The CIA and our Habits and Social Lives

The Pentagon’s plans for psychological operations or PSYOP in the global information environment of the 21st century are wide ranging and aggressive. These desires are outlined in the 2003 Pentagon document signed by Donald Rumsfeld in his capacity as the Secretary of Defense called the Information Operation Roadmap.

The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system".

Facebook's first round of venture capital funding ($US500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome 'The Diversity Myth', he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC.

The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company's key areas of expertise are in "data mining technologies".

Breyer also served on the board of R&D firm BBN Technologies, which was one of those companies responsible for the rise of the internet.

Dr Anita Jones joined the firm, which included Gilman Louie. She had also served on the In-Q-Tel's board, and had been director of Defence Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defence.

She was also an adviser to the Secretary of Defence and overseeing the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for high-tech, high-end development.
It was when a journalist lifted the lid on the DARPA's Information Awareness Office that the public began to show concern at its information mining projects.

Wikipedia's IAO page says: "the IAO has the stated mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone, in a centralised location, for easy perusal by the United States government, including (though not limited to) internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver's licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data.".

• Starbucks as a entity was originally set by a black cell organisation by the C.I.A to covertly launder money. The plan was establish ONE in every major city in the u.s.a..this way the c.i.a could transfer illegally gained funds easily and quickly throughout the country. The administrators never anticipated that the organisation was going to make money and originally tried to keep it low key by making extremely poor quality coffee that repel a usual customer base. To date operation 'star buck' is now unofficially one of the c.i.a's most profitable branches of revenue. Every you buy a star bucks coffee, you are unwittingly supporting brutal and inhumane para-military tactics, as well as funding political regimes that impinge upon basic human rights.


• Facebook has 20 million users worldwide, is worth billions of dollars and, if internet sources are to be believed, was started by the CIA.


• The social networking phenomenon started as a way of American college students to keep in touch. It is rapidly catching up with MySpace, and has left others like Bebo in its wake.
  But there is a dark side to the success story that's been spreading across the blogosphere. A complex but riveting Big Brother-type conspiracy theory which links Facebook to the CIA and the US Department of Defence.


• The CIA is, though, using a Facebook group to recruit staff for its very sexy sounding National Clandestine Service.


• Checking out the job adsdoes require a Facebook login, so if you haven't joined the site - or are worried that CIA spooks will start following you home from work -check them out on the agency's own site.


• The US military has retained the services of a commercial privacy invasion outfit to assemble detailed dossiers on all American high school children and college students, according to a report in the Washington Post. Direct-marketing database outfit BeNow Inc will manage students' information for the US Department of Defense (DoD), in order to sidestep federal regulations limiting the amount of citizens' personal data that government agencies are permitted to retain.


• The Defense Department has been working with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.
  
  
  
  
  

What A Tangled {Intar}Web We Weave...

Open Source Militias

I found this interesting in itself, but even more interesting in light of the governments history of infiltrating organizations it considers subversive, sometimes even coopting entire movements. Will we see a revival of the militia movement in this country that is guided by the hidden hand of power?

The way we have become our own betrayers to the NWO is the result of a series of masterful manipulations. Entrpreneurial litegation, artificially generated debt and its collection, speculative war investment, where are we taking ourselves? A stepping up of organized stalking, (see the video below), is almost sure to follow.

The US military is on the slow path to the realization that nation-building -- from reconstruction to other forms of traditional COIN dogma that serve to return legitimacy to the government -- doesn't work. Politics and populations in our new global environment fragment faster than they can be assembled into cohesive entities. What does work to slow the spread of temporary autonomous zones and open source insurgencies are open source militias. While messy (and many times as bad as what they replace), these militias do work:

• Colombia. The AUC blunted the spread of the FARC and other revolutionary groups.
  
• Sao Paulo, Brazil. Neighborhood militias have purged neighborhoods of the PCC (a criminal drug gang).
  
• Iraq. Anbar awakening and other militias have radically diminished al Qaeda's operational sphere.
  

Open Source Militias

In each case, militias developed organically based on local loyalties that have nothing to do with the central government. Their emergence is spontaneous and a surprise to the government or the foreign military occupation. They develop according to a now familiar pattern:

• Expansion. Guerrillas or criminal gangs move into a new area in which they have no organic support. They impose their own form of governance which is at odds with local needs.
  
• Reaction. These external guerrillas/gangs intimidate/kill local leaders. A militia is formed to force the encroaching groups out.
  
• Domination. The local militia begins to run the neighborhoods/area. Soon, they tend to adopt many of the same financial systems of the guerrillas/gangs (from drugs to extortion) and enforcement measures (assassination, torture, etc.). However, they remain less hostile to the government and commercial interests than the guerrillas/gangs.
  

