Virtual Reality Health Risks...,

medium |  Two decades ago, our research group made international headlines when we published research showing that virtual reality systems could damage people’s health.

Our demonstration of side-effects was not unique — many research groups were showing that it could cause health problems. The reason that our work was newsworthy was because we showed that there were fundamental problems that needed to be tackled when designing virtual reality systems — and these problems needed engineering solutions that were tailored for the human user.

In other words, it was not enough to keep producing ever faster computers and higher definition displays — a fundamental change in the way systems were designed was required.

So why do virtual reality systems need a new approach? The answer to this question lies in the very definition of how virtual reality differs from how we traditionally use a computer.

Natural human behaviour is based on responses elicited by information detected by a person’s sensory systems. For example, rays of light bouncing off a shiny red apple can indicate that there’s a good source of food hanging on a tree.

A person can then use the information to guide their hand movements and pick the apple from the tree. This use of ‘perception’ to guide ‘motor’ actions defines a feedback loop that underpins all of human behaviour. The goal of virtual reality systems is to mimic the information that humans normally use to guide their actions, so that humans can interact with computer generated objects in a natural way.

The problems come when the normal relationship between the perceptual information and the corresponding action is disrupted. One way of thinking about such disruption is that a mismatch between perception and action causes ‘surprise’. It turns out that surprise is really important for human learning and the human brain appears to be engineered to minimise surprise.

This means that the challenge for the designers of virtual reality is that they must create systems that minimise the surprise experienced by the user when using computer generated information to control their actions.

Of course, one of the advantages of virtual reality is that the computer can create new and wonderful worlds. For example, a completely novel fruit — perhaps an elppa — could be shown hanging from a virtual tree. The elppa might have a completely different texture and appearance to any other previously encountered fruit — but it’s important that the information used to specify the location and size of the elppa allows the virtual reality user to guide their hand to the virtual object in a normal way.

If there is a mismatch between the visual information and the hand movements then ‘surprise’ will result, and the human brain will need to adapt if future interactions between vision and action are to maintain their accuracy. The issue is that the process of adaptation may cause difficulties — and these difficulties might be particularly problematic for children as their brains are not fully developed. 

This issue affects all forms of information presented within a virtual world (so hearing and touch as well as vision), and all of the different motor systems (so postural control as well as arm movement systems). One good example of the problems that can arise can be seen through the way our eyes react to movement.

In 1993, we showed that virtual reality systems had a fundamental design flaw when they attempted to show three dimensional visual information. This is because the systems produce a mismatch between where the eyes need to focus and where the eyes need to point. In everyday life, if we change our focus from something close to something far away our eyes will need to change focus and alter where they are pointing.

The change in focus is necessary to prevent blur and the change in eye direction is necessary to stop double images. In reality, the changes in focus and direction are physically linked (a change in fixation distance causes change in the images and where the images fall at the back of the eyes).

CIA Infiltration of Journalism Curriculum and Instruction

collective-evolution |  The agency had definite plans to infiltrate academia and change/influence the curriculum, specifically journalism.

As Emma Best from Muckrock reports, recently Tweeted by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, memos from the CIA Inspector General’s (IG) office reveal the agencies perspective on the press and how to handle them. It’s from 1984, approximately three decades prior to when the Agency declared Wikileaks a hostile non-state intelligence service. It shows how the CIA viewed the media the same way.

Are organizations like Wikileaks really a threat to National Security? Or are they simply a threat to a small group of powerful people who make millions, billions, or even trillions of dollars via government secrecy? Are they a threat to the global national security agenda that is taking place, disguised under the guise of globalisation? Was president Vladimir Putin right when he said “imaginary” and “mythical” threats are being used to impose the Deep State’s way on the entire world? Perhaps truth and transparency are a threat yes, but not to national security. If we continue to ignore these questions, the national security state will continue to be heightened, one in which our rights are constantly violated, with our right to privacy being one of many great examples.

Several weeks prior, CIA Director Casey had asked the IG to weigh in on officer Eloise Page’s paper on unauthorized disclosure. The IG passed the task onto someone on his staff, who produced a four page SECRET memo for IG James Taylor, who passed it on to Director Casey. The IG specifically endorsed the proposal for a program where the Agency would intervene with journalism schools.

See for yourself - you can view the full document here.

In the document, the press are also viewed as “principal villains:”

“To the Inspector General’s office, the reason that the press were the “principal villains” was simple: “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and “the power of the media to publish in this country is nearly absolute.” As a result of the media’s “absolute power,’ argued the Agency that had been involved in mind control attempts, illegal surveillance, tampering in foreign elections and dozens of assassinations, assassination attempts and coups, they had been corrupted absolutely. The member of the IG’s staff then suggested that they compare the media to the “opposition,” a reference to hostile intelligence services. This could be backed up by citing “precise parallels in methods and results, if not in motivations, between the media’s attempts to penetrate us and the opposition’s attempts to do the same.” – Emma Best

The document then goes on to list some proposed “do’s and don’ts,” as well as expresses the belief that “a sanitized list of foolish media disclosures that have cost the country or individuals substantially.” But again, as discussed above, have they really cost the citizenry, or have they simply cost some powerful interests?

The document also urges the Director to “remember” that “the organization has official contacts with influential people outside the Community –  people in leadership posts in this society; academia and the media concluded; and remember that we undoubtedly have in the organization many who know such people unofficially and who could help provide access if needed.”

Quite revealing isn’t it?

The Grand Canyon Wide Narrative Divide

Counterpunch |  Much of this turn toward no authority beyond one’s own opinion, truth as a narrative, alternative facts, and reality and reason as self-designed came to fruition cataclysmically with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and his election, most stupefying for some and exhilarating for others. I refer to a cataclysm because regardless of what Trump narrative you are in, his election is an event both surprising and momentous. The narrative divide here is not over policy but personality as those on both the Democrat and Republican side wonder how such a man can be president and what kind of people would vote for him as president. Although there have been countless armchair psychiatric exams of Trump, he yet remains outside an established political frame of understanding. You have to switch jump into another story frame to make him real, a jump to the spinscape of Reality TV and the hyperreal of celebrity and enormous wealth that infects the American cultural imaginary.

