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Jean-Léon Gérôme Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind 1896An entire library of articles about Big Tech is coming out these days, and I find that much of it is written so well, and the ideas in them so well expressed, that I have little to add. Except, I think I may have the solution to the problems many people see. But I also have a concern that I don’t see addressed, and that may well prevent that solution from being adopted. If so, we’re very far away from any solution at all. And that’s seriously bad news.

Let’s start with a general -even ‘light’- critique of social media by Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan for the Guardian:

How Did The News Go ‘Fake’? When The Media Went Social

Social media force us to live our lives in public, positioned centre-stage in our very own daily performances. Erving Goffman, the American sociologist, articulated the idea of “life as theatre” in his 1956 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, and while the book was published more than half a century ago, the concept is even more relevant today. It is increasingly difficult to live a private life, in terms not just of keeping our personal data away from governments or corporations, but also of keeping our movements, interests and, most worryingly, information consumption habits from the wider world.

The social networks are engineered so that we are constantly assessing others – and being assessed ourselves. In fact our “selves” are scattered across different platforms, and our decisions, which are public or semi-public performances, are driven by our desire to make a good impression on our audiences, imagined and actual.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

WikiLeaks Publishes CIA Hacking Tool Designed To “Impersonate” Russia’s Kaspersky Lab

November 9, 2017

WikiLeaks Publishes CIA Hacking Tool Designed To “Impersonate” Russia’s Kaspersky Lab

On September 18th, the US Senate voted to ban the use of products from the Moscow-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab by the federal government, citing national security risk. The vote was included as an amendment to an annual defense policy spending bill approved by the Senate on the same day and was written to bar the use of Kaspersky Lab software in government civilian and military agencies.

Alas, according to a new revelation from WikiLeaks this morning, any perceived “national security risk” from Kaspersky could have resulted from the fact that the CIA specifically designed hacking software, code-named ‘Hive’, which intentionally “impersonated” the Russian cyber security firm so that “if the target organization looks at the network traffic coming out of its network, it is likely to misattribute the CIA exfiltration of data to uninvolved entities whose identities have been impersonated.”

Here’s a summary of the hacking tool posted by WikiLeaks:

Today, 9 November 2017, WikiLeaks publishes the source code and development logs to Hive, a major component of the CIA infrastructure to control its malware.

Hive solves a critical problem for the malware operators at the CIA. Even the most sophisticated malware implant on a target computer is useless if there is no way for it to communicate with its operators in a secure manner that does not draw attention. Using Hive even if an implant is discovered on a target computer, attributing it to the CIA is difficult by just looking at the communication of the malware with other servers on the internet. Hive provides a covert communications platform for a whole range of CIA malware to send exfiltrated information to CIA servers and to receive new instructions from operators at the CIA.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“False Flags” Are So Common that U.S. Officials Commonly Discuss Them

November 7, 2017

“False Flags” Are So Common that U.S. Officials Commonly Discuss Them

Despite the attempt to marginalize the concept, “false flags” are so common that U.S. officials frequentlyuse that phrase.

For example, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell:

Former Director for Transnational Threats on the U.S. National Security Council, Roger Cressey:

Former CIA counterterrorism official Philip Mudd:

Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, a high ranking Air Force official:

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (and Neocon warmonger) John Bolton:

The Washington Post notes that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved as an acceptable interrogation method

A technique known as “false flag,” or deceiving a detainee into believing he is being interrogated by someone from another country.

NBC News points out:

In another document taken from the NSA by Snowden and obtained by NBC News, a JTRIG official said the unit’s mission included computer network attacks, disruption, “Active Covert Internet Operations,” and “Covert Technical Operations.” Among the methods listed in the document were jamming phones, computers and email accounts and masquerading as an enemy in a “false flag” operation. The same document said GCHQ was increasing its emphasis on using cyber tools to attack adversaries.

Washington’s Blog asked high-level NSA official Bill Binney* if he had heard of the term “false flags” when he was with the NSA.

Binney responded:

Sure, they were under deception and manipulation programs. I was not involved in doing them; but, I did have to figure out some that the other side was doing. The other side called them “dezsinformatsiya” and Manipulatsiya.”

