Some stories of note in August...
Iran prepares for war...
Asia Times: Eyes on skies over Iran's reactor
Israel prepares for war...
WND: Israeli official declares 'We're preparing for war'
We've heard these war drums before however...
+
We realize we violate sound epistemic manners in making conjectures such as this, but the dark pools of classified technology lures it in... Is the weather itself being utilized as a despoiling and destabilizing weapon of opportunity?...
Independent: Russians fear worst as fires reach Chernobyl fallout zone
AP: Insurgents, police clash amid Pakistan flooding
+
BP oil spill update - efforts to sweep it under the "rug"...
Washington's blog: Gulf Chemist - Mercenaries Hired By BP Are Now Applying Toxic Dispersant - at Night and In an Uncontrolled Manner - Which BP Says It No Longer Uses
...are a huge "success"...
Science: Tracking Hydrocarbon Plume Transport and Biodegradation at Deepwater Horizon
+
In police state news...
Forbes: Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed in Street Roving Vans
Another revelation on surveillance capabilities arises out of a legal dispute...
Narconews: Tech Firm Claims Its Software “Hacked” in CIA’s Quest for Drone Code
The lawsuit revolves around a series of claims and counterclaims related to a sophisticated, analytical software program developed by IISI that is capable of integrating at high speeds spatial data, such as maps and visual images, with non-visual data, such as names and phone numbers.
+
Net Neutrality on the ropes...
EFF: A Review of Verizon and Google's Net Neutrality Proposal
+
Wayne Madsen's bombshell: Obama literally a child of the CIA...
Prison Planet: Barack Obama conclusively outed as CIA creation
But if grandpa Dunham was with the CIA, what then was the nature of his friendship with communist Frank Marshall Davis?
Lyndon LaRouche's psychological profile of the "failed personality" of this creation is detailed in a short film...
LaRouchePAC: Obama's Failed Personality
But of course, everyone is comparing Obama to Hitler these days, even if for opposing reasons...
Telegraph: Blackstone chief Schwarzman likens Obama to Hitler over tax rises
+
As the Fed indulges in more exercises of Gödelian monetarism...
MoneyWatch: Fed buys $2.55 billion in Treasury bonds
Ron Paul inquires into the Ft. Knox conundrum...
The Hill: Ron Paul questions whether there's gold at Ft. Knox, NY Fed
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Information Is the New Battlefield 2
The JSOU paper cited in our first part demonstrates that on the information battlefield, the admonition to 'consider the source' is itself an avenue of attack. Raise ad hominem questions about an opponent's motive - even suggest that the opponent is working on your side - and you have thus neutralized the opponent's arsenal. There has never been a lack of rivalry and back-biting in the conspiracy theory world - but we can wonder to what extent such rivalry is the result of simple human frailties or of deliberate "shit-stirring" on the part of dissemblers.
A case in point: we wonder about the source of this hit piece on Sibel Edmonds...
EqualPartyUSA: Blowing the Whistle on Sibel Edmonds
We ask to what extent this site fits the bill: "information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nation, group, or community to pass the U.S. message...[or] hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message..." The site administrator James Laffrey's urgent request for help - "More help, please. No, not money! Just leave comments on other websites and encourage people to check us out..." - would indeed reflect the JSOU paper's focus on gaining prominence in the infosphere...
We find on Mr. Laffrey's about page that he is based in Vietnam as an English language teacher - it could be interesting to determine whether he is operating a Vietnamese language blog as well and what its overall message might be.
Incidentally, Edmonds was recently in Vietnam where she shot a rather disturbing video (not at all flattering to U.S. interests)
Boiling Frogs Post: Another Sorry Episode in American History: Agent Orange
Perusing his EqualPartyUSA site, there is little in the way of "scoops" beyond this hit piece on Edmonds, though Laffrey also attacks other prominent oppositional figures like Ralph Nader and Alex Jones. Otherwise it is the usual regurgitated "conspiraciology" as can be found on thousands of other sites. The Rothschild cabal is behind everything evil in the world and whoever fails to focus on this is providing cover for the the Rothschilds. (Or perhaps Mr. Laffery providing cover for the Rockefellers?) Some curious biographical points are raised about Mrs. Edmonds and her husband; and the sexy, creepy photo on the about page of the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance - at which Edmonds volunteers - does raise eyebrows (but could this be a case of... "Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience..."?)
These biographical volleys at Edmonds do not go beyond highlighting mere curiosities, however; nothing substantial is offered to raise real doubts about Edmonds and her whistlebowing as an FBI translator. Ultimately, ye shall know them by their works, and Edmonds provides us with invaluable geopolitical analysis that is rarely matched elsewhere - her recent piece on the Kyrgyzstan situation for instance.
+
Consider another possible example of "cognitive infiltration" - to borrow Cass Sunstein's terminology - in a communication to Cryptome signed "Wikileaks Insiders," where the target would be Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir, who was instrumental in killing the "IceSlave" plan...
Birgitta Jonsdottir; a left wing Icelandic politician is being very economical with the truth; and is behaving true to her stereotype as a persistent and predicable anti American loud mouth. Many WIKILEAKS activists consider Birgitta Jonsdottir a liability to WIKILEAKS; responsible for introducing excessive political bias into our output. This was evident with her naming, editing, and commentary of the gunship video.
