Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Oliver North' is associated with 41 posts.

FTR #946 In Your Facebook: A Virtual Panopticon, Part 2

In FTR #718 (record­ed on Inde­pen­dence Day week­end of 2010), we not­ed that the new social medium–Facebook-might very well be the oppo­site of the lib­er­at­ing, empow­er­ing enti­ty many believed it to be.

On the con­trary, we said–it received finan­cial back­ing from the CIA, per­mits unprece­dent­ed gath­er­ing and data­bas­ing of users’ per­son­al infor­ma­tion, and might very well be a “panopticon”–a type of prison in which the interned can nev­er see his or her jail­ers, but their keep­ers can see the interned at all times.

In par­tic­u­lar, we not­ed the promi­nent posi­tion of major Face­book investor Peter Thiel in “Mon­do Zucker­berg.” Of Ger­man (and prob­a­ble I.G. Far­ben) ori­gins, we opined that Thiel was Under­ground Reich. Opposed to democ­ra­cy because he feels it is inim­i­cal to wealth cre­ation and does­n’t believe women should be allowed to vote, Thiel has now emerged as one of the most promi­nent of Don­ald Trump’s sup­port­ers, tran­si­tion team cre­ators and influ­en­tial pol­i­cy wonks.

Where­as we explored the “vir­tu­al panop­ti­con” con­cept of Face­book with a ques­tion mark in 2010, we now feel affir­ma­tive­ly on the issue.

A very impor­tant sto­ry from New York mag­a­zine sets forth Face­book’s role in the just-con­clud­ed elec­tion. ” . . . . Facebook’s size, reach, wealth, and pow­er make it effec­tive­ly the only one that mat­ters. And, boy, does it mat­ter. At the risk of being hyper­bol­ic, I think there are few events over the last decade more sig­nif­i­cant than the social network’s whole­sale acqui­si­tion of the tra­di­tion­al func­tions of news media (not to men­tion the polit­i­cal-par­ty appa­ra­tus). Trump’s ascen­dan­cy is far from the first mate­r­i­al con­se­quence of Facebook’s con­quer­ing inva­sion of our social, cul­tur­al, and polit­i­cal lives, but it’s still a brac­ing reminder of the extent to which the social net­work is able to upend exist­ing struc­ture and trans­form soci­ety — and often not for the bet­ter. . . .

” . . . . Facebook’s enor­mous audi­ence, and the mech­a­nisms of dis­tri­b­u­tion on which the site relies — i.e., the emo­tion­al­ly charged activ­i­ty of shar­ing, and the show-me-more-like-this feed­back loop of the news feed algo­rithm — makes it the only site to sup­port a gen­uine­ly lucra­tive mar­ket in which shady pub­lish­ers arbi­trage traf­fic by entic­ing peo­ple off of Face­book and onto ad-fes­tooned web­sites, using sto­ries that are alter­nate­ly made up, incor­rect, exag­ger­at­ed beyond all rela­tion­ship to truth, or all three. . . .

” . . . . And at the heart of the prob­lem, any­way, is not the moti­va­tions of the hoax­ers but the struc­ture of social media itself. Tens of mil­lions of peo­ple, invig­o­rat­ed by insur­gent out­sider can­di­dates and anger at per­ceived polit­i­cal ene­mies, were served up or shared emo­tion­al­ly charged news sto­ries about the can­di­dates, because Facebook’s sort­ing algo­rithm under­stood from expe­ri­ence that they were seek­ing such sto­ries. Many of those sto­ries were lies, or ‘par­o­dies,’ but their appear­ance and place­ment in a news feed were no dif­fer­ent from those of any pub­lish­er with a com­mit­ment to, you know, not lying. As those peo­ple and their fol­low­ers clicked on, shared, or oth­er­wise engaged with those sto­ries — which they did, because Trump dri­ves engage­ment extreme­ly bigly — they were served up even more of them. The engage­ment-dri­ving feed­back loop reached the heights of Face­book itself, which shared fake news to its front page on more than one occa­sion after fir­ing the small team of edi­to­r­i­al employ­ees tasked with pass­ing news judg­ment. . . .