The Brits have been doing this for several hundred years and are quite good at it.

Washington’s Blog asked Philip Giraldi – a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer with the CIA – the same question with regards to his experience with the CIA.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What the Kennedy Assassination Records Reveal: Uncontrollable Incompetence

November 1, 2017

What the Kennedy Assassination Records Reveal: Uncontrollable Incompetence

Imagine Harvey Weinstein wielding a “top secret” stamp to block any exposure of the uncomfortable truth and you have the FBI, CIA and NSA.

One way to interpret the intelligence community’s reluctance to let all the Kennedy assassination archives become public is that the archives contain evidence of a “smoking gun”: that is, evidence that the intelligence agencies of the United States of America were complicit in the assassination of the President.

I think the agencies fear something larger: exposure of their gross incompetence, their “cowboy” recklessness and their disavowal of elected-civilian control. Their fear of this exposure is based on one simple fact: nothing’s changed since 1963. They were unaccountable and incompetent then, and they remain unaccountable and incompetent now. The only difference is their funding has greatly increased.

We rarely get an insider’s glimpse of the intelligence community’s pettiness, hubris and incompetence. The Ministry of Propaganda is tasked with showing the NSA, CIA, FBI, et al. as super-competent, super-dedicated, and focused on defeating evil (which is always presented as unambiguously evil, i.e. anti-American.)

Although it’s 30 years old, I still recommend this account of a top MI5 (U.K.) officer, SpyCatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer.

I’ve read many books on the intelligence community, but few (if any) reveal the inter-agency rivalries and bad blood that (as far as I can tell) still exist beneath a formal veneer of co-operation. The CIA and FBI were always envious of the NSA’s SigInt (signal intelligence, i.e. eavesdropping), and so they’ve attempted to create their own versions, with laughably incompetent results in the case of the FBI’s “Russians stole the election” inquiry.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How America Spreads Global Chaos

October 30, 2017

How America Spreads Global Chaos

The U.S. government may pretend to respect a “rules-based” global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is “might makes right” — and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies.

As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment that had already killed millions of people.

Air Force F-105s bomb a target in the southern panhandle of North Vietnam on June 14, 1966. (Photo credit: U.S. Air Force)”

As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented, the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as Pete Seeger satirized it, and then pushing on regardless, all came down to “credibility”: the domestic political credibility of the politicians involved and America’s international credibility as a military power.

Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the 1954 Geneva Accords and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die was cast. The CIA’s support for the repressive Diem regime and its successors ensured an ever-escalating war, as the South rose in rebellion, supported by the North. No U.S. president could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited from them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

JFK Files: The CIA Planned To Murder American Citizens In Miami And Blame It On Cuba During Operation Mongoose

October 29, 2017

JFK Files: The CIA Planned To Murder American Citizens In Miami And Blame It On Cuba During Operation Mongoose

As reporters have began to sift through the thousands of newly revealed government documents relating to the assassination of President Kennedy and subsequent investigation, we are starting to see some stunning revelations concerning not only JFK but the overall mindset of the CIA at the time in their all out war against Communism.

One of the more scary revelations to come out so far details a copy of a paper on “Pretexts” for war with Cuba that described a plan, under Operation Mongoose, to conduct false flag terror attacks in Miami, to be blamed on Cuba but actually carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Operation Mongoose” was the operational name for the CIA’s plan to topple the Castro government which we now know included purposefully killing our own citizens.

The time was 1962, the same year that brought us the now infamous Operation Northwoods, which was also a plan to kill American citizens as a pretext for war with Communist Cuba.

“On April 12th, 1962, General Lansdale forwarded to Maxwell Taylor an “advance copy” of the Joint Chiefs paper on “Pretexts” stating, I am informed that the Chiefs approve of this,” reads the document.

Keep in mind that this is an admission that the Pentagon at the time was fully on board with killing Americans if it allowed them to wage war against Cuba.

