments of Syria and Iran plausible deniability that they had
nothing to do with them?
Maybe the U.S. objective all along has been to try to tip the
balance against Iran and its Shia allies in the Arab world by
neutralizing Syria and the chemical weapons issue is just a pretext?
That possibility might explain why the U.S. is adamant about eschewing
the U.N.
Or maybe the Americans are being snookered into another war by
cunning regional players who know the U.S. is always shopping for a
pretext to assert its military dominance in that part of the world?
Or maybe the U.S. weapons contractors simply cannot contain their
greed any longer after the winding down of the Iraq War and are seeking
new revenue streams? Or maybe what's driving this is the internal logic
of what used to be called "U.S. imperialism," which requires punitive
strikes now and then to show everyone in a neighborhood floating on a
sea of oil that the United States is not afraid to use its military to
protect its "vital interests?"
On the other hand, why would the Syrian government, which has shown
itself to be so brutal in massacring its own people, be intimidated by
the kind of "limited" short duration strike Obama spoke about during his recent PBS interview? A few hundred cruise missiles aren't going to change anything.
Are we really ready to believe that striking selected targets in
Syria will have any wider effect on the civil war or the balance of
power in the region that has unfolded between the Sunni states and their
allies and the Shiites in Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon and their allies?
It was the U.S. military aggression in Iraq in the first place that
ended up turning that country's "power ministries" (Interior, Defense,
Foreign Affairs, Oil) over to the Shiite majority for the first time
ever, and in the process, strengthened Iran's power in the region. This
de facto alliance between Iran and Iraq put the Sunni kingdoms in a
weakened position. Now it appears the United States wants to punish the
Shia power centers of its own creation.
Conveniently, the chemical weapons attack of August 21st in Syria
delivers a perfect pretext for the U.S. to attack. And if Syria or its
proxies respond by hitting U.S. "interests" in their neighborhood the
U.S. is then fully justified to "defend" itself with strikes against
Iran or Hezbollah or more aimed at Syria. The American people have been
kept in the dark about what's happening in the Middle East. Even after
eight years of occupying Iraq the average American knows very little
about the region and its people. We are told once again by our
government: "trust us," we have the "intelligence." Journalists are
even throwing around the term "slam dunk" without any sense of irony.
It all reminds me of the confidence that President Lyndon Johnson
showed in February 1964 when his National Security Council drew up 66
targets to hit in North Vietnam. He saw it as limited in scope and
believed it would teach Ho Chi Minh a lesson. Instead, it opened a
Pandora's box that cost 58,000 American lives and at least 2 million
Vietnamese in a war that marks one of the most shameful episodes in
American history. Yet it appears our leaders have learned nothing from
our experiences in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq.
"Governments lie," the great journalist I.F. Stone used to say. And
the Middle East has more than its fair share of double-crossers and
people posing as one thing but carrying out an agenda for something
else. We cannot believe anything that comes out of the offices of any
of those regimes, but neither can we believe our own government since
we've caught it in so many lies, particularly those designed to
facilitate going to war. Pretexts come and go (Remember the Maine! --
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident! -- Iraqi WMD!) and consent in a democracy
must be manufactured. We've been told that "we" must enforce a "norm"
against the use of prohibited weapons. But ever since the CIA coup in
Iran 60 years ago that lit the fuse of theocratic revolution U.S. policy
in the Middle East has been one disaster after another for the people
in the region and for the American people too. I don't think a few
billion dollars worth of cruise missiles can erase more than a
half-century of misguided imperial policy.
The percentage of Americans who have a job or are looking for one,
known as the labor force participation rate (LFPR), has plunged to a
34-year low, according to a new report from staffing company Express Employment Professionals.
If ever there was a sign of the military industrial complex in America, this graph is it.
Reports that the United States is very near to launching an attack
against Syria to punish Damascus for the use of chemical weapons sent
Raytheon’s stock price to a 52-week high this week.
Who is Raytheon? The manufacturer of the BGM-109, more commonly known
as the Tomahawk missile, the weapon of choice of the Obama
administration in any strike against Syria.
Raytheon stock has surged over
the past two months, coinciding with the biggest U.S. military build-up
America has mounted since it launched an assault against Libya in 2011.