If this is such a case, however, the author has put less effort in establishing his/her oppositional cover, as it is delivered in the tone of a Rush Limbaugh.
+
A confounding case of source tainting revolves around the strange, and apparently heavily medicated figure of Adrian Lamo, the tipster who outed the alleged leaker to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning. The cover story of how this came about is difficult enough to swallow, as noted by Glenn Greenwald...
Salon: The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks
(To further peruse this maze, see the time-line with citations provided at Cryptome)
This case took a confusing twist however when it was "revealed" in Forbes of all places that Lamo volunteered for a shadowy semi-private Internet snoop group known as "Project Vigilant". It appears however that this of itself is a false lead, as a little bit of investigating on the part of John Young showed Project Vigilant's website to be of dubious provenance...
Cryptome: Project Vigilant is a Fraud
Of course, this does not mean that there are no Special Ops groups, very likely private contractors, or perhaps foreign services, that engage in surveillance of U.S. domestic Internet activity. "Project Vigilant" and perhaps with it the entire Lamo/Manning/WikiLeaks/Wired/Salon/Cryptome/etc. affair is but a diversion, a "dual node network"* serving to draw attention away from the central battlefield where the information war is truly being waged...
EFF: Government Uses Social Networking Sites for More than Investigations
With the amount of personal information that Internet users wittingly or unwittingly volunteer in open source mode, much can be gleaned by government agencies armed with Internet tracking algorithms, and without needing to take recourse to domestic spying as such. "Netizens" have effectively lodged themselves in glass-walled domiciles, as in the One State of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, whence the public/private distinction has been effectively subverted, and wherein the Fourth Amendment does not apply.
* The Invisibles: A Dialectic by Thibaut D'Amiens? F. Borishinski? (or some have speculated, John Harsanyi?) Horizon Press, 1976. Pgs. 42-53.
Update: Sept. 6
Our doubts about the "Wikileaks insiders" have proven accurate; or at least, John Young has come around to admit these doubts himself:
Cryptome: Wikileaks - Birgitta Jónsdóttir Clarifies Her Position
While a little bit unusual for Cryptome to dabble in the authenticity racket, wink, the "Wikileaks insiders" are likely imposters fabricated by a person or persons unknown. Jónsdóttir is correct in asking that these persons reveal identity.
A case in point: we wonder about the source of this hit piece on Sibel Edmonds...
EqualPartyUSA: Blowing the Whistle on Sibel Edmonds
We ask to what extent this site fits the bill: "information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nation, group, or community to pass the U.S. message...[or] hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message..." The site administrator James Laffrey's urgent request for help - "More help, please. No, not money! Just leave comments on other websites and encourage people to check us out..." - would indeed reflect the JSOU paper's focus on gaining prominence in the infosphere...
We find on Mr. Laffrey's about page that he is based in Vietnam as an English language teacher - it could be interesting to determine whether he is operating a Vietnamese language blog as well and what its overall message might be.
Incidentally, Edmonds was recently in Vietnam where she shot a rather disturbing video (not at all flattering to U.S. interests)
Boiling Frogs Post: Another Sorry Episode in American History: Agent Orange
Perusing his EqualPartyUSA site, there is little in the way of "scoops" beyond this hit piece on Edmonds, though Laffrey also attacks other prominent oppositional figures like Ralph Nader and Alex Jones. Otherwise it is the usual regurgitated "conspiraciology" as can be found on thousands of other sites. The Rothschild cabal is behind everything evil in the world and whoever fails to focus on this is providing cover for the the Rothschilds. (Or perhaps Mr. Laffery providing cover for the Rockefellers?) Some curious biographical points are raised about Mrs. Edmonds and her husband; and the sexy, creepy photo on the about page of the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance - at which Edmonds volunteers - does raise eyebrows (but could this be a case of... "Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience..."?)
These biographical volleys at Edmonds do not go beyond highlighting mere curiosities, however; nothing substantial is offered to raise real doubts about Edmonds and her whistlebowing as an FBI translator. Ultimately, ye shall know them by their works, and Edmonds provides us with invaluable geopolitical analysis that is rarely matched elsewhere - her recent piece on the Kyrgyzstan situation for instance.
+
Consider another possible example of "cognitive infiltration" - to borrow Cass Sunstein's terminology - in a communication to Cryptome signed "Wikileaks Insiders," where the target would be Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir, who was instrumental in killing the "IceSlave" plan...
Birgitta Jonsdottir; a left wing Icelandic politician is being very economical with the truth; and is behaving true to her stereotype as a persistent and predicable anti American loud mouth. Many WIKILEAKS activists consider Birgitta Jonsdottir a liability to WIKILEAKS; responsible for introducing excessive political bias into our output. This was evident with her naming, editing, and commentary of the gunship video.
If this is such a case, however, the author has put less effort in establishing his/her oppositional cover, as it is delivered in the tone of a Rush Limbaugh.
+
A confounding case of source tainting revolves around the strange, and apparently heavily medicated figure of Adrian Lamo, the tipster who outed the alleged leaker to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning. The cover story of how this came about is difficult enough to swallow, as noted by Glenn Greenwald...
