FTR #1161 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 21: What the Hell Does Dave Emory Mean by Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse?

Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of ris­ing dis­trust of Chi­na, the pro­gram notes the role in that ris­ing dis­trust of the coro­n­avirus. First detect­ed in Chi­na, the avail­able evi­dence chron­i­cled in numer­ous pro­grams points to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare false flag oper­a­tion and provocation–part of the Full Court Press against Chi­na. 

The bulk of the pro­gram con­sists of Mr. Emory read­ing arti­cles from The New York Times pub­lished over the course of the lock­down in the U.S. High­light­ing the stress expe­ri­enced by var­i­ous pop­u­la­tion groups and the behav­ioral and phys­i­o­log­i­cal symp­toms stem­ming from that stress, the articles–covering a peri­od from the spring through fall of 2020–document the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the “bio-psy-op apoc­a­lypse.”

The arti­cles chron­i­cle: Stress on mar­i­tal rela­tion­ships; duress on sex­u­al behav­ior, with New York and Los Ange­les (among oth­er cities) advis­ing peo­ple to mas­tur­bate, rather than engage in sex­u­al encoun­ters with oth­ers; psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­lo­ca­tion of chil­dren, who can’t play with oth­ers; psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­lo­ca­tion of ath­let­ic youths, who can’t com­pete in sports; work­ers who can’t inter­act at the office with their peers; stress on friend­ships; peo­ple los­ing their hair in clumps, because of stress; peo­ple grind­ing their teeth and crack­ing them; the effect of peo­ple wear­ing masks and lim­it­ing the abil­i­ty of oth­ers to respond to facial stimuli–an innate and impor­tant ele­ment of human psy­cho-social behav­ior; cities expe­ri­enc­ing soar­ing mur­der rates because of stress; the effect of lock­downs on street demon­stra­tions pur­suant to the deaths of George Floyd and Bre­an­na Tay­lor; ris­ing rates of domes­tic vio­lence; ris­ing con­sump­tion of alco­hol; ris­ing inci­dence of peo­ple feel­ing sui­ci­dal; ris­ing drug abuse; peo­ple fore­go­ing wear­ing masks and prac­tic­ing social dis­tanc­ing because of what psy­chol­o­gists call “Covid Fatigue;” peo­ple flock­ing to con­trar­i­ans oppos­ing var­i­ous pub­lic safe­ty mea­sures; peo­ple express­ing sup­port for polit­i­cal lead­ers because of feel­ings of inse­cu­ri­ty. 

Mr. Emory also opines that the pan­dem­ic may well have inter­dict­ed the pro­ject­ed “Blue Wave,” because peo­ple who might oth­er­wise have endorsed a more altru­is­tic polit­i­cal agen­da instead were feel­ing fright­ened and–as a result–more needy and self­ish.

Although Belarus­sians had put up with Alexan­der Lukashenko pri­or to the coro­n­avirus: “Trapped inside their coun­try by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, many Belaru­sians began to chafe at the inhu­man­i­ty in Mr. Lukashenko’s rule and lan­guage that had once been easy to ignore. . . .” 

We con­clude with a look at the past, which may reflect on the future.

An aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by a Fed­er­al Reserve econ­o­mist posits the socio-polit­i­cal effects of the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic as a fac­tor con­tribut­ing to the rise of Nazism in Ger­many.

Cit­ed by numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing The New York Times, Bloomberg News and Politi­co, the study under­scores some of our asser­tions con­cern­ing the fas­cist and extreme right-wing ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the pan­dem­ic. 

This time­ly and very impor­tant study will be ref­er­enced in future dis­cus­sion of the psy­cho­log­i­cal, soci­o­log­i­cal and socio-eco­nom­ic aspects of the Covid-19 out­break.

Kris­t­ian Blick­le’s analy­sis under­scores points we have made about the demo­graph­ic, eco­nom­ic and psy­cho­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion the pan­dem­ic is hav­ing on the body politic.

“A new aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of New York con­cludes that deaths caused by the 1918 influen­za pan­dem­ic “pro­found­ly shaped Ger­man soci­ety” in sub­se­quent years and con­tributed to the strength­en­ing of the Nazi Par­ty.

“The paper, pub­lished this month and authored by New York Fed econ­o­mist Kris­t­ian Blick­le, exam­ined munic­i­pal spend­ing lev­els and vot­er extrem­ism in Ger­many from the time of the ini­tial influen­za out­break until 1933, and shows that ‘areas which expe­ri­enced a greater rel­a­tive pop­u­la­tion decline’ due to the pan­dem­ic spent ‘less, per capi­ta, on their inhab­i­tants in the fol­low­ing decade.’ . . .