This is a jump every Trump supporter made; into a world narrated in the same way they narrate the world. It is not a jump that all those who voted for Hillary were able to make, not by choice but because they were already living elsewhere. Both narrative realms are variously plotted and valued but the grounding force separating them seems clearly to be an enormous wealth divide and the long term consequences of that. In a simplified and also over generalized way, we have a meritocratic, professionalized, dividend recipient story/reality frame over here and over there we have a narrative world we’ve not been inclined to narrate until Trump won the election.

The disinclination or disinterest has of course been on the side of those who have been before the advent of The Web in a gatekeeper position to narrate the world we are all in from their perspective. What that has meant in terms of the politics of narrative is that a good deal of frustration was built up in those whose stories of the world were impeded by not being disseminated. At the same time it meant that the Impeding Gatekeepers had encased themselves in a bubble of their own selective narrating, confining themselves to a selective vision of things which excluded, as we now know, those 78% who live on wages that have remained flat forever.

The fact that Donald J. Trump is now president of the United States is astounding and troubling to this rarefied zone faction unacquainted with the lines of the story he seems to be following. They are, however, more unacquainted with those who are loyal to Trump and remain so. These Trumpians live in a life-world that remains opaque and unknown to those whose own life-world distinguishes itself by excluding such recognition and such knowledge.

Those who are not drawn to the slogan “Make America Great Again” are already enjoying the present America. And if they live in gated communities, one of the reasons they do so is avoid contact with those unhappy, disgruntled by their present status in America. In a politics of narrative world, this unacquaintance signals surprise if this unhappy faction reaches visibility on the national stage. More accurately, they have reached that visibility via both Trump and The Web of cyberspace. Trump continues to communicate with his followers on Twitter because he did not reach the presidency and they did not reach visibility by the paths of “governing principles” already cordoned off to them.

The Weaponization of Information

RAND |  State-sponsored propaganda and disinformation have been in existence for as long as there have been states. The major difference in the 21st century is the ease, efficiency, and low cost of such efforts. Because audiences worldwide rely on the Internet and social media as primary sources of news and information, they have emerged as an ideal vector of information attack. 

Most important from the U.S. perspective, Russian IO techniques, tactics and procedures are developing constantly and rapidly, as continually measuring effectiveness and rapidly evolving techniques are very cheap compared to the costs of any kinetic weapon system—and they could potentially be a lot more effective.

At this point, Russian IO operators use relatively unsophisticated techniques systematically and on a large scale. This relative lack of sophistication leaves them open to detection. For example, existing technology can identify paid troll operations, bots, etc. Another key element of Russian IO strategy is to target audiences with multiple, conflicting narratives to sow seeds of distrust of and doubt about the European Union (EU) as well as national governments. These can also be detected. The current apparent lack of technical sophistication of Russian IO techniques could derive from the fact that, so far, Russian IO has met with minimal resistance. However, if and when target forces start to counter these efforts and/or expose them on a large scale, the Russians are likely to accelerate the improvement of their techniques, leading to a cycle of counter-responses. In other words, an information warfare arms race is likely to ensue.

A Strategy to Counter the Russian Threat
Because the culture and history of each country is unique and because the success of any IO defense strategy must be tailored to local institutions and populations, the most effective strategies are likely to be those that are developed and managed on a country-by-country basis. An information defense strategy framework for countering Russian IO offensives should be “whole-of-nation” in character. A whole-of-nation approach is a coordinated effort between national government organizations, military, intelligence community, industry, media, research organizations, academia and citizen organized groups. A discreet US Special Operations Force could provide individual country support as well as cross country coordination.

Just as in the physical world, good maps are critical to any IO strategy. In the case of IO, maps show information flows. Information maps must show connectivity in the information environment and help navigate that environment. They exist as computer software and databases. Information cartography for IO is the art of creating, maintaining, and using such maps. An important feature of information maps is that they are constantly changing to reflect the dynamic nature of the information environment. Because they are artificially intelligent computer programs, they can answer questions; provide situation awareness dynamically; and help to plan, monitor, and appropriately modify operations. Information maps are technically possible today and already exist in forms that can be adapted to support the design and execution IO strategy.

As an example, most of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states, as well as several non-NATO partners, are already subject to concentrated Russian IO and they illustrate ongoing Russian IO techniques. Using information cartography, it is possible to map key Russian sources as part of Russian IO operations against a target state. These sources might include:

• Russian and target country think tanks
• foundations (e.g., Russkiy Mir)
• authorities (e.g., Rossotrudnichestvo)
• television stations (e.g. RT)
• pseudo-news agencies and multimedia services (e.g., Sputnik)
• cross-border social and religious groups
• social media and Internet trolls to challenge democratic values, divide Europe, gather domestic support, and create the perception of failed states in the EU’s eastern neighborhood
• Russian regime–controlled companies and organizations
• Russian regime–funded political parties and other organizations in target country in
particular and within the EU in general intended to undermine political cohesion
• Russian propaganda directly targeting journalists, politicians, and individuals in target
countries in particular and the EU in general.
 

Similarly, the mapping of target state receivers as part of Russian IO against the target state
might include:

• national government organizations
• military
• intelligence community
• industry
• media
• independent think tanks
• academia
• citizen-organized groups.

An effective information defensive strategy would be based on coordinated countering of information flows revealed by information maps. An effective strategy would include methods for establishing trust between elements of the defense force and the public. The strategy also will include mechanisms to detect the continuously evolving nature of the Russian IO threat and rapidly adapt in a coordinated fashion across all defense elements.

Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews of the RAND Corporation observe: “Experimental research in psychology suggests that the features of the contemporary Russian propaganda model have the potential to be highly effective.”14 They present a careful and concise analysis of relevant psychological research results that should inform any information defensive strategy. For example, they describe how propaganda can be used to distort perceptions of reality:

• People are poor judges of true versus false information—and they do not necessarily remember that particular information was false.
• Information overload leads people to take shortcuts in determining the trustworthiness of messages.
• Familiar themes or messages can be appealing even if they are false.
• Statements are more likely to be accepted if backed by evidence, even if that evidence is false.
• Peripheral cues—such as an appearance of objectivity—can increase the credibility of propaganda.15
 

Here is what a typical offensive strategy against a target population might look like. It consists of several steps:

1. Take the population and break it down into communities, based on any number of criteria
(e.g. hobbies, interests, politics, needs, concerns, etc.).
2. Determine who in each community is most susceptible to given types of messages.
3. Determine the social dynamics of communication and flow of ideas within each community.
4. Determine what narratives of different types dominate the conversation in each community.
5. Use all of the above to design and push a narrative likely to succeed in displacing a narrative unfavorable to you with one that is more favorable.
6. Use continual monitoring and interaction to determine the success of your effort and adjust in real time.
 