Salon: The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks
(To further peruse this maze, see the time-line with citations provided at Cryptome)
This case took a confusing twist however when it was "revealed" in Forbes of all places that Lamo volunteered for a shadowy semi-private Internet snoop group known as "Project Vigilant". It appears however that this of itself is a false lead, as a little bit of investigating on the part of John Young showed Project Vigilant's website to be of dubious provenance...
Cryptome: Project Vigilant is a Fraud
Of course, this does not mean that there are no Special Ops groups, very likely private contractors, or perhaps foreign services, that engage in surveillance of U.S. domestic Internet activity. "Project Vigilant" and perhaps with it the entire Lamo/Manning/WikiLeaks/Wired/Salon/Cryptome/etc. affair is but a diversion, a "dual node network"* serving to draw attention away from the central battlefield where the information war is truly being waged...
EFF: Government Uses Social Networking Sites for More than Investigations
With the amount of personal information that Internet users wittingly or unwittingly volunteer in open source mode, much can be gleaned by government agencies armed with Internet tracking algorithms, and without needing to take recourse to domestic spying as such. "Netizens" have effectively lodged themselves in glass-walled domiciles, as in the One State of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, whence the public/private distinction has been effectively subverted, and wherein the Fourth Amendment does not apply.
* The Invisibles: A Dialectic by Thibaut D'Amiens? F. Borishinski? (or some have speculated, John Harsanyi?) Horizon Press, 1976. Pgs. 42-53.
Update: Sept. 6
Our doubts about the "Wikileaks insiders" have proven accurate; or at least, John Young has come around to admit these doubts himself:
Cryptome: Wikileaks - Birgitta Jónsdóttir Clarifies Her Position
While a little bit unusual for Cryptome to dabble in the authenticity racket, wink, the "Wikileaks insiders" are likely imposters fabricated by a person or persons unknown. Jónsdóttir is correct in asking that these persons reveal identity.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Information is the New Battlefield
We're interested in information... And we believe that the whole battlefield (if there is one in the human situation) is about information. We don't think that politicians or arms have any real power, we think that's just a facade. We think the real power lies with who controls the information... - Throbbing Gristle
There is no such thing as bad information. Any piece of information can tell you something, provided that you can pose the appropriate question that the information answers. Generally the best question to ask concerns the source and his or her or its motives. There is some circularity in this, but motives can be gauged by the nature of the information that is put out... Does it always come with a particular "spin"? The veracity bar on the referent of a piece of information is likely much lower if it reinforces the ideological structure of the teller than if it threatens it. If some piece of information does threaten, then one should expect some accompanying ideological readjustment. Ideological structure comes in varying degrees of rigidity: the greater the rigidity, the more information will be rejected or arranged in conformity to it; the less rigid, the more adjustable the structure will be. Generally, reinforcing information will say more about the source - the vehicle - of the information than it does of its "currency". More often than not, a source wearing ideological bias on their sleeve will simply refrain from conveying a non-reinforcing piece of information, and forgo the vetting of reinforcing information. Such ideologically rigid "low-pass filters" then offer themselves up as unwitting vehicles for passing disinformation. These in turn can shape the ideologically less rigid who are more "open" to new and challenging "facts" and "ideas". In evaluating a piece of information, then, one should focus on establishing its provenance: its originating source and the position it subsequently occupies within varying ideological structures.
Not every passer of information readily discloses their ideological motives, however. They may even dissemble their motives... A case in point is found in some of the proposals for infiltrating the "infosphere" through blogs in a 2006 JSOU report by James Kinniburgh and Dorothy Denning, as posted on Cryptome:
Blogs and Military Information Strategy
In order to select or design a useful blog for conducting IO [information operations], developing measures of the blog’s ability to reach and activate the conventional, middle and micro layers of the entire infosphere, as well as the development of a method for measuring the change in attitudes, thinking, beliefs and ultimately actions that are directly attributable to the blog, is critical in order to fine tune military efforts. Selecting or creating a likely candidate blog is the first step, since the hard measure of effectiveness must necessarily come after an operation. -Pg. 17
Segmentary opposition and its gentler cousin, in-group/out-group dynamics, may prevent a foreign audience from taking an overtly U.S. government-run or sponsored blog seriously... In this regard, information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nation, group, or community to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital... An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. -Pg. 20
There are certain to be cases where some blog, outside the control of the U.S. government, promotes a message that is antithetical to U.S. interests, or actively supports the informational, recruiting and logistical activities of our enemies. The initial reaction may be to take down the site, but this is problematic in that doing so does not guarantee that the site will remain down. As has been the case with many such sites, the offending site will likely move to a different host server, often in a third country. Moreover, such action will likely produce even more interest in the site and its contents. Also, taking down a site that is known to pass enemy EEIs (essential elements of information) and that gives us their key messages denies us a valuable information source. This is not to say that once the information passed becomes redundant or is superseded by a better source that the site should be taken down. At that point the enemy blog might be used covertly as a vehicle for friendly information operations. Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience. -Pg. 21
There will also be times when it is thought to be necessary, in the context of an integrated information campaign, to pass false or erroneous information through the media, on all three layers, in support of military deception activities... In these cases, extra care must be taken to ensure plausible deniability and nonattribution, as well as employing a well-thought-out deception operation that minimizes the risks of exposure. Because of the potential blowback effect, information strategy should avoid planting false information as much as possible. -Pg. 22
Now the caveat:
This brings us to an even more fundamental issue. Because the U.S. military is prohibited from conducting information operations against U.S. persons, it is reluctant to engage in Internet IO operations that might be characterized as PSYOP or deception. Once information is on the Internet, it can reach anyone, including those in the U.S. Thus, while the military offers factual news on the Internet through Public Affairs, it generally stays away from commentary and IO. -ibid.
