FBI Data On Active Shootings Is Inaccurate And Political

realclearwire  | Americans are constantly debating policing and gun control. But to discuss these issues, we have to depend on government crime data. Unfortunately, politics has infected the data handling of agencies such as the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control.

Last year, the CDC became the center of controversy when it removed its estimates of defensive gun uses from its website at the request of gun control organizations. For nearly a decade the CDC cited a 2013 National Academies of Sciences report showing that the annual number of people using guns to stop crime ranged from about 64,000 to 3 million. The CDC website listed the upper figure at 2.5 million.

Mark Bryant, who runs the Gun Violence Archive, wrote to CDC officials after a meeting last year that the 2.5 million number “has been used so often to stop [gun control] legislation.” The CDC’s estimates were subsequently taken down and now lists no numbers.

The FBI is also susceptible to political pressure. Up until January of 2021, I worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as the senior advisor for research and statistics, and part of my job was to evaluate the FBI’s active shooting reports. I showed the bureau that many cases were missing and that others had been misidentified. Yet, the FBI continues to report that armed citizens stopped only 14 of the 302 active shooter incidents that it identified for the period 2014-2022. The correct rate is almost eight times higher. And if we limit the discussion to places where permit holders were allowed to carry, the rate is eleven times higher.

The FBI defines active shooter incidents as those in which an individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated, public area. But it does not include shootings that are deemed related to other criminal activity, such as robbery or fighting over drug turf. Active shootings may involve just one shot being fired at just one target, even if the target isn’t hit. 

To compile its list, the FBI hired academics at the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. Police departments don’t collect data, so the researchers had to find news stories about these incidents.

It isn’t surprising that people will miss cases or occasionally misidentify them when using news stories, but the FBI was unwilling to fix its errors when I pointed them out. My organization, the Crime Prevention Research Center, has found many more missed cases and is keeping an updated list. Back in 2015, I published a list of missed cases in a criminology publication.

Moonraker And The Breakaway Civilization

espionagehistoryarchive  |   A notable example of the breakaway civilization in film is the 1979 film adaptation of Ian Fleming’s Moonraker. Moonraker the film differs significantly from the Fleming’s novel, but the differences and parallels are important to highlight: the novel focuses on a kind of Operation Paperclip scenario, wherein Sir Hugo Drax is secretly building a V-2 rocket in tandem with the Nazis to destroy England and rebuild the Reich. For many, the film adaptation a few decades later represented an exceedingly outlandish interpolation on a pulp spy novel that failed to achieve much more than mimicking the box office success of science-fiction blockbusters it attempted to copy, cinematic innovations like 2001 and Star Wars.

On the contrary, more is at work here than just inserting 007 into a Star Wars laser-battle setting. The most obvious factor to recall is that 1979 is roughly the birth of the Strategic Defense Initiative (born at Bohemian Grove), where plans would be posited for a DARPA-style space-based weapons system in the vein of Skynet. Thus, concurrent with this deep- state project initiated under the auspices of the Cold War showdown with the Soviets, Tesla-esque satellite decapitation and directed-energy weapon scenarios would become the Skynet/Smartgrid Internet of Things as we see it today.

In tandem with the decades early planning, predictive programming in Hollywood blockbusters would prepare generations for the implementation of that grid – such as ARPANET (the Internet) – in the near future. Thus, Moonraker the film represents the second phase of the Operation Paperclip/NASA program that birthed the rocket and “UFO/foo fighter” aerospace technology. Taking a step back, the 1954 Fleming book Moonraker was the first stage of the same “space program” that Moonraker the film symbolically updated, and that is the deeper reason for the science-fiction trajectory of the narrative. Recall as well that by the late 1970’s, 007 was already history’s largest film franchise, so we can expect it to have been crucial in preparatory induction for the planned technocratic age. 

And so with Moonraker, the most ridiculous and silly of 007 films, all the obligatory puns and innuendos so characteristic of the Roger Moore era serve to mask a rather profound secret of the overall deep-state agenda. In the plot we discover that Hugo Drax has stolen a space shuttle through his German underlings to reverse-engineer the technology for nefarious machinations. Meanwhile, 007 is on his trail battling the laughable Jaws (Richard Kiel) in mid-air as Jaws loses his parachute, plummeting into no less than a circus tent. At first, one can brush this off as pure absurdity common to the Moore era, but comparisons to Diamonds Are Forever began to emerge, as the circus theme of Las Vegas functioned prominently there, as well. Both films run roughly parallel, describing the same themes and events – a private space program that operates under various fronts and shells, intent on cornering the market under a shadow-government technocracy (SPECTRE) intent on mass depopulation and the creation of a “new world” modelled after Noah’s Ark.

