"You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they're people just like you. You're wrong. Dead wrong." — They Live

We're living in two worlds, you and I.

There's the world we see (or are made to see) and then there's the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America — privileged, progressive and free — is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and "freedom," such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

This is the premise of John Carpenter's film They Live, which was released more than 30 years ago, and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can't be killed, Carpenter's larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker's concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King's novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose "the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy."

And then there is Carpenter's They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace — blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives — has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

The report says a combination of global starvation, war, disease, drought, and a fragile power grid could have cascading, devastating effects
According to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.

The senior US government officials who wrote the report are from several key agencies including the Army, Defense Intelligence Agency, and NASA. The study called on the Pentagon to urgently prepare for the possibility that domestic power, water, and food systems might collapse due to the impacts of climate change as we near mid-century.

The report was commissioned by General Mark Milley, Trump's new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making him the highest-ranking military officer in the country (the report also puts him at odds with Trump, who does not take climate change seriously.)

As a foreign student eager to bring American values to your home, you'd normally be a darling of US media and NGOs. Unless your name is Maria Butina, that is - then your fate is Russia conspiracy theories, media smears and jail.

Your story begins like a movie: A twenty-something from "flyover country," going to Moscow to advocate for what Americans consider a basic constitutional right, but which has been curtailed for almost a century. Frustrated by the political and social opposition, you move to the US to study - at American University in Washington, DC, can't get more American than that! - and seek out members and officials of the biggest US advocacy group for your cause.

You post photos of yourself in a cowboy hat at their conventions in the heartland and tell tall tales to your fellow students in an effort to be cool and fit in.

It's that time of year again: when All Saints's Day, the Day of the Dead, and Halloween come around and our propensity to view or read some horror becomes that much more likely. But why do we indulge in horrific stories year around? Or better put - why do we seem to enjoy horror? What is it about horror, which can be so unpleasant - yet makes people crave a dose of the willies from time to time? Is the viewing or reading of it cathartic? A reminder of something intrinsic to the human experience? Can it even be healthy in a way? Or is it just morbid fascination? Maybe all of the above?

This week on MindMatters we take a look at some of our favorite scary books and movies and, in an effort to answer the questions posed, get into those stories and ideas that we find truly frightening; a top 5 more or less. We'll also be sharing some of our own scary experiences, and seeing what, if anything about them, has brought value to our lives and a greater understanding of the world in which we live.


Running Time: 01:34:14

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Russia has pulled off an impressive security deal to avoid escalation of violence and war in Syria. It's a win-win formula for peace, drawn up by Russia and Turkey. Arguably, the luckiest beneficiary is US President Donald Trump.

Although, you wouldn't think that listening to Trump's trumpeting about the latest ceasefire, worked out by Russia and Turkey. The American leader arrogated all praise for the peace accord as being "an outcome created by us, the United States... No other nation did this."

In Trump's vainglory, he reckons his dubious policy shift earlier this month, which many saw as a shameful betrayal of the Kurds, was the precursor for the Sochi memorandum creating a new peace corridor in northeast Syria, to be overseen by Russia, Turkey, and Syrian state forces.

It's like someone who throws down a basket of eggs. Then, when someone else comes along and somehow turns the mess into an omelette, the original wrecker slaps himself on the back for being a gourmet chef.

I'm reading one of the best books I've ever seen, historian Yuri Slezkine's The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution. It's a massive — over 1,000 pages — history of the Bolshevik movement, focusing on the people who lived in a vast apartment building constructed across the Moskva River from the Kremlin, for party elites. In the 1930s, during the purges, it was the most dangerous address in the country. The secret police came for people there all the time.

The book has given me a breakthrough in understanding why so many people who grew up under communism are unnerved by what's going on in the West today, even if they can't all articulate it beyond expressing intense but inchoate anxiety about political correctness. Reading Slezkine, a UC-Berkeley historian, clarifies things immensely. Let me explain as concisely as I can. All of this is going into the book I'm working on, by the way.

In my book, I identify two main factors that make the "soft totalitarianism" we're drifting into different from the hard totalitarianism of the communist years. One is the vastly greater capabilities of surveillance technology, and its penetration into daily life in this current stage of capitalism. The other is the pseudo-religion of Social Justice, the holy trinity of which is Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. The mathematician James Lindsay last year wrote an insightful essay analyzing Social Justice ideology as a kind of postmodern religion ("faith system," he writes). Reading Slezkine on Bolshevism illuminates this with new depth.

Russia-Turkey deal establishes 'safe zone' along Turkish border and there will be joint Russia-Turkey military patrols
The negotiations in Sochi were long - over six hours - tense and tough. Two leaders in a room with their interpreters and several senior Turkish ministers close by if advice was needed. The stakes were immense: a road map to pacify northeast Syria, finally.

The press conference afterwards was somewhat awkward - riffing on generalities. But there's no question that in the end Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan managed the near-impossible.

The Russia-Turkey deal establishes a safe zone along the Syrian-Turkish border - something Erdogan had been gunning for since 2014. There will be joint Russia-Turkey military patrols. The Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Units), part of the rebranded, US-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces, will need to retreat and even disband, especially in the stretch between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, and they will have to abandon their much-cherished urban areas such as Kobane and Manbij. The Syrian Arab Army will be back in the whole northeast. And Syrian territorial integrity - a Putin imperative - will be preserved.

Former British ambassador Craig Murray has published a very disturbing account of Julian Assange's court appearance yesterday which I recommend reading in full. There have been many reports published about Assange's case management hearing, but the combination of Murray's prior experience with torture victims, his familiarity with British courts, his friendship with Assange, and his lack of reverence for western power structures allowed for a much more penetrating insight into what happened than anyone else has been able to provide so far.

Here is a small excerpt:

Protests and demonstrations have rocked every corner of the world in recent days, with tax hikes, corruption and supposed environmental injustice all raising public anger. But why have they spread?

Watching the news over the last week, one would be convinced that the world has devolved into a series of flashpoints, with corrupt governments across the political spectrum facing the wrath of their enraged citizens. To be fair, that's not far from the truth.

Four continents have seen anti-government demonstrations over the last week, many of them sparked by seemingly innocuous taxes or changes to the law. In Lebanon, protesters have set Beirut ablaze in response to a proposed fee of 20 cents per day on internet voice calls, dubbed the "WhatsApp tax." Chileans set metro stations on fire following a $1.17 increase in public transport fares, and the streets of Ecuador are filled with rubble after a planned removal of fuel subsidies triggered mass unrest.

In the 1960s in the US, the psychedelic drug subculture exploded out into the mainstream, bringing with it promises of peace and love, ushering in the 'Age of Aquarius' (whatever that means).

Unfortunately, all they really accomplished was scaring the crap out of 'the authorities', who subsequently made all psychedelics illegal. Thus all the therapeutic potential of the drugs, which had already been studied for over a decade previously, ground to a screeching halt. Scientists could no longer get access to these promising substances.

Today we seem to be witnessing a cautious renaissance of study on psychedelics. Government regulators have been loosening restrictions on researchers who have taken up where their forefathers in the 50s left off. Scientists at well-respected institutions such as Johns Hopkins University have been investigating the benefits of psilocybin on those dying from cancer, for example.

Preliminary results of psychedelic research are showing benefits in cases of crippling depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and addictions. There is the potential that the substances could benefit many other conditions as well.

Join us for a discussion on the healing potential of psychedelics - so much more than party drugs! And be sure to stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment, where she gives us some examples of extreme animal births.


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Running Time: 01:11:59

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