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Originally posted by Aeons
We need an entire thread of this.
How to Avoid Poop Throwing, or How to Improve Your Aim - A Dating Guide for Men and Women.
The intelligence thing can activate the "China The Wrestler" symptoms in guys. Suddenly they see a BIG mountain to climb and get all excited.
Anyways. MIB as an authority concept can be re-inforced and I think putting it all on the USA's team isn't fair. Clearly some others are working on imbuing this idea with some predefined authority and menance and a bit of sexual sass.
Agent Mega-Putin.
A strange loop, technically called tangled hierarchy consciousness, arises when, by moving only upwards or downwards through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back where one started.
Douglas Hofstadter, author of the very famous, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid:
"And yet when I say "strange loop", I have something else in mind — a less concrete, more elusive notion. What I mean by "strange loop" is — here goes a first stab, anyway — not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive "upward" shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle. That is, despite one's sense of departing ever further from one's origin, one winds up, to one's shock, exactly where one had started out. In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop."
And...
Hofstadter argues that the psychological self arises out of a similar kind of paradox. We are not born with an ‘I’ – the ego emerges only gradually as experience shapes our dense web of active symbols into a tapestry rich and complex enough to begin twisting back upon itself.
According to this view the psychological ‘I’ is a narrative fiction, something created only from intake of symbolic data and its own ability to create stories about itself from that data.
The consequence is that a perspective (a mind) is a culmination of a unique pattern of symbolic activity in our nervous systems, which suggests that the pattern of symbolic activity that makes identity, that constitutes subjectivity, can be replicated within the brains of others, and perhaps even in artificial brains.
en.wikipedia.org...
From the African two-headed snake, one at each end to discourage attacks from behind, to the hominid women of the Pleistocene, using red ochre to mimic the subtle blush of ovulation in order to attract mates, to the lies we routinely teach our children in the interests of the social graces, Smith demonstrates the ubiquity of deception throughout human history and the animal kingdom, and in some plant life as well. Since it is wholly unconscious, self-deception is more difficult to detect, but Smith provides data which point also to its pervasiveness in humans. For example, a survey of one million high school students showed that all thought they had above average ability to get along with others, and 25% ranked themselves in the highest 1 percent. Regarding the possible exception of professional scholars to this trend, a survey of college professors revealed that 93% believe they were better than average at their work.
Synthesizing Alexander and Noonan’s argument on ovulatory concealment with Knowlton’s synchrony model, Turke (1984, 1988) was the first to focus on ‘ovulatory synchrony’ in hominine mating systems. He argued that ovulatory concealment (with continuous receptivity) functioned to draw males into longer consortships by depriving would-be philanderers of accurate information about fertility…. Once amplified menstrual displays signaled “no” to males, “ritual” and “taboo” in forms known among hunter-gatherers would have been established. Coalitions of women who had already been artificially manipulating information divulged to males, and engaging in collective deception, would have had the preadaptations necessary to construct such a signal of “no sex” or “taboo.”
It is immediately clear that this kind of communication presupposes trust: two parties engaged in a violent argument could not conceivably rely on signals of this subtle kind. On the other hand a network of co-conspirators might well go beyond such rudimentary cues. They could augment their head and eye signals by recruiting additional parts of the body, such as hands, tongue or lips. It is possible to imagine speech beginning to evolve in this way.
Literary theory’s relevance to the paranormal is rarely recognized (though Jacques Derrida addressed it in his 1981 essay “Telepathy”). The trickster and the paranormal are associated with the collapse, blurring, and inversion of binary oppositions. Structuralism, deconstructionism, and post-structuralism are the schools influential in this book.
Deconstructionism raised the problem of meaning. It problematized interpretation. It thereby evoked hostility and antagonism. Hermeneutics, the study of interpretation, was named after the Greek trickster, Hermes. He is at the core of the problem of meaning (and conversely, ambiguity).
…Deconstructionism and post-structuralism challenge the Western conceits of objectivity and rationality. So-called “primitive” views do also. The debates on totemism, magic, primitive classification, and taboo were direct intellectual antecedents to structuralism…
…Both magic and meaning are found in the realm between the signifier and signified, and it turns out that magic and meaning are sometimes virtually identical. The betwixt and between is the domain of the trickster.
www.tricksterbook.com...
Jacques Derrida was one of the most well known twentieth century philosophers. He was also one of the most prolific. Distancing himself from the various philosophical movements and traditions that preceded him on the French intellectual scene (phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism), he developed a strategy called “deconstruction” in the mid 1960s. Although not purely negative, deconstruction is primarily concerned with something tantamount to a critique of the Western philosophical tradition.
Deconstruction is generally presented via an analysis of specific texts. It seeks to expose, and then to subvert, the various binary oppositions that undergird our dominant ways of thinking—presence/absence, speech/writing, and so forth.
…Deconstruction has at least two aspects: literary and philosophical. The literary aspect concerns the textual interpretation, where invention is essential to finding hidden alternative meanings in the text. The philosophical aspect concerns the main target of deconstruction: the “metaphysics of presence,” or simply metaphysics.
Deconstruction is parasitic in that rather than espousing yet another grand narrative, or theory about the nature of the world in which we partake, it restricts itself to distorting already existing narratives, and to revealing the [alleged] dualistic hierarchies they conceal.
www.iep.utm.edu...
it restricts itself to distorting already existing narratives, and to revealing the [alleged] dualistic hierarchies they conceal.
Easily Abbey's most famous fiction work, the novel concerns the use of sabotage to protest environmentally damaging activities in the American Southwest, and was so influential that the term "monkeywrench" has come to mean, besides sabotage and damage to machines, any sabotage, activism, law-making, or law-breaking to preserve wilderness, wild spaces and ecosystems…
…The book's four main characters are ecologically-minded misfits — "Seldom Seen" Smith, a Jack Mormon river guide; Doc Sarvis, an odd but wealthy and wise surgeon; Bonnie Abbzug, his young sexualized female assistant; and a rather eccentric Green Beret Vietnam veteran, George Hayduke. Together, though not always working as a tightly-knit team, they form the titular group dedicated to the destruction of what they see as the system that pollutes and destroys their environments, the American West. As their attacks on deserted bulldozers and trains continue, the law closes in...
...For the Gang, the enemy is those who would develop the US Southwest — despoiling the land, befouling the air, and destroying Nature and the sacred purity of Abbey's desert world. Their greatest hatred is focused on the Glen Canyon Dam, a monolithic edifice of concrete that dams a beautiful, wild river, and which the monkeywrenchers seek to destroy. One of the book's most memorable passages describes Abbey's character Seldom Seen Smith, as he kneels atop the dam praying for a "pre-cision earthquake" to remove the "temporary plug" of the Colorado River.
The book may have been the inspiration for Dave Foreman's and Mike Roselle's creation of Earth First!, a direct action environmental organization that often advocates much of the minor vandalism depicted in the book.
Originally posted by AthlonSavage
Really why do people imsist on making up stories about this group.
In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.
In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.
www.politico.com...
Intelligence agencies use front organizations to provide "cover", plausible occupations and means of income, for their covert agents. These may include legitimate organizations, such as charity, religious or journalism organizations; or "brass plate firms" which exist solely to provide a plausible background story, occupation, and means of income.
The airline Air America, an outgrowth of Civil Air Transport of the 1940s, and Southern Air Transport, ostensibly a civilian air charter company, were operated and wholly owned by the CIA, supposedly to provide humanitarian aid, but flew many combat support missions and supplied covert operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
Other CIA-funded front groups have been used to spread American propaganda and influence during the Cold War, particularly in the Third World.[2] When intelligence agencies work through legitimate organizations, it can cause problems and increased risk for the workers of those organizations.[3] To prevent this, the CIA has had a 20-year policy of not using Peace Corps members or US journalists for intelligence purposes.
en.wikipedia.org...
Astroturfing, a wordplay based on "grassroots" efforts, is an American term used pejoratively to describe formal public relations projects which try to create the impression of a groundswell of spontaneous popular response to a politician, product, service, or event. Corporations have been known to "astroturf", but are not the only entities alleged to have done so. In recent years, organizations of plaintiffs' attorneys have established front groups such as Victims and Families United to oppose tort reform.
en.wikipedia.org...
Social Networking the Killer App for Intel Gathering?
