Twelfth Bough

i run my own damn think tank

Archive for category Surveillance

let’s take our ball and go home for lunch

Oct 7

Posted by A. Peasant in Censorship, NWO, Surveillance | No Comments

TPTB use the internet to keep us busy and track what we’re doing and thinking. They use it to send us down dead end streets.

At this point we know the general outlines of what they want to do. Has the law of diminishing returns set in? Are we now giving them more information by our behavior following the bouncing psyops ball then we get in exchange?

I don’t know, but a thought occurs to me: What if we, the people paying attention, just stopped analyzing for a period of time? What if we became the silent lurkers? We would rustle them out of the bushes maybe. ?? I don’t know. It’s just an idea.

Threat of next world war may be in cyberspace: UN

The next world war could take place in cyberspace, the UN telecommunications agency chief warned Tuesday as experts called for action to stamp out cyber attacks. “The next world war could happen in cyberspace and that would be a catastrophe. We have to make sure that all countries understand that in that war, there is no such thing as a superpower,” Hamadoun Toure said. “Loss of vital networks would quickly cripple any nation, and none is immune to cyberattack,” added the secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union during the ITU’s Telecom World 2009 fair in Geneva. Toure said countries have become “critically dependent” on technology for commerce, finance, health care, emergency services and food distribution.

“The best way to win a war is to avoid it in the first place,” he stressed. [natch]

…But one of the most prominent victims in recent years has been the small Baltic state of Estonia, which has staked some of its post Cold War development on new technology. In 2007 a spate of cyber attacks forced the closure of government websites and disrupted leading businesses. Estonian Minister for Economic Affairs and Communications Juhan Parts said in Geneva that “adequate international cooperation” was essential. “Because if something happens on cyberspace… it’s a border crossing issue. We have to have horizontal cooperation globally,” he added.

…Experts say that a major problem is that the current software and web infrastructure has the same weaknesses as those produced two decades ago. “The real problem is that we’re putting on the market software that is as vulnerable as it was 20 years ago,” said Cristine Hoepers, general manager at Brazilian National Computer Emergency Response Team. “If you see the vulnerabilities that are being exploited today, they are still the same,” she underlined. She suggested that professionals needed to be trained to “design something more resilient.” “Universities are not teaching students to think about that. We need to change the workforce, we need to go to the universities…, we need to start educating our professionals,” she said.

Pointing out the infrastructure weakness, Carlos Moreira, who founded and runs the Swiss information security firm Wisekey, said legislation is needed to bring cybersecurity up to international standards.

And this, if you can believe it:

Yesterday on October 6, 2009 several acts of war against the U.S. and the U.K. were perpetrated and very few know about it. No it was not bullets, mortars, missiles, or even IEDS in Afghanistan or Iraq…….but the blows were none less telling in the world of 3 C’s ……..Command, Control, and Communications.

Apparently, the entire National Communications Center capability to communicate went down at Andrews at least for enough of a duration to cause extreme consternation and a designation of RED. As many know, this is a vital Communications Center for the U.S. Military, Intelligence community, and the Commander In Chief. It going down caused numerous problems and no doubt many questions asked.

…The U.K. situation yesterday apparently was a massive deep hack and the resultant cyber-purloining of approx. 2000 pages of the Queen’s MI-6 deepest current secrets relating perhaps to operational details of clandestine agenteur, current INTEL operations, and future plans for a variety of target nations around the world. That these “Dirty Knickers” were spread all over the Internet throughout the Eurozone prior to a quick takedown by GCHQ and MI-6 caused great wailing and consternation in the British circles of power. Understandably so as this amounts to war.

Curiously though, yesterday also had a UN group comment that the next World War will be fought in Cyberspace………is there any linkage of these cyber generated attacks to the fact that certain UN working groups were addressing that very issue or that in nearly every country belabored Elites like Senator Rocky Oil want to take away the Internet from the people because they are losing control of the masses of sheep they have been feeding upon.

Et cetera.

I covered that Rockefeller legislation here. (Also here.)

The purpose of this language [legislation] is mind-fucking people into supporting the government takeover of the internet after a false-flag terrorist attack. You will support President Obama. You will listen to whatever he says. Turn on the teevee.