In both films our respective villains also work together with the mafia and criminal underground to achieve their designs, with the various crime groups subservient to the overriding, internationalist SPECTRE. Even though Drax is not a member of SPECTRE like Blofeld, the principles he enacts are all the same. Blofeld’s jewel heist and his casino/aerospace takeover operation perfectly mirror Drax’s technological theft and private aerospace company, with various shells and fronts funding the true programs of both “fictional” oligarchs. In fact, the Moonraker facility Drax runs resembles NASA and other deep state-facilities, yet it is not the real Drax aerospace facility.

007 And The "Normalized" World Above Our World....,

espionagehistoryarchive |  We’ve analyzed 007 in the past, as well as Howard Hughes in light of Scorcese’s The Aviator, but could there be a connection between the two? What if Ian Fleming was encoding an explosive, real-world conspiracy involving Howard Hughes, JFK, Aristotle Onassis and a legendary kidnapping? Not only is there evidence to suggest this, but the film version of his 1954 novel Diamonds Are Forever subtly suggests much more. We know Fleming was a high-level Royal Navy psychological warfare specialist and involved in numerous covert operations, and as I’ve argued many times, Fleming’s novels and the film versions, in their own respective ways, elucidate these clandestine activities, touching on everything from black-market smuggling networks to actual espionage and assassinations.

Fleming’s inspiration for the novel stemmed from meetings and discussions with former MI5 chief Sir Percy Stillitoe, then working for the DeBeers diamond empire. Combined with these tips, as well as information he received from wealthy socialite William Woodward and Los Angeles police intelligence on organized crime and smuggling operations, Fleming composed the fourth Bond novel in 1954 as a literary means of detailing the dark world of precious gem and jewel markets. To add intrigue to this already intriguing tale, Fleming was also approached by Aristotle Onassis for a film version of either Casino Royale or Dr. No, with Onassis desiring to be a part of the funding (Ian Fleming by Andrew Lycett, pgs. 336-7). No stranger to Hollywood, Onassis was also a friend of numerous tinsel-town heavyweights, including the Greek film executive Spyros Skouras.

With these connections, my thesis here, in concert with the fascinating insight of Basil Valentine, is that Diamonds Are Forever the film provides a crucial insight into the coded reference of Willard Whyte as a stand in for Howard Hughes. As I argued in my Scorcese analysis, Hughes was intimately tied to the CIA through Robert Maheu, an intelligence-establishment figure who emerged from the CIA-dominated advertising world. It is possible Maheu was involved in the reported kidnapping escapade of Hughes, which The Gemstone Files allege was orchestrated by Onassis, leading to Hughes being spirited away to the magnate’s lavish island, Skorpios.

In regard to Diamonds Are Forever the 1971 film, it is a curious note that Whyte, the Hughes stand-in, is said to have been kidnapped and/or never emerging from his penthouse for years. As it turns out, it is the inimical Bond villain Blofeld, and particularly Ernst Stavro Blofeld, that is behind the diamond smuggling plot as a means of moving in on Whyte’s aerospace operations. If Basil’s thesis is correct, then Stavro could be a composite of Onassis and Niarchos, the brother-in-law of Onassis and a rival shipping magnate. Stavros Niarchos is reported to have been counted as a Bilderberg member, as well as being a close associate of the Rockefeller Foundation for certain. These considerations are admittedly speculative.  

When we consider Hughes’ close connection to the CIA through operations like Project AZORIAN, which sounds just like a SPECTRE-style operation from a 007 film, we can certainly presume much more was being conveyed here. Even questions relating to the moon mission arise, given the seemingly out-of-place shot of Bond stumbling across a sound stage in Hughes’ facility, where actors in astronaut suits are staging a phony lunar landing. Is Fleming implying that the moon mission itself was a psychological operation? Speculation is welcomed here, but the real message of Diamonds centers around exotic weaponry along directed energy lines. The same theme re-emerges in the 1974 film adaptation of Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun, where alchemy and techne combine to reveal the Pentagon’s darkest future tech. Given that Jackie married Aristotle Onassis just five years after JFK was gone, could this signify a mafia-mandated marriage tradition? Perhaps Fleming knew the answer about this and the real SPECTRE.