“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated),” the false flag plan reads.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Declassified JFK Papers Reveal Yet ANOTHER False Flag

October 28, 2017

Declassified JFK Papers Reveal Yet ANOTHER False Flag

The JFK assassination papers which were declassified yesterday reveal:

The minutes of the March 5, 1962 Special Group Augmented meeting state that “Mr. Johnson (U. Alexis Johnson) [U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Thailand and Czechoslovakia and Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the U.S. State Department] was asked to have a list prepared of various situations which would serve as a plausible pretext for intervention.”

***

On April 12, 1962, General Lansdale [a Major General and CIA officer] forwarded to Maxwell Taylor [then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy] an “advance copy” of the Joint Chiefs’ paper on “Pretexts,” stating “I am informed that the Chiefs approved this.” The paper, captioned “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba (TS), ” set forth 9 “pretexts.” These included:

“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of a Cuban agent and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”

This is yet another false flag attack which government officials admit was either planned or actually carried out.

NPR, the CIA and Corporatism

October 25, 2017

NPR, the CIA and Corporatism

Photo by Todd Huffman | CC by 2.0

In her five-minute interview with Ursula Wilder, a CIA psychologist whose job there is debriefing returning spies, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly (their alleged National Security Correspondent) spoke of what makes someone who reveals state secrets tick. Kelly failed big-time to probe Wilder about whether she ever thought an insider might ever have a patriotic motivation to inform the public of illegal behavior on the part of the agency. Based on Wilders’ profile of leakers, the answer would surely have been No, but it sure would have been nice to ask.

Instead, the official story is simple. Each and every leaker, Wilder maintained, suffers from some DSM psychopathy, such as impulsiveness, narcissism or drug addiction, often compounded by exigencies such as marital discord or gambling debts. Leaks all stem from character defects, Wilder says—and Kelly doesn’t contradict—not to blowback by thwarted careerists or misdeeds the agency wants to disappear. She also neglected to point out that leaks should only happen when authorized by superiors, but Kelly didn’t ask about that kind either.

Wilder’s job description implies she treats agents for PTSD but she probably doesn’t admit to it. Wants the world to think they’re all so well motivated, trained, equipped, and managed as to be impervious to shock and awe. If they’re stressed, it’s likely that their personal lives are out of control, their problems self-inflicted. Any time you have a problem with power, the problem is you. Hear for yourself.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US May Strike North Korea in November

October 24, 2017

US May Strike North Korea in November

Former US President Jimmy Carter said he would be ready to travel to North Korea for peace talks, if the administration wanted him to go on a diplomatic mission. But President Trump does not appear to be chomping at the bit to grab the opportunity for launching a diplomatic initiative.

Recent North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests suggest that the country now has the capability to hit the continental US. The CIA has assessed that North Korea’s Hwasong-14, the intercontinental ballistic missile tested twice in July, has the capability to reach the US with a nuclear payload. According to the US Defense Intelligence Agency, North Korea may well have already developed a miniaturised nuclear warhead that could be delivered on an ICBM.

The defense chiefs of South Korea, the US and Japan met on October 23 at the 4th ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus) to emphasize the importance of strengthening their partnerships in maximizing pressure on North Korea.

The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group arrived in Busan, South Korea, on October 21 after participating in large-scale US-South Korean naval drills. Washington and Seoul started another military exercise on October 23. The annual Courageous Channel drills are to last five days. Pyongyang sees exercises as provocative actions, just like the strategic bombers’ flights. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho warned last month that his country reserves the right to shoot down US States strategic bombers even outside the national airspace.

US President Donald Trump said he is “totally prepared” to use military force against North Korea if necessary, in an interview with Fox News on October 22. Earlier this month, he dismissed the idea of dialogue as a “waste of time.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Legacy of Reagan’s Civilian ‘Psyops’

October 13, 2017

The Legacy of Reagan’s Civilian ‘Psyops’

Special Report: When the Reagan administration launched peacetime “psyops” in the mid-1980s, it pulled in civilian agencies to help spread these still-ongoing techniques of deception and manipulation, reports Robert Parry.

Declassified records from the Reagan presidential library show how the U.S. government enlisted civilian agencies in psychological operations designed to exploit information as a way to manipulate the behavior of targeted foreign audiences and, at least indirectly, American citizens.