Raytheon is a Cambridge, Mass.,-based American defense contractor
with total employment of 72,400 people. It is the world’s largest
manufacturer of guided missiles and produces such widely used weapons as
the AIM-7 Sparrow missile, the AIM-9
Sidewinder missile and the BGM-109 Tomahawk. The company is also
responsible for the Air Warfare Simulation program used by the Air
Force. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2010, the company had nearly $23 billion in arms sales, more than 90% of its total revenue for the year. Read more on Syria: Obama Officially Pins the Blame Of Chemical Weapons Attack On Assad
The Pentagon buys 196 Tomahawk missiles a year, considered the
"minimum sustaining rate" for the U.S. military's arsenal. And there are
some key members of Congress who think more should be spent on these
weapons.
“There are many of us who have been concerned for years about
maintaining our missile capabilities,” said Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), a
member of the House Armed Services Committee, to Politico.
Raytheon has delivered 252 missiles this fiscal year and 361 last
fiscal year. War with Syria means that there would likely be a future
increase in orders for the missiles, which can go for about $1 million a
pop. In the 2011 U.S. military adventure into Libya, 124 Tomahawk
missiles were fired by U.S. and UK ships against Libyan targets. The
Libya campaign would give a comparable bar on how many Tomahawk missiles
will be used in a Syrian campaign.
Supply and demand, baby.
The BGM-109 has been used in each of America's official conflicts in
the last 22 years. Using wings and a flight system, cruise missiles
like the Tomahawk are designed to carry a heavy warhead at subsonic
speeds over a significant distance. Originally developed by General
Dynamics in the 70s, the 3,500 lb. 20 foot long Tomahawk missile is
now manufactured by Raytheon, a large U.S. defense contractor. Each
unit can cost anywhere from the mid-$500,000s to almost $1.5 million,
depending on the chosen configuration, payload, and booster deployment.
The missile's modular system allows it to carry a conventional or
nuclear payload if needed.
In its budget submission for fiscal 2013, the White House requested
196 Tomahawks, for a total program cost of $320 million. The White House
is requesting the same amount next fiscal year, for a cost of $325
million.
War is big business, and Syria is paying the bills.
Need more proof that companies are profiting off of the recent Syria war mongering?
Lockheed Martin — the largest arms-producing and military services
company in the world, with nearly $3 billion more in arms sales — saw
its stock spike to a six month high on Monday, the day that the war drums with Syria really started beating.
Happiness Brigades could soon be part of every town and smart city –
making us brimful of sunshine to fulfill the United Nations’ mandate for
Gross Global Happiness. Tracked and monitored, the “not-yet-happy”
could be brought up to spec with a specialized brain zapper, such as the
ultrasonic neural interface funded by DARPA.
‘Pfff!’,
you may be thinking – ‘I just won’t use it!’ … but smart ID chips are
already being phased in as part of the global “federated identity
ecosystem”, and chances of avoiding these are looking slim. The ID
proposals include hackable biometrics, which will push us closer to
“passthoughts” that rely on our unique, live, brainwave patterns;
DARPA’s “portable brain recording device” (EEG) could be used for this.
So can heartbeat sensors (ECG).
The smartphones which we’ll be expected to use for ID, payment, health
services, and life-logging, are ridiculously prone to loss and theft, so
by the time ubiquitous surveillance, implants, and neural interfaces
have become normal, connecting your brain to the Internet might seem
like a natural step. This, of course, would then make us the most
vulnerable we could ever be. So just what are these ‘brain zappers’, and
what do we mean when we talk about ‘mind control’?
Zapping
the brain can have a great many good uses, but these have to be weighed
against the equal number of potential bads. Scientists have discovered
it’s possible to send signals to the brain to control a person’s
movements, just like voodoo. They can cure or cause addiction. They can
make you happy, or they can make you sad.
As for mind control, times have moved on, and the new methods of public
manipulation are slicker than ever. Ye Olde Propaganda has always been a
political tool, such as spreading rumors about adversaries, and
‘winning hearts and minds’ by guile. The early days of scientific
propaganda, though, can be traced back to Edward Bernays, and a ‘story’
he created, using his media connections, to get women to start smoking.