“. . . . The paper’s find­ings are like­ly due to ‘changes in soci­etal pref­er­ences’ fol­low­ing the 1918 out­break, Blick­le argues — sug­gest­ing the influen­za pandemic’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate toll on young peo­ple may have ‘spurred resent­ment of for­eign­ers among the sur­vivors’ and dri­ven vot­ers to par­ties ‘whose plat­form matched such sen­ti­ments.’ The con­clu­sions come amid fears that the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic will shake up inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and spur extrem­ism around the world, as offi­cials and pub­lic health experts look to pre­vi­ous out­breaks for guid­ance on how to nav­i­gate the months and years to come. . . .”

Why “Bio-Psy-Op?”: Federal Reserve Analysis Ties 1918 Flu Pandemic to Rise of Nazism

In our ongo­ing series about the Covid-19 out­break and its mul­ti-dimen­sion­al man­i­fes­ta­tions, we have termed it a “bio-psy-op.” An aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by a Fed­er­al Reserve econ­o­mist posits the socio-polit­i­cal effects of the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic as a fac­tor con­tribut­ing to the rise of Nazism in Ger­many. Cit­ed by numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing “The New York Times,” “Bloomberg News” and “Politi­co,” the study under­scores some of our asser­tions con­cern­ing the fas­cist and extreme right-wing ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the pan­dem­ic. ” . . . . The paper, pub­lished this month and authored by New York Fed econ­o­mist Kris­t­ian Blick­le, exam­ined munic­i­pal spend­ing lev­els and vot­er extrem­ism in Ger­many from the time of the ini­tial influen­za out­break until 1933, and shows that ‘areas which expe­ri­enced a greater rel­a­tive pop­u­la­tion decline’ due to the pan­dem­ic spent ‘less, per capi­ta, on their inhab­i­tants in the fol­low­ing decade.’ . . . The paper’s find­ings are like­ly due to ‘changes in soci­etal pref­er­ences’ fol­low­ing the 1918 out­break, Blick­le argues — sug­gest­ing the influen­za pan­dem­ic . . . may have ‘spurred resent­ment of for­eign­ers among the sur­vivors’ and dri­ven vot­ers to par­ties ‘whose plat­form matched such sen­ti­ments.’ The con­clu­sions come amid fears that the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic will shake up inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and spur extrem­ism around the world. . . .”

Shape-Shifting Analysis on Alleged Russian Poisoning

For­mer UK diplo­mat Craig Mur­ray notes that: his coun­try con­clud­ed that Putin ordered the poi­son­ing of ex-spy Sergei Skir­pal before any thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion could have been under­tak­en; it is not clear that Rus­sia even has the type of weapon in ques­tion; the offi­cial sce­nario makes no sense; for­mer MI6 agents linked to the Steele Dossier oper­at­ed in prox­im­i­ty to Skir­pal in Rus­sia. We are being pre­sent­ed with four dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios as to how the poi­son was deliv­ered: via a Russ­ian mini drone; via the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem of Skir­pal’s car; via the door han­dle of Skir­pal’s car; via a suit­case that his daugh­ter had in Moscow. No sale.

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 #895 The CIA and the “Privacy” Advocates: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis and dis­cus­sion from FTR #891, we fur­ther explore the CIA-gen­er­at­ed back­ground and fund­ing of the “pri­va­cy” advo­cates who com­prise much of “Team Snow­den.” Recall that Snow­den him­self was with CIA when he chose to dou­ble on NSA. We begin by review­ing our scruti­ny of Edward Snow­den from the per­spec­tive of Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty, the Air Force “Focal Point Offi­cer” who devel­oped a CIA-con­trolled net­work inside of the branch­es of the mil­i­tary and oth­er agen­cies of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. This “focal point” net­work con­sti­tut­ed a “secret gov­ern­ment with­in a gov­ern­ment” that appears to exist to this day. Next, we set forth the evo­lu­tion of the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors and Radio Free Asia, the par­ent orga­ni­za­tions of the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. The OTF has cap­i­tal­ized much of the encrypt­ed “anti-sur­veil­lance” tech­nol­o­gy that has been devel­oped. “Team Snow­den,” in turn, has evolved from this milieu. In our past dis­cus­sions of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, we have not­ed that the very same covert action net­works used to over­throw and elim­i­nate gov­ern­ments and indi­vid­u­als deemed hos­tile to U.S. inter­ests were ulti­mate­ly deployed against Amer­i­cans and even the Unit­ed States itself. “Regime change” and desta­bi­liza­tion came home. In a sim­i­lar fash­ion, it is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that a CIA-derived tech­nol­o­gy milieu devel­oped to assist and effect “ops” abroad was used to desta­bi­lize the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion through the Snow­den “op.” ” . . . Read­ers might find it odd that a US gov­ern­ment agency estab­lished as a way to laun­der the image of var­i­ous shady pro­pa­ganda out­fits (more on that soon) is now keen to fund tech­nolo­gies designed to pro­tect us from the US gov­ern­ment. More­over, it might seem curi­ous that its mon­ey would be so warm­ly wel­comed by some of the Internet’s fiercest antigov­ern­ment activists. . . . . You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tinue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ingly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­rity State they so adamant­ly oppose. . . .” Pro­gram High­lights Include: The con­tro­ver­sy over What­sAp­p’s encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy; the devel­op­ment of What­sAp­p’s encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy by the CIA-derived Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund; FBI Direc­tor James Comey’s sup­port for Mitt Rom­ney in 2012; the appar­ent role of Comey in desta­bi­liz­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and the Hillary Clin­ton cam­paign.