” . . . . Some­thing like 170 mil­lion peo­ple in North Amer­i­ca use Face­book every day, a num­ber that’s not only sev­er­al orders of mag­ni­tude larg­er than even the most opti­mistic cir­cu­la­tion reck­on­ings of major news out­lets but also about one-and-a-half times as many peo­ple as vot­ed on Tues­day. Forty-four per­cent of all adults in the Unit­ed States say they get news from Face­book . . . ”

Symp­to­matic of Face­book’s fil­ter of what its users see con­cerns the social medi­um’s recent non-cov­er­age of the wom­en’s march:

” . . . . We don’t usu­al­ly post on Pan­do at the week­end, but this is too top­i­cal and too shame­ful to wait until Mon­day. As you cer­tain­ly know, today is the day of the Women’s March on Wash­ing­ton in protest of Don­ald Trump. The main event is in DC, where some­thing close to 500,000 pro­test­ers of all gen­ders and ages have packed the streets — but there are also major protests in Chica­go, New York and around the world. Includ­ing Antarc­ti­ca.

You cer­tain­ly know this because the protest march is the top sto­ry on every major news out­let, and because updates and pho­tos from the event are flood­ing your Twit­ter and Face­book feeds.

And yet, here’s what Facebook’s trend­ing news feed looked like at the height of the march…

And here’s its trend­ing pol­i­tics feed…

Notice any­thing miss­ing?

Like, say, a half mil­lion women? . . .

In case you think I’m see­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent from the rest of the world, be assured I’m not….”

Face­book has changed its algo­rithm, no longer fac­tor­ing in “likes” and oth­er per­son­al pref­er­ences in deter­min­ing its news feed.

This, how­ev­er, does not bode as well as Face­book would like us to believe. Face­book has pro­mot­ed, among oth­ers, Camp­bell Brown, to an impor­tant posi­tion in struc­tur­ing its news feed: ” . . . . Brown has long­stand­ing ties not just to the tra­di­tion­al news media, but also to con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, although she describes her­self as a polit­i­cal inde­pen­dent. She is a close per­son­al friend of Bet­sy DeVos, the Repub­li­can megadonor who is Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nee for Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary, and is mar­ried to Dan Senor, a for­mer top advi­sor to Mitt Rom­ney who also served as spokesper­son for the Coali­tion Pro­vi­sion­al Author­i­ty in the wake of the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq. . . .

. . . . And along­side her main­stream media expe­ri­ence, Brown is famil­iar with the world of non-tra­di­tion­al news out­lets spring­ing up online. In 2014, she found­ed a non­prof­it news site, The 74, which bills itself as non­par­ti­san but which crit­ics have said func­tions as advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism, tilt­ed in favor of char­ter schools and against teach­ers’ unions. The site was launched with mon­ey from donors includ­ing the foun­da­tion run by DeVos, Trump’s pro­posed Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary. When the nom­i­na­tion was announced, Brown said she would recuse her­self from The 74’s cov­er­age of DeVos. . .”

Brown is joined by Tuck­er Bounds, a for­mer John McCain advis­er and spokesman for the McCain/Palin cam­paign.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the ter­ri­fy­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of the vir­tu­al panop­ti­con, we exam­ine the nexus of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, its prin­ci­pal investors, Robert and Rebekah Mer­cer and Steve Ban­non, a key mem­ber of the fir­m’s board of direc­tors and a polit­i­cal guru to Rebekah. ” . . . . For sev­er­al years, a data firm even­tu­al­ly hired by the Trump cam­paign, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, has been using Face­book as a tool to build psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­files that rep­re­sent some 230 mil­lion adult Amer­i­cans. A spin­off of a British con­sult­ing com­pa­ny and some­time-defense con­trac­tor known for its coun­tert­er­ror­ism ‘psy ops’ work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seed­ing the social net­work with per­son­al­i­ty quizzes. Respon­dents — by now hun­dreds of thou­sands of us, most­ly female and most­ly young but enough male and old­er for the firm to make infer­ences about oth­ers with sim­i­lar behav­iors and demo­graph­ics — get a free look at their Ocean scores. Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca also gets a look at their scores and, thanks to Face­book, gains access to their pro­files and real names.

“Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca worked on the ‘Leave’ side of the Brex­it cam­paign. In the Unit­ed States it takes only Repub­li­cans as clients: Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz in the pri­maries, Mr. Trump in the gen­er­al elec­tion. Cam­bridge is report­ed­ly backed by Robert Mer­cer, a hedge fund bil­lion­aire and a major Repub­li­can donor; a key board mem­ber is Stephen K. Ban­non, the head of Bre­it­bart News who became Mr. Trump’s cam­paign chair­man and is set to be his chief strate­gist in the White House. . .