This was also the beginning of branding – the women on TV were said to
be smoking ‘torches of freedom’. Time moved on, the Internet arrived and
big data took over. There was so much data they didn’t know what to do.
They had to put it into an understandable format, to be able to
analyse, communicate and act upon the data being gathered. So in the
last decade, intelligence agencies, and even corporations, have begun to
frame their reports as narratives which shape, explain, and make sense
of the data.
Cognitive computers themselves can do this – creating news articles from
pooled data, just like I’m doing here, but with no human being
involved. These computer-generated narratives are also on DARPA’s wish
list, along with sensors to monitor people’s reactions to stories, in
real-time.
As for propaganda, now called ‘strategic communications’, the
powers-that-be see it all in terms of ‘telling a story’. Defence
departments are now focused on creating ‘counter-narratives’, i.e.
stories they believe will counteract the effects of ‘radicalism’.
DARPA’S “Narrative Networks” program made the news in 2011 – the link to
propaganda was clear to all.
So it’s important to understand that the program is still going!
Moreover, stories can be used to affect changes in a person’s beliefs,
their sense of identity, and even memory, partly because they stimulate
the release of brain chemicals. So can neural interfaces. And DARPA’s
funding of neural interfaces – and storytellers – is part of this
program.
There
are several ways to zap the brain – usually involving electrical and/or
magnetic energy. The most common is transcranial magnetic stimulation
(TMS) – when targeted at a specific area in the brain, TMS can create a
variety of effects, including emotional changes, and even bodily
movement. As reported by Activist Post, DARPA funded a study at Arizona
State University, which aimed to, (i) map out the precise areas of the
brain that are affected by stories; (ii) analyse how people respond to
specific stories; and (iii) test ways of changing their response to a
story, i.e. by altering the story format, and/or zapping their brains
with TMS.
This technique is more properly referred to as neuromodulation, and
involves stimulating the release of neurotransmitters by targeting
specific areas of the brain with electromagnetic pulses; it’s being used
to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders, in place of
medication. Whilst more serious conditions have been treated with deep
brain stimulation, using implanted microchips, people with pain and
depression can be treated with TMS using a headset for the duration of
the therapy. Unlike EEG recording devices (read-only), this headset is a
computer-to-brain interface (CBI), since signals are sent to the brain,
from a computer (i.e. write-only).
Obviously,
this is where we start to get on very dodgy ground indeed. Especially
when we find out that DARPA’s interest in narrative networks extends to
the way both stories and TMS affect a person’s brain chemistry: they
stimulate the release of profoundly important neurotransmitters (and/or
hormones), especially dopamine and oxytocin. DARPA’s research, led by
General Casebeer, has found that stories affect our emotions, our
cultural and religious beliefs, and even memory. In other words, the
narratives we hear (on TV, in the news, blogs, tweets, etc) affect
important brain chemicals, and therefore our very identities. And so do
pulsed electromagnetic fields – such as TMS.
TMS can only be delivered via either a CBI or implants. As noted in my
last article, BCI headsets, such as those made by Emotiv and Neurosky,
are well-developed and becoming popular amongst neuro-gamers and
quantified-selfers.
CBIs are less advanced, as their use is far more complicated. However,
neuromodulation is being used to treat a wide range of problems
(including depression, and chronic pain), which is likely to stimulate
growth in the market[1] for personal brain zappers. DARPA is clearly
aware of the vast range of possible applications for these devices, and
have also been funding a new way of altering brain chemistry, called
pulsed ultrasound, along with the US Department of Defense, and the US
Army. Often referred to as focused ultrasound (FUS), this technology
made the news in 2010, when William J Tyler, whilst at Arizona State
University, won an award from DARPA for research into CBIs which use
ultrasonic pulses[2] to effect a variety of changes in the brain. Tyler
has also worked with the Army Research Lab to look for ways to encode
“sensory data onto the cortex using pulsed ultrasound” which can be
“focused through the skull to any discrete region of the brain with
millimeter accuracy.”
Tyler has published several papers showing the effects achieved using
pulsed ultrasound, and has a company called NeuroTrek (formerly
Synsonix, Inc.), which has received substantial sums from government
funding. NeuroTrek sees its device as having applicability beyond
serious medical conditions, and beyond the battlefield, claiming it
could be used by gamers, the communications industry, and the
entertainment industry.