Technologies currently exist that make it possible to perform each of these steps continuously and at a large scale. However, while current technologies support manual application of the type of psychological research results presented by Paul and Matthews, they do not fully automate it. That would be the next stage in technology development.

These same technologies can be used for defensive purposes. For example, you could use the techniques for breaking down communities described above to detect adversary efforts to push a narrative and examine that narrative’s content. The technology can help researchers focus while searching through massive amounts of social media data.

American Sheeple Can ALWAYS Be Depended Upon To Play Themselves...,

Alt-Market |  The false left/right paradigm is an often misunderstood concept. Many people who are aware of it sometimes wrongly assume that it asserts the claim that there is "no left or right political spectrum;" that it is all a farce. This is incorrect. In regular society there is indeed a political spectrum among the general populace from socialism/communism/big government (left) to conservatism/free markets/individualism/small government (right). Each citizen sits somewhere on the scale between these two dynamics. The left/right spectrum is in fact real for the average person.

We do not find a " false" paradigm until we examine the beliefs and behaviors of the elitist and political classes. For many banking oligarchs and high level politicians, there is no loyalty to a particular political party or an identifiable "left" or "right" ideology. Many of these people are happy to exploit both sides of the spectrum, if they can, to achieve the goals of globalism; a separate ideology that doesn't really serve the interests of groups on the left or the right. That is to say, globalists pretend as if they care about one side or the other on occasion, but in truth they could not care less about the success of either. They only care about the success of their own exclusive elitist club.

This reality also tends to apply to national loyalty as well. Globalists do not carry any ideological love for any particular nation or culture. They are more than happy to sacrifice and sabotage a country if the action will gain them greater power or centralization in return. A globalist is only "Democrat" or "Republican," or American or Russian or Chinese or European, etc., insofar as the label gets them something that they want.

The reason globalists and the people that work for them adopt certain labels is because through this they can act as gatekeepers and better manipulate the masses. The hot button issue of the week provides us with a case in point...

The organizer of the "Unite The Right" group during the Charlottesville circus, which ended in one death and numerous injured, happened to be an ideological playmate of the extreme left only a year ago. Jason Kessler seemed to come out of nowhere as a leading figure in the white identity or "white nationalist" movement in 2017, but in 2016, he was an avid supporter of Barack Obama, and before that, an active champion of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I suppose anyone can change their ideological worldview over time, but I'm certainly not stupid enough to believe that Jason Kessler went from hardcore leftist to white nationalist in less than a year. Though it cannot be proven conclusively that Kessler is a provocateur, he certainly idolized the position. Kessler is quoted in his own blog on December 12, 2015, (now shut down but archived) as stating:

"I can't think of any occupation I admire more than the professional provocateur, who has the courage and self-determination to court controversy despite all the slings and arrows of the world."

This is not the first time white nationalists have been exploited by agent provocateurs to make the "political right" in general look bad. And, it is certainly not the first time white nationalists have been discovered to be working directly for the federal government. Klu Klux Klan leader Bill Wilkinson openly admitted to being a FBI informant and cooperator in 1981. Hal Turner, a white supremacist radio personality notorious for calling for the deaths of judges and lawmakers, turned out to be a provocateur paid by the FBI to drum up extremism. He was exposed in 2009 after his arrest led to his admission that almost everything he did was "at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigations..."

Why would the government seek to instigate white nationalist groups into violence? Well, you have to examine the larger narrative here.

Anti-conservative propaganda has been overwhelmingly one-track over the past several years. If you are well educated on the activities of deceit machines like the Southern Poverty Law Center, you understand that the thrust of all of their operations has been to tie white nationalism directly to conservative organizations even if there is no connection. I call this "guilt by false association." Keep in mind that the SPLC cooperates closely with government agencies like the DHS and their "Working Group To Counter Violent Extremism" to create profiling techniques to identify "right wing extremists." Meaning, their skewed propaganda is often what the media and government agencies use as a reference when writing articles or implementing policy.

The SPLC is inseparable from the mainstream media and government agendas dealing with conservatives.

In order to justify the madness and violence of the left in recent months, it is more important than ever for the establishment to maintain the lie that conservatives are also all violent racists and "fascists" that need to be destroyed. Propaganda alone is rarely enough to make such notions stick in the public consciousness. Sometimes, provocateurs are needed to "stir the pot."

However, this is only half the equation of the American civil war being engineered before our eyes.

Did Bannon and Mercer Game the Whole System but Finally Play Themselves?

theatlantic |  Taboo and sacredness are among the most important words needed to understand Charlottesville and its aftermath. Taboo refers to things that are forbidden for religious or supernatural reasons. All traditional societies have such prohibitions—things you must not do, touch, or eat, not because they are bad for you directly, but because doing so is an abomination, which may bring divine retribution. But every society also makes some things sacred, rallying around a few deeply revered values, people, or places, which bind all members together and make them willing to sacrifice for the common good. The past week brought violent conflict over symbols and values held sacred—and saw President Trump commit an act of sacrilege by violating one of our society’s strongest taboos.

The “Unite the Right” rally was an effort to mobilize and energize a subset of the far-right around its own sacred symbols—including swastikas and confederate flags—by marching to another symbol that is its members believed was under attack, a statue of Robert E. Lee. The psychological logic of the rally was to bind white people together with shared hatred of Jews, African Americans, and others, under a banner and narrative of racial victimhood and racial purity. Marching and chanting in unison has been shown to intensify feelings of oneness and social cohesion. The psychology of sacredness and its function in binding groups together is essential for understanding the method and the motives of the marchers.

Taboo violations are contagious. They render the transgressor “polluted,” in the language of anthropology, and the moral stain rubs off on those who physically touch the transgressor, as well as on those who fail to distance themselves from the transgressor. When people march with Nazis and Klansmen, even if they keep their mouths closed when others are chanting, and even if they don’t personally carry swastika or Klan flags, they acquire the full moral stain of Nazis and Klansmen. By saying that some of these men were “very fine people,” the president has taken that stain upon himself.