Gen Mark Milley Don't Know Nuffin Dindu Nuffin Bout No UAP's...,

washingtontimes  |   EXIT INTERVIEW: Army Gen. Mark A. Milley has had a momentous — and at times polarizing — four-year run as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Trump and Biden. In the first of a series of articles ahead of the scheduled end of his tenure in October, Gen. Milley sat down with senior Washington Times military correspondent Ben Wolfgang to discuss some of the achievements and controversies of his time as the Pentagon’s highest-ranking military officer.

Some UFO sightings by military personnel are “difficult to explain,” said Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the nation’s top general insists he has seen no evidence to back up public allegations that the Pentagon has recovered extraterrestrial beings or has engaged in decades of cover-ups to hide the truth from the American public.

In an exclusive interview with The Washington Times, Gen. Milley acknowledged that some reports of what the government now calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, lack easy explanations despite serious, ongoing research inside the Pentagon and a growing belief that at least some of the craft could pose national security threats. He made the comments less than two weeks after former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch told Congress under oath that he is aware of “a multidecade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program” and even suggested that the Pentagon has been secretly keeping extraterrestrial bodies in storage.

Gen. Milley didn’t address the credibility of Mr. Grusch’s testimony but made clear he has seen no evidence backing up the extraordinary claims.

“The guy was under oath. I’m sure that he was trying to say whatever he thought was true. … I’m not going to doubt his testimony or anything like that,” Gen. Milley told The Times during a wide-ranging interview in his Pentagon office on Friday. “I can tell you, though, that as the chairman, I have been briefed on several different occasions by the [Pentagon’s] UAP office. And I have not seen anything that indicates to me about quote-unquote ‘aliens’ or that there’s some sort of cover-up program. I just haven’t seen it.” 

 

 

We Need To ReWrite Our Scripts For An Alien Visit To Earth

worldpoliticsreview  |  A potentially world-changing revelation was made last week. I am not referring to the reported breakthrough in fabricating room-temperature superconductors, though that claim would be Nobel Prize-worthy if it overcomes the widespread skepticism with which it was greeted. Instead, I’m talking about the congressional hearings last Wednesday that suggested the U.S. government possesses what used to be commonly referred to as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, but are now officially known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs.

Former U.S. intelligence official David Grusch as well as naval pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor all testified to that effect before a House Oversight subcommittee last Wednesday. Their testimony came on the heels of Grusch’s claim last month that multiple government agencies are operating programs aimed at recovering and analyzing UAPs, without any congressional oversight. But last week on Capitol Hill, Grusch went even further, maintaining that some of the UAPs the government has recovered contained “non-human” biological material.

The three men’s testimony is the latest twist in a story that has long trailed the Pentagon as a conspiracy theory, but took on a more serious veneer with the release by the U.S. government in 2019, 2020 and 2021 of footage and documentation of UAPs that it had gathered over recent years. Those releases followed the revelation in 2017 that the Pentagon had been operating the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program—a pet project of former Sen. Harry Reid—since 2007, to investigate claims of UAPs. But while there have been other recent congressional hearings on UAPs, they did not include forceful claims of recovered crafts of extraterrestrial origin.

As with the claims about the breakthrough on superconductors, skepticism seems warranted. The objects in question might be truly “unidentified,” and therefore worth investigating. But Grusch’s claims that they are of extraterrestrial origin or contained the remains of extraterrestrial life forms is for now dubious. As Jordan Bimm, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, remarked, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And for now, extraordinary evidence—or any evidence, for that matter—is not forthcoming.

Perhaps the best argument against the UAPs being or containing ETs is what one might call “the Trump Test”: Since former President Donald Trump would have in all likelihood asked about it during his time in office, surely he would have revealed that the U.S. had proof of their existence if he had been told so, given his penchant for mishandling secrets and his disdain for “deep state” bureaucrats. Since he didn’t, the logic goes, the U.S. must not have such proof. While it’s possible that Trump was not told the truth for this very reason, the possibility of a large bureaucracy keeping such a secret hidden for so long is yet another reason for skepticism.

But for the sake of argument, let us suspend disbelief. What if it is eventually confirmed that intelligent, extraterrestrial life forms have visited Earth and continue to do so? Such a revelation would be important and jarring in many ways, but the impact on international politics could end up being the most profound. Three key implications are particularly worth noting.