” . . . . Their [the Mer­cers] data firm, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, was hired by the Cruz cam­paign. They switched to sup­port Trump short­ly after he clinched the nom­i­na­tion, and he even­tu­al­ly hired Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, as well. Their top polit­i­cal guru is Steve Ban­non, the for­mer Bre­it­bart News chair­man and White House chief strate­gist. They’re close, too, with Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er Kellyanne Con­way, who also has a senior role in the White House. They nev­er speak to the press and hard­ly ever even release a pub­lic state­ment. Like Trump him­self, they’ve flout­ed the stan­dard play­book for how things are done in pol­i­tics. . . .”

Ban­non’s influ­ence on Rebekah Mer­cer is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong: ” . . . Anoth­er of the Repub­li­can oper­a­tives described Ban­non as the ‘Obi-Wan Keno­bi’ to Rebekah Mer­cer, and a third was even more point­ed: ‘Sven­gali.’ Ban­non is ‘real­ly, real­ly, real­ly influ­en­tial’ with Mer­cer, said the for­mer Bre­it­bart employ­ee. The Mer­cers, the for­mer employ­ee said, made their wish­es known through Ban­non, who would some­times cite the company’s finan­cial back­ers as a rea­son for Bre­it­bart not to do a sto­ry. Ban­non didn’t respond to a request for com­ment about this. . . .”

In turn, the influ­ence of Steve Ban­non with­in the Face­book vir­tu­al panop­ti­con is even more sin­is­ter con­sid­er­ing Ban­non’s polit­i­cal out­look: ” . . . . But, said the source, who request­ed anonymi­ty to speak can­did­ly about Ban­non, ‘There are some things he’s only going to share with peo­ple who he’s tight with and who he trusts.’

Bannon’s read­ings tend to have one thing in com­mon: the view that tech­nocrats have put West­ern civ­i­liza­tion on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry and that only a shock to the sys­tem can reverse its decline. And they tend to have a dark, apoc­a­lyp­tic tone that at times echoes Bannon’s own pub­lic remarks over the years—a sense that human­i­ty is at a hinge point in his­to­ry. . . .”

One of the influ­ences on Ban­non is Cur­tis Yarvin, aka Men­cius Mold­bug, who has actu­al­ly opened a backchan­nel advi­so­ry con­nec­tion to the White House: ” . . . . Before he emerged on the polit­i­cal scene, an obscure Sil­i­con Val­ley com­put­er pro­gram­mer with ties to Trump backer and Pay­Pal co-founder Peter Thiel was explain­ing his behav­ior. Cur­tis Yarvin, the self-pro­claimed ‘neo­re­ac­tionary’ who blogs under the name ‘Men­cius Mold­bug,’ attract­ed a fol­low­ing in 2008 when he pub­lished a wordy trea­tise assert­ing, among oth­er things, that ‘non­sense is a more effec­tive orga­niz­ing tool than the truth.’ When the orga­niz­er of a com­put­er sci­ence con­fer­ence can­celed Yarvin’s appear­ance fol­low­ing an out­cry over his blog­ging under his nom de web, Ban­non took note: Bre­it­bart News decried the act of cen­sor­ship in an arti­cle about the programmer-blogger’s dis­missal.

Moldbug’s dense, dis­cur­sive mus­ings on history—‘What’s so bad about the Nazis?’ he asks in one 2008 post that con­demns the Holo­caust but ques­tions the moral supe­ri­or­i­ty of the Allies—include a belief in the util­i­ty of spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion that now looks like a tem­plate for Trump’s approach to truth. ‘To believe in non­sense is an unforge­able [sic] demon­stra­tion of loy­al­ty. It serves as a polit­i­cal uni­form. And if you have a uni­form, you have an army,’ he writes in a May 2008 post.‘It’s been a while since I post­ed any­thing real­ly con­tro­ver­sial and offen­sive here,’ he begins in a July 25, 2007, post explain­ing why he asso­ciates democ­ra­cy with ‘war, tyran­ny, destruc­tion and pover­ty.’