FTR #827 Brave New World: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Bring­ing up to date our ongo­ing inquiry into “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” we note a num­ber of impor­tant devel­op­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to Ger­many. After the inter­na­tion­al hue-and-cry about NSA mon­i­tor­ing Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, the Ger­man probe into the alleged event has been dropped for lack of evi­dence! After review­ing the BND’s mon­i­tor­ing of mobile phone calls by U.S. Sec­re­taries of State Hillary Clin­ton and John Ker­ry, the pro­gram notes the rhetor­i­cal and legal strat­a­gems used by Ger­man intel­li­gence to con­duct pre­cise­ly the same type of elec­tron­ic espi­onage that NSA per­forms. In addi­tion to its [appar­ent­ly failed] attempt to gain entrance to the “Five Eyes” spy­ing con­sor­tium, Ger­many has acquired Black­Ber­ry’s source code, this in exchange for allow­ing the Cana­di­an firm to acquire a Dus­sel­dorf-based com­pa­ny that han­dles secu­ri­ty for mobile phones. Ger­many also seeks access to Google’s search engine algo­rithm. Both the Google algo­rithm and the Black­Ber­ry source code will give Ger­man intel­li­gence impor­tant tools to con­duct pre­cise­ly the type of snoop­ing con­demned by Merkel et al. Much of the lat­ter part of the pro­gram high­lights tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments that are herald­ing a new phase of civ­i­liza­tion. With poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing cyber-ter­ror­ism a present real­i­ty, the devel­op­ment of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and small, inex­pen­sive, pri­vate­ly-owned drones that can mim­ic cell phone tow­ers are indica­tive of the “Brave New World” we have cre­at­ed. Much of the uproar over Snow­den’s dis­clo­sures stems from future shock–the pub­lic has not adjust­ed to an entire­ly dif­fer­ent tech­no­log­i­cal land­scape, in which (as Albert Ein­stein said with regard to the devel­op­ment of the atom­ic bomb) “Every­thing has changed but our way of think­ing.”

Now, About those School Yard Shootings . . .

With the nation and much of the world focused on the grue­some shoot­ings in New­town, Con­nect­cut, we revis­it the top­ic of the school­yard shoot­ings. In past pro­grams, we have not­ed that a num­ber of the [alleged] per­pe­tra­tors of the school shoot­ings have links to Nazi and white suprema­cist groups. A form of ter­ror­ism, these mas­sacres desta­bi­lize soci­ety, lead­ing to the pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment for “order.” Endorsed by some ele­ments of pop­u­lar cul­ture, the school­yard shoot­ings are func­tion­ing in a man­ner anal­o­gous to the Fritz Haar­mann inci­dent in Weimar Ger­many. That ser­i­al mur­der of more than a hun­dred juve­niles, whose corpses were butchered and baked into meat pies, dis­cred­it­ed the author­i­ties of Weimar Ger­many, help­ing to sow sen­ti­ment that would ben­e­fit the Nazis.

Tip of the Iceberg: The CIA and The Paris Review

Famed lit­er­ary jour­nal “The Paris Review” exem­pli­fies the inex­tri­ca­ble rela­tion­ship between Amer­i­can lib­er­al polit­i­cal cul­ture and the CIA. The “Salon” piece is the tip of the ice­berg and we have all booked pas­sage on the Titan­ic.

Sending a Message? RFK Jr.‘s Wife Found Dead by Hanging

RFK Jr’s wife dead of hang­ing. An “assist­ed sui­cide” to send a mes­sage as RFK Sr.‘s assas­si­na­tion returns to the court­room?

Repost: FTR #93 The Science of Coercion II — Interview With Christopher Simpson

Rela­tion­ship between the U.S. psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare estab­lish­ment and Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ca­tion research as an aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline.