by Gordon Duff, VT Sr. Editor, …with New Eastern Outlook, Moscow
As we enter 2019, one thing above all others is clear, the mechanisms of human engagement, education, media and information, even what passes for human contact through social media and email, is all subjected to “algorithms,” whatever those are.
It was Snowden that brought it to our attention, from the Guardian back in 2014:
“Increasingly, we are watched not by people but by algorithms. Amazon and Netflix track the books we buy and the movies we stream, and suggest other books and movies based on our habits. Google and Facebook watch what we do and what we say, and show us advertisements based on our behavior.
Google even modifies our web search results based on our previous behavior. Smartphone navigation apps watch us as we drive, and update suggested route information based on traffic congestion. And the National Security Agency, of course, monitors our phone calls, emails and locations, then uses that information to try to identify terrorists.”
Documents provided by Edward Snowden and revealed by the Guardian today show that the UK spy agency GHCQ, with help from the NSA, has been collecting millions of webcam images from innocent Yahoo users.
And that speaks to a key distinction in the age of algorithmic surveillance: is it really okay for a computer to monitor you online, and for that data collection and analysis only to count as a potential privacy invasion when a person sees it? I say it’s not, and the latest Snowden leaks only make more clear how important this distinction is.”
When we look back on 2014 from where we are today, Edward Snowden’s warnings of an Orwellian nightmare seem innocent. Maybe it was Donald Trump that opened our eyes, if so, whatever contribution history attributes to him, he might well want to hang his hat on this one.
The fake science of intruding into lives in order to recognize and control “influencers” began in the private sector and was “tuned up” for political races, crime and terrorism prevention and more.
By “more,” we mean “dumbing down” the “masses,” as they are called, presenting reality as a consumer product, custom engineered to be believable, to create drama or fear, to raise concerns of imaginary threats, to distract, and, above all, to control.
Social scientists have postulated that humans can actually be programmed to respond to the most basic stimuli, touch, hearing, taste, based on “fake” information, that the human mind can be fooled into filtering out such basic sensory responses as smell.
The basic synaptic connections that tie sensory input to ideas or concepts, let’s look at one glaring example. Try to say the word “Palestinian” without following it with “terrorist.”
Then again, let’s go back one more step and define the difference between an “armed militant” and a “freedom fighter.” Nothing here is new, the rules were laid out a century ago.
Einstein predicted this in his “Autobiographical notes” on epistemology. It was some 50 years ago when Dr. John Ward of Michigan State University pounded this into my head in his Philosophy of Science lectures. “The relationship between sense experiences and concepts is entirely intuitive as are the relationships between all concepts. You see what you see, not because of what you see but because of what you think.”
It was quite one thing when such pursuits were endeavors of science and philosophy at our great universities, but it became something quite different when Wilson Bryan Key, back in 1973, wrote the seminal work, Subliminal Seduction, demonstrating how altered images could reach into the most basic primitive drives, the “reptile brain,” as it were, driving an unknowing viewer to alter both perceptions and reasoning, even toward lowering human survivability.
Key’s imagery, taken from popular magazines, strange figures of death’s heads or nude women, airbrushed into ice cubes, were an opening salvo. If thanatotic drive could sell liquor or cigarettes, how easy might it be to sell a war?
No more films like Sergeant York or Red Dawn needed, or perhaps only as a “supporting actor,” pounding the nail in just a bit more.
Twenty years prior to the publication of Key’s work, the US government began a project known as MK Ultra. Though it officially ended in 1973 after 20 years of poorly documented “research” into every form of psychological manipulation, in truth, MK Ultra and other programs as well, simply “went dark.”
The reason, of course, we are traveling his historical path today is that those programs, after not 50 but 65 years of still classified efforts, after billions of dollars in black funding, programs with no over sight, programs carried out on unsuspecting citizens, sometimes entire cities, sometimes on unwilling victims in “black sites,” are the precursors to the world of Google and Facebook today.
Looking at 2018, there were some obvious “projects,” the White Helmet staged fake gas attacks for sure. This involved Facebook posts, fake videos, but the key is that they were channeled directly to the President of the United States who had been programmed to ignore credible intelligence sources. Thus, Trump ordered an attack on Syria entirely based on a Facebook post.
But there are millions of Facebook posts every day. Why did he get this one? Who put it in front of him? Is Trump surrounded by handlers, traitors?
You see, it is one thing when something is put on the internet, the equivalent of leaving a post-it note in a public restroom on the “wrong side of town.” It is quite something else when the message, a parentless bastard of disinformation, is given to a man who has, according to sources within the White House, openly advocated use of tactical nuclear weapons against Syrian people in retribution for wildly fabricated accusations.
Consider the implications, even if someone, perhaps General Mattis, had taken the nuclear option off the table. Simply put, it lowers the standards of the United States exercising war powers in attacking a sovereign nation to an anonymous social media post.
Again, we ask, it is one thing posting something malicious and dangerous and quite something else when a national leader with access to nuclear weapons is programmed to seek out and act upon same.
Then again, were any other president to order a missile strike based on, well, based on nothing whatsoever, not even a decent lie, one might expect negative repercussions.
Let’s take a second to juxtapose. If a fake public narrative exists, and it is reasonable to postulate that “the public,” such as it is, is more than aware that a “real world” exists in which what is generally known and accepted as true is, in fact, utterly false.
In fact, some of the most popular television series of the past decades have exposed the flummery of generally accepted history. Shows like The Secret History of World War II and many if not endless others, feed a hungry public a continual diet of debunked reality.
What we are left with is this, an ongoing process, a spiral as it were, around and down, around and down, ever faster, ever more hopeless, intrusion into lives, into thoughts, planted feelings, manipulated responses, altered perceptions, until nothing can be trusted, especially not ourselves.
About Author: Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of VT, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
© 2019 – Gordon Duff
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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…Amazon and Netflix track the books we buy and the movies we stream… Google and Facebook watch what we do and what we say…”
There are workarounds to these invasions of our privacy.
Instead of using Google, use an alternative search engine, like DuckDuckGo.
Buy books at a local bookstore and pay cash. There will be no identifiable electronic record of the transaction, it will keep money in your local community and it will get you off your fat ass in front your computer screen and give you some exercise!
I have posted this several times before here on VT, and I’m gonna do it again — if you want privacy online, then you gotta get a VPN — a Virtual Private Network. It will mask your IP — thus your identity– and it encrypts your data in both directions. It’s nobody else’s business which Web sites that you visit or which videos/movies that you stream.
And, while you’re at it, if you really care about your online privacy, then ditch Facebook, Twitter and other “social media.”
“Try to say the word “Palestinian” without following it with ‘terrorist.’” – GD
Change “terrorist” to “victim” and you would characterize me. But then I do not have a television or read CMM websites.
The stroller crisis shows us he is limited and his choices of how to make his mark have been whittled down to a few billion. It looks like damage control, mixed with MIC supremacy to me.
The AI and satellite world has gone beyond the understanding of the average person. The complexity leaves people behind, just like any other complex topic such as rocket engine repair manuals. But, just like we knew, that motorized vehicles would want to race each other, AI inevitably will compete with each other. Competition is inherent in all processes in our reality. The strongest humans did not get us this far, the smartest ones did, and such will be the case with AI. The potential is frightening, but the likelihood bad guys will win the competition is slim. That said, we are not far from making trackers obsolete and all that is needed is birth information to know where a person is and what they are doing. Percentages of likelihood will dominate just like medicine. All prognosis and analysis will improve exponentially.
After tracing the blockchain for WikiLeaks donations, got more questions than answers:
why is SatoshiDICE all over the wikileaks, singularity institute, Seasteading Institute, Peter Thiel,
Moses Znaimer, Keith and Mariela Kleiner, Barney Pell, Klee Irwin, Sonia Arrison Senkut, Dan Stoicescu, Reese Jones, David S. Rose, Peter L. Bloom, Geoffrey Shmigelsky, Georges Harik, and Rob Nail
These people are all donating their time, money and effort on AI, Satellites and the bridging of humanity and computer. Who runs this operation?
Still tracing, but seems to land in the City of London with the largest wallet I’ve ever seen.
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1JEC8vYP9cEDSu6N6DXkkYd3RaeWAdsCqN
$849,892,000 = 4,042.82661732 BTC
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/14TCyuJPwEkNhyWn1m7zbxDoFU4JMy7X9i
Leads into another other suspect wallet: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1FexWDptSXFWsZvdLoBckZgVFWytHjsSu8
might be a mixer to try and burn routes.
https://su.org/about/leadership/
https://lifeboat.com/ex/about
This wikelieaks wallet (one of hundreds) has $16 Million!
WikiLeaks now accepts anonymous Bitcoin donations on 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v
Consider the current stand off on the proposed wall between Israel lover whores in
Congress and Israel lover whore Trump: It is not about $5 billion at all is it? Billions of fake public dollars mean nothing to either side. After all government owes trillions of dollars. Is there any difference between living with a debt of trillions of dollars or living without a debt of trillions of dollars so far as they are concerned? No. This is a stand off between bullies isn’t it over ego, not money? For example why not simply write a check for $ 1 million to every family in the country to solve the problem of poverty if the public debt of the government is meaningless? Recall how Obama did exactly this on about two occasions only with smaller amounts. Were does money come from, out of thin air? If the origin of money is no different if earned or printed, why not simply run the printing presses 24/7 and let the parties roll? Isn’t this the attitude of the whores in Congress in funding their friends in the cesspool Israel? Why not simply legalized prostitution, drugs and gambling and run the printing presses 24/7 and let the parties roll and party to the end? Wouldn’t this be an appropriate end to this once great country?
In fact it is doubtful anyone in our government really knows how much fake money government owes or even cares do they? Most of these fools hated the most important subjects in school physics, mathematics and history didn’t they? They avoided them like the plague. When I grew up in the 1940’s kids were everywhere. Teenagers were observed in neighborhoods delivering newspapers on bikes. They would do almost any job for money, working in gas stations, washing dishes, carrying out groceries, working in businesses of all kinds. Most kids were totally honest. They even sold bottles back for a few pennies to be recycled when drinks still tasted so good out of a glass bottle instead of a poison plastic container. Mild was delivered to homes in glass bottles. The parents of these kids did not sue businesses if they were injured. Where are all the teenagers today? Aren’t they hidden watching porn or playing video games? You don’t see them in businesses any more.
I had not thought of this. Gone are the teenage baggers at the grocery store, or mowing lawns or shoveling snow.
Win, punishment was being “grounded”; which was staying inside under house-arrest.
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