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Manifesto
#21
Thanks for the clarity, Jan. I don't particular like posting what is obviously a sales pitch that shows the gloss but not the inside truth, and Wired/Defense is often (if not always) a mouthpiece for the US DOD and DARPA but, on the other hand, it sometimes is the only way those of us on the outside, up in the cheap seats, can have a clue as to what is really going on way behind the scenes. And, as I am sure you appreciate, if we are seeing it addressed in a public outlet in late 2009, it's probably been in development for at least a year, maybe more, and even already in use somewhere in some dark hell-hole of a corner.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
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#22
Ed Jewett Wrote:Thanks for the clarity, Jan. I don't particular like posting what is obviously a sales pitch that shows the gloss but not the inside truth, and Wired/Defense is often (if not always) a mouthpiece for the US DOD and DARPA but, on the other hand, it sometimes is the only way those of us on the outside, up in the cheap seats, can have a clue as to what is really going on way behind the scenes. And, as I am sure you appreciate, if we are seeing it addressed in a public outlet in late 2009, it's probably been in development for at least a year, maybe more, and even already in use somewhere in some dark hell-hole of a corner.

Ed -I absolutely agree that the likes of "Wired" can shine valuable light on otherwise largely hidden scientific or technological developments.

I worked for MSM for nearly 20 years. Sometimes the price of access is that you have play by Their rules. Sometimes getting the information into the public domain, on the record, may justify an uncritical editorial line.

When I was at the BBC, I was once offered access to a new non-lethal technology, a viscous kind of chemical net that could be fired by cops at fleeing criminals to apprehend them.

I was sorely tempted to accept the offer and make the short film. The company who'd produced this "non-lethal technology" was desperate to publicize it and agreed to set up a great "chase scene" for me to film. I could have justified filming it as the price of revealing this crazy nonsense to the world. Ultimately, though, I just couldn't stomach the thought of writing a script extolling the brave new world of law enforcement agents humanely pursuing and catching the bad guys with Company Z's patented SpiderWeb stuff.

I also suspected that sooner or later some "villain" would get a mouthful of goo and choke to death on it. Or meet some other non-lethal end...

On reflection, I was perhaps a little harsh on the author of the World Politics Review piece. I also agree that it contains much important and little known material.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
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#23
Jan, I should have been more precise. Yes, the article was from World Politics Review and, when posting, I went right to its greater detail without noting that I'd discovered it when the "hackette" was blowing her own horn over here: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/...at-a-time/ .... which I'd mindlessly (but perhaps accurately?) referred to as Wired/Defense.

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was enrolled in a conference on health planning run by an arm of the BU School of Public Health. There, I learned a technique for "seeing" and plotting the power/salience positions of various "players" by 'seeing' (or creating a graphic of) a three-dimensional hollowed cube with a mid-stripe which constituted a "zero" line. Graph lines along the inner walls at 1" and 2" (above and below the midline, i.e., both positive and negative) allowed the end-user to label, position and index any entity -- in this case, agency, media outlet, etc. -- on any issue. Done with pen and paper, or mentally, or with computer tools, such a device would allow deep politics analysts to consider, remember, plot and alter the relative positions and strengths of any "party", be they author, columnist, media outlet, spokesperson, etc.

Another way of "seeing this, if my description wasn't clear enough, would be to simply sit your self down mentally inside a room painted white measuring 12' long, 8' wide, 8' high, with a black stripe around the walls at the 4' mark to represent the "zero" line. Marks at 2" and 6' feet represented values of -1 and +1; the floor was -2 and the ceiling +2. Fishing line was used to suspend 2"x2" cards labeled with topic and identity, and its power measured on the vertical, and its salience measured on the horizontal.

Voila! A mental visual "walk-through".... Given the right kind of software tool, such a thing could be a semi-permanent or malleable "sticky" on any topic; time and multi-issue cross-over then becomes very instructive, to say nothing of multi-topic cross-over.

Conceptually, mentally, is this how people like Peter Dale Scott think through deep events across decades?
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
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#24
Jan Klimkowski Wrote:Naval shrink Lt Narut told British journalists about his work in creating cadres of assassins from psychopaths in prisons.

How far back do such programs extend?

At least the 1950s. See From Russia with Love (the novel), in which the very tuned-in Ian Fleming created the character of "Red Grant" -- a lunar cycle serial killer conscripted, controlled, and utilized by SMERSH (a very real organization, by the way) as an assassin.
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