As this last example shows, shell companies, false fronts and friendly corporate cover are not techniques that the CIA stopped doing back in the dark old days that serve as the subject matter of the 'Family Jewels' document. In fact, today, they would appear to be more multi-faceted (and even web-friendly) than ever. One of the most recent cases of apparent CIA cover would appear to be the rather troubling possibility that the incredibly popular Facebook social networking application is in fact a CIA intelligence gathering tool.
Part of this yet-to-be-proven 'internet rumour' is based on the a demonstrated connection -- however tenuous -- between the Pentagon's abortive (yet creepy) Information Awareness Office . Add in Facebook's venture capital funding sources having demonstrated links to In-Q-Tel, which is itself a CIA technology incubator, and you have more than enough smoke for an internet conspiracy theory fire.
If the Facebook issue were the only Web 2.0 link to crop up in the last couple of months, it would be enough -- particularly when you think about what a massive wealth of data people are freely providing (and how easily it could be misused by an intelligence outfit with massive budgets). But out of the blue earlier this month came the revelation that the owner of the influential Daily KOS website, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, is a former CIA employee who would have "no problem working for them" even today.
primarysources.newsvine.com...
Originally posted by The GUT
This thread will attempt to collate a wide-range of operations, and operatives, that have, and continue, to make an impact on ufology in the course of their official work. Further, we will look at the evidence for that assertion and the impact and ramifications of what that might mean, should we find it to be true.
The first installment with deal with the so-called Aviary, one alleged member in particular, but this thread intends to cover a much broader spectrum than that group alone.
There's basically 4 lines of thought about what the Aviary has been up to especially in regards to MJ12 and it's spinoff: Serpo.
Those 4 lines of thought go something like this:
1.) They are UFO believers who in their high-clearance careers have heard rumors and have subsequently tried to determine for themselves what the government is hiding in regards to UFOs.
2.) They know the truth and are attempting, out of goodwill, or as part of official disclosure, to get the info out to the public.
3.) They are involved in ufological deception for their own murky purposes apart from any intelligence agency directives.
4.) They are tied to the hip with intelligence factions and their prime directive(s) include ufological deception.
Firstly, lets look at Dr. Green and see if his background and current activities can shed any light on the questions above.
Dr. Christopher "Kit" Green
Dr Christopher C Green is a very fascinating man, as some of you know. Officially with the CIA from 1969 to 1985 he quickly moved up the ranks to a position of Senior Division Analyst of the Office of Scientific and Weapons Intelligence--reporting directly to the CIA director himself. (Keep that position in mind as it will have bearing on this thesis as we move forward in regards to his current activities.)
Dr. Green is also the recipient of the the President's National Intelligence Medal for his work on a classified project during the years 1979-1983. It's my assertion that he has a lot invested in toeing the line in his government service, and with that in mind lets look at some of his more recent activities.
He's currently, according to the Wayne University page found here, a member of faculty and also involved in some very interesting projects that suggest "once a company man, always a company man," or maybe to be more fair, "once a patriot, always a patriot."
We'll see how that pans out, but what I'd like you to consider is, if it's more likely that Dr. Green would buck the system and act independently of the intelligence apparatus, or if it's more likely that he is is now & forever a "company man."
Dr. Christoper C. "Kit" Green sits on and chairs various boards that keep a close eye on events and advances in the neurophysiological sciences that have national security implications.
These studies have a particular emphasis on techniques being developed outside of U.S. oversight. Now, who would be most interested in keeping tabs on such research? Why the intelligence community of course.
And we know where the funding for such ventures almost inevitably comes, right?
Below are quotes from two different, but related, projects that Dr. Green is significantly involved in. The links to the reports themselves make for some fascinating--if somewhat scary at times--reading.
Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies, from the National Research Council, identifies and explores several specific research areas that have implications for U.S. national security, and should therefore be monitored consistently by the intelligence community. These areas include:
1. neurophysiological advances in detecting and measuring indicators of psychological states and intentions of individuals
2. the development of drugs or technologies that can alter human physical or cognitive abilities
3. advances in real-time brain imaging
4. breakthroughs in high-performance computing and neuronal modeling that could allow researchers to develop systems which mimic functions of the human brain, particularly the ability to organize disparate forms of data.
As these fields continue to grow, it will be imperative that the intelligence community be able to identify scientific advances relevant to national security when they occur. To do so will require adequate funding, intelligence analysts with advanced training in science and technology, and increased collaboration with the scientific community, particularly academia.