Researchers at Arizona State University have also published several
papers on pulsed ultrasound, as well as several patent application. Last
year, Tyler filed a patent application for "Devices and Methods for
Modulating Brain Activity" and another one this month (“Optimization of
Ultrasound Waveform Characteristics for Transcranial Ultrasound
Neuromodulation”), with two of his colleagues (one of whom includes
Daniel Wetmore, who has contributed to the submission of several FUS
patent applications; see also D P Jang, et al,in Korea).
An article in popsci.com quoted Tyler as saying,
Maybe the next generation of social entertainment networks will
involve downloading customized information or experiences from
personalized computer clouds while encoding them into the brain using
ultrasound. I see no reason to rule out that possibility.
Focused ultrasound can deliver, “complex spatiotemporal patterns of
acoustic waves” to achieve similar results to TMS, but has a spatial
resolution which is five times greater, and can reach far deeper into
the brain, meaning a lot more can be done with it, such as:
neurological/psychiatric intervention
cognitive enhancement
behavioral reinforcement
TBI (traumatic brain injury) protection
pain intervention
anxiety/stress reduction
long term alertfulness/wakefulness
navigational commands/assistance
Ahem! Did you notice “behavioral reinforcement” on that list? Are you
thinking Pavlov’s dogs, aka operant conditioning? You’d be right –
ultrasound delivered via a CBI can be used to activate reward pathways
(dopamine) in the brain, which,“may be used to condition and/or
reinforce certain desired attributes and/or to motivate specific
behavioral actions . . . rats conditioned to press a bar to receive
intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) of [specific parts of the brain]
will lead to reinforcing behaviors such that the rat ignores all other
environmental cues and will engage in repeated bar pressing behaviors in
order to gain the reinforcing/pleasure inducing ICSS of those brain
nuclei.”
Sure sounds like addiction to me.
Soooo . . . Just stay away from them there mind-machines, eh? Errrm,
well, that might not save you from having your brain messed with, I’m
afraid. You see, propaganda has taken an entirely new turn. It’s gone
from putting a spin on things, to an attempt to oversee the stories we
all hear, whether it’s the news, or blogs we read, and even Tweets, or
posts on Internet forums. DARPA has spent several years analysing
universal narrative structures, and the physiological effects they have
on people, as well as tracking popular narratives (and the memes they
produce) in social media. (I’ll explain this more in a separate
article.) General Casebeer, who is leading the research on narrative
networks for DARPA, notes the sense of ‘reward’ is linked to the
production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter which can affect whether you
like or dislike a story, and which also “enervates several important
parts of the brain responsible for memory, drive, judgment”.
There
are numerous other hugely influential neurotransmitters[3] than can be
modulated by both neural interfaces and stories, including oxytocin (the
‘love hormone’). This powerful brain chemical is linked to the
modulation of trust. Paul Zak, who has worked with General Casebeer on
creating persuasive narratives, even believes our level of morality is
dependent on the level of oxytocin we produce (psychopaths have little
of it in situations that make other people release loads!).
Zak and Casebeer contributed to a high-level meeting on the use of
narratives to ‘stop terrorism’. This meeting, attended by researchers,
and military and federal agencies, was convened to examine the
‘Neurobiology of Political Violence’, including discussion of TMS, which
can “turn parts of the human brain on and off”. Casebeer noted, “There
is some emerging work being done on how Tweets can create a rise in
oxytocin release based on message content.” We should bear in mind here
the US Government’s Strategic Communications plan, which involves
sentiment analysis, the use of counter-narratives, and ‘downvoting’
stories which it does not approve of, preventing discussion of certain
‘banned’ topics, as well as using “persona management software” to
create false identities, and thus manipulate public perception of news
and fool people into believing in a false ‘popular consensus’. This
astroturfing technique has become common, and is just one part of the
new Psy-op strategy – controlling the conversation.
By manipulating the news we hear, our primal responses can therefore be
influenced, without us even knowing it. Obviously this has been going on
for years, in the form of propaganda and reputation control, but the
methods just keep getting slicker, and all the more insidious.
Narratives are becoming the weapon of choice, said to be capable of
nipping ‘radicalisation’ in the bud. Terrorists are said to ‘be
radicalised’ by influential others, as if it were something done to
them, and bit by bit, radicalisation is being defined as ‘mistrust of
government’, which could one day mean little indignant nobodies such as
myself being listed as ‘dangerous’!
I
digress…. The point is that CBIs could become commonplace, given the
huge range of potential applications, such as moderating the production
of brain chemicals involved in emotion (e.g. serotonin), much like
psychotropic drugs.[4]
Brain-to-computer interfaces (BCIs) are already being used to link
people’s minds/feelings to a movie they’re watching. MyndPlay have
devised an EEG headset (using Neurosky’s microchips) which monitors the
viewer’s emotional reactions to the movie, and changes the ending
accordingly. (As a side note, analysing their state of mind also
provides an insight into the kind of personality they have!)
Maybe
some people would want the signal to work the other way as well, so
when they’re watching a movie, their brain chemicals can be boosted to
give them a more immersive experience. How about a boost of adrenaline
for the fight scenes, or a dose of oxytocin to ‘feel’, empathically,
what the characters in the film are ‘feeling’? What could be better?
(says she, sarcastically). Both ‘narrative therapy’ and TMS are now
being recommended for the treatment of depression. How long till
Hollywood gets hold of it?
It’s a lot harder to bring a CBI to market than it is a BCI, because of
the direction in which it works! There will always be issues with
insurance, and brain zapping techniques are still in the early stages of
development/understanding.
Should the use of CBIs become widespread, they could be used to
condition people in almost any way imaginable. What is perhaps even more
frightening is that it is now technically feasible that ultrasound
techniques could be used,
… to activate sensory or motor brain regions of the subject to
produce movement or to create synthetic brain imagery. For example ….
projections of visual sounds to auditory regions of the brain, ability
to generate virtual maps/images onto visual brain regions, ability to
control body movement patterns of an individual. Such brain stimulation
may …. cause the subject to make a turning motion in order to guide that
subject via GPS or other feedback from navigation technology, or
stimulate motor areas of the subject's brain to cause the subject to
make a motor action. Such methods and devices may be used for any
application, including but not limited to, recreational, entertainment,
and/or video gaming applications. (my italics)
In fact, this was done with a brain-to-brain interface(BBI) earlier this
year! By the power of thought, and the use of transcranial focused
ultrasound (FUS), a researcher was able to cause a rat’s tail to move.
(Video of this on YouTube has a strobe in it.) Even more astounding is
the announcement this week that human-to-human neural interfacing has
been achieved, as shown in the video below:
Neural dust (powered by ultrasound), which was proposed last month,
remains an undeveloped concept, whilst research into optogenetics has
made significant progress. The mind boggles.
It used to be that people had to guess what the public wanted; they
could do polls and ask around people in the know, or even rely on
hunches, but now things are very slick and super-sneaky. The definition
of propaganda will, in fact, need to change; data from mass surveillance
is being used to create targeted messages, which could be embedded into
news articles, movies, TV shows, blogs, online forums, speeches, etc,
for both political and commercial purposes, whilst our brains are
monitored for our reactions, and possibly even neuromodulated to ensure
our well-being, as each nation strives for Gross National Happiness. The
new propaganda is sooooo subliminal, you and I might not notice. It may
even be that events are being engineered over time to create the
narrative that will be our history; perhaps people like me are being
framed as ‘conspiracy theorists’ to serve a future purpose, as the
characters in a future ‘story of how we got here’, who threatened the
peace of the world, and had to be ‘made happy’.
It used to be that the study of narrative belonged mainly to the
literary world, encompassing other subjective concerns such as
philosophy, and history. Not any more. Forever in the name of ‘fighting
terrorism’, the scientific study of stories breaches our last frontier,
and could be used to reveal, and possibly even directly control, our
unconscious minds.
It used to be that we’d worry about what would - one day - be possible,
and we’ve grown up on a diet of media memes that help us imagine
Orwellian scenes. Now we know how we can be controlled, even from a
distance - and we can even list the brand names. The next step is mass
production, the essence of mission creep.
Here endeth yet another sorry tale of a nightmare life, another
affirmation of the craziness of the world. Perhaps the alternative
media-sphere, just by trying to understand what is going on, has come to
function like predictive programming! So much doom and gloom. Lots of
newsworthy possibilities, waiting in the wings to become our future
reality, as if there’s no alternative.
But really, it needn’t be so. There are those among you with creative
flair, visions, and ideas. Storytellers and artists.
So help us please with tales of brighter imaginings, sing us songs and
tell us stories of a better world that’s coming. Dream a dream and
change the narrative so we see the future that you see. A better place
to be.
Footnotes:
[1] As reported by BusinessWire, “Neuromodulation devices have emerged
as one of the fastest growing segments of the medical device market due
to high demand for minimally invasive and non-invasive treatment. With
advancements in technology, neuromodulation is expected to become a
promising therapeutic area and high growth industry in the next decade,
as it offers symptomatic relief mainly from chronic pain, incontinence,
heart failure, headache, depression, epilepsy, etc. The neuromodulation
devices market includes deep brain stimulation, spinal cord stimulation,
vagus nerve stimulation, sacral nerve stimulation and other external
stimulation devices such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, and
transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS).
The neuromodulation technique acts directly upon nerves or the target
area where the activity of nerves is altered due to biological responses
produced by electrical stimulation or drug infusion. These devices
include small electrodes that are attached to the brain, the spinal
cord, or peripheral nerves. These precisely placed leads are connected
by means of an extension cable to a pulse generator to generate
electrical stimulation. Neuromodulation can have applications in any
area of the body and can treat several diseases like chronic pain,
epilepsy, psychiatric disorder, movement disorder, cardiovascular
disorder, genitourinary and colorectal disorder, stroke and brain
injury, and gastric disorder.”
[2] A patent application, submitted on behalf of Arizona State
University, for “Devices and Methods for Modulating Brain Activity”
(2012), stated,“Ultrasound (US) has been used for many medical
applications, and is generally known as cyclic sound pressure with a
frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing. The production
of ultrasound is used in many different fields, typically to penetrate a
medium and measure the reflection signature or to supply focused
energy. ….. A well-known application of this technique is its use in
sonography to produce a picture of a fetus in a womb. ….. US waveforms
can be defined by their acoustic frequency, intensity, waveform
duration, and other parameters that vary the timecourse of acoustic
waves in a target tissue.”
[3] such as acetylcholine, histamine, hypocretin, serotonin, and
norepinephrine.
[4] See, for instance, ‘Transcranial ultrasound (TUS) effects on mental
states: A pilot study’, by Hameroff et al, 2012, University of Arizona
Health Sciences Center, Tucson, AZ, USA
WASHINGTON — The White House signaled that the United States would
act alone in Syria if necessary to protect its national security
interests, as a Western coalition that just days ago appeared determined
to launch a joint military action split wide open.
President Obama appeared increasingly isolated after British Prime
Minister David Cameron lost a vote Thursday in the House of Commons on
endorsing military action. It was a stunning defeat for a government
that days ago called for punishing Syrian President Bashar Assad’s
forces for alleged use of chemical weapons against rebel-held
neighborhoods last week.
Will War With Syria Cause The Price Of Oil To Explode Higher?
Are you ready to pay four, five or possibly even six dollars for a
gallon of gasoline? War has consequences, and a conflict with Syria has
the potential to escalate wildly out of control very rapidly. The
Obama administration is pledging that the upcoming attack on Syria will
be “brief and limited” and that the steady flow of oil out of the Middle
East will not be interrupted. But what happens if Syria strikes back?
What happens if Syrian missiles start raining down on Tel Aviv? What
happens if Hezbollah or Iran starts attacking U.S. or Israeli targets?
Unless Syria, Hezbollah and Iran all stand down and refuse to fight
back, we could very easily be looking at a major regional war in the
Middle East, and that could cause the price of oil to explode higher.
Syria is not a major oil producer, but approximately a third of all of
the crude oil in the world is produced in the Middle East. If the Suez
Canal or the Persian Gulf (or both) get shut down for an extended period
of time, the consequences would be dramatic. The price of oil has
already risen about 15% so far this summer, and war in the Middle East
could potentially send it soaring into record territory.