Walter Raymond Jr., a CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist who oversaw President Reagan’s “psyops” and “perception management” projects at the National Security Council. Raymond is partially obscured by President Reagan. Raymond is seated next to National Security Adviser John Poindexter. (Photo credit: Reagan presidential library)

A just-declassified sign-in sheet for a meeting of an inter-agency “psyops” committee on Oct. 24, 1986, shows representatives from the Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department, and the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) joining officials from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department.

Some of the names of officials from the CIA and Pentagon remain classified more than three decades later. But the significance of the document is that it reveals how agencies that were traditionally assigned to global development (USAID) or international information (USIA) were incorporated into the U.S. government’s strategies for peacetime psyops, a military technique for breaking the will of a wartime enemy by spreading lies, confusion and terror.

Essentially, psyops play on the cultural weaknesses of a target population so they could be more easily controlled or defeated, but the Reagan administration was taking the concept outside the traditional bounds of warfare and applying psyops to any time when the U.S. government could claim some threat to America.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Harvard, the CIA, and All That

October 13, 2017

Harvard, the CIA, and All That

Members of the Center for International Affairs, 1958–1959 by Center for International Affairs with Henry Kissinger and Robert R. Bowie front and center

After Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government rescinded its invitation to Army whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (whom Obama sprung from the brig by pardoning her), a chorus of protest (led by 19,000 Harvard alumni and 169 professors) ensued. The main issue, according to them and the press, was how the Institute of Politics (IOP) at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) caved to deep-state pressure. Specifically, current CIA Director Mike Pompeo cancelled his talk at the school, and former CIA deputy director Michael Morrell tendered his resignation to Harvard’s Belfer Center, saying “I cannot be a part of an organization…that honors a convicted felon and leaker of classified information,” apparently believing that only the best and brightest war criminals deserve such honorifics (horrorifics?). When, after all, has the CIA ever taken Harvard publicly to task for slack on the national security front?

Lesson learned. Sure enough, a penitent dean Douglas Elmendorf quickly issued a statement admitting that Manning’s appointment as a Fellow “was a mistake, for which I accept responsibility. … I think we should weigh, for each potential visitor, what members of the Kennedy School community could learn from that person’s visit against the extent to which that person’s conduct fulfills the values of public service to which we aspire.” Ranking high among those values, one is forced to presume, is the necessity of continuing Harvard’s engagement with the deep national security state.

Sic Transit Veritas

Elmendorf’s reaction was not unexpected. Harvard’s association with spooks goes way back. Let me tell you a little story about the good old boys in the good old days.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Whose Bright Idea Was RussiaGate?

October 3, 2017

Whose Bright Idea Was RussiaGate?

The answer to the question in the title of this article is that Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan.The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached. I don’t think the Democrats have considered the consequence of further worsening the relations between the US and Russia.

Public Russia bashing pre-dates Trump. It has been going on privately in neoconservative circles for years, but appeared publicly during the Obama regime when Russia blocked Washington’s plans to invade Syria and to bomb Iran.

Russia bashing became more intense when Washington’s coup in Ukraine failed to deliver Crimea. Washington had intended for the new Ukrainian regime to evict the Russians from their naval base on the Black Sea. This goal was frustrated when Crimea voted to rejoin Russia.

The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony requires the principal goal of US foreign policy to be to prevent the rise of other countries that can serve as a restraint on US unilateralism. This is the main basis for the hostility of US foreign policy toward Russia, and of course there also is the material interests of the military/security complex.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Syrian Outcome Has Departed the Script

October 1, 2017

The Syrian Outcome Has Departed the Script

The CIA and presstitutes will re-write the history

Stephen Lendman sums up the success of Russian and Syrian militaries against Washington-supported ISIS. Washington claims to be fighting ISIS, but doesn’t. Remember, U.S. General Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, revealed on television that it was the “willful decision” of the Obama regime to use ISIS to overthrow the Assad government. General Flynn said the decision was made over his objection. https://www.rt.com/usa/312050-dia-flynn-islamic-state/

News agencies and writers should stop referring to ISIS and any of the other groups as “terrorists.” The term “terrorists” connotes an independence that the “terrorists” do not have. These so-called “terrorists” are organized, financed, and armed by Washington and Washington’s vassals. Washington uses “terrorists” as a foreign policy tool. This has been going on for decades. Yes, sometimes the “terrorists” escape Washington’s control. Washington supported Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to help organize the Mujahideen to fight against the Soviet occupying force. Everyone knows this, or, perhaps I should say, fomerly knew it prior to the presstitutes helping Washington bury all the facts and replace them with fake news.