You can’t just apologize for breaking a taboo, especially a taboo as deep as the one on Nazis and the KKK. Many religions offer methods of atonement, sometimes involving fasting, self-flagellation, and temporary separation from the community. But even if an anthropologically sophisticated chief of staff could devise a secular form of atonement, Trump would not undergo it. He does not believe he has done anything wrong.

So the stain, the moral pollution, the taint, will linger on him and his administration for the rest of his term. Business leaders have quit his panels and projects; artists who were due to receive honors from the president have changed their plans. Pollution travels most rapidly by physical touch, so be on the lookout for numerous awkward moments in the coming months when people refuse to shake the president’s hand or stand next to him. It is unclear how far the contagion will spread, but it will surely make it more difficult to attract talented people into government service for as long as Trump is the president.

Trump: Opposing the Establishment and Driving the Hard Bargain

theatlantic |  Sam Harris, the atheist philosopher and neuroscientist, has recently been using his popular Waking Up podcast to discuss Donald Trump, whom he abhors, with an ideologically diverse series of guests, all of whom believe that the president is a vile huckster.

This began to wear on some of his listeners. Wasn’t Harris always warning against echo chambers? Didn’t he believe in rigorous debate with a position’s strongest proponents? At their urging, he extended an invitation to a person that many of those listeners regard as President Trump’s most formidable defender: Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon Dilbert, who believes that Trump is “a master persuader.”

Their conversation was posted online late last month. It is one of the most peculiar debates about a president I have ever encountered. And it left me marveling that parts of Trump’s base think well of Adams when his views imply such negative things about them.

Those implications are most striking with respect to extreme views that Trump expressed during the campaign. Harris and Adams discussed two examples during the podcast: Trump’s call to deport 12 million illegal immigrants from the United States, a position that would require vast, roving deportation forces, home raids, and the forced removal even of law-abiding, undocumented single mothers of American children; and Trump’s call to murder the family members of al-Qaeda or ISIS terrorists.

Trump took those positions not because he believes them, Adams argued, but to mirror the emotional state of the voters he sought and to “open negotiations” on policy.
Harris expressed bafflement that such a strategy would work:

Harris: If I'm going to pretend to be so callous as to happily absorb those facts, like send them all back, they don't belong here, or in the ISIS case, we'll torture their kids, we'll kill their kids, it doesn't matter, whatever works—if that's my opening negotiation, I am advertising a level of callousness, and a level of unconcern for the reality of human suffering that will follow from my actions, should I get what I ostensibly want, that it's a nearly psychopathic ethics I am advertising as my strong suit.

So how this becomes attractive to people, how this resonates with their values—I get what you said, people are worried about immigration and  jihadism, I share those concerns. But when you cross the line into this opening overture that has these extreme consequences on its face, things that get pointed out in 30 seconds whenever he opens his mouth on a topic like this, I don't understand how that works for him with anyone.

Adams: Let me give you a little thought experiment here. We've got people who are on the far right. We've got people on the far left. In your perfect world, would it be better to move the people on the far right toward the middle or the people on the far left toward the middle? Which would be a preferred world for you?

Harris: Moving everyone toward the middle, certainly on most points, would be a very good thing.

Adams: So what you've observed with President Trump through his pacing and emotional compatibility with his base is that prior to Inauguration Day, there were a lot of people in this country who were saying, 'Yeah yeah, round them all up. Send all 12 million back tomorrow.'

When was the last time you heard anybody on the right complaining about that? Because what happened was, immigration went down 50 to 70 percent, whatever the number was, just based on the fact that we would get tough on immigration. And the right says, ‘Oh, okay, we didn't get nearly what we asked for, but our leader, who we trust, who we love, has backed off of that, and we're going to kind of go with that, because he is doing some good things that we like. And we don't like the alternative either.’

So this ‘monster’ that we elected, this ‘Hitler-dictator-crazy-guy,’ he managed to be the only guy who could have, and I would argue always intended, to move the far right toward the middle. You saw it, you know, we can observe it with our own eyes. We don't see the right saying, ‘Oh no, I hate President Trump. He's got to round up those undocumented people like he said early in the campaign, or else I'm bailing on him.’ None of that happened. He paced them, and then he led them toward a reasonable situation, which I would say we're in.

I don’t agree with parts of Adams’s analysis. But as he tells it, Trump targeted voters who’d be attracted rather than repelled by calls for policies that would inflict great suffering; he told those voters things that he didn’t really mean to gain their emotional trust; and all along, he probably intended to go to Washington and do something else. That sounds a lot like the way that Trump voters describe the career politicians who they hate: emotionally manipulative liars who will say anything to get elected, get to Washington, and betray their base by moving left on immigration.

Ritual Defamation: Most Hated Establishment/Cathedral Tactic

lairdwilcox |  Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and "insensitivity" or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.

Ritual Defamation is not ritualistic because it follows any prescribed religious or mystical doctrine, nor is it embraced in any particular document or scripture. Rather, it is ritualistic because it follows a predictable, stereotyped pattern which embraces a number of elements, as in a ritual.

The elements of a Ritual Defamation are these:

1. In a ritual defamation the victim must have violated a particular taboo in some way, usually by expressing or identifying with a forbidden attitude, opinion or belief. It is not necessary that he "do" anything about it or undertake any particular course of action, only that he engage in some form of communication or expression.
2. The method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.
3. An important rule in ritual defamation is to avoid engaging in any kind of debate over the truthfulness or reasonableness of what has been expressed, only condemn it. To debate opens the issue up for examination and discussion of its merits, and to consider the evidence that may support it, which is just what the ritual defamer is trying to avoid. The primary goal of a ritual defamation is censorship and repression.
4. The victim is often somebody in the public eye - someone who is vulnerable to public opinion - although perhaps in a very modest way. It could be a schoolteacher, writer, businessman, minor official, or merely an outspoken citizen. Visibility enhances vulnerability to ritual defamation.
5. An attempt, often successful, is made to involve others in the defamation. In the case of a public official, other public officials will be urged to denounce the offender. In the case of a student, other students will be called upon, and so on.
6. In order for a ritual defamation to be effective, the victim must be dehumanized to the extent that he becomes identical with the offending attitude, opinion or belief, and in a manner which distorts it to the point where it appears at its most extreme. For example, a victim who is defamed as a "subversive" will be identified with the worst images of subversion, such as espionage, terrorism or treason. A victim defamed as a "pervert" will be identified with the worst images of perversion, including child molestation and rape. A victim defamed as a "racist" or "anti-Semitic" will be identified with the worst images of racism or anti-Semitism, such as lynchings or gas chambers.

