Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Mental Warfare Indeed

This is just dark and cynical enough to be credible. I of course have no way to independently credit the source. However, the material seems ever-so-plausible, and it gets high marks on my personal scorecard when it comes to what might in some cases seem superficial aspects but I would argue are not. Note the coherent language, a persuasive case, proper grammar, and at-least-near-flawless spelling. Someone put a lot of effort into crafting this material. George Bush can't even pull off an introduction of a head of state with anything like the quality control seen here. This is the result of smart working brains.

And it would be hard to argue with the seven suggested actions. While all of them resonated strongly with me, I was especially moved at #6 after recent reading of Thom Hartmann's Unequal Protection, which spells out in horrifying detail how the expansion of corporate rights at the expense of human rights has included via the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, and such what amounts to a back-door destruction of our own painfully-wrought legal system that once protected the citizenry from the sort of abuse that was a major cause of the nation's founding.

I encourage you to skim excerpt here and then skip to original to get the whole story. We might consider early orders for book from which this is excerpted, namely The Art of Mental Warfare.

Psychological Operations is my specialty. PsyOps.

Everything I’ve done has been highly classified, all black programs and black operations. Some people I know thought I worked for the CIA, but it’s much more complicated than that. I’ve worked with people in the CIA, DIA, NSC, NSA, SAIC, Army Intel and many more lesser known agencies within the intelligence apparatus.

Before focusing on PsyOps I started out running covert combat missions, special operations. I was good at what I did and rose through the ranks fast. When the “War on Terror” started I was paid a lot of money to consult with private military contractors. When private paramilitary units needed to get the jobs done that paid the most money they would come to me with checkbooks filled with US taxpayer dough.

I’ve seen the worst things imaginable, hell on earth. Had friends die in my arms. Seen piles of rotten corpses. Seen men, women and children tortured. I’ve seen the eyes of terrified and confused children being sold into a vicious life of slavery and an early death.

I could get a lot more graphic, but you get the idea.

That was my life, and all along I was told that I was fighting for freedom and working for the “good guys.” What a ridiculous comment that is! In the black world, that is, in the covert world, there aren’t any “good guys” — just varying degrees of evil.

As Brigadier General Butler famously stated, “War is a racket.” It doesn’t have anything to do with freedom and democracy. It is not good fighting evil. There’s just a bunch of old greedy gangsta motherfuckers making obscene amounts of cash and breeding hatred, violence, terrorists and sex slaves.

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To give a little more background on publicly revealed psychological operations, in 1977, after the Congressional Church Committee investigated CIA manipulation of the news media, and right after George Bush Sr. left his post as the Director of the CIA, famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein searched a little deeper into what was known as Operation Mockingbird. He revealed that over 400 US journalists were actually carrying out clandestine CIA PsyOps services. Bernstein identified operations involving almost every major US news outlet, most notably The New York Times, CBS and Time magazine. The CIA responded to all of this with a “limited hangout.” A “limited hangout” is CIA speak for when classified information gets out and you have to make it seem as if you are “coming clean” with all the information on the operation, but in reality you are really just admitting part of the operation so you can cover up other deeper parts and continue the program. This worked very effectively for them, as the US public quickly moved on and this operation has largely been forgotten. Currently, I would estimate, with cable news and the Internet now, that there are well over a thousand covert operatives spread throughout the news media. They have a firm grip on television, newspapers, wire services, radio and magazines. However, with the Internet - that’s their weak spot - it’s too decentralized and difficult to control.

The Pentagon’s Information Operations Roadmap now describes the Internet as an enemy “weapons system.” The Pentagon doesn’t hide the fact that they want total control over information, or as they call it “information dominance.” They very plainly state that they seek to “control land, sea, space and information.” This is what they refer to as “full spectrum dominance.” If you don’t think they see this as a top priority, look at Iraq. The plan to “embed” journalists with the military in Iraq was a strategic operation that considered “journalism as part of psychological operations.” The journalists that weren’t “embedded” were considered “enemy combatants.” More journalists have been killed in Iraq than in any other war, and it is the US doing a large portion of the killing.

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So, to the people who have awareness of the problems facing us, if I could give advice, it would be this:

1. Try the Bush Administration for war crimes. If the case could ever be brought to court, the evidence to convict is definitely there. This is why the administration has been strongly against the International Criminal Court. If we are to begin repairing this country, and the world, we must begin by showing these power crazed and covert forces that they are accountable. If we can convict someone like Cheney, we will send a powerful message to the covert world. If we let them walk, we will keep having these problems. New people will follow them and take their place.

2. Investigate where all the military spending has been vanishing off to. There are literally trillions of taxpayer dollars unaccounted for. This money is fueling the covert world and terrorism in general. As part of this, I would include an investigation into war profiteering as well.

3. Make it mandatory that all electronic voting machines must have a 100% verifiable paper trail.

4. Get people into the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who will smash the current media ownership rules. The concentration of media ownership is the foundation of the covert power structure. Without that, the whole thing is a house of cards. That’s why the FCC is currently trying to ram through rules that will further consolidate media ownership before the Bush administration leaves office. As part of this, it is pivotal that we protect the open architecture of the Internet. The media belongs to the people, as does the government, in theory anyway, but we need an information system that actually serves the public interest.

5. Declare a national and global emergency on the environmental front. We have already reached the breaking point. We need organized, governmental, policy driven, bold action now.

6. We need to address entities that now have power over the Constitution, such as the undemocratic and unelected corporate global governing structure - institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and “agreements” like NAFTA and DR-CAFTA, to name a few. Most Americans don’t even know what these power structures are, let alone that they have power that supersedes the Constitution. We must also address the National Security Act, that’s where the ultimate power of our country lies. The National Security Act has effectively made the Constitution meaningless and is the primary driver of the covert world. The PATRIOT Act and various other newly granted powers must also be drastically revised or eliminated completely in order to protect our civil liberties.

7. Lastly, we need to have publicly financed elections. As long as we have a system that requires candidates to raise tens of millions of dollars to even be considered for office, we will have politicians who bend over backwards for the richest one percent and the most powerful elements of society at the citizens’ expense. An important aspect of this has to be a requirement for large media companies to provide candidates with free airtime. Candidates have to spend the majority of their money on advertising in the mainstream media. That’s why the major news media spend so much time focusing on who is raising the most money, because they are the ones who end up with all that money. Once we have publicly financed elections and free airtime for candidates, we will get people in office who will work in the interests of the public because they are not beholden to the large and powerful entities. When you have politicians depending on the public instead of the private sector for survival, all the issues mentioned above could be addressed because they won’t have to fear the withdrawal of support from large corporations and the wealthy and powerful who do not want these things to happen. This will also enable us to eliminate tax breaks for the richest one percent, put an end to corporate welfare practices, and stop funding for obscene military and prison industrial companies that are profiting off of disasters and no longer serve security interests. Then we can redirect that money into environmental, education, health care and social security programs, to mention a few.

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