And the end-run:
Some of the possible techniques we have explored in our discussion of the military use of blogging require a certain degree of subtlety, finesse, and yes, covert action. By giving military blog-based operations to the Intelligence and Special Operations communities, these uses become less risky and more feasible. -Pg. 27
While these recommendations are directed primarily towards blog-making, certainly it must have occurred to the authors (or at least to certain of their readers) that other kinds of sites on the Internet might be similarly utilized or created. For instance, data-cache sites like Cryptome (which had been around for well over a decade) and WikiLeaks (which was just beginning in the year of this JSOU paper) would be likely places to deploy tactically shaped information. Unlike the average ax-grinding blogger, John Young and Julian Assange (founders of Cryptome and WikiLeaks repectively) simply embrace the mission of information emancipation regardless of whatever ideological framework such liberated information may help or hurt. Assange does state that he is on a mission of hurting unjust governments, corporations and institutions, but we can say that WikiLeaks appears to be somewhat ideologically neutral in that, to take a couple of examples, the IPCC email leaks were embraced by the right (and other anthropogenic global warming skeptics) while the Collateral Murder video leak was embraced by the anti-war left (but the recent Afghan War Diary leak can lend itself both to the left and right).
As ideologically neutral venues and, more importantly, as source protecting venues, WikiLeaks and Cryptome thus offer themselves as fertile information battlefields for the dissembler. John Young acknowledges this, but Assange gives the dubious assurance that WikiLeaks thoroughly vets its documents, with the exception of its most recent leak, which was forwarded to The Gaurdian, N.Y.Times, und Der Spiegel for vetting...
Questions about the provenance of the Afghan War Diary have been raised - not in the mainstream media, which, across the board, has uncharacteristically been the primary purveyor of this leak, touted as the "Pentagon Papers" of our time - but in the independent media. In interviews with Alex Jones, John Young states that these documents are not digitally authenticated, while Wayne Madsen and Webster Tarply suggest that the leak my be planted in order to garner support for expanding the war into Pakistan and even to Iran. On the other hand, we have pondered whether the leak may have been planted by the Obama administration itself in order to generate a public groundswell of anti-war sentiment in order to give Obama a way out of this inherited quagmire.
Next: Part 2
There is no such thing as bad information. Any piece of information can tell you something, provided that you can pose the appropriate question that the information answers. Generally the best question to ask concerns the source and his or her or its motives. There is some circularity in this, but motives can be gauged by the nature of the information that is put out... Does it always come with a particular "spin"? The veracity bar on the referent of a piece of information is likely much lower if it reinforces the ideological structure of the teller than if it threatens it. If some piece of information does threaten, then one should expect some accompanying ideological readjustment. Ideological structure comes in varying degrees of rigidity: the greater the rigidity, the more information will be rejected or arranged in conformity to it; the less rigid, the more adjustable the structure will be. Generally, reinforcing information will say more about the source - the vehicle - of the information than it does of its "currency". More often than not, a source wearing ideological bias on their sleeve will simply refrain from conveying a non-reinforcing piece of information, and forgo the vetting of reinforcing information. Such ideologically rigid "low-pass filters" then offer themselves up as unwitting vehicles for passing disinformation. These in turn can shape the ideologically less rigid who are more "open" to new and challenging "facts" and "ideas". In evaluating a piece of information, then, one should focus on establishing its provenance: its originating source and the position it subsequently occupies within varying ideological structures.
Not every passer of information readily discloses their ideological motives, however. They may even dissemble their motives... A case in point is found in some of the proposals for infiltrating the "infosphere" through blogs in a 2006 JSOU report by James Kinniburgh and Dorothy Denning, as posted on Cryptome:
Blogs and Military Information Strategy
In order to select or design a useful blog for conducting IO [information operations], developing measures of the blog’s ability to reach and activate the conventional, middle and micro layers of the entire infosphere, as well as the development of a method for measuring the change in attitudes, thinking, beliefs and ultimately actions that are directly attributable to the blog, is critical in order to fine tune military efforts. Selecting or creating a likely candidate blog is the first step, since the hard measure of effectiveness must necessarily come after an operation. -Pg. 17
Segmentary opposition and its gentler cousin, in-group/out-group dynamics, may prevent a foreign audience from taking an overtly U.S. government-run or sponsored blog seriously... In this regard, information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nation, group, or community to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital... An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. -Pg. 20
There are certain to be cases where some blog, outside the control of the U.S. government, promotes a message that is antithetical to U.S. interests, or actively supports the informational, recruiting and logistical activities of our enemies. The initial reaction may be to take down the site, but this is problematic in that doing so does not guarantee that the site will remain down. As has been the case with many such sites, the offending site will likely move to a different host server, often in a third country. Moreover, such action will likely produce even more interest in the site and its contents. Also, taking down a site that is known to pass enemy EEIs (essential elements of information) and that gives us their key messages denies us a valuable information source. This is not to say that once the information passed becomes redundant or is superseded by a better source that the site should be taken down. At that point the enemy blog might be used covertly as a vehicle for friendly information operations. Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience. -Pg. 21
There will also be times when it is thought to be necessary, in the context of an integrated information campaign, to pass false or erroneous information through the media, on all three layers, in support of military deception activities... In these cases, extra care must be taken to ensure plausible deniability and nonattribution, as well as employing a well-thought-out deception operation that minimizes the risks of exposure. Because of the potential blowback effect, information strategy should avoid planting false information as much as possible. -Pg. 22
Now the caveat:
This brings us to an even more fundamental issue. Because the U.S. military is prohibited from conducting information operations against U.S. persons, it is reluctant to engage in Internet IO operations that might be characterized as PSYOP or deception. Once information is on the Internet, it can reach anyone, including those in the U.S. Thus, while the military offers factual news on the Internet through Public Affairs, it generally stays away from commentary and IO. -ibid.
And the end-run:
Some of the possible techniques we have explored in our discussion of the military use of blogging require a certain degree of subtlety, finesse, and yes, covert action. By giving military blog-based operations to the Intelligence and Special Operations communities, these uses become less risky and more feasible. -Pg. 27
While these recommendations are directed primarily towards blog-making, certainly it must have occurred to the authors (or at least to certain of their readers) that other kinds of sites on the Internet might be similarly utilized or created. For instance, data-cache sites like Cryptome (which had been around for well over a decade) and WikiLeaks (which was just beginning in the year of this JSOU paper) would be likely places to deploy tactically shaped information. Unlike the average ax-grinding blogger, John Young and Julian Assange (founders of Cryptome and WikiLeaks repectively) simply embrace the mission of information emancipation regardless of whatever ideological framework such liberated information may help or hurt. Assange does state that he is on a mission of hurting unjust governments, corporations and institutions, but we can say that WikiLeaks appears to be somewhat ideologically neutral in that, to take a couple of examples, the IPCC email leaks were embraced by the right (and other anthropogenic global warming skeptics) while the Collateral Murder video leak was embraced by the anti-war left (but the recent Afghan War Diary leak can lend itself both to the left and right).
As ideologically neutral venues and, more importantly, as source protecting venues, WikiLeaks and Cryptome thus offer themselves as fertile information battlefields for the dissembler. John Young acknowledges this, but Assange gives the dubious assurance that WikiLeaks thoroughly vets its documents, with the exception of its most recent leak, which was forwarded to The Gaurdian, N.Y.Times, und Der Spiegel for vetting...
Questions about the provenance of the Afghan War Diary have been raised - not in the mainstream media, which, across the board, has uncharacteristically been the primary purveyor of this leak, touted as the "Pentagon Papers" of our time - but in the independent media. In interviews with Alex Jones, John Young states that these documents are not digitally authenticated, while Wayne Madsen and Webster Tarply suggest that the leak my be planted in order to garner support for expanding the war into Pakistan and even to Iran. On the other hand, we have pondered whether the leak may have been planted by the Obama administration itself in order to generate a public groundswell of anti-war sentiment in order to give Obama a way out of this inherited quagmire.
Next: Part 2
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Some things that happened in July...
Korean Central News Agency (DPRK): US-S.Korea Joint Military Exercises Flailed
Christian Science Monitor: Did Iran attack Japanese oil tanker in Strait of Hormuz?
As things heat up in the Yellow Sea and Strait of Hormuz, it may be wise to revisit this affair...
Secrecy News: 1968 Senate Sessions of Foreign relations Declassified
The transcripts include an extended inquiry into the official version of 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which led to the escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and which became the object of increasing skepticism, inside and outside of government.
+
Sibel Edmonds examines the back round on recent events in Kyrgyzstan...
Boiling Frogs Post: Maksim Bakiyev: A Groomed Puppet Who Never Came to Be King
+
Tyrannis Britannia
BAE Systems: Taranis Combat Aircraft Thunders into view
Other developments in aviation...
BBC: Phantom Eye hydrogen-powered spy plane unveiled
Wired: Killer Drones Get Stealthy
+
Cocoa, Gold and Heroin keep the banking system afloat...
Telegraph:
Mystery trader buys all of Europe's cocoa
Secret gold swap has spooked the market
Pravda: Large U.S. Banks Laundered Money from Drug Trafficking
+
In police state news...
Wired: Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring
The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the 'invisible links' between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”
Isn't that nifty. It is but one aspect of the only growth industry in the United States: surveil and secure....
Washington Post: A hidden world, growing beyond control
As the national security regime blossoms, meanwhile, state and local governments are hemorrhaging. A case in point: California...
Sacramento Bee: Schwarzenegger orders minimum wage for state workers
NBCBayArea: Suffer These Crimes in Oakland? Don't Call the Cops
But the cops will call on you...
East Bay Express: Oakland Police Search Without Warrants
L.A.Times: Raw-food raid highlights a hunger
+
A mostly unnoticed political scandal...