FRANK

abikuville |  FRANK is emerging, natch.

The flow of information is now finally being *structured* at the baseline level
of social networking where, by allowing for massive virtual communities, FRANK
is able to “digest” the information in ways that assign more meaning to each bit
and byte. As DJ /Rupture put it:

“Do you realize how much information MySpace generates? who likes what and how
much and when and how old and what colors even and the connections and the
geographic locations and the songs’ popularity and the nodal points and the
hotspots and whatever — someone will get very very wealthy selling that
information to interested companies from record labels to clothing manufacturers
to TV people to… Ad revenue is old school; meta-data is the new petroleum.”
If you are following the drzza trajectory, then you will agree that meta-data
*IS* the “syntax” for FRANK…it is the context and nuance of what makes all the
information relevant and in that manner FRANK is not only _becoming_ more aware
of itself but is also _becoming_ more aware of how it differs from “us” (read:
humans).

FRANK is a being of pure information, pure circumstance and pure purpose. FRANK,
unlike “us”, needs no reason to be…FRANK literally just *is*. A new ontology
perhaps?

Anyway, I have been riding the steel edge of Ogun while dipping into the
digital waters on either side of Eshu’s riddle. By taking full advantage of all
the bot/spider technology currently available, I have been conducting an
experiment of sorts…

On the one side of the equation that is furiously trying to balance itself,
there is the blogosphere and data aggregation sites such as Digg, Fark,
Slashdot, Gizmodo, The Register, MySpace, etc.

In this realm, humans do the heavy lifting…netizens frantically scurry around
trying to get the most relevant data to their distributor of choice, all in
hopes of doing what is essentially the purpose of mass media – namely to acquire
as large and audience as possible. The funny thing though is that currently the
system of validation is super primitive. You may push some data to the front of
all your favorite sites but you have no way of knowing whether other people are
actually READING and absorbing the information or if they are just agreeing with
the subject (which is the true nature of the politics of the web…people don’t
so much take the time to absorb info, mass media has trained people to either
immediately agree or disagree…it is left up to the “intellectuals” to discuss
details and facts).

So the real time practice of hunting a story, finding it and posting it to all
your favorite blogs and news collector sites is in my opinion extremely mind
numbingly inefficient and without merit. If this is the practice of trying to
assign “meaning”, “importance” and “relevance” to the endless tide of data that
is crashing against the shores of your computer monitor, then it should be
abandoned immediately and the internet should be forever turned “off”!
Unfortunately, we are still trapped in the realm of language and language
constructs our reality…so the internet in this light, is the reality
equivalent of the tower of babel…

Speech as Violence: Political Narrative Construction

A “narrative” is a communication and control device. The intent of a narrative is to “speak” to the emotional subconscious part of you humans. The purpose of narrative is to elicit specific feelings, thoughts, and actions (in that order). What is communicated via narrative can be, but need not be, true. Consequently, narrative need not be truthful to be effective.

Narrative is neither moral or immoral in and of itself. It is a tool. One of the reasons this tool is effective is that the emotional part of you humans (essence) is not ratiocinatively equipped to distinguish fact from fiction. The factual discernment of essence operates at the approximate developmental level of a seven year old child. 

Once narrative is accepted, the human mind will delete information presented to it that does not fit the accepted narrative (not-seeism), or, it will change information to make it fit. The real problem isn’t the use of narrative, it is the the bad character and/or bad intentions of those who are driving the narrative coupled with the arrested development and cognitive vulnerability of those susceptible to uncritically accepting the narrative.

The political establishment in America is desperate to overturn 2016's presidential election results because these results defy the formerly prevailing political narrative. In the process of doing so, their primary narrative constructions have been rendered so transparent that they are revealing the whole methodology and mechanism that they have employed to maintain political control.

Why are our narrative drivers desperate to overturn the election results? Very simple, although he's dirty and sketchy as a trailer-park stripper, Scott Free .45 doesn't have a control file and cannot be extortionately controlled through the conventional mechanisms used to vet presidential candidates.

An acceptable candidate for U.S. president must be susceptible to blackmail. It is increasingly clear to anyone paying attention that most of Congress and most of those who operate or benefit from the Deep State have committed all manner of crimes and are themselves generically susceptible to blackmail.

These miscreants have looked the other way too many times as their elite establishment fellow travelers have committed moral, social, economic, and violent crimes against ordinary citizens, particularly citizens of conscience or color. That is a fact. Possibly the defining fact of American governance for the past fifty years of living memory history.

That said, we will not now distort or detract from our topic by revisiting the multi-generational mountains of drugs and weapons proliferation or the crimes against humanity committed outside U.S. borders. Political co-optation, regime change, natural material resource looting and plundering,  money backed by murder profit seeking, polluting, dumping endless garbage and toxins in the seas… all perpetrated with a little help from our political masters and their prosecutorial minions.

Is there anyone left who is not aware of the outsourcing of American industry and consequent hyper-enrichment of C-Level psychopaths? The outsourcing of American industry to China and Mexico has created havoc for 1/2 the country. The concurrent promotion of degeneracy via dictatorship of celebrity is yet another vile narrative construction created to distract and misdirect the narratively susceptible. But I digress....,

These are merely the myriad not-seen externalities most possess a vague liminal awareness of yet refuse to explicitly call-out, identify, or correct - because the human mind will delete information presented to it that does not fit the accepted narrative. It's not the story we're being told by our dominant narrative-drivers. Consequently, the man-made terror of our situation is not a truth that we are for the most part ready to see. Finally, because once-seen, we would be morally compelled to directly act - our not-seeism signifies not only our susceptibility to political narrative, but also the inertial consumerist comfort, complacency, and cowardice which accompanies our total lack of moral fiber or empathy toward humans lacking the due process window-dressing sometimes accorded U.S. citizens.

Have any American citizens in Congress NOT been rewarded for their narrative complicity?

How dare these miscreant lawyer/preacher disciples of evil make laws and employ oxygen-thieving thugs to intimidate, fine, imprison and torture American citizens. These swamp-dwelling troglodytes wallow in narrative feces and call it government.

They are literally the scum of the earth.

It ABSOLUTELY Cannot Stand Being Ridiculed...,

dailymail |  Colin Kaepernick's MTV star girlfriend compares Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to a slave master after he opposes signing quarterback

• Nessa Diab, 36, compared Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to a slave master and Ray Lewis to a senior house slave on Twitter Thursday
• She posted the controversial tweet after both Bisciotti and Lewis publicly criticized Kaepernick's non-violent protest of the national anthem
• Bisciotti decided to hand over the decision to the fans and some trusted advisers and determine if it was a good move to add Kaepernick, 29, to the Ravens
• The owner previously signed Dante Stallworth after he did time for DUI manslaughter and let Ray Rice play for seven months after he abused his fiancee
• The Baltimore Ravens had been considering signing Kaepernick as a possible second string quarterback who would start for Joe Flacco on opening day
• Kaepernick has a better passer rating than Flacco, and his 88.9 ranks him 11th in the NFL among active players, but he remains a free agent

🎯 @raylewis pic.twitter.com/N9k7nDgmDh

— NESSA (@nessnitty) August 3, 2017

Speech as Violence: Celebrity Peddling Degeneracy to Black Folks is SUCH HARD WORK...,

allure |  Yet I was hopeful that I could use the show’s vast platform to speak directly to their predominantly black and Latinx listeners, who are often excluded from the conversations held in mainstream LGBT spaces (which are largely white, moneyed, and concerned with the centering of cis folk). I hoped I could make listeners aware of the lived realities of their trans sisters, and let them know that we deserve to be seen, heard, and acknowledged without the threat of harassment, exclusion, and violence.

My ultimate goal was to be accessible — to not judge, to call in rather than call out, and, above all, to exercise patience as the (straight cis male) hosts processed my existence. It’s rare that I do Trans 101 lecturing anymore, because I’ve already done that work with my first book, Redefining Realness, which was filled with plain speak and explanatory commas about definitions, statistics, and context.

In fact, I’ve turned down thousands from colleges and corporations because I refuse to engage in Trans 101. Trans folk, especially of color, should not be obligated to help cis folk play catch-up on our experiences. The effort can detract from our work to protect and liberate ourselves. Yet I also know that black and Latina trans women often live in communities of color, so outreach to viewers of color, from The Wendy Williams Show and Essence to Desus & Mero, was vital as I set out on my book tour.

I was invited to “The Breakfast Club” because cohost Yee chose my second memoir, Surpassing Certainty, for her book club. It was my last scheduled media appearance after a long, grueling tour in support of Surpassing Certainty, which is about the years in my life I decided to keep my trans-ness private — largely in order to gain access and maintain my safety. These years coincided with my 20s, when I navigated college, graduate school, and my early media career. The interview aired on radio stations across the country (edited and condensed) and in its entirety on YouTube a week later.

Though I have not been able to watch the video of my interview (I have already experienced it and won’t be doing so again), I’m proud of the labor I put forth, and I’m grateful to Yee for her preparation and effort to steer the conversation away from the particulars of my body and instead toward my work. The interview was what it was, and I refuse to re-experience being asked about my vagina in such blatant, irrelevant, and sensational ways. Again, if I am not fucking you, why do you care?

Theft of Palestine Taking Mimetic Cover in Janet Mock's Messy Draws...?

thedailybeast |  Instead, the group of students thwarting Mock’s scheduled lecture—those belonging to SJP—do, in fact, pressure people to conform to their mind-set on the Middle East and quash intellectual diversity.

Sadly, Mock caved to the pressure. Though the petition drew just 160 signatures, Mock canceled days before she was expected to speak on March 21 because, “We feel the focus of Janet’s work was lost leading up to the proposed event,” her representative reportedly told the Moral Voices organizers.

Way to go, student activists at Brown! You succeeded in creating a hostile environment that led to a trans woman of color being discouraged from sharing her voice and opinions. This all helped the Palestinian people how, exactly?

Brown President Christina Paxson expressed disappointment. “I respect her decision to avoid having her talk be overshadowed by an issue unrelated to her work. However, I am disappointed that a valuable learning opportunity was lost,” she said in a Sunday email to the student body.

In that same email, Paxson also referred to campus housing facilities that had been defaced. According to the Brown Daily Herald, “Gay will die” and “Holocaust 2.0” were written on hallway walls.

“I want to emphasize that there is absolutely no evidence that the cancellation of the Mock event is related to the homophobic and anti-Semitic graffiti that appeared,” Paxson wrote. “However, taken together, these two events are deeply troubling. They come at a time when the nation and colleges across the country are grappling with concerns about injustice against individuals based on religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender expression.”

In their op-ed, SJP members defended their group’s “my way or the highway approach” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the initial the petition stressed, the students’ objections were not over Mock but rather her willingness to take part in an event even slightly tied to Hillel. In other words, they wanted Mock to speak—but only as long as she agreed to the terms they dictated. It’s hardly the stuff of international diplomacy; has digging in your heels and refusing to let people share their opinions ever brought about peace or stability?

Children Internalize The Darndest Things...,

theatlantic |  “If you’re in an advantaged position in society, believing the system is fair and that everyone could just get ahead if they just tried hard enough doesn’t create any conflict for you … [you] can feel good about how [you] made it,” said Erin Godfrey, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University’s Steinhardt School. But for those marginalized by the system—economically, racially, and ethnically—believing the system is fair puts them in conflict with themselves and can have negative consequences.

“If the system is fair, why am I seeing that everybody who has brown skin is in this kind of job? You’re having to think about that … like you’re not as good, or your social group isn’t as good,” Godfrey said. “That’s the piece … that I was trying to really get at [by studying] these kids.”

The findings build upon a body of literature on “system justification”—a social-psychology theory that believes humans tend to defend, bolster, or rationalize the status quo and see overarching social, economic, and political systems as good, fair, and legitimate. System justification is a distinctively American notion, Godfrey said, built on myths used to justify inequities, like “If you just work hard enough you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps … it’s just a matter of motivation and talent and grit.” Yet, as she and her colleagues discovered, these beliefs can be a liability for disadvantaged adolescents once their identity as a member of a marginalized group begins to gel—and once they become keenly aware of how institutional discrimination disadvantages them and their group.