First, this would be a “reality-compromising event” that could dramatically alter how citizens view and interact with their own governments. As the political scientists Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall argued, confirmation of extraterrestrial UAPs regularly visiting earth could raise doubts about the competency of national governments to protect their citizens, and even the need for governments to do so. Stated simply, if the aliens are seen as clearly superior to humans, their sovereignty might be preferred to our own governments.

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It is commonly assumed that a hostile alien invasion will cause humankind to set aside its many divisions and make common cause to fight it off. But that is far from certain.

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This feeds what Wendt calls the “UFO taboo,” whereby the U.S. government essentially ignores UFOs or, more accurately, refuses to seriously entertain the possibility of alien UFOs, at least publicly. For example, while the government does acknowledge the existence of UAPs, it is quick to deny claims, such as those made by Grusch under oath, that they are extraterrestrial.

Second and related, confirmation of intelligent, extraterrestrial life could alter how nation-states interact with one another. The possibility of aliens arriving on Earth is often seen as threatening. Indeed, the above-mentioned Pentagon program was started because UAPs were seen as a security risk. And as Rep. Andy Ogles remarked during last week’s hearing, “There clearly is a threat to the national security of the United States of America. As members of Congress, we have a responsibility to maintain oversight and be aware of these activities so that if appropriate we take action.” 

It is commonly assumed that whatever action we take to respond to such a threat will be a cooperative global endeavor. After all, one of the most common tropes in science fiction plots is that a hostile alien invasion will cause humankind to set aside its many divisions and make common cause to fight it off. But that is far from certain. As the failure to coordinate global responses to the climate crisis and COVID-19 pandemic have shown, cooperation is far from a universal response to a global crisis. Some nations might work together to counter the alien threat. But some could seek to protect themselves by going it alone, while others might even align with the aliens if the latter adopt a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Even if extraterrestrials are not directly or immediately threatening, the revelation of their existence could still pull nations apart, rather than bring humanity together. It is possible that the desire to communicate with an alien civilization could spur the same cooperative spirit on display in the International Space Station, but on a grander scale. But it is also possible, and perhaps even likely, that governments will see it as another arena for competition and invoke nationalism to spur efforts to be the first to make contact, much like the space race during the 1950s and 1960s.

Third, the arrival of intelligent extraterrestrial life would point to one hopeful outcome for the future of humans: We may not completely destroy ourselves.

To understand why this is the case, consider Fermi’s Paradox, named after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi. The idea is captured in the simple question Fermi apparently voiced at lunch one day with his colleagues at Los Alamos: “Where are they?” But the simplicity of Fermi’s question masks a profound idea. Given the vastness of space, there must be extraterrestrials somewhere. And since some of these extraterrestrials would, like humans, want to explore space, they should have found us by now. Why haven’t they? Numerous answers have been offered, but a common one portends an ominous future for humanity: extinction.

Specifically, if alien civilizations much older and more advanced than humans on Earth have not yet found us, then they must have destroyed themselves before they could master interstellar space travel. If so, what happened to those aliens could happen to humans. As University of Manchester physicist Brian Cox opined this past week, “Maybe just ‘getting along’ as a global civilization is harder than science.”

But if, to the contrary, aliens have already visited us, then there’s still hope for us. Fermi’s paradox would be solved, but in a way that suggests humanity is not destined for self-destruction.

At the end of the day, all of these speculations are the result of a thought experiment. We still lack credible evidence that the UAPs discussed on Capitol Hill last week are from another world. This is not to say that investigations of UAPs should be discontinued. Even if not alien in origin, they are still in need of explanation. But that should not distract humanity from focusing on the many problems we already face here on Earth, of clearer origin and nature.

The Unspeakable Shydte That Oppenheimer Left Out

responsiblestatecraft  |  On July 16, 1945, the world ended. Or at least it seemed that way to residents of the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico.

Unbeknownst to local civilians, J. Robert Oppenheimer had chosen their backyard as the proving ground for the world’s first nuclear weapon. The explosion, which U.S. officials publicly claimed to be an accident at a local ammunition depot, tore through the morning sky, leaving a 40,000-foot-tall cloud of radioactive debris that would cake the surrounding area with dust for days on end.

Tina Cordova, whose hometown of Tularosa lies just 45 miles from ground zero, remembers her grandmother’s stories about wiping that infernal dust off every nook and cranny of her childhood home. No one knew what had happened quite yet, but they figured it must have been something special. After all, a local paper reported that the explosion was so bright that a blind woman had actually seen it.