AP: Ex-Clinton fundraiser gets 12 years in prison
But one which demonstrates a certain continuity...
WhoWhatWhy: Hillary's Bush Connection
Korean Central News Agency (DPRK): US-S.Korea Joint Military Exercises Flailed
Christian Science Monitor: Did Iran attack Japanese oil tanker in Strait of Hormuz?
As things heat up in the Yellow Sea and Strait of Hormuz, it may be wise to revisit this affair...
Secrecy News: 1968 Senate Sessions of Foreign relations Declassified
The transcripts include an extended inquiry into the official version of 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which led to the escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and which became the object of increasing skepticism, inside and outside of government.
+
Sibel Edmonds examines the back round on recent events in Kyrgyzstan...
Boiling Frogs Post: Maksim Bakiyev: A Groomed Puppet Who Never Came to Be King
+
Tyrannis Britannia
BAE Systems: Taranis Combat Aircraft Thunders into view
Other developments in aviation...
BBC: Phantom Eye hydrogen-powered spy plane unveiled
Wired: Killer Drones Get Stealthy
+
Cocoa, Gold and Heroin keep the banking system afloat...
Telegraph:
Mystery trader buys all of Europe's cocoa
Secret gold swap has spooked the market
Pravda: Large U.S. Banks Laundered Money from Drug Trafficking
+
In police state news...
Wired: Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring
The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the 'invisible links' between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”
Isn't that nifty. It is but one aspect of the only growth industry in the United States: surveil and secure....
Washington Post: A hidden world, growing beyond control
As the national security regime blossoms, meanwhile, state and local governments are hemorrhaging. A case in point: California...
Sacramento Bee: Schwarzenegger orders minimum wage for state workers
NBCBayArea: Suffer These Crimes in Oakland? Don't Call the Cops
But the cops will call on you...
East Bay Express: Oakland Police Search Without Warrants
L.A.Times: Raw-food raid highlights a hunger
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A mostly unnoticed political scandal...
AP: Ex-Clinton fundraiser gets 12 years in prison
But one which demonstrates a certain continuity...
WhoWhatWhy: Hillary's Bush Connection
Monday, July 26, 2010
Official pervs
Boston Globe: Pentagon workers tied to child porn
The DoD investigation document, courtesy of Cryptome...
Operation Flicker
Page 30 of the PDF summarizes and explains how such activity constitutes not merely criminal, but potentially treasonous violation...
1. This project was initiated based upon information and a request from the DCIS MidAtlantic Field Office regarding information received from Project Flicker, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) national undercover investigation into commercial child pornography websites.
2. Project Flicker identified over 5,000 individuals who subscribed to the commercial child pornography websites that were targeted by ICE. The names and identifying data on the individuals who subscribed to the commercial child pornography websites were checked against the Department of Defense (DoD) databases to identify those individuals who were associated with the DoD and subscribing to child pornography.
3. Child pornography is illegal and subscribers of commercial child pornography that are associated with the DoD put the DoD, the military and national security at risk by compromising computer systems, military instillations and security clearances to name a few. Additionally, it puts the Dor;> at risk of blackmail, bribery, and threats, especially since these individuals typically have access to military instillations.
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Then there is the banality of official perversity. For this, we need look no farther than the TSA, truly the bottom of the barrel when it comes to federal employees...
St. Petersburg Times: Airport body scanners reveal all, but what about when it's your kid?
CBS2 LA: TSA Screener At LAX Accused Of Possessing Child Porn
News4 Jax: TSA Worker Molested 12-Year-Old
And it goes for the Canadian TSA as well...
Toronto Sun: Woman allegedly mocked during airport strip search
The DoD investigation document, courtesy of Cryptome...
Operation Flicker
Page 30 of the PDF summarizes and explains how such activity constitutes not merely criminal, but potentially treasonous violation...
1. This project was initiated based upon information and a request from the DCIS MidAtlantic Field Office regarding information received from Project Flicker, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) national undercover investigation into commercial child pornography websites.
2. Project Flicker identified over 5,000 individuals who subscribed to the commercial child pornography websites that were targeted by ICE. The names and identifying data on the individuals who subscribed to the commercial child pornography websites were checked against the Department of Defense (DoD) databases to identify those individuals who were associated with the DoD and subscribing to child pornography.
3. Child pornography is illegal and subscribers of commercial child pornography that are associated with the DoD put the DoD, the military and national security at risk by compromising computer systems, military instillations and security clearances to name a few. Additionally, it puts the Dor;> at risk of blackmail, bribery, and threats, especially since these individuals typically have access to military instillations.
+
Then there is the banality of official perversity. For this, we need look no farther than the TSA, truly the bottom of the barrel when it comes to federal employees...
St. Petersburg Times: Airport body scanners reveal all, but what about when it's your kid?
CBS2 LA: TSA Screener At LAX Accused Of Possessing Child Porn
News4 Jax: TSA Worker Molested 12-Year-Old
And it goes for the Canadian TSA as well...
Toronto Sun: Woman allegedly mocked during airport strip search
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Gulf of Mexico: Cauldron of Doom
Statements of Texas A & M oceanographer Dr. John Kessler, as reported in the press in late June following his expedition to the Gulf spill site, have been cause for some alarm...