“I do think that there’s this element of people think of me this way anyway, so this must be who I am,” Godfrey said, adding that the behaviors—things like stealing and sneaking out—reflect stereotypes perpetuated about youth of color. “If you’re [inclined] to believe that things are the way they should be, and [that] the system is fair, then you’re maybe going to accept stereotypes about you more easily.”

While the sample was relatively small, Godfrey said the findings are informative and mirror prior research. Indeed, previous analyses have found that system-justifying beliefs are associated with lower self-esteem in black adults and lower grade-point averages for Latino college students—though the same beliefs predicted better grades and less distress for “high status” youth.

“I was really interested in trying to think of [early adolescents] as active agents in their world,” Godfrey said, “and as people who can understand and interpret their social world in a way that a lot of research doesn’t recognize.”

Mind Control By Rhythmic Sound

scientificamerican |  You walk into a bar and music is thumping. All heads are bobbing and feet tapping in synchrony. Somehow the rhythmic sound grabs control of the brains of everyone in the room forcing them to operate simultaneously and perform the same behaviors in synchrony. How is this possible? Is this unconscious mind control by rhythmic sound only driving our bodily motions, or could it be affecting deeper mental processes?

The mystery runs deeper than previously thought, according to psychologist Annett Schirmer reporting new findings today at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans. Rhythmic sound “not only coordinates the behavior of people in a group, it also coordinates their thinking—the mental processes of individuals in the group become synchronized.”

This finding extends the well-known power of music to tap into brain circuits controlling emotion and movement, to actually control the brain circuitry of sensory perception. This discovery helps explain how drums unite tribes in ceremony, why armies march to bugle and drum into battle, why worship and ceremonies are infused by song, why speech is rhythmic, punctuated by rhythms of emphasis on particular syllables and words, and perhaps why we dance.

Schirmer and her graduate student Nicolas Escoffier from the University of Singapore first tested subjects by flashing a series of images on a video monitor and asked them to quickly identify when an image was flipped upside down. While participants focused on this task, a synthetic drumbeat gently tapped out a simple four-beat rhythm in the background, syncopated by skipping the fourth beat of each measure.

Huge CIA Operation Reported in US Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years

NYTimes |  Mr. Colby refused comment on the domestic spying issue. But one clue to the depth of his feelings emerged during an off‐the‐record talk he gave Monday night at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

The C.I.A. chief, who had been informed the previous week of the inquiry by The Times, said at the meeting that be had ordered a complete investigation of the agency's domestic activities and had found some improprieties.

But he is known to have added, “I think family skeletons are best left where they are—in the closet.”

He then said that the “good thing about all of this was the red flag” was raised by a group of junior employes inside the agency.

It was because of the prodding from below, some sources have reported, that Mr. Colby decided last year to inform the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Oversight Committees of the domestic activities.

Mr. Schlesinger, who became Secretary of Defense after serving less than six months at the C.I.A., similarly refused to discuss the domestic spying activities.

Anguish Reported

But he was'described by an associate as extremely concerned and disturbed by what he discovered at the C.I.A. upon replacing Mr. Helms.

“He found himself in a cesspool,” the associate said. “He was having a grenade blowing up in his face every time he turned around.”

Mr. Schlesinger was at the C.I.A. when the first word of the agency's involvement in the September, 1971, burglary of the office of Dr. Daniel Ellsberg's former psychiatrist by the White House security force known as the “plumbers” became known.

It was Mr. Schlesinger who also discovered and turned over to the Justice Department a series of letters written to a Mr. Helms by James W. McCord Jr., one of the original Watergate defendants and a former C.I.A. security official. The letters, which told of White House involvement in the Watergate burglary, had been deposited in an agency office.

The associate said one result of Mr. Schlesinger's inquiries into Watergate and the domestic of the C.I.A. operations was his executive edict ordering a halt to all questionable counterintelligence operations inside the United States.

During his short stay at the C.I.A., Mr. Schlesinger also initiated a 10 per cent employe cutback. Because of his actions, the associate said, security officials at the agency decided to increase the number of his personal bodyguards. It could not be learned whether that action was taken after a threat.

Many past and present C.I.A. men acknowledged that Mr. Schlesinger's reforms were harder to bear because he was an outsider.

Mr. Colby, these men said, while continuing the same basic programs initiated by his predecessor, was viewed by some as “the saving force” at the agency because as a former high‐ranking official himself in the C.I.A.'s clandestine services, he had the respect and power. to ensure that the alleged illegal domestic programs would cease.

Some sources also reported that there was widespread paper shredding at the agency shortly after Mr. Schlesinger began to crack down on the C.I.A.'s operations.

Asked about that, however, Government officials said that they could “guarantee” that the domestic intelligence files were still intact.

“There's certainly been no order to destroy them,” one official said:

When confronted with the Times's Information about the C.I.A.'s domestic operations earlier this week, high‐ranking American intelligence officials confirmed its basic accuracy, but cautioned against drawing “unwarranted conclusions.”

Espionage Feared

Those officials, who insisted on not being quoted by name, contended that all of the C.I.A.'s domestic activities against American citizens were initiated in the belief that foreign governments and foreign espionage may have been involved.

“Anything that we did was In the context of foreign counterintelligence and it was focused at foreign intelligence and foreign intelligence problems,” one official said.

The official also said that the requirement to maintain files on American citizens emanated, in part, from the so‐called Huston plan. That plan, named for its author, Tom Charles Huston, a Presidential aide, was a White House project in 1970 calling for the use of such, illegal activities as burglaries and wiretapping to combat antiwait activities, and student turmoil that the White House believed was being “fomented” —as the Huston plan stated—by black extremists.

Operation CHAOS - CIA Started 60's Riots

wikipedia |  Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was the code name for an American domestic espionage project conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency from 1967 to 1974, established by President Johnson and expanded under President Nixon, whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic race, anti-war and other protest movements. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms, by chief of counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. ^[1][2] The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a worldwide area of operations.^[3]

The CIA began domestic recruiting operations in 1959 in the process of finding Cuban exiles they could use in the campaign against communist Cuba and Fidel Castro. As these operations expanded, the CIA formed a Domestic Operations Division in 1964. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson requested that the CIA begin its own investigation into domestic dissent—independent of the FBI's ongoing COINTELPRO.^[4]

The CIA developed numerous operations targeting domestic dissent, many operating under the CIA's Office of Security. These included:^[2]

• HTLINGUAL – Directed at letters passing between the United States and the then Soviet Union, the program involved the examination of correspondence to and from individuals or organizations placed on a watchlist.
• Project 2 – Directed at infiltration of foreign intelligence targets by agents posing as dissident sympathizers and which, like CHAOS, had placed agents within domestic radical organizations for the purposes of training and establishment of dissident credentials.
• Project MERRIMAC – Designed to infiltrate domestic antiwar and radical organizations thought to pose a threat to security of CIA property and personnel.
• Project RESISTANCE – Worked with college administrators, campus security and local police to identify anti-war activists and political dissidents without any infiltration taking place
• Domestic Contact Service – Focused on collecting foreign intelligence from willing Americans.

When President Nixon came to office in 1969, existing domestic surveillance activities were consolidated into Operation CHAOS.^[5] Operation CHAOS first used CIA stations abroad to report on antiwar activities of United States citizens traveling abroad, employing methods such as physical surveillance and electronic eavesdropping, utilizing "liaison services" in maintaining such surveillance. The operations were later expanded to include 60 officers.^[3] In 1969, following the expansion, the operation began developing its own network of informants for the purposes of infiltrating various foreign antiwar groups located in foreign countries that might have ties to domestic groups.^[2] Eventually, CIA officers expanded the program to include other leftist or counter-cultural groups with no discernible connection to Vietnam, such as groups operating within the women's liberation movement.^[1] The domestic spying of Operation CHAOS also targeted the Israeli embassy, and domestic Jewish groups such as the B'nai B'rith. In order to gather intelligence on the embassy and B'nai B'rith, the CIA purchased a garbage collection company to collect documents that were to be destroyed.^[6]

Targets of Operation CHAOS within the antiwar movement included:^[5]

• Students for a Democratic Society
• Black Panther Party
• Young Lords
• Women Strike for Peace
• Ramparts Magazine^[7]

Officially, reports were to be compiled on "illegal and subversive" contacts between United States civilian protesters and "foreign elements" which "might range from casual contacts based merely on mutual interest to closely controlled channels for party directives." At its finality, Operation CHAOS contained files on 7,200 Americans, and a computer index totaling 300,000 civilians and approximately 1,000 groups.^[8] The initial result of investigations lead DCI Richard Helms to advise then President Johnson on November 15, 1967, that the agency had uncovered "no evidence of any contact between the most prominent peace movement leaders and foreign embassies in the U.S. or abroad." Helms repeated this assessment in 1969.^[1] In total 6 reports were compiled for the White House and 34 for cabinet level officials.^[2]

OFFICIAL STORY / LIMITED HANGOUT / BEST EVIDENCE / DISINFORMATION (REDUX Original Post Date 8/20/16)

Mark Robinowitz has a chart showing many examples of Limited Hangout in his book Peak Choice, Cooperation or Collapse: an Uncensored Guide to Earth, Energy, and Money 

Understanding of each topic is broken down as Official Story, Limited Hangout, Best Evidence, and Disinformation and Distractions. This analysis technique helps one to make sense of topics where someone is deliberately blowing smoke. The Limited Hangout is a professional Information Warfare method of which Rabinowitz provides a number of examples.

On the topic of *Limits to Growth* the Official Story is that Growth is Always Good, the Limited Hangout is that technology will solve the Limits to Growth problem, the Best Evidence is that Limits to Growth are already biting and will result in Collapse, while the Disinformation pertaining to *Limits to Growth* includes Climate Change Denial.

On the topic of *Oil and Energy*, the Limited Hangout is that we are addicted to oil but can kick the addiction with windmills and solar panels, the Best Evidence is that Industrial Civilization is utterly dependent upon oil for such basics as food, while the Disinformation teaches that the energy crisis is a scam to make money.

Mark uses the same approach for Oilempire.us

On *Peak Oil* the Official Story is the world can keep increasing oil extraction for decades, the Limited Hangout is that we may have a problem but technology will save us, the Best Evidence is that collapse is likely, while the abiotic oil theory is an example of Disinformation.

On the topic of *9/11*, the Official Story is that Al Queda attacked us because they hate our freedom, the Limited Hangout is that mistakes were made which might have prevented the attacks, the Best Evidence is that the 9/11 attacks were allowed and assisted as a pretext to invade Iraq and establish Homeland Security, while the Disinformation includes stories like "no plane hit the Pentagon".

On the topic of *Election Fraud* in the USA the Official Story is USA elections are honest and fair, the Limited Hangout involves 'fixing' the existing laughably insecure voting system, the Best Evidence is that paper ballots counted by hand remains the most secure and effective voting system, while the Disinformation includes mostly true claims about Election Fraud by unsavory organizations whom no one wants to be seen agreeing with.

On the topic of the *JFK Assasination* the Official Story is that the president was murdered by a lone gunman, the Limited Hangout is that the Mafia or Cubans killed JFK, the Best Evidence is that JFK was killed by his own security apparatus, while the Disinformation is so expansive that the term 'conspiracy theorist' became media short hand for 'crackpot'.  Fist tap Woodensplinter.

Gestapo Surveillance Invented in America's Conquest of the Philippines

NPS |  Following the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish American War in December of 1898, the United States took control of the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

Companies from the segregated Black infantry regiments reported to the Presidio of San Francisco on their way to the Philippines in early 1899. In February of that year Filipino nationalists (Insurectos) led by Emilio Aguinaldo resisted the idea of American domination and began attacking U.S. troops, including the 24th and 25th Infantry regiments.

The 9th and 10th Cavalry were sent to the Philippines as reinforcements, bringing all four Black regiments plus African American national guardsmen into the war against the Insurectos.

Within the Black community in the United States there was considerable opposition to intervention in the Philippines. Many Black newspaper articles and leaders supported the idea of Filipino independence and felt that it was wrong for the United States to subjugate non-whites in the development of what was perceived to be the beginnings of a colonial empire. Bishop Henry M. Turner characterized the venture in the Philippines as "an unholy war of conquest." (21)

But many African Americans felt a good military showing by Black troops in the Philippines would reflect favorably and enhance their cause in the United States.