BARCODES

For most people barcodes are the handy black and white stripes on products that facilitate quick payment at the store: instead of the assistant keying in the price, the item is swiped over red laser lights which read it off. For the shopkeeper, barcodes have the advantage that swiping the barcode allows instant stock control.Oh, those poor deluded souls. They need to read the 1982 book The New Money System: 666 by Mary Stewart Relfe. For Relfe has divined that barcodes have Satanic importance. 

The guard bars on the code indicate 666 – the mark of the Devil and his cashless economy. It says so in Revelations 13:16-18:And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

David Icke (he who, inter alia, tracks the doings of the Babylonian Brotherhood) is another to have a problem with barcodes, because they enable mass observation: everything you buy with a credit or debit card can be put against your name. Soon the government and the backroom cabal that runs it will know exactly what’s in your home.Icke may be a nut, but he might be right. 

The trend of the era is towards microscopic surveillance of citizens’ consumer habits. In 2005 the BBC reported that the Tesco supermarket chain had trialled Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips, which allowed products to be tracked via radio waves. Privacy groups labelled these chips “spy chips” because the tags could be used to track the behaviour of customers.

There is clearly a need for citizens to watch out for what big business and governments are up to. The Devil, though, is not in the detail of the UPC and EAN barcodes used in America and Europe respectively.