Reuters: Methane in Gulf 'astonishingly high' - US scientist
"There is an incredible amount of methane in there"
AP: Vast Amounts of Methane in Gulf Spill Pose Threat
"This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history"
At the time of this draft, links to Kessler's Gulf methane study at Texas A & M are dead, but we snagged the following from Google's cache...
Oceanographer John Kessler analyzes methane levels from oil spill site
Preliminary results show concentrations at some points to be a million times higher than normal, researcher says John Kessler, a chemical oceanographer in the College of Geosciences at Texas A&M University, is currently analyzing methane levels in water collected from seven miles to 500 meters from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead.
Preliminary results, he says, point to high concentrations of the gas. "Methane levels ranged from 10,000 to nearly 1 million times higher in some spots than normal concentration," Kessler said.
The 10-day cruise, which was funded by a National Science Foundation Rapid Response grant, returned June 21 with nearly 1 million data points gathered. Since that time, he and his colleagues have been analyzing the results in the shore-based lab at Texas A&M.
Ramifications are multifold, Kessler said. He called the site a natural laboratory in which to better assess the effect of methane on global climate change. Naturally occurring methane seeps have been linked to rapid climate change. For instance, an event occurring 55 million years ago may have caused one of these spikes, scientists believe. So the Deepwater Horizon environmental disaster may, at least, help scientists better understand and perhaps predict methane effects on global temperatures.
Results also indicate that oxygen levels at some deepwater sites were 30 percent lower, while other sites remained unaffected. "This presents a puzzle that we cannot resolve without further research," Kessler says.
In an interview with the Living on Earth radio show, Kessler added:
The ocean floor is just an absolutely enormous reservoir of methane. And there are implications that this reservoir has erupted its methane in the past, contributed this methane to the atmosphere in certain abrupt climate change events. This anthropogenic event that we are currently in the midst of, actually simulates one of those previous eruptions on how it is emitting its methane to the water so rapidly.
Reuters: Methane in Gulf 'astonishingly high' - US scientist
"There is an incredible amount of methane in there"
AP: Vast Amounts of Methane in Gulf Spill Pose Threat
"This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history"
At the time of this draft, links to Kessler's Gulf methane study at Texas A & M are dead, but we snagged the following from Google's cache...
Oceanographer John Kessler analyzes methane levels from oil spill site
Preliminary results show concentrations at some points to be a million times higher than normal, researcher says John Kessler, a chemical oceanographer in the College of Geosciences at Texas A&M University, is currently analyzing methane levels in water collected from seven miles to 500 meters from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead.
Preliminary results, he says, point to high concentrations of the gas. "Methane levels ranged from 10,000 to nearly 1 million times higher in some spots than normal concentration," Kessler said.
The 10-day cruise, which was funded by a National Science Foundation Rapid Response grant, returned June 21 with nearly 1 million data points gathered. Since that time, he and his colleagues have been analyzing the results in the shore-based lab at Texas A&M.
Ramifications are multifold, Kessler said. He called the site a natural laboratory in which to better assess the effect of methane on global climate change. Naturally occurring methane seeps have been linked to rapid climate change. For instance, an event occurring 55 million years ago may have caused one of these spikes, scientists believe. So the Deepwater Horizon environmental disaster may, at least, help scientists better understand and perhaps predict methane effects on global temperatures.
Results also indicate that oxygen levels at some deepwater sites were 30 percent lower, while other sites remained unaffected. "This presents a puzzle that we cannot resolve without further research," Kessler says.
In an interview with the Living on Earth radio show, Kessler added:
The ocean floor is just an absolutely enormous reservoir of methane. And there are implications that this reservoir has erupted its methane in the past, contributed this methane to the atmosphere in certain abrupt climate change events. This anthropogenic event that we are currently in the midst of, actually simulates one of those previous eruptions on how it is emitting its methane to the water so rapidly.
Kessler doesn't specify which of the previous methane eruptions is currently being simulated, but the following article makes a few suggestions...
SalemNews: Doomsday: How BP Gulf Disaster May Have Triggered a 'World-Killing' Event
251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world.
55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum...
Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be happening again-and no known technology can stop it.
The bottom line: BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.
Is this just journalistic hyperbole? The answer is likely yes, but only if in reference to the methane that has already been released. Of greater concern is the methane that could yet be released if the geological formations around the well head should collapse, and a giant methane bubble should arise...
Presently, BP is maintaining its recently installed cap on the leak, despite concerns that the plug could be increasing the seepage of the oil-methane mixture into the surrounding geological structures. Said Dr. Don Van Nieuwenhuise of the Professional Geosciences Program at the University of Houston on CNN Sunday...
One of the most serious situations would be is that if you have a leak very close to the well head and you could have a potential erosion of the substrate or the rocks around that well head that could cause it to collapse if the flow increased enough…
The tone of Coast Guard National Incident Commander Thad Allen's letter to BP's Robert Dudley last weekend suggests a heightened concern over this possibility...
Given the current observations from the test, including the detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head, monitoring of the seabed is of paramount importance during the test period. As a continued condition of the test, you are required to provide as a top priority access and coordination for the monitoring systems, which include seismic and sonar surface ships and subsea ROV and acoustic systems. When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours. I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed.