Mold­bug, who does not do inter­views and could not be reached for this sto­ry, has report­ed­ly opened up a line to the White House, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Ban­non and his aides through an inter­me­di­ary, accord­ing to a source. Yarvin said he has nev­er spo­ken with Ban­non. . . .”

After dis­cussing Face­book’s new AI tech­nol­o­gy being employed to search users’ pho­tos, the pro­gram con­cludes with the shift of Sil­i­con Val­ley mon­ey to the GOP.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Steve Ban­non’s role on the NSC; review of the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans drawn up by Oliv­er North dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, involv­ing the dep­u­tiz­ing of para­mil­i­tary right-wingers; review of Erik Prince’s rela­tion­ship to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Bet­sy De Vos, Trump’s edu­ca­tion sec­re­tary.


FTR #869 The Assassination of Olof Palme, Part 2

Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion and analy­sis from FTR #868, this pro­gram under­scores the pos­si­ble role of Swedish and Scan­di­na­vian fas­cists over­lap­ping both WACL and Sapo, the Swedish intel­li­gence ser­vice. Involved with escape net­works forged to aid the inter­na­tion­al flight from jus­tice of fas­cists and Nazis, the prin­ci­pals in these net­works exhib­it­ed behav­ior around the time of the Palme killing that is sug­ges­tive. Worth not­ing in this regard is the late Stieg Larsson’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the Palme killing, which point­ed in the direc­tion of some of the same fig­ures exam­ined in the Kruger essay. The pro­gram con­cludes with an exam­i­na­tion of the Bofors muni­tions firm and its cor­po­rate links to Third Reich indus­try and the post­war Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, with which it may well be affil­i­at­ed.


FTR #868: The Assassination of Olof Palme, Part 1

The first of two pro­grams high­light­ing the unsolved 1986 assas­si­na­tion of Swedish Prime Min­is­ter Olof Palme, the broad­cast fea­tures a 1988 arti­cle by the bril­liant free­lance Dan­ish jour­nal­ist Hen­rik Kruger, author of “The Great Hero­in Coup: Drugs, Intel­li­gence and Inter­na­tion­al Fas­cism.” Through this exam­i­na­tion of the inter­sect­ed net­works that Kruger has termed (in “The Great Hero­in Coup”) “The Inter­na­tion­al Fascista,” we are able to observe the ele­ments of Oper­a­tion Con­dor, key indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions com­pris­ing the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions under­ly­ing “the Strat­e­gy of Ten­sion” in Italy, as well as the cast of char­ac­ters that man­aged the Iran-Con­tra machi­na­tions. Long the focal point of death threats and assas­si­na­tion attempts, Palme had earned the lethal ire of fas­cists in North and South Amer­i­ca, as well as Europe. The fail­ure to solve the killing, despite the pas­sage of almost 30 years and some very strong evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries, under­scores the grav­i­tas of the forces that destroyed Palme. Kruger’s arti­cle also serves as some­thing of an “in vit­ro” win­dow into many of the polit­i­cal net­works we have exam­ined over the years.


The Assassination of Olof Palme

In our ongo­ing series of inter­views with Peter Lev­en­da, the author of “The Hitler Lega­cy,” we have high­light­ed points of dis­cus­sion relat­ing to WACL, Oper­a­tion Con­dor, the Iran/Contra scan­dal and oth­er ele­ments that might not be famil­iar to recent/younger read­ers and lis­ten­ers. Peter detailed his hair-rais­ing vis­it to Colo­nia Dig­nidad in FTR #839. While going through some box­es in stor­age, we came across an old essay by the bril­liant Dan­ish jour­nal­ist Hen­rik Kruger, author of “The Great Hero­in Coup,” ana­lyz­ing the unsolved 1986 assas­si­na­tion of Swedish prime min­is­ter Olof Palme. We present that arti­cle here, in order to famil­iar­ize younger read­ers and lis­ten­ers with indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions we haven’t cov­ered in decades. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.


FTR #836 The Death of Alberto Nisman and the AMIA Bombing

After recap­ping some threads in the tan­gled web of the 1994 AMIA bomb­ing in Argenti­na, this pro­gram takes up the sus­pi­cious death of Argen­tine pros­e­cu­tor Alber­to Nis­man, who was found dead from a sin­gle gun­shot wound to the head the week­end before he was to tes­ti­fy before that coun­try’s con­gress about the bomb­ing. Nis­man was report­ed­ly going to indict Argen­tine pres­i­dent Kirch­n­er in con­nec­tion with a cov­er-up of the bomb­ing, alleged­ly stem­ming from a “grain-for-oil” deal with Iran. Nis­man had pre­vi­ous­ly expressed fear for his own life and for the safe­ty of his two young daugh­ters. In addi­tion to the pres­ence of the DNA of a sec­ond per­son in Nis­man­’s apart­ment, the pro­gram cov­ers: Nis­man­’s fear of his own body­guards; appar­ent irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the han­dling of the phys­i­cal evi­dence in the case; pres­i­dent Kirch­n­er’s attack on Nis­man and her char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of his death as a “sui­cide;” a female wit­ness in the case express­ing fear for her life after the charred body of anoth­er woman was found across the street from Kirch­n­er’s apart­ment; irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the state­ments of Nis­man­’s secu­ri­ty per­son­nel.


FTR #835 Tangled Web: Overview of the AMIA Bombing Investigation

In this pro­gram, we detail some of the deep pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the AMIA attack, prepara­to­ry to a dis­cus­sion of devel­op­ments in the inves­ti­ga­tion of Argen­tine pros­e­cu­tor Alber­to Nis­man­’s death in FTR #836. The dizzy­ing melange of indi­vid­u­als, insti­tu­tions and events con­nect­ed to the AMIA bomb­ing involves: sev­er­al peo­ple linked to for­mer Argen­tin­ian pres­i­dent Car­los Men­em; indi­vid­u­als linked to the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal; neo-Nazi ele­ments in Argenti­na; inves­ti­ga­tions into fugi­tive Nazi war crim­i­nals; the res­ig­na­tions of two jus­tice min­is­ters involved in the AMIA inves­ti­ga­tion; the sus­pi­cious deaths of numer­ous indi­vid­u­als linked to one or anoth­er of the ele­ments fig­ur­ing in sev­er­al relat­ed inves­ti­ga­tions; evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries link­ing the AMIA bomb­ing to the Okla­homa City Bomb­ing, the bomb­ing of Pan Am flight 103 over Locker­bie, Scot­land and the Achille Lau­ro hijack­ing in 1985.


FTR #821 Continuity of Government, the JFK Assassination and Covert Operations

Ana­lyz­ing the role of net­works orig­i­nal­ly set up to per­pet­u­ate and sus­tain gov­ern­ment in the event of nuclear war, this pro­gram high­lights the role of Con­ti­nu­ity of Gov­ern­ment (COG) ele­ments in a num­ber of domes­tic and/or ille­gal covert oper­a­tions. With its own com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work, the COG has proved an effec­tive vehi­cle for side­step­ping nor­mal oper­a­tional chan­nels in order to real­ize nefar­i­ous aims. The COG-relat­ed net­works and indi­vid­u­als have fig­ured promi­nent­ly in aspects of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, Water­gate, the Octo­ber Sur­prise, the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal and events pur­suant to the 9/11 attacks. Dick Cheney and Don­ald Rums­feld are two of the promi­nent fig­ures in the COG net­works and have been present in the Nixon/Ford, Reagan/Bush, Clin­ton and George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tions.


The Bowe Bergdahl Controversy

With the Bergdahl “con­tro­ver­sy,” Amer­i­can polit­i­cal cul­ture con­tin­ues to hit new lows, cour­tesy of the ter­ror­ist-cod­dling GOP and their Amen cho­rus in the media. John McCain–himself a for­mer POW–seems intent on lead­ing the GOP’s race to the bot­tom, no mean feat under the cir­cum­stances. Dewey Clar­ridge, him­self a play­er in the Iran-Con­tra affair, was the source for much of the “secret intel­li­gence” that has been uti­lized by Fox News, that bea­con of jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty.


No Surprise Here, Either: DEA Laundering Profits from Mexican Cartels

Some ele­ments of DEA long known to be com­plic­it in drug traf­fick­ing. Is this laun­der­ing REALLY to help fight the drug traf­fic?


Thompson Agonistes: The Dissent and Subsequent Disappearance of A CIA Officer

Jim Thomp­son, CIA offi­cer who open­ly crit­i­cized the Agen­cy’s pol­i­cy in Asia dis­ap­peared from the face of the earth.