Bottom line seems to be that they plan on taking the internet away from us when it’s convenient for them. It’s a timing issue. They adjust their timing based on all the great feedback we give them. I’m just thinking hey, why don’t we just get all quiet and do our reading but not write what we think for a few days, maybe even a week. A bloggy strike kind of thing. You know put the mind fuck in reverse. That could get interesting.

Just remember: they need us we don’t need them. In any relationship, even a hellish one, only one party has to change behavior for the whole relationship to change.

diehard resisters

Sep 29

Posted by A. Peasant in Military, Mind Control, Resistance, Surveillance | No Comments

I’ve written about abusive military technology before. It’s a little pet peeve of mine.

super creepy mind control experiments
a laser beam?
laser technology
use your imagination
coverup in full swing
who killed benazir bhutto?
fusion centers
another PR problem
sick minds make sick weapons
a logical conclusion
close enough to see the whites of their eyes
bullshit detector - activated (complete with comment thread military suck-up troll who I would dispatch differently today (link fixed))
the holy grail of crowd control
message control

So now we have the military and militarized police forces abusing the G20 protesters in Pittsburgh. And here’s three big goons doing a terrible job trying to blend in with some students.

h/t Dissecting the New Age (on the blogroll)

What is the point of all this? It is to control the way you think.

The war against our minds has many dark levels, all of which attempt to hide truth which is not sanctioned by the police state, replacing it with a new fabricated “official version” of events. The state/corporate controlled media informs us of what we are to think, while multiple forms of coercion, bribery and intimidation are used to reinforce the government’s ideas and convince people to accept them as their own.

Each political protest that attempts to open people’s eyes to the world of untruths which constantly inundates us, exposes the silent majority to more and more of the police state tactics that the ruling elite has gathered together, to use as it wages war against the American public by less than deadly means. In addition to rubber bullets and flash grenades, the police state brought-out acoustic weapons to herd protestors at the recent G20 Summit in Pittsburgh:

I try whenever possible to unpack things for people as best I can, by showing how the manipulation works. How they use language like ’scientists believe,’ ’studies suggest,’ and ‘experts disagree,’ and all the myriad ways they twist what people see and hear and understand, how they send people off down dead-end roads giving them misdirections that can cost them their lives.

The militarization of American police forces and their adaptation to the new low-level warfare techniques is spoon-fed to us, mixed-in with the usual themes of “terrorism” and other fear factors, hoping to intimidate any potential resistance movement before it even begins—stifling the idea itself. That’s the entire mission of the war against the people, in a nutshell, to stifle all unacceptable ideas within the mind itself, before trouble arises from them.

Exactly right. They strangle the infant independent thoughts in the cradle of your brain. As soon as you start thinking hey what am I doing on my knees and you start to pick your head up they come down on your neck with a spike-soled boot. Aren’t you a GOOD AMERICAN? Don’t you SUPPORT THE TROOPS? Don’t you believe that ISRAEL IS THE ONLY DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND OUR BEST FRIEND THAT WE HAVE TO SUPPORT? Go ahead, stand up and say it out loud. Put it on the internet what you really think. Go ahead. I dare you. I dare you to speak the truth.

Oh no. That would be crazy. The truth is radical and most people aren’t cut out for that sort of thing, they’re not diehard resisters. Resisting is more like a hobby than a survival mechanism. They don’t take it all that seriously. Better to remain Anonymous because they think that keeps them safe from the police state. But that is the biggest mind-fuck of all, that submitting to mind-control keeps you safe. The only way out is to RESIST and to THINK YOUR OWN THOUGHTS and to OPEN YOUR MOUTH. If you censor yourself, they have won. That’s exactly what they want you to do. It frees them up for other projects. That’s why they whine so bitterly when people don’t listen to The Authorities, because you’re supposed to police your own thoughts, shut up and make their jobs easy. That’s your Patriotic Duty, to be a mind-controlled slave.

And yes, you *are* under mind-control. If you live in these United States, you are under mind-control.

Resistance begins and ends within the mind. The police state knows this. When they say euphemistically, that it is a war for “hearts and minds,” this is what they mean—a battle to kill-off ideas of resistance. The Master State is attempting to preempt future resistance by anticipating who will be in the resistance, so that their rebellious minds might be swept clean of such unacceptable thinking, before trouble comes from it.