An AP update on the story Sunday suggests that the situation underneath could be worsening, and that BP is not complying with the Allen's demands...
A federal official says scientists are concerned about a seep and possible methane near BP's busted oil well in the Gulf of Mexico
Both could be signs there are leaks in the well that's been capped off for three days.
The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Sunday because an announcement about the next steps had not been made yet.
The official is familiar with the spill oversight but would not clarify what is seeping near the well. The official says BP is not complying with the government's demand for more monitoring.
For more on all this...
Phoenix Rising from the Gulf: PRESSURE at the Wellhead
OilDrum: BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Bubble, Bubble Oil and Trouble
Meanwhile, the body count on the world wide wrath of methane increases...
Columbia Reports: Last bodies recovered from coal mine disaster
Friday, July 2, 2010
Robert Sea Byrd
The body of Senator Robert C. Byrd was memorialized in West Virginia on Friday, July 2nd.
WVPB: Senator Byrd's body returns to West Virginia
Here is our elegy...
As sea birds sink into the Gulf of Mexico,
The Senator Robert C. Byrd passed away 3AM Monday.
As the longest serving Senator in U.S. history perished,
Brown Pelicans were suffocated in red crude, on Queen Bess Island off the Louisiana coast...
Queen Bess...
It was Queen Elizabeth II's eighty-fourth birthday at the very hour,
3AM Greenwich Mean Time, April 21st, when
British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.*
Robert C. Byrd was the senior senator of West Virginia.
The Virginias were named after the Virgin Queen - Elizabeth I,
whose reign spanned 5 decades of the 16th Century,
and whose reign spawned the British Empire.
Her symbol was the mystical pelican,
a bird which pierces its own breast, bleeding to nourish her brood...
But, Lady GaGa was not allowed to let the blood flow...
in the presence of the Queen.**
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Robert C. Byrd surpassed five decades in the U.S. Senate. He will be well remembered for his poetic soliloquies and rambling historical reveries on the Senate floor...
But not everyone is fond of his verse. Here are words attributed to the Senator, as remembered by Cathy O'Brien, one who claims she was Byrd's Project Monarch MKULTRA sex slave at the age of thirteen:
"Atlantis has long been the epicenter of alien activity. The path is so well worn that there are holes in the fabric of time and space whereby airplanes and ships, even people, timelessly seemingly disappear, transformed into another dimension alien to this world. Likewise, we (aliens) came in, entering through the mirror reflection in the hole in the fabric of space, the deep blue sea. Some of us entered the Earth's plane as whales and dolphins. And when we emerged from the sea, some of us came flying out. Or is that in? At any rate, we are here. Watch for the flying fish when you are out to see/sea. When you see one, you will know it is kin to me. A flying fish by any other name is a C. Byrd. A sea bird. Robert C. Byrd."***
* KRZog: The British Empire Answers the Tea Party of Boston Harbor, 1773
** Mirror 3am: Lady GaGa banned from doing suicide act in front of Queen
*** Cathy O'Brien with Mark Phillips. Trance Formation of America. Reality Marketing Inc. 1995. Pg. 122.
WVPB: Senator Byrd's body returns to West Virginia
Here is our elegy...
As sea birds sink into the Gulf of Mexico,
The Senator Robert C. Byrd passed away 3AM Monday.
As the longest serving Senator in U.S. history perished,
Brown Pelicans were suffocated in red crude, on Queen Bess Island off the Louisiana coast...
Queen Bess...
It was Queen Elizabeth II's eighty-fourth birthday at the very hour,
3AM Greenwich Mean Time, April 21st, when
British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.*
Robert C. Byrd was the senior senator of West Virginia.
The Virginias were named after the Virgin Queen - Elizabeth I,
whose reign spanned 5 decades of the 16th Century,
and whose reign spawned the British Empire.
Her symbol was the mystical pelican,
a bird which pierces its own breast, bleeding to nourish her brood...
But, Lady GaGa was not allowed to let the blood flow...
in the presence of the Queen.**
+
Robert C. Byrd surpassed five decades in the U.S. Senate. He will be well remembered for his poetic soliloquies and rambling historical reveries on the Senate floor...
But not everyone is fond of his verse. Here are words attributed to the Senator, as remembered by Cathy O'Brien, one who claims she was Byrd's Project Monarch MKULTRA sex slave at the age of thirteen:
"Atlantis has long been the epicenter of alien activity. The path is so well worn that there are holes in the fabric of time and space whereby airplanes and ships, even people, timelessly seemingly disappear, transformed into another dimension alien to this world. Likewise, we (aliens) came in, entering through the mirror reflection in the hole in the fabric of space, the deep blue sea. Some of us entered the Earth's plane as whales and dolphins. And when we emerged from the sea, some of us came flying out. Or is that in? At any rate, we are here. Watch for the flying fish when you are out to see/sea. When you see one, you will know it is kin to me. A flying fish by any other name is a C. Byrd. A sea bird. Robert C. Byrd."***
+
* KRZog: The British Empire Answers the Tea Party of Boston Harbor, 1773
** Mirror 3am: Lady GaGa banned from doing suicide act in front of Queen
*** Cathy O'Brien with Mark Phillips. Trance Formation of America. Reality Marketing Inc. 1995. Pg. 122.
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