A key tool for the intelligence community, this book will also be a useful resource for the health industry, the military, and others with a vested interest in technologies such as brain imaging and cognitive or physical enhancers.
Appendix F from the same report above:
True and False Memories as an Illustrative Case of the Difficulty of Developing Accurate and Practical Neurophysiological Indexes of Psychological States
An important issue for cognitive neuroscientists concerns efforts to determine whether a person is reporting a true experience or one that is false but believed. In the last decade, there have been innumerable research efforts designed to distinguish true from false memories. Earlier work examining behavioral differences between true and false memories revealed that group differences were sometimes found (for example, more sensory details in true-memory reports) (Schooler et al., 1986). However, the statistical group differences did not enable reliable classification of any particular memory report as to its authenticity...
The military application of neuroscience research - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Several of the cognitive science applications that have the most enormous ethical implication (as described by Huang and Kosal) contain advances that are being made even faster than publicly thought. These advances do not include lie detection technology, whose potential to invade the privacy of individuals is an unrealistic scientific possibility (I'm waiting for a theory of mind to be developed first!). They do include an approach to near-real-time, multimodal cognitive measurements to "watch people think" while under stress (an achievable goal scientifically) not under duress (an unachievable goal scientifically).
Not all of the "good" research will be done exclusively in the West--at least not before 2015. The results of this work will make sick people well and soldiers safer, but the technologies will not exclusively follow Western views on ethical questions, such as human stem-cell research, research on willing prisoners, and work on human-animal chimeras…
Two side questions: What is going to happen in 2015 and how close are scientists, somewhere, to "human-animal chimeras?" And the BIG question: Would it be likely that Dr. Green would act as a "rogue," or do his history, loyalties, research, and funding prospects suggest that his ufological activities are for "the company?"edit on 30-8-2012 by The GUT because: (no reason given)
Forbidden Gates: How Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Biology, Nanotechnology, and Human Enhancement Herald The Dawn Of TechnoDimensional Spiritual Warfare by Thomas R. Horn, Nita F. Horn.
“If then, we humans are cells in the great cortex of a world organism, would it not require a super-observer (extra-terrestrial) to scan the cultural movements of humanity and recognize them as planetary brain waves?” (p. 449, Cosmic Humanism) “This Logos Field would be able to integrate the action-patterns of the human neuroblasts of the 'world sensorium' into a meaningful drama.” (p. 472, CH) “We need to fabricate radiation belts of spiritual consonance around the earth in a manner analogous to the Van Allen radiation belt which encloses the earth.” (p. 472, CH) Thought-belts of the planetary cortex control the DNARNA – “the program of the integration of knowledge concerning the cosmos from top to bottom.” (p. 47, Cosmic Humanism and World Unity) “Organizing fields of energy as guiding agencies” (p. 34, CH & WU) All of this Actual Matrix Plan
Originally posted by The GUT
The initial questions raised might find some of the Aviary elements falling into all the categories. But if you, like me, find it highly unlikely that either Dr. Green or Col. John Alexander would go rogue and dump on their allegiances and continued fees as "consultants," then I think we can safely remove two from the list in regards to their main motivations:
1.) They are UFO believers who in their high-clearance careers have heard rumors and have subsequently tried to determine for themselves what the government is hiding in regards to UFOs.
2.) They know the truth and are attempting, out of goodwill, or as part of official disclosure, to get the info out to the public.
3.) They are involved in ufological deception for their own murky purposes apart from any intelligence agency directives.
4.) They are tied to the hip with intelligence factions and their prime directive(s) include ufological deception.
DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the areas of
(1) quantitative analysis of narratives,
(2) understanding the effects narratives have on human psychology and its affiliated neurobiology, and
(3) modeling, simulating, and sensing-especially in stand-off modalities-these narrative influences. Proposers to this effort will be expected to revolutionize the study of narratives and narrative influence by advancing narrative analysis and neuroscience so as to create new narrative influence sensors, doubling status quo capacity to forecast narrative influence.
www.fbo.gov...
"Stories exert a powerful influence on human thoughts and behavior. They consolidate memory, shape emotions, cue heuristics and biases in judgment, influence in-group/out-group distinctions, and may affect the fundamental contents of personal identity.