Resistance to the idea of the all-powerful state is all that prevents the rising-up of the global dictatorship. Many plans are afoot now to bring this new order about. Full implementation of the plan will bring-about a massive planetary kill-off, where multiple animal and plant species will disappear, along with a billion or more human beings. Silence in the face of such inhuman plans is a deadly surrender of apocalyptic proportions.

Read the whole thing.

That’s the ticket

Aug 29

Posted by A. Peasant in Censorship, Mind-fucking, Surveillance | 3 Comments

For a long long time TPTB have been controlling and shaping public opinion. I’m sure this has been quite fun and profitable for them — a tiny group of people controlling a huge group of people.

But the spell has broken. Not for all of course, but for enough. Enough people have started to question the officially sanctioned narrative and this wavelength moves through the deep sea of people and TPTB don’t know where it is exactly but they’re worried that a rogue wave is about to swamp their luxury liner command center.

That damn internet. If it wasn’t for that damn internet they could pull everything off without a hitch. They’ve tried controlling the internet and filling it with plants but the truth keeps popping up anyway. Maybe if there was an emergency, something kind of terrifying, and if we had a bill authorizing the president to take control of the nation’s critical infrastructure….

Yeah yeah, that’s the ticket….

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. “We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs–from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records,” Rockefeller said.

…Rockefeller’s revised legislation seeks to reshuffle the way the federal government addresses the topic. It requires a “cybersecurity workforce plan” from every federal agency, a “dashboard” pilot project, measurements of hiring effectiveness, and the implementation of a “comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy” in six months–even though its mandatory legal review will take a year to complete.

But they don’t have time for that. They have serious PR emergencies RIGHT NOW. Not to worry. These things can always be arranged. That’s what the Unitary Executive is for — to Protect National Security!

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to “direct the national response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.”

…Translation: If your company is deemed “critical,” a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.

See? All they have to do is deem some internet companies “critical” to National Security in an emergency situation, like say a terrorist attack, and they fall magically under the umbrella of government control. Voila. I’m sure companies like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and all the big boys will be deemed critical. And any little independent companies not deemed critical will probably come under suspicion for aiding and abetting terrorists or something like that. Should be fun. Nobody will know what’s going on and they’ll have to watch tv to get any information.

It’s all to Keep You Safe, and Don’t You Forget It (wink wink wink)! In fact, here’s a dramatic statement, dripping with every power word they can possibly cram into it, provided by Jena Longo, deputy communications director for the Senate Commerce committee:

The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president’s authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks.

OK that seems pretty clear that the president can secure (control) the national infrastructure from attack as part of the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster based on statutory authorities for wartime use of communication networks. Right?

WRONG! THAT’S NOT WHAT IT SAYS CAN’T YOU READ?????

To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a “government shutdown or takeover of the Internet” and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false.

Oh wow, that’s so confusing. The statement says one thing, and then it says the complete opposite! Yes you will allow the president to secure the private infrastructure based on the Rockefeller-Snowe bill based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks, but no you will not suggest that the Rockefeller-Snowe bill empowered the president to shutdown or take over the internet. That would make you a LIAR.

So here’s the instruction: “Securing the private infrastructure based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks” IS NOT “shutting down or taking over the internet.”

YES IT IS.
NO IT’S NOT.
YES IT IS.

Mind-fucking.

The purpose of this language is to clarify how the president directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government’s response.

No. The purpose of this language is mind-fucking people into supporting the government takeover of the internet after a false-flag terrorist attack. You will support President Obama. You will listen to whatever he says. Turn on the teevee.

Where does one even begin?

Sep 16

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, McCain/Palin, Media, Surveillance | No Comments

Following the news can easily become a full-time job, and interpreting the news takes the wisdom of Solomon. Since I am unqualified for that task, let me just wish all of you the best of luck and I’ll do what I can with the cards we’ve been dealt.

As for the financial meltdown currently taking place, I see it but I’m not sure what it really means yet. It appears to be planned event, but the timing seems off. Perhaps “they” hoped to forestall it until after the elections to insure that McCain could get in first. In addition, it does not seem that everyone expected to have both feet on the reservation about McCain got the memo. Perhaps Palin is a bridge too far. The overall problem appears to be that events are happening so quickly that they defy coordination and control. Considering how orchestrated our lives have become, the advantage accrues to those paying attention — as long as you can keep up. Good luck.

Meanwhile, the revelations about the DOJ and Cheney’s cabal back in 2004 are very, very interesting. Clearly Cheney and Addington have been making all sorts of decisions and using a combination of secrecy and bullying to make it all stick. Addington whined:

“I’m sure when we leave office we’re all going to be hauled up before congressional committees and grand juries,” Addington told one colleague in disgust.

God Willing!

But we still don’t know what was this surveillance ‘thing’ that prompted such intense pushback from the DOJ.

While all this rages on, we’ve had other news about the mysterious weapons that Bob Woodward told Larry King about. He couldn’t say more because someone could get killed, by which he must have meant a “good guy,” since obviously, plenty of people have been getting killed by the said unknown technology, but I digress…

And what the hell is going on with Hurricane Ike? Gee whiz the Republicans were so attentive to people’s needs when Hurricane Gustav displaced their convention. They were paragons of virtue. But here we are, just two weeks later, and they’re right back to the Katrina playbook.

These things are connected. It’s all connected: mysterious weapons, surveillance, the lethargic and brain-dead American public, weather modification. We must discover the connections, and they have to do with technology.

The surveillance state is well in place and all pervasive. The government here employs one in 25 people (2001) to snitch on their neighbors and clientele, and there are many more recruits available who do this out of some misguided zealotry: fundamental churches are sponsored to provide candidates for this role, as well as any other organization including but not limited to motorcycle club/gang members. Two way television surveillance is rife, and in place just about anywhere there are cable TV facilities. Many monitors and televisions are equipped with a camera OUT, letting law enforcement into your living room whenever they feel the need. The legislation enacted recently by boy george (Since 9-11) is just an attempt to make all this legal on paper.

Watching people in their homes, through their TVs and computers? Was that what pushed Ashcroft and Comey over the edge? I mean, were they ok with monitoring all our phone calls and emails, but they drew the line at the peep show? I don’t know. That’s just the problem — we don’t know. So much secrecy surrounds our government, and what they’re really doing, and to what nefarious ends.

The New World Order is wireless, and will never end unless the antennae come down. That is the stark truth. Get up close to them, see how they are made.

I encourage you to explore the links at this site, especially if you have some background in science.

Kill the Bloggers, C….I….L…..L

Aug 20

Posted by Marlena in Civil Rights, Surveillance | No Comments

I remember seeing something a while back, but unfortunately I can’t put my hands on it now, and it said that many patriotic Americans worked in the NSA. These people are very, very intelligent types and they will not sit by and let the US become taken over by the goon squad currently in charge. If I recall correctly, this was part of a comment thread.

Now that may all be true, and I hope it is, but apparently there are others in the NSA who carry a different attitude.

Wayne Madsen, always spoiling for a fight with Bush and Cheney, or the chance to show off his undies to minimum wage airport TSA workers, has an executive level NSA staff person on record saying that significant sentiment exists within the NSA to kill troublesome bloggers and journalists.
The NSA executive staffer was, apparently, not the source of the sentiment, but this individual did pass along the context and the precise wording of the “junior G-man” working in the NSA. Prominent names listed in the NSA database of troublemakers?
1. Bill Gertz

2. James Bamford

3. Vernon Loeb

4. Jim Risen

5. Dr. John C. K. Daly

6. Wayne Madsen

7. Seymour Hersh

These were all the names Madsen published, but there are, of course, many others. Possibly you, gentle reader.

At moments like this I like to recall the military guy who called me a ‘paranoid delusionist.’ Oh geez yeah.

Regime School

Jul 24

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Egypt, Israel, Surveillance | No Comments

I am just getting back into the swing of things after having spent most of the last couple of weeks finishing a deep edit for a book on Egyptian politics. The very charming gentleman who wrote it tells me he’ll probably have to move to Canada soon, because his writing will eventually drop him into “troubles he cannot carry.”

Imagine that. Sadly, I can totally imagine that. All during this project, reading about the Mubarak regime, and Sadat and Nasser, and how wily and clever they are at staying in power, I kept thinking Rove has studied this stuff, and so has Cheney, and so have all the other scumbags who scurry around in Washington think tanks figuring out ways to get power and keep power. And Bush learned everything he knows while walking around holding hands with Saudi Princes. Our current group of corrupt psychopathic ‘leaders’ has learned from the masters, the Arab dictators, the people who have perfected Regime Management over decades of authoritarian rule. It is seriously impressive in a deviant sort of way.

And you know what is so scary? It’s this. At least if you live under an Arab dictatorship, you know where the lines are. You know when you’re going to cross one. They’ll just tell you: you can’t criticize the president. But not so here. Our government knows where the lines are, but you don’t get to know unless you are paying very close attention, and even then you can’t be sure. It’s a secret. Are you on the terrorist watch list? Who knows. How do you get on or off? Who knows. By the time you ever find out, it’s much too late, like the poor dog running into the invisible fence. Yes, the Bush regime has set up their secret little dictatorship right here in the USA, trashing our Constitution with his signing statements, torturing people, making preparations for martial law, presiding over financial ruin, and tapping his fingers. Waiting…waiting. Waiting for the day when he can Be the Dictator, in Real Time, Live, Bursting out of the Oval Office in his Superpower Dictator Tights and Cape. Not Secret Anymore. Oh yeah.

And I’ll say one more thing. Israel is nothing without the USA. These Arab leaders are exceedingly astute. Without the US running interference, Israel would quickly find itself in a diplomatic figure four, forced to behave. Violence would hardly be required. Our continued unqualified support of Israel prevents peace in the Middle East. If we got out of the way, they would all somehow figure it out with Israel. After that, the Arab dictatorships would eventually fall, and there would come a time of equilibrium and peace, which all people of good will desire. I don’t know how long it would take or via what route, but it would happen.

The Fallacy of Insufficient Cynicism

Jun 12

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Surveillance | No Comments

In a recently exchange with someone who vehemently disagreed with me, the person said, “It’s just baffling to me how anyone could misconstrue something like this.” Well, it is equally baffling to me how some people can still fail to suspect our government’s motives. Let us borrow this phrase to describe it: The Fallacy of Insufficient Cynicism.

Just in today’s news over at Global Research, you can read two pieces from established scholars that should bring a shadow across even the most trusting brow. My challenge to anyone who persists in believing that our government will not do horrible things to us, the American people, is this: show me what would prevent them? If it’s true that we have been operating under a Continuity of Government (COG) plan since 9/11, then our Constitution has been effectively suspended. Who is then capable of stopping NSPD 51 and the latest, NSPD 59? And even if that isn’t true, what has stopped them from doing anything we don’t like?

(crickets)

The national security crowd considers themselves sophisticated and tough, and they remind us that our government has to do certain dirty things to keep us safe. It’s the ‘real world’, the world Jack Nicholson screamed about when he said, “You can’t handle the truth!!” Some of those things are described here.

But in the next breath they insist that the government would never do anything to hurt us. This is where the Fallacy of Insufficient Cynicism kicks in. They admit conspiracies happen and are necessary, but they accuse the conspiracy theorists of being naive for thinking that some of the conspiracies are directed against the American people.

Now a quick observation on the state of the American people should confirm who is truly being naive here. Have our wages increased? No. Has our security increased? No. Do we enjoy greater leisure time and a safe food supply and better jobs? No. No. No. Is it all a coincidence or else the fault of brown people and/or liberals and/or terrorists? No. Those are the scapegoats. The people responsible for these giant problems are the people actually running the government. If things suck on a grand scale, and they do, it’s Washington’s fault. Remember all that talk about the ownership society we heard from the right? How about some ownership that the Bush Regime and it’s congressional enablers and Israeli handlers have run the USA into the ground?

Here is George Bush’s latest disgusting terrorist attack on the American people: NSPD 59. There is nothing here to prevent the executive branch from classifying Americans critical of the government as threats to national security. It is just another nail in the coffin of our Bill of Rights. And if Bush/Cheney/Israel decide to rustle up some new war with Iran, you can be sure that we will find out why Bush passed NSPD 51 and NSPD 59 — so they can come out of the authoritarian closet once and for all.

Our government clearly holds us in utter contempt. It is ultimately naive to refuse to recognize this.

There’s Still a Difference

May 31

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Corruption & Crime, Military, Politics, Surveillance | No Comments

Having long been a liberal and a citizen, I certainly have been bitterly disappointed by the Democratic Party’s countless capitulations to the Republicans over the last eight long years. The specific reasons for this, I’m sure, would be fascinating to learn and someday I hope to read all about the dossiers and bribes and taps and threats, but the bottom line is they can’t be trusted and I’m not voting. Having said that, I reject the argument that they’re all (dems and reps) equally complicit in our current dismal state of advanced rotting decay. Complicit? Yes. Equally complicit? No. If they were all equally to blame, then why do things like this keep happening only to people on the left?

Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

Carroll would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered.

The story goes on to recall how similar things happened in 2004.

Carroll’s story echoes a familiar theme. During the lead-up the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, the NYPD’s Intelligence Division infiltrated and spied on protest groups across the country, as well as in Canada and Europe. The program’s scope extended to explicitly nonviolent groups, including street theater troupes and church organizations.

There were also two reported instances of police officers, dressed as protestors, purposefully instigating clashes. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, the NYPD orchestrated a fake arrest to incite protestors. When a blond man was “arrested,” nearby protestors began shouting, “Let him go!” The helmeted police proceeded to push back against the crowd with batons and arrested at least two. In a similar instance, during an April 29, 2005, Critical Mass bike ride in New York, video footage captured a “protestor”—in reality an undercover cop—telling his captor, “I’m on the job,” and being subsequently let go.

Then we have the preparations for the DNC in Denver. Apparently, the biggest issue is security and crowd control because….well…just because.

Citing “Denver’s unjustified penchant for secrecy,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado filed a new lawsuit today in Denver District Court demanding disclosure of security-related equipment purchases connected to the Democratic National Convention this summer.

The suit comes hot on the heels of The Colorado Independent’s Riot Toyz series that last week detailed the panoply of high-tech security vehicles, non-lethal crowd control devices and just plain weird personal restraint devices available for purchase by the Denver Police Department, which has an $18 million equipment budget in its total $50 million federal earmark for convention-related security expenses.

…Responding to ACLU media inquiries that the Denver Police Department has purchased a “sonic ray gun” to subdue unruly crowds, Silverstein said: “If Denver is buying such a device, or any other new-fangled so-called ‘less lethal’ weapons,” Silverstein continued, “the public is certainly entitled to know. And the public is entitled to ask whether Denver has adequately evaluated the manufacturers’ self-serving claims of safety, has established appropriate policies to regulate how and when officers may use such weapons, and has adequately trained its officers.”

‘Non-lethal’ and ‘less lethal’ weapons - these euphemisms apply to the weapons discussed here.

People can say what they want about the weak and mewling democrats, and they may be totally justified, but how convenient for the republicans to have the police power of our nation arrayed in their service to intimidate and entrap their opposition. It indicates that the powerful still want to manage events in a certain direction, does it not?

So as long as things like this keep happening to the left end of the political spectrum and not to the right end, it seems very obvious to me that there is still a difference between democrats and republicans in power. Some people do the wrong things out of coercion and desperation, and others do them out of sheer enjoyment and a lust for power.

You Are Here

May 19

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Surveillance | No Comments

At least, I’m pretty sure I am here. I am a Target Head.

Because, you see, I do a lot of reading and a lot of thinking and quite a bit of writing, and all that probably makes me Very Dangerous in some people’s eyes. I could be a (ahem) ‘Thought Criminal’.

Now you probably wouldn’t find me very dangerous in person. I’m not very big. I’m a mom. I suppose I can wield a frying pan for a weapon…that’s about it. Nonetheless…

Our government has been collecting names of people, and compiling databases, and spying on us to protect us from us, or them from us, or us from ‘them’ (meaning the ‘terrorists’) or something like that. Actually, it’s to protect them, the government, from us, the active and engaged citizens. Anyone just zipping along on autopilot watching FOX News and American Idol probably has nothing to worry about. But you never can tell because nobody knows if they’re on the list or not, or how to get on the list, or what might happen to the people on the list if something happens to us as a nation. It’s all very secret.

So if you’re already thinking to yourself, “What the hell is she talking about?”, then it’s time to go read this and find out.

I saw this via Cryptogon, who has additional links for your reading enjoyment.

And so far it looks like 8 million names are on this secret list, or roughly three Americans in one hundred. So if you live in a town of 15,000 people, roughly 450 people in your town may be at risk for anything from heightened surveillance to detention should some sort of terrorist attack happen again.

That’s quite a lot of people. I would be really happy if that many people in my town knew what was going on, but personally, I find that number impossibly optimistic. Just in terms of having good information about what is currently happening, I would estimate maybe three people in 1000 have begun to limn out the reality. That’s just a totally wild-assed guess based on my own observations. So basically what I’m trying to say here is that I think this list is total bullshit. It’s very seriously doubtful whether anyone on this list poses any threat whatsoever to national security, unless of course you define national security as ‘whatever George W Bush prefers’. Now if you do that, sure, it would be pretty easy to rustle up 8 million people who think that ass-clown should go. But that still doesn’t make them dangerous. Seriously.

Do you see what we’re dealing with here? Do you see why it’s so important to prevent some new bogus war? Do you see where this is all going? This country can change overnight. All they have to do is flip the switch, and we’ll be living in a police state.

Now I just want to say that if I ever get detained for thinking and writing about the psychopaths who have taken over our country and are itching to create a police state, let it be known that some of us saw them walking over to that switch. We see them raising their hands, and we are screaming at you people to LOOK. For the love of God and country, look at what they are doing. They are going to plunge us into darkness.

That’s what makes us ‘dangerous’. And that’s it. So remember that someday.

Things I notice that may or may not mean anything

Apr 4

Posted by Marlena in Citizenship, Civil Rights, Language & Meaning, Media, Military, Psychology, Surveillance, Unreality | No Comments

#1. We’re supposed to believe that the US military and intelligence establishment is just now figuring out the important of blogs and psyops. Right. Sure.

#2. We’re supposed to believe that the military has to limit soldiers’ use of YouTube and MySpace accounts because they use too much bandwidth. Okaay.

#3. We’re supposed to believe that Islamofascist terrorists are practically everywhere, raising money through t-shirt sales as they blog about killing us. In broad daylight, I tell you. Check.

#4. We’re supposed to believe that this guy is talking about….well, who the hell is he talking about anyway?

That shift in attitude can’t come quick enough, one influential counterinsurgency officer tells DANGER ROOM.

“We still don’t see or accept information as an element of power,” he writes. “For the enemy, it is THE driving element.”

Why? Because for modern, highly developed democracies the beliefs and opinions of their well-informed populations is their center of gravity. If you cannot simply overpower your opponent physically, then it is the will of the opponent that has to become the target. 100% available modern media is the avenue of approach that your “information bombs and missiles” travel along. [L]iving rooms of registered voters are the impact areas…

This newly emerged information element of power has the potential to do to highly developed modern democracies what conventional and nuclear weapons could not: compel them to quit. Which is exactly what is happening now.

OK, so let me get this straight. Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that he is referring to the US as a ‘highly developed democracy’. Who are the most well-informed people in said ‘democracy’? Well, that would be your alternative new crowd, which is an internet phenomenon. Therefore, our beliefs and opinions are this democracy’s ‘center of gravity’. (Don’t we wish.) Therefore we are the opponent of the terrorists, who must overpower us.

He says that if you can’t overpower the opponent physically, then you must overpower the opponent’s will, using ‘information bombs and missiles’ into the opponent’s living room (registered voters, ie: people who are politically engaged). This will compel them to quit, which is exactly what is happening now, he says.

Now I ask you, who depresses the alternative news community? What breaks our will?

We are the opponent because we seek the truth. That is the whole point and goal of reading alternative news, to find out the truth. But who are the terrorists? Islamofascists? Uhh, no. Our government, which spreads lies and propaganda and which spies on us. Our government, which taints the alternative news community with suspicion, limited hang outs, misdirection, trolls, psyops chain letters, intimidation, etc.

But, Citizen, don’t you know? Our government is just getting the hang of blogs and information psyops. They’re babes in the woods compared to these Islamofascist terrorists.

Very funny. I die laughing.

Oh, and by the way, note the recurring motifs here:

I guess great minds think alike.