The CIA has long used presstitutes to rewrite history. But not all facts have yet been thrown down the Memory Hole. Here is former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook: “Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the ’80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.” Here is Prince Bander bin Sultan on CNN’s Larry King program (October 1, 2001): “This is ironic. In the mid-’80s, if you remember, we and the United – Saudi Arabia and the United States were supporting the Mujahideen to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The CIA: 70 Years of Organized Crime

September 22, 2017

The CIA: 70 Years of Organized Crime

Photo by Tom Thai | CC BY 2.0

Lars Schall: 70 years ago, on September 18, 1947, the National Security Act created the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA. Douglas, you refer to the CIA as “the organized crime branch of the U.S. government.” Why so?

Douglas Valentine: Everything the CIA does is illegal, which is why the government provides it with an impenetrable cloak of secrecy. While mythographers in the information industry portray America as a bastion of peace and democracy, CIA officers manage criminal organizations around the world. For example, the CIA hired one of America’s premier drug trafficker in the 1950s and 1960s, Santo Trafficante, to murder Fidel Castro. In exchange, the CIA allowed Trafficante to import tons of narcotics into America. The CIA sets up proprietary arms, shipping, and banking companies to facilitate the criminal drug trafficking organizations that do its dirty work. Mafia money gets mixed up in offshore banks with CIA money, until the two are indistinguishable.

Drug trafficking is just one example.

LS: What is most important to understand about the CIA?

DV: Its organizational history, which, if studied closely enough, reveals how the CIA manages to maintain its secrecy. This is the essential contradiction at the heart of America’s problems: if we were a democracy and if we truly enjoyed free speech, we would be able to study and speak about the CIA. We would confront our institutionalized racism and sadism. But we can’t, and so our history remains unknown, which in turn means we have no idea who we are, as individuals or as a nation. We imagine ourselves to be things we are not. Our leaders know bits and pieces of the truth, but they cease being leaders once they begin to talk about the truly evil things the CIA is doing.

LS: A term of interest related to the CIA is “plausible deniability”. Please explain.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Former CIA Director compared prosecuting leakers under the Espionage Act to “driving tacks with a sledge hammer”

September 17, 2017

Former CIA Director compared prosecuting leakers under the Espionage Act to “driving tacks with a sledge hammer”

Declassified report called journalists “patriotic,” argued for more appropriate responses to leaks.

Just months before the government’s first successful use of the Espionage Act against someone for leaking to the media, a declassified report written by then-CIA Director William Casey argued that just such an act would be irresponsible.

In the formerly SECRET paper, the Director stated that using the Espionage Act against media leakers was like “driving tacks with a sledge hammer” – grossly excessive. Months later, the government did just that, setting a precedent which is still used today. Two years later, Reagan’s war against leakers had pushed Casey into the even more aggressive position of threatening not just leakers with prosecution – but the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Times, Time and Newsweek as well.

Far from minimizing the potential harm of national security leaks, Casey emphasized the damage that they could do. However, none of the five examples provided by Casey in his report resulted in any actual harm. Two examples “could have” resulted in adversary adjusting their techniques, though the language implies that hadn’t happened. A third and fourth example resulted in potential damage which forced the Agency to cut off contact with a human source lest that danger be amplified. While endangering human sources is never a good thing and disrupting HUMINT operations was unlikely to have been the intention, the report again indicates that no actual harm came to anyone. A fifth example placed someone in danger of being discovered, again a possibility which hadn’t come to pass, though it “could possibly have an adverse effect on U.S. relations” with an unknown group.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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