An Expansible Strategy?

The rapid emergence of these local militias in Anbar came as a surprise to both the Iraqi government and the US military. Despite the lack of loyalty these groups have to the Iraqi government (and the previous involvement of many of these groups in killing US troops), the US military embraced them -- in that have been given a degree of autonomy as well as arms and training. The result has been the return to a slow burning war, a status quo of sorts, that will continue to operate at levels of violence not seen since early 2006. The success of this approach, as opposed to the boondoggles we've experienced in conventional operations, has led the US Special Operations Command to recommend in a new briefing (leaked to the press), that the US replicate the "militia strategy" in Pakistan. Unfortunately, the report makes the following errors:

• The wrong militia. The US, due to political restrictions, wants to focus its efforts on the Frontier corps. This militia is too tightly connected to the government and has a record of atrocity that makes it unlikely to generate any meaningful form of local loyalty.
  
• Bad timing. This process works according to its own rules, it cannot be forced. The guerrillas (a combination of different flavors of Taliban, tribes, and al Qaeda) will eventually overreach. This process is in motion, but the reaction that forms local militias will not occur until much later (the government and the US are still considered the primary enemy).
  
• Government opposition. The organic rise of local militias will be an affront to the Pakistani government since it represents a near permanent loss of control over these regions. They will resist it (despite their preoccupation with oppressing Pakistani civil society). Unlike the Iraqi government, they will not roll over on this.
  

Final Note: The use of a plethora of militias to fight a global open source insurgency from Nigeria to Mexico to Iraq to Pakistan is effective within a grand strategy of delay (it holds disorder at bay while allowing globalization to work). Most beneficially, it eliminates the need for nation-building, massive conventional troop deployments, and other forms of excess. Some questions remain: can the US manage something this complex or this messy? Will the rest of the US military/contractors sit idle (and as a result fall victim to budget cuts) while light weight special operations forces (and their allied private military corporations) take center stage?

The video takes a minute to get going, so just let it load for a bit and be patient.

Senate Judiciary Committee Passes Surveillance Bill Without Telecom Amnesty

Your humble host has been called a luddite, a cranky old fart and other things put in terma that will not be repeated here. I'll be getting into some exploration of our society and the issues that surround our use or not of technology and how naked we are through our use of seemingly innocent services.

From if:book.


The UK is one of the most watched over societies on earth with CCTV cameras in abundance, and the whole world is waking up to how much retrievable evidence the likes of Google have on us all thanks to our laptops and cellphones. (This spooky walking iphone was seen at the New York Halloween parade last week).



But is the invasion of privacy making our culture more secretive or less? Networks like FaceBook appear to be turning the once wild web into a cosy global village where all know each other's business and keep an eye out for our digital neighbours and group members.



Privacy and the implications of social networking and user generation on our culture were key topics in a discussion about new technology on the UK internet TV company Doughty Street TV this November 5th, hosted by the Institute of Ideas.



Reading has always been a solitary activity where the individual's imagination roams at will. There's been a strange reversal now that book groups and recommendations from chat show hosts - Richard & Judy in the UK, Oprah in the USA - create a tiny pool of recommended bestsellers in the vast and frightening ocean of the unread. Who are the free thinkers now, websurfers or bookbrowsers?

The Happiest Dissent On Earth

The world to come, perhaps? Georgian riot police dressed as mickey mouse, or is that his banished cousin Mortimer?

It Happened Again! the Garden of Truth Broadcast Online

Well, I did indeed have one Mr. Matheny on the broadcast, and we had an exchange that, while not necessarily a love-fest, this interview did answer more questions than we may have anticipated. After putting issues in context, a context that becomes clearer the deeper I look into these issues, I read the materials on the mysterious El-Centro phenomenon.

The first half of the program is, not unexpectedly, posted online. Not on the Incunabula site this time, but a haven of the decadent, counterculture media and commentary site of the Alterati. (Are they altered Illuminati? When did I become their uncle?) The description is as much loving as snide, methinks, so I don't take exception to their having their fun:

He’s creepy and he’s kooky, Mysterious and spooky,
He’s all together ooky, It’s Milford Connolly! His Garden’s a museum Where people come to see ‘im He really is a scream He’s Milford Connolly! (Neat) (Sweet) (Petite) So get a witches shawl on A broomstick you can crawl on We’re gonna pay a call on Milford Connolly!



They did leave the opening commentary and reading intact, so if you missed the program when it was aired, you can head to that chapel perilous and download it.

To the left is something I'll be getting to later. An interesting document that was sent to me by someone who has a past of many infamous organizations, individuals and barely detectable but insidious societal shifts to all numbers of flavors of devilry. I think our telecommunications corporations have been infiltrated. Soon you'll know why I say so, and it has nothing to do with billing practices.