by Anthony Gucciardi

US military soldier on social media.

How many times now has such ‘conspiracy nonsense’ now been reported years later by the mega media as undeniable fact? In the case of the US intelligence propaganda machine thateven the New York Times has covered in an article entitled ‘The Real War on Reality‘, we are seeing just that.

The New York Times report goes on to detail information uncovered from hacked data regarding the military operation to stage ‘grassroots’ responses and organizations in order to deceive via psyop.  Professor of philosophy Peter Ludlow writes for the Times:

“The hack also revealed evidence that Team Themis was developing a “persona management” system — a program, developed at the specific request of the United States Air Force, that allowed one user to control multiple online identities (“sock puppets”) for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grass roots support.  The contract was eventually awarded to another private intelligence firm.”

This cyber warfare is clearly not just in the capacity of ‘improving international reputation’ as military commanders are claiming on record (just like there is ‘no such thing’ as domestic spying and it’s only for terrorists). Instead, we’re talking about running a major network of computers that are constantly running code specifically written to post to social media and news comment pages. Something that was revealed all the way back in 2011 by RawStory and brushed off in the name of national security by the military.

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES RUNNING MASS NUMBER OF PROPAGANDA ACCOUNTS

And remember, this is the same military that says political activists are terrorists and need to be targeted. At the highest levels, combating ‘terrorism’ simply means going after law-abiding citizens and journalists — especially so-called ‘leakers’. With propaganda scripts that run 24/7 and are intended to discredit people like Edward Snowden, top level intelligence agencies are teaming up with the military to combat whistleblowers through such phony means.

An excerpt from a particularly concerning summary of a recent German report on how political activists are targeted reads:

“The targets of these attacks are scientists… It does not stop at skirmishes in the scientific community. Hackers regularly target various web pages. Evaluations of IP log files show that not only Monsanto visits the pages regularly, but also various organizations of the U.S. government, including the military. These include the Navy Network Information Center, the Federal Aviation Administration and the United States Army Intelligence Center, an institution of the US Army, which trains soldiers with information gathering.”

Now admittedly the news is not getting nearly as much coverage as it should, especially when considering it highlights two essential points:

1. This means that the United States military and intelligence communities are highly afraid of alternative networks and the overall public perception when it comes to the United States government and the state of the corrupt political mafia at large.

2. This also means that the United States military and intelligence agencies arelosing the informational battle, and the only way they can even fight back is to run a conglomerate of fake accounts attacking legitimate users and journalists. You know, the terrorists that dare to question anything.

Social media pages, comment systems on top news websites, and various other areas online are the targets of a pinpointed ‘cyber psyop’ by a government that simply can’t answer real questions. And instead of actually doing anything about the outrage, disinformation campaigns are of utmost priority.

By Michael Moore, Open Mike Blog , RSN

Manning: We are all in his debt.

Michael Moore is the celebrated documentarian who gave us Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, Capitalism, a Love Story, and other films of urgent social relevance.

 COMMENT WE APPROVE OF

+75# Eliz77 2013-07-31 07:26

Manning is a brilliant citizen of the United States. He swore to protect the country and the Constitution. The US has signed treaties in agreement with the Nuremburg trials and the Geneva Convention which therefore are the law of the land. He did that very thoughtfully and carefully after approaching the chain of command with his concerns. They ignored him and treated the information he brought them as not important. He thought the people, you and I, should know what was being done with our tax money and in our name. I am glad he was not charged with aiding the enemy, but all charges should be dropped and he should be honored for his service.

by Stephen Lendman

Both countries want peace, not war. America threatens them. Defensive readiness is prioritized. Forewarned is forearmed. NATO’s a global alliance. Washington heads it. It’s a geopolitical threat. It menaces humanity. It’s expanding worldwide. It’s allied for offense, not defense. It plans war, not peace.

It’s comprised of 28 member states, 22 partner ones, seven Mediterranean Dialogue allies, four Istanbul (Gulf) Cooperation Council Initiative states, and eight other global Partners. It works cooperatively with the UN, EU, and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. South American and African expansion is planned.

