This sort of headline must be a joke, a fake headline from The Onion, right? Wrong. Here's what the U.K. guardian has to say:
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
What follows is utterly precious, needing no further comment. Here's the opening sentence of some extraordinary information provided by the U.K. Guardian:
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
I saw this video late last night and then couldn't fall asleep for two hours. I lay awake in bed wondering what has happened to the America I thought I knew. Glenn Greenwald adds the commentary here. Waving an American flag is the furthest thing from my mind now that our formerly inclusive and honorable national symbol has been so thoroughly adopted by so many warmongers, and increasingly by abject bigots. I've personally heard several hideous broadbrush slams against Muslims over the past year, several times by people who (I thought) knew better. I'm afraid that it's getting much worse over the past year and the venom is aimed indiscriminately against all Muslims. Maybe someday the American flag will again widely symbolize unity and respect for individual rights.
Keep President Eisenhower's warning in mind as you read this post (see video below). The U.S. Department of Defense defines "Psychological Operations" or "Psy-Ops" as "Planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign government, organizations, groups, and individuals." Such operations may be based upon truth or based upon deception, but the goal is the same: to alter perceptions and "ultimately the behavior" of others. As a matter of law, such actions are supposed to be directed against the "foreign hostile groups", or at least not against Americans. Unfortunately, this law is routinely ignored:
Glenn Greenwald has once again gathered evidence that American citizens are intentionally being kept in the dark, even by our "news" media:
Yesterday, as I noted earlier, The Guardian reported that Davis -- despite Obama's description of him as "our diplomat in Pakistan" -- actually works for the CIA, and further noted that Pakistani officials believe he worked with Blackwater. When reporting that, The Guardian noted that many American media outlets had learned of this fact but deliberately concealed it -- because the U.S. Government told them to: "A number of US media outlets learned about Davis's CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration."The question that has echoed in my ear for the past 10 years (or more) is, "What else don't we know?". . .
In other words, the NYT knew about Davis' work for the CIA (and Blackwater) but concealed it because the U.S. Government told it to. Now that The Guardian and other foreign papers reported it, the U.S. Government gave permission to the NYT to report this, so now that they have government license, they do so -- only after it's already been reported by other newspapers which don't take orders from the U.S. Government.. . .
[T]here is simply no justification -- none -- for a newspaper to allow government officials to run around misleading the public, and to print those misleading statements, all while concealing information (at the Government's request) which reveal those claims to be factually dubious.