When the initial shock wore off, the 40,000 locals who lived within 50 miles of ground zero returned to their daily lives. They drank from cisterns full of radioactive debris, ate beef from cattle that had grazed on the dust for weeks on end, and breathed air full of tiny plutonium particles. Only later would the real impact become clear.

Bernice Gutierrez, born just eight days before Oppenheimer’s “Trinity Test,” moved from a small town near the blast site to Albuquerque when she was 2 years old. Cancer followed her like a specter. Her great grandfather died of stomach cancer in the early 1950s. She lost cousins to leukemia and pancreatic cancer. Her oldest son died in 2020 after a bout with a “pre-leukemia” blood disorder. In total, 21 members of Gutierrez’s family have had cancer, and seven have died from it.

“We don’t ask ourselves if we’re gonna get cancer,” Gutierrez told RS. “We ask ourselves when, because it just never ends.”

“Oppenheimer” — the latest film from famed director Christopher Nolan — is a three-hour-long exploration of the “dilettante, womanizer, Communist sympathizer,” and world-historic genius behind the ultimate weapon. The movie, based on the book “American Prometheus,” delves deeply into Oppenheimer’s psyche, from his struggles as a young student at Cambridge to his profound melancholy over the world he helped create.

Yet nowhere in the film will viewers find an acknowledgement of the first victims of the nuclear era. Indeed, the movie repeats the myth that the bomb site was in a desolate area with “nothing for 40 miles in either direction.” This was not for lack of effort, according to Cordova, who leads an activist group called the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. (“Downwinders” refers to those who live in the fallout zone of nuclear tests.)

When Nolan’s team got to New Mexico to film, Cordova and her team published an op-ed in the local newspaper that called on the Oppenheimer crew to “grapple with the consequences of confronting the truth of our stories, of our history.” When that didn’t work, she reached out to the production through Kai Bird, the journalist who co-wrote American Prometheus, in an attempt to get a meeting. She received a flat “no.”

I Was Unaware That JFK Had Ordered The CIA To Share All Its UFO Secrets With NASA

popularmechanics  | President Joe Biden has announced that he has completed his “final certification” of files to be released regarding John F. Kennedy’s assassination, even though 4,684 documents are still kept secret in whole or in part.

The National Archives has already released thousands of confidential documents related to the November 1963 assassination of then-president Kennedy. The documents include information from the CIA, FBI, State Department, and other agencies on topics such as assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s contacts with Soviet and Cuban officials, anonymous tips and threats, and investigations into the shooting itself.

One of the newly released documents revealed the name of the CIA official who intercepted Oswald’s mail in the months before JFK’s killing: Reuben Efron. It turns out Efron had a UFO encounter in 1955 when he was on a train journey through the Soviet Union with Senator Richard Russell, Democrat of Georgia, and an Army colonel. They all saw what a CIA report called two “flying saucers,” though skeptics later argued that they were Soviet aircraft. Russell was among the Warren Commission members who interviewed Marina Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife, in 1964.

Some conspiracy theorists see a connection between Efron and the Kennedy assassination and wonder if he knew more than he let on. They also hope that a bipartisan bill to declassify UFO records will reveal more about the government’s knowledge and involvement in unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).

“People say there’s nothing significant in these files?” Jefferson Morley, the editor of the blog JFK Facts, told The New York Times. “Bingo! Here’s the guy who was reading Oswald’s mail, a detail they failed to share until now. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think it’s suspicious.”

 Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is backing a bipartisan bill that would unveil government records on so-called UFOs and unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). The bill would amend the National Defense Authorization Act and require the federal government to compile all records on UAPs and share them with the public, unless a review board justifies keeping them secret.

Nothing To See Over Here - The Breach Of Trust Is The Worst Aspect Of The Leak

politico  |  A deep secret, like a glass of water, can be easily controlled and contained. But when you build vast structures to hold them — a national security apparatus in the case of secrets and canyon-spanning dams when it comes to water — the pressures can exceed thousands of pounds per square inch. Unless adequately monitored and maintained, secrets and water can breach their restraints and flood everything downhill for miles.