Stop Nato’s Rick Rozoff told Progressive Radio News Hour listeners it’s a “global missile.” It’s aimed at humanity’s heart. It threatens potential armageddon. Stopping its rogue agenda matters most. It threatens world peace. It’s expanding to Russian and Chinese borders. Encroaching US bases surround them. Moscow and Beijing are mindful. They’re allied defensively. They’re preparing for scenarios they hope to avoid. They’re readying for possible global war.

On December 7, 2011, the EU Times headlined “China Joins Russia, Orders Military to Prepare for World War III.”

A Beijing Ministry of Defense bulletin said then President Hu “agreed in principle” that deterring US-led Western aggression’s only possible by “direct and immediate military action” or threat thereof.

He ordered his naval forces to “prepare for war.” BBC reported the same story. He wants stepped up preparation and readiness. He told military officials that China’s navy should “accelerate its transformation and modernisation in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations for warfare in order to make greater contributions to safeguard national security.”

Chinese Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong warned unequivocally. “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War,” he said.

Hopefully he means it. Hopefully Washington and Israel take heed. Hopefully it deters their planned aggression. Hopefully a nightmarish scenario’s avoided.

Russian General Nikolai Makarov said:

“I do not rule out local and regional armed conflicts developing into a large-scale war, including using nuclear weapons.”

Beijing’s bulletin discussed a US-planned “ultimate (Middle East) solution.” It’s readied in case of regional nuclear war. It said Washington will attack Syria and Iran with lethal biological weapons. They’re “intended to kill tens of millions of innocent civilians.”

Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier revealed it. He discovered that five avian flu virus mutations spread far more easily. Doing so makes them the “most lethal killer(s) of mankind ever invented.”

US capabilities were based on Russian intelligence examination of Lockheed Martin’s RQ-170 Sentinel Drone. It was downed over Iranian territory.  “Russian made Avtobaza ground-based electronic intelligence and jamming system was used. Evidence showed it was equipped with a sophisticated aerosol delivery system.”

America’s nuclear, chemical, and biowarfare agenda is longstanding. Post-9/11, stepped up development was prioritized. Nuclear disarmament was spurned. So were Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) provisions.  The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) was abandoned. It expressly forbids development, testing and deployment of missile defenses. Doing so interferes with Washington’s offensive plans.

It refuses to adopt a proposed Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). It prohibits further weapons-grade uranium and plutonium production. It forbids adding new nuclear weapons to present stockpiles.

America spends more on military readiness than all other countries combined. Funding includes enormous congressional appropriations, outsized black budgets, others off the books, secret programs, huge amounts for intelligence, and other unknown initiatives.

Longstanding US policy calls for preventive, preemptive, and/or proactive wars. Global targets are involved. First-strike chemical, biological and nuclear weapons are planned. Anticipatory self-defense justifies doing so.   Washington rescinded the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Subverting its provisions preceded doing it.

Enhancing America’s offensive capability matters most. Doing so prepares for global war. At issue is unchallenged dominance. Anything goes is policy. Achieving it is prioritized. Potentially destroying life on Earth is risked. Advancing Washington’s imperium matters more. America has hugely destructive chemical, biological, nuclear and other arsenals.

Secret research and development programs upgrade them. Enormous amounts are spent doing so. Classified budgets conceal how much.  Hundreds of private biolabs operate nationwide. Fort Detrick, Lawrence Livermore, and other government facilities operate secretly. Research prioritizes offense, not defense.

Germ warfare once was science fiction fantasy. Today it’s a grim reality. So is chemical and/or mushroom shaped cloud annihilation. America plays hardball. It does so for keeps. Nuclear/chemical/biological trigger readiness is prioritized. Francis Boyle calls catastrophic biowarfare/bioterrorist incidents or accidents a “statistical certainty.”

It’s just a matter of time. Permanent war is official US policy. Total war risks annihilation. All weapons in America’s arsenal will be used. They’re planned to be as needed. Humanity’s more than ever threatened. Russia and China represent our last line of defense. Hopefully they’re up to the challenge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

By Kevin Martinez and Clodomiro Puentes, wsws.org

Star Trek Into Darkness

Directed by J.J. Abrams; written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof; based on the television series created by Gene Roddenberry

The twelfth installment of the Star Trek franchise, and the sequel to the 2009 film with that original title, Star Trek Into Darkness has made over $438 million in ticket sales as of this writing and is the most profitable installment of the series yet.

However, the latest film is largely joyless and tedious. The secret behind its financial success has less to do with its remarkable qualities as entertainment and more to do with the fact that moviegoers are offered little choice other than to attend one or another blockbuster in the overall summer wasteland.

The plot of the new film concerns the crew of the USS Enterprise and more of their assorted exploits in space. After Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is stripped of his command of the Enterprise, following a mission that violates established protocols of non-interference with primitive alien life, the so-called “Prime Directive” of the Star Trek universe, Admiral Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) is reinstated as the ship’s commanding officer.

Meanwhile, a Section 31 building in futuristic London is bombed. Section 31 refers to a secretive intelligence organization in the Star Trek series—a relatively recent addition, one must add, that is accountable to no one and implicated in various war crimes. Where have we encountered this before?

The commanders of Starfleet meet to discuss apprehending the perpetrator of the attack, John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), a former member of Starfleet. The meeting is attacked by Harrison, and Admiral Pike and others are killed.

Predictably, Kirk seeks revenge and is reinstated by Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) to command a mission to find and kill Harrison, without the benefit of a trial. Kirk is accompanied by Spock (Zachary Quinto), who raises moral and ethical objections to the expedition. The precise motives of Harrison, as well as that of the pursuing crew and their commanding officers, will be called into question as the seemingly simple operation begins to fall apart once the Enterprise (almost) reaches its destination.

In an interview, actor Simon Pegg who plays Montgomery Scott in the film, was asked about the film’s broader themes: “I think it’s a very current film, and it reflects certain things that are going on in our own heads at the moment; this idea that our enemy might be walking among us, not necessarily on the other side of an ocean, you know. John Harrison, Benedict Cumberbatch’s character, is ambiguous, you know? We [the characters in the film] don’t know who to support. Sometimes, Kirk, he seems to be acting in exactly the same way as him [Harrison]. They’re both motivated by revenge. And the ‘Into Darkness’ in the title is less an idea of this new trend of po-faced, kind of, everything’s-got-to-be-a-bit-dour treatments of essentially childish stories. It’s more about Kirk’s indecision.”

The last comment, in particular is revealing. Pegg is referring to the latest adaptations of Batman and Superman, both of them juvenile paeans to authority and the forces of law and order. As a matter of fact, the main problem with Into Darkness is precisely that it also takes itself far too seriously.

The plot is overly complicated, the characters are hardly developed. The dialogue and acting is trite. Certain “emotional” scenes, where the audience is supposed to feel something for the characters, unfortunately make one want to laugh out loud instead. The problem is not so much with the cast and crew, many of whom are very talented, but with the filmmakers, including director J.J. Abrams, and their conceptions. They have chosen “to go with the flow,” so to speak, and insert retrograde ideas (targeted assassination, revenge, etc.) into an overly bombastic piece of work.

If the material were at least presented competently or seriously, with thinking adults in mind, that would be one thing. Then one could at least argue over the film’s themes and how truthfully they corresponded to reality. But Into Darkness is not that sort of film. Three-quarters or more of the movie, it seems, consists of people running, shooting, exploding, fighting, jumping and falling. Added to all that is the recurring use of “lens flares” (the usually unwanted effect when a camera lens is pointed at a bright light source), Abrams’ personal and annoying touch.

The special effects are presumably the raison d’être of the latest Star Trek, but they don’t add any real depth or excitement to the story.

As for the themes of revenge and militarism featuring so prominently in the film, albeit superficially, all one can say is: what would Gene Roddenberry think?

The original Star Trek television series (1966-1969), for all its faults and limitations (and occasional outright silliness), contained at least some underlying humanity and humor. Premiering on television during the era of the Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War protests and the US-Soviet race to the Moon, Star Trek was not about military missions, but exploring space. Even the Klingons and Romulans, alien races functioning as stand-ins for US rivals in the Soviet Union and China, appear in only ten episodes over the course of the original series’ three seasons.

The future presented in the series was one where—at least within the “United Federation of Planets” to which the protagonists belonged—war, racial prejudice, religious ignorance, even poverty and the profit motive, were things of the distant past. It is not a mystery why the original series is still held dear by a great number of people. Moreover, the storylines at least aspired to provoke thought in the audience.

For some years now, the Star Trek franchise has adapted, in its own manner, to the trend of “dark” re-adaptations of various comic books and the like. For example, Section 31, the aforementioned intelligence organization was consciously introduced in the late 1990s as a CIA-like antipode to the “squeaky-clean” democratic and egalitarian image of the Federation. The generally utopian and optimistic character of the television series was apparently deemed unfashionable or somehow irreconcilably at odds with “true human nature.”

Such cynicism is neither new, nor insightful or interesting. In fact, it reflects the accommodation of a layer of artists and intellectuals to the general brutalization of cultural and political life. The lawlessness of US foreign and domestic policy, reckless militarism, and cultural backwardness are all more or less taken for granted and find expression, largely undigested, in the vacuous bloody-mindedness of much of Hollywood filmmaking at present.

It should not come as a great surprise that the final credits of this latest affront to Star Trek read: “This film is dedicated to our post-9/11 veterans with gratitude for their inspired service abroad and continued leadership at home.” When will such bootlicking end?

By William T. Hathaway

SOF personnel in Iraq.  The power of life and death is intoxicating to many youths, who, like most of the population, are also pitifully ignorant about the actual political goals they implement. (Wikipedia)

The US Special Forces is a bizarrely gendered world, as I found out when I joined it to write a book about war. This all-male bastion is sexualized in a truly perverted way, particularly in its methods for turning young men into killers on command.

[pullquote] The day the superrich and the politicians invest their sons and daughters in wars, the wars will end. [/pullquote]

Being the epitome of patriarchy, the military creates soldiers by forcing them into the role of the lowliest creatures in patriarchy: women. The recruits’ sense of personal power is stripped away, and they are required to obey commands from the men higher in the hierarchy and do the military’s “housework”: scrubbing and waxing floors, dusting windowsills, washing dishes, cleaning toilets to meet the standards of the commanders. They are forced to be obsessed with their appearance and to stand passively at attention while the older, more powerful men inspect them from a few inches away about how closely they’ve shaved, how neat their hair looks, how correctly they are dressed, often insulting them, calling them pussies and queers.

This intimate domination stirs homosexual feelings and at the same time represses them, creating psychological conflicts that are then channeled into aggression. A confused inner rage is generated in the young men, then given an outlet: the enemy.

A favorite ritual involves the distinction between guns and rifles. The word “gun” is reserved for the big cannons that kill dozens of people with one shot. “Rifle” is the smaller weapon that kills only one person at a time. If a recruit mistakenly calls his rifle a gun, he is ordered to stand in front of the group, point to his rifle, and shout, “This is my rifle,” then point to his crotch and shout, “This is my gun.” Then back to his rifle, “This is for fighting,” back to his crotch, “This is for fun!”

Their phallus is symbolically turned into a weapon. Instead of something loving that brings you closer to another person and can create new life, their sexuality becomes a tool for death, for destroying life. The military flips sexuality into its opposite.

This sexualization of violence is profoundly sick, but it’s just an extension of a pathology that permeates our society. It’s further proof that we have to dismantle patriarchy before we can have peace.

#

William T. Hathaway’s first book, A World of Hurt, portrays his experiences on a Special Forces combat team and won a Rinehart Foundation Award for its uncovering of the psychological roots of war: the emotional blockage and need for patriarchal approval that draw men to the military. His latest book, Radical Peace: People Refusing War,presents the experiences of peace activists who have moved beyond petitions and demonstrations into direct action, defying the government’s laws and impeding its capacity to kill. He is a member of the Freedom Socialist Party, a red feminist organization (www.socialism.com). A sample of his writing is available at www.peacewriter.org.