22.13. Combined dinner, meditation, and scenarios session with Barnes. He had gotten 'leaked' information from the Org that they targeted a little-known software company today. He took extra care in briefing the Deep Cover ops-team who will shadow the Org. As preparation, they played Lustmord tape-loops with Jerry Mander and Neil Postman during the briefing sessions. If any ops-team members are apprehended, at least law enforcement will think they are dealing with Unabomber-poseurs, and won't guess at our real agenda.

At first, I was iridescent . . .

Barnes also brought some new STELLA projections of global population dynamics. His data-gathering and synthesis skills have vastly improved over the past six years, since his postgraduate thesis on the resolutique came to our attention. His insights are scary. Machiavellian scary, not Scary Movie 2 scary.

"With a projected population growth of 450 million people in Africa over the next 20 years," Barnes told me, "unless we do something soon, 20 million people will die of disease and famine. I heard that Bono's last speech raised some awareness for about five seconds, but everyone's focused on bin Laden. The Wild Card will be how pharmaceutical companies react. We had hoped for some 'support from below' by anti-globalist activists, but they're still self-identified with their group-divisive ideologies and squabbling over Internet resources."

We reminisced about the impact of Hawking's speech, which was delivered the same week that Barnes went through his initiation rite-of-passage into the cell. No athame to the throat needed: we just told him to visit a certain bookshop in New York's east side, and purchase J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye. That triggered a marker on the store's EDS stock-control system, and so when Barnes left the store, he was scooped up by FBI agents for questioning. Barnes' performance was so good that we circulated the footage on Gnutella as an experiment. A fringe media site picked up the footage for real. Which is why they're so useful.