It comes as no surprise that these influences make stories highly relevant to vexing security challenges such as radicalization, violent social mobilization, insurgency and terrorism, and conflict prevention and resolution. Therefore, understanding the role stories play in a security context is a matter of great import and some urgency," DARPA stated. "Ascertaining exactly what function stories enact, and by what mechanisms they do so, is a necessity if we are to effectively analyze the security phenomena shaped by stories. Doing this in a scientifically respectable manner requires a working theory of narratives, an understanding of what role narratives play in security contexts, and examination of how to best analyze stories-decomposing them and their psychological impact systematically."
According to DARPA, STORyNET has three goals:
1. To survey narrative theories. These empirically informed theories should tell us something about the nature of stories: what is a story? What are its moving parts? Is there a list of necessary and sufficient conditions it takes for a stimulus to be considered a story instead of something else? Does the structure and function of stories vary considerably across cultural contexts or is there a universal theory of story?
2. To better understand the role of narrative in security contexts. What role do stories play in influencing political violence and to what extent? What function do narratives serve in the process of political radicalization and how do they influence a person or group's choice of means (such as violence) to achieve political ends? How do stories influence bystanders' response to conflict? Is it possible to measure how attitudes salient to security issues are shaped by stories?
3. To survey the state of the art in narrative analysis and decomposition tools. How can we take stories and make them quantitatively analyzable in a rigorous, transparent and repeatable fashion? What analytic approaches or tools best establish a framework for the scientific study of the psychological and neurobiological impact of stories on people? Are particular approaches or tools better than others for understanding how stories propagate in a system so as to influence behavior?
www.networkworld.com...
Originally posted by Aeons
What the hell is a "standoff modality?"
DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the areas of (1) quantitative analysis of narratives, (2) understanding the effects narratives have on human psychology and its affiliated neurobiology, and (3) modeling, simulating, and sensing-especially in stand-off modalities-these narrative influences. Proposers to this effort will be expected to revolutionize the study of narratives and narrative influence by advancing narrative analysis and neuroscience so as to create new narrative influence sensors, doubling status quo capacity to forecast narrative influence.
www.fbo.gov...
The maturity and deployment of several standoff technologies capable of detecting suicide and other terrorists at a safe distance will change the landscape of homeland security and the war against terror...
...Global Standoff Terrorist Detection Technologies & Markets – 2010-2014, presents detailed analysis and forecasting of this rapidly evolving market. Profit from in-depth analysis of seven standoff detection modalities sub-markets:
Concealed Explosives & Weapon Standoff Detection Systems
Walk-by Threat Sensing Systems
Pass-through Threat Detection Corridors
Standoff Biometric Identification Systems
Standoff Behavior Detection & Tracking Systems
Vehicle Standoff Threat Detection Systems
Standoff Video Content Analysis Based Systems
www.homelandsecurityresearch.com...
Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies, from the National Research Council, identifies and explores several specific research areas that have implications for U.S. national security, and should therefore be monitored consistently by the intelligence community. These areas include:
1. neurophysiological advances in detecting and measuring indicators of psychological states and intentions of individuals
2. the development of drugs or technologies that can alter human physical or cognitive abilities
3. advances in real-time brain imaging
www.nap.edu...
This is no run-of-the-mill R&D+i call. Calling for revolution not once but twice is an unusually proactive way of dissing everything they know on the subject, before driving the point home in the last sentence by excluding “evolutionary improvements”, meaning that anything that even smells familiar will be rejected.
The objective is “to create new narrative influence sensors, doubling status quo capacity to forecast narrative influence“. This is describing at least three different technologies –narrative influence, sensors and forecast capacity– integrated into a single system with capacity to intercept, process and predict the spread of memes amongst target populations from a safe distance (stand-off modality).
The key to the system is the quantitative narrative analysis, defined as “to ascertain who is telling stories to whom and for what purpose, and to discover latent indicators of the spread and influence of narrative tropes in structures such as social networks, traditional and social media, and in conversation.” Without these variables to plug into the machine, it doesn’t matter how much processing power is thrown at the issue, it will just be GIGO.
99percentspace.wordpress.com...
Originally posted by fulllotusqigong
reply to post by The GUT
So is ATS a Kit Green Aviary "stand off modality" DARPA project?
Are we all just story line characters in the developing "real time" brain imaging Matrix project?