Hi guys! I'm Abby Martin, welcome to Breaking The Set.
Well the government has been scrambling recently
to keep any more potential leakers under wraps.
And now we know about the software they’re using to help
pinpoint the troublemakers within their ranks.
It’s a test called the Cyber Awareness Challenge,
and it’s used to determine whether or not federal employees
or contractors are considered to be a threat.
The test gauges workers on several factors:
how often they travel, their views on the government,
and even their driving behavior.
After you complete the test, the program determines
if you’re considered a low, medium, or high-level threat.
Well, I’m glad I’m not one of the millions
that works for the government,
because I’m pretty sure that’s a test I wouldn’t pass.
As you can see right here,
not only do I frequently travel outside the US,
but I’m facing hundreds of dollars in fines in speed trap tickets in DC,
and, I think we all know that I could just be
"slightly" critical of the US government.
Look, this program is basically forcing workers to implicate themselves
based on their personal beliefs and driving habits!
But the real issue here is that this is just another tactic
being used to squash any kind of dissent among workers,
thereby discouraging people to speak up
or ever blow the whistle on government wrongdoing.
But hey, that’s exactly what the government wants.
In fact I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this little pilot program
was an experiment that'll one day be used to recognize and categorize
EVERY American into different threat levels!
Doesn’t quite feel like we're that far off from that being a reality.
And that means there’s lots of work to be done guys.
So join me, and let’s break the set.
♪ [Hip Music] ♫
[Voiceover] I want you to watch what we’re about to do
because you’ve never seen anything like this, on television.
Breaking News
Breaking The Set
The revolutionary Albert Einstein once said
“We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking
we used to create them.”
Meaning that we have to keep reinventing the wheel
if we want a better society.
And that’s the driving force behind an organization
called The Venus Project.
It’s a movement offering an architectural plan for human beings,
technology, and nature to coexist
to create a sustainable future.
The man behind the project is Jacque Fresco.
He’s a self-educated industrial designer, engineer and futurist,
who truly believes the ills of society can be cured only
if we throw away the rules that govern it, and ourselves.
Fresco poses a question for us all:
“Will humanity create the paradise we know is possible?
or will it drive itself into oblivion?”
The choice is ours.
Well I spoke to him earlier,
and I first asked him what drives this system of greed and war, and -
why haven’t political and social institutions evolved along
with technology?
[Jacque Fresco] Scarcity,
or fear of scarcity.
So it makes people
want to grab as much territory as they can,
as much arable land as they can,
and as much water as they can.
So the needs of people
have to do with their behavior.
The more scarcity, the more aberrant behavior.
- What does the Venus Project propose
to redesign society in a way that is possible today?
It’s the bringing [of] all of the nations together, as one nation,
and agree to take care of the Earth,
and everything on the Earth.
And then in nature,
to restore nature as near a natural condition as possible.
And [there's] no dumping of toxic materials
into rivers or the oceans.
- Can you break down some of the specifics
about the transportation and energy capabilities in said society?
- I would say the energy capabilities
would be based on geothermal energy,
the natural heat of the earth.
When you rely on solar,
if there’s clouds in the way,
you don’t get as much electric generated.
But geothermal energy,
those are natural fumaroles under the ocean,
and on the land.
And we can tap those, make steam,
and the steam can turn the turbines,
and generate power continuously,
without worrying about whether the sun’s out or not.
- And what about transportation?
- Transportation would be by monorail.
In other words, about 30 feet off the ground,
so it doesn’t have to stop at every corner.
- I thought that something was really interesting
in one of your presentations talking about sea cities.
Can you describe what those would look like?
- The city is circular;
it looks like a series of rings,
emanating out from a central dome.
The central dome will have the socially integrated computer,
which has its tentacles way out into the agricultural belt,
and deep into the soil. So if the water table drops,
that unit can pump water out there.
Whereas man has to take too much time
to decipher the conditions.
- Jacque, if all of these amazing technologies exist today,
what is prohibiting them from flourishing right now?
- The established institutions.
Once you’ve invested $10 million in oil platforms,
you don’t want the electric car.
You don’t want anything that'll interfere with your income.
So we become self-centered that way.
- Is there anywhere in the world that’s practicing a society
such as the one that you’re proposing right now?
- I would say that 90% of the societies
are corrupted by scarcity.
No, I can’t say there’s any decent society in the world.
Maybe, maybe Iceland …
might be okay.
- You've said that all world systems thus far -
communism, socialism, fascism and free-market enterprise -
have all failed to eliminate racism, elitism and scarcity.
Can you explain how your vision would eliminate those things?
- I’m trying. First of all,
money corrupts people in all areas.
You can pay off judges, senators, politicians,
with the use of money.
We must outgrow the need for money,
and go on to a resource-based economy,
where we make things available to people,
just like the public library.
If you have difficulty understanding that,
you can check out any book in the library
without paying payments of any kind,
or going into debt of any kind.
That isn’t true of the whole of society.
The society generates debt
and obligations which people cannot fulfill.
- Jacque, you said that
greed and an endless war are based on aberrant behavior
based on social conditioning alone.
Would you say that the need for competition, for reward,
is also based on our societal conditions?
- Yes.
- And that it’s not innate within human nature?
- No. There’s no such thing as human nature.
Human nature, or human behavior, is shaped by culture.
After all, what makes a person a patriot?
The Nazis were just as patriotic as the Americans.
Propaganda makes them all alike.
They hate Americans and we hate the Germans, before the war.
And the Japanese used the same technique of propaganda
to get them to want to do away with the Americans.
It’s all environmentally determined.
Every word you use, you learn.
Your mother said cup, table,
light, papa, mama.
Every word you use
and all the facial expressions
come from movies, books that you read,
role models that you look up to, and so on.
There seems to be nothing that humans can say
that doesn’t reflect their culture.
When you are brought up in the south,
and you hear all day long the same thing:
“I’m gonna get me a [nigger],
and I’m gonna hang him up from a tree!”
That isn’t inborn, that’s learned in the South-…
southern areas of the South,
uneducated regions of the South.
Where do you think prejudice comes from?
It isn’t inborn. Children will play with anybody.
Afro-Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos,
until mother says
“You’re a Lutheran, you don’t play with that Catholic. ”
She means well, but she doesn’t understand what she’s doing.
- Jacque, I commend you for actually presenting solutions
to the multitude of problems that we face in the world -
the scarcity, all the problems that we're facing -
it seems really overwhelming and I think
it’s amazing that you’ve actually produced something
that could be a solution. However,
how can we insure that putting full trust
in one concentrated planning system of society
will work and not become corrupted?
Because I’m just worried that we’re not there yet, and that
I feel like that’s how socialism’s failed in the past.
- If you do away with a scarcity, number one,
and you do away with money,
and make things available like a public library-…
Next door to the public library, we have a camera center,
where anyone can go in and check out a camera.
Next door to the camera center, there’s musical instruments.
You can check out a violin, a saxophone,
just like the public library.
No payments of any kind.
And we have all those buildings around the central building.
And that makes it impossible
for people to take bribes or to break into your house,
and steal anything.
If you make goods and services available to people,
they do not steal.
There’s no need for it.
- We need to reinvent our value system
in order to share the resources of this planet.
How much would you say that language
and mental trappings of these social orders
that have failed in the past, trap us?
prevent us from being able to progress with revolutionary ideas?
- Well, our language was designed hundreds of years ago,
and that cannot communicate with people.
We know that because we have
democrats, republicans,
socialists, Lutherans, Catholics,
and language is a terrible thing!
It’s never been invented so that people can
draw the same conclusions.
You see, language is subject to interpretation.
When you read the bible, somebody says
“This is what Jesus meant.”
And another person says “Oh no, he meant something else. ”
And the third person says “You’re both wrong,
this is what he meant.”
That's why you have the Lutheran,
the 7th day Adventists, the Catholics,
only because the bible is subject to interpretation.
And our language is terrible,
because it’s subject to interpretation.
But there is a language that is not subject to interpretation.
And that’s the language used by engineers.
When they talk to each other, they don’t say
“Believe me, this is the strongest material. ”
They give you the specifications of what’s in that metal,
how much torsion load it can take,
how much tension, how much compression.
So engineers, when they talk to each other,
they don’t say “I think he means this”
or “I think he means that.”
When you talk to normal people, they interpret it
in relation to their background.
That’s a major problem.
- Yes. Math and science and these things are not
really open for interpretation. It’s mind-blowing to see
the technologies that do exist that are available to us right now.
Jacque Fresco, thank you so much for coming on,
explaining a little bit more about The Venus Project;
everyone check it out.
We're taking a quick break guys, but still ahead
we’ll talk about the tragic nuclear legacy of Japan; stay tuned.