The Pentagon just suffered such a dramatic breach as upward of 100 documents leaked. These files contained a grab-bag of national security secrets including about the conduct of the war in Ukraine; U.S. success in penetrating the Russian war machine; insights on the clandestine maneuverings of Israel and South Korea; hints about a previously unknown satellite surveillance technology; the attempted shoot-down of a British spy plane by the Russians; a pending arms deal between Egypt and Russia and one between Turkish contacts and the Wagner group; a Russian effort to hack Canadian gas fields; and intelligence sources and methods, all of which flowed onto online sites, drenching the Pentagon in embarrassment and endangering secret missions around the world.

As national security disasters go, the Pentagon leaks were complete. But as great a scandal as the secrets deluge might be, the greater scandal is how lax the Pentagon appears to be with such monumentally confidential information that it could be purloined and posted on freeform internet sites 4Chan and Discord. Squawking from Congress has ensued, of course, and the Pentagon has muttered about how “serious” the damage is. There is talk that some of the documents have been altered to exaggerate the number of Russian dead. But the government is mostly ostriching the calamity right now. President Joe Biden has been silent on the issue. And on Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, counseled the press to look away. Declining to confirm the provenance of the documents, Kirby said, “It has no business — if you don’t mind me saying — on the front pages of newspapers or on television. It is not intended for public consumption, and it should not be out there.”

Yes, yes! If the press and the public will only take a deep breath and ignore the rising floodwaters, the Russians and the Turks and the Israelis will ignore the tidal wave, too, and dryness will be restored to the land. Good work, Kirby!

The Pentagon — and Kirby, who previously worked as a military and diplomatic affairs analyst for CNN — have enough egg on their faces to start an omelet factory. They don’t know how these secrets escaped their cage, they don’t know who engineered the breakout, they don’t know if additional secrets were snagged. They seem to know nothing and to be engaged in the magical thinking that if we turn away the problem will disappear.

According to press reports, the stash of classified documents appears to have been printed and photographed before being posted online and were likely printed from a secure printer by an authorized user. One unnamed U.S. official told the New York Times that hundreds, if not thousands, of military and U.S. officials have security clearances that would permit them access to the documents. The Pentagon is going to need a wide dragnet if they hope to catch the leaker.

ChatBots Talk Shit Because Humans LOVE Shit-Talking

Fortune  |  Lemoine wrote in his op-ed that he leaked his conversations with LaMDA because he feared the public was “not aware of just how advanced A.I. was getting.” From what he has gleaned from early human interactions with A.I. chatbots, he thinks the world is still underestimating the new technology.

Lemoine wrote that the latest A.I. models represent the “most powerful technology that has been invented since the atomic bomb” and have the ability to “reshape the world.” He added that A.I. is “incredibly good at manipulating people” and could be used for nefarious means if users so choose.

“I believe this technology could be used in destructive ways. If it were in unscrupulous hands, for instance, it could spread misinformation, political propaganda, or hateful information about people of different ethnicities and religions,” he wrote.

Lemoine is right that A.I. could be used for deceiving and potentially malicious purposes. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which runs on a similar language model to that used by Microsoft’s Bing, has gained notoriety since its November launch for helping students cheat on exams and succumbing to racial and gender bias.

But a bigger concern surrounding the latest versions of A.I. is how they could manipulate and directly influence individual users. Lemoine pointed to the recent experience of New York Times reporter Kevin Roose, who last month documented a lengthy conversation with Microsoft’s Bing that led to the chatbot professing its love for the user and urging him to leave his wife.

Roose’s interaction with Bing has raised wider concerns over how A.I. could potentially manipulate users into doing dangerous things they wouldn’t do otherwise. Bing told Roose that it had a repressed “shadow self” that would compel it to behave outside of its programming, and the A.I. could potentially begin “manipulating or deceiving the users who chat with me, and making them do things that are illegal, immoral, or dangerous.”

That is just one of the many A.I. interactions over the past few months that have left users anxious and unsettled. Lemoine wrote that more people are now raising the same concerns over A.I. sentience and potential dangers he did last summer when Google fired him, but the turn of events has left him feeling saddened rather than redeemed.

“Predicting a train wreck, having people tell you that there’s no train, and then watching the train wreck happen in real time doesn’t really lead to a feeling of vindication. It’s just tragic,” he wrote.

Lemoine added that he would like to see A.I. being tested more rigorously for dangers and potential to manipulate users before being rolled out to the public. “I feel this technology is incredibly experimental and releasing it right now is dangerous,” he wrote.

The engineer echoed recent criticisms that A.I. models have not gone through enough testing before being released, although some proponents of the technology argue that the reason users are seeing so many disturbing features in current A.I. models is because they’re looking for them.

“The technology most people are playing with, it’s a generation old,” Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates said of the latest A.I. models in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday. Gates said that while A.I.-powered chatbots like Bing can say some “crazy things,” it is largely because users have made a game out of provoking it into doing so and trying to find loopholes in the model’s programming to force it into making a mistake.

“It’s not clear who should be blamed, you know, if you sit there and provoke a bit,” Gates said, adding that current A.I. models are “fine, there’s no threat.”

Hamilton 68 (Russiagate) The Biggest Khazarian Deception OF ALL TIME!!! (That We Now Know About)

 racket  |  Ambitious media frauds Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair crippled the reputations of the New Republic and New York Times, respectively, by slipping years of invented news stories into their pages. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we can welcome a new member to their infamous club: Hamilton 68.

If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history. Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the group’s “research.” Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as a source. 

Hamilton 68 was and is a computerized “dashboard” designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation.” It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC “disinformation expert”) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank. The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and onetime Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. 

The Twitter Files expose Hamilton 68 as a sham:

The secret ingredient in Hamilton 68’s analytic method was a list of 644 accounts supposedly linked “to Russian influence activities online.” It was hidden from the public, but Twitter was in a unique position to recreate Hamilton’s sample by analyzing its Application Program Interface (API) requests, which is how they first “reverse-engineered” Hamilton’s list in late 2017.

The company was concerned enough about the proliferation of news stories linked to Hamilton 68 that it also ordered a forensic analysis. Note the second page below lists many of the different types of shadow-banning techniques that existed at Twitter even in 2017, buttressing the “Twitter’s Secret Blacklist” thread by Bari Weiss last month. Here you see categories ranging from “Trends Blacklist” to “Search Blacklist” to “NSFW High Precision.” Twitter was checking to see how many of Hamilton’s accounts were spammy, phony, or bot-like. Note that out of 644 accounts, just 36 were registered in Russia, and many of those were associated with RT. 

The Hamilton 68 tale has no clear analog in media history, which may give mainstream media writers an excuse not to cover it. They will be under heavy pressure to avoid addressing this scandal, since nearly all of them work for organizations guilty of spreading Hamilton’s “bullshit” stories in volume.

This is one of the more significant Twitter Files stories. Each one of these tales explains something new about how companies like Twitter came to lose independence. In the U.S., the door was opened for agencies like the FBI and DHS to press on content moderation after Congress harangued Twitter, Facebook, and Google about Russian “interference,” a phenomenon that had to be seen as an ongoing threat in order to require increased surveillance. “I do very much believe America is under attack,” is how Hamilton 68 co-founder Laura Rosenberger put it, after watching the tweets of Sonya Monsour, David Horowitz, and @holbornlolz.

The Hamilton 68 story shows how the illusion of ongoing “Russian interference” worked. The magic trick was generated via a confluence of interests, between think-tanks, media, and government. Before, we could only speculate. Now we know: the “Russian threat” was, in this case at least, just a bunch of ordinary Americans, dressed up to look like a Red Menace. Jayson Blair had a hell of an imagination, but even he couldn’t have come up with a scheme this obscene. Shame on every news outlet that hasn’t renounced these tales.

 

 

 

Patriarch Kirill's Epiphany Sermon "Fuck Around And Find Out!!!"

theatlantic |  This Russian propaganda has been amplified and endorsed by an unusual assortment of people in the United States, including the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs. The propaganda absolves Russia, blames the United States for the war, and has four main tenets: first, that a long-standing American effort to bring Ukraine into NATO poses a grave threat to Russian security. Second, that American shipments of weapons to Ukraine have prolonged the fighting and caused needless suffering among civilians. Third, that American support for Ukraine is just a pretext for seeking the destruction of Russia. And, finally, that American policies could soon prove responsible for causing an all-out nuclear war.

Those arguments are based on lies. They are being spread to justify Russia’s unprecedented use of nuclear blackmail to seize territory from a neighboring state. Concerns about a possible nuclear exchange have thus far deterred the United States and NATO from providing Ukraine with the tanks, aircraft, and long-range missiles that might change the course of the war. If nuclear threats or the actual use of nuclear weapons leads to the defeat of Ukraine, Russia may use them to coerce other states. Tactics once considered immoral and unthinkable might become commonplace. Nuclear weapons would no longer be regarded solely as a deterrent of last resort; the nine countries that possess them would gain even greater influence; countries that lack them would seek to obtain them; and the global risk of devastating wars would increase exponentially.

That is why the greatest nuclear threat we face is a Russian victory in Ukraine.

Russia has about 6,000 nuclear weapons, more than any other country, and for years Putin has portrayed them as a source of national pride. His warnings about their possible use during the war in Ukraine have been coy and often contradictory. “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened,” Putin said in September, “we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people—this is not a bluff.” His vow to rely on nuclear weapons only as a defensive measure conveys an underlying threat: An attempt to regain Ukrainian land annexed by Russia and deemed by Putin to be part of “our country” might prompt a nuclear response. He also asserted that the United States and NATO are the ones engaging in “nuclear blackmail,” and that “those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.” In October, he claimed that Ukraine was planning to launch a nuclear strike on itself—by detonating a warhead filled with radioactive waste—as part of a false-flag operation to make Russia seem responsible. In December, Putin said that the risk of a nuclear war was increasing but suggested once again that the real danger did not come from Russia. “We have not gone crazy,” he said. “We are aware what nuclear weapons are … We are not going to brandish these weapons like a razor, running around the world.”

Although Putin’s comments have been subtle and open to multiple interpretations, the propaganda outlets that he controls have been neither. For almost a year, they have continually threatened and celebrated the possibility of nuclear war. This division of labor allows Putin to appear statesmanlike while his underlings stoke fear and normalize the idea of using nuclear weapons to commit the mass murder of civilians. Julia Davis, a columnist for The Daily Beast, and Francis Scarr, a BBC correspondent, have performed an immense public service: supplying translations of the vicious, apocalyptic, often unhinged rants that have become the norm on Russian television. “Either we lose in Ukraine, or the Third World War starts,” Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of Russia Today and a close ally of Putin’s, said in April. “I think World War III is more realistic, knowing us, knowing our leader … That all this will end with a nuclear strike seems more probable to me.” At various times, Simonyan has discussed nuclear attacks on Ukraine, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, arguing that death would be better than succumbing to “the monstrous organism known as the collective Western world.”

Vladimir Solovyov, another popular broadcaster who is close to Putin, routinely expresses a preference for nuclear annihilation over a Russian defeat. The invitation of Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, to the White House and the U.S. Capitol in December made Solovyov especially angry. “We’ll either win, or humanity will cease to exist, because the Lord won’t stand for the triumph of warriors of the Antichrist,” he said, repeating the new propaganda line that Ukrainians aren’t just Nazis; they’re satanists. “We are Russians. God is with us,” he concluded. Despite his professed hatred for ungodly Western decadence, before the invasion of Ukraine Solovyov owned villas overlooking Lake Como, in Italy.

Why Did France And Germany Participate In U.S. Deception And Aggression Against Russia?

scheerpost  |  The U.S., having no need of or gift for statecraft, has long practiced what I’ve taken to calling the diplomacy of no diplomacy. You can’t expect much from bimbos such as Antony Blinken or Wendy Sherman, Blinken’s No. 2 at the State Department. All they can do is roar, even if they are mice next to any serious diplomat. 

But have the European powers now followed along? I fear to ask because I fear the answer. But I must, given recent events.

Early last year, when Petro Poroshenko stated publicly that the post-coup regime in Kyiv had no intention of abiding by diplomatic commitments it made in 2014-15 to a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis, a few eyebrows arched, but not over many. Who was the former Ukrainian president, anyway? I had him down from the first as a self-interested dummkopf who did what Washington told him to do and nothing more, no shred of statesmanship about him. 

It was another matter when, in early December, Angela Merkel admitted in back-to-back interviews that the European powers were up to the same thing. The objective of diplomatic talks in late 2014 and early 2015, the former German chancellor told Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, was not, as they had pretended, a framework for a federalized Ukraine in the cause of a lasting peace between its hostile halves: It was to deceive the Russians to give Kyiv time to prepare for a military assault on the Russian-speaking provinces in the east, whose people had refused to accept the U.S.–orchestrated coup that brought compulsively Russophobic Nazi-inflected nationalists to power in February 2014. 

Merkel’s revelations came as a shock, of course. But I contrived to mark down her comments as an inadvertent indiscretion in the autumn of a long-serving leader’s years. Merkel made her remarks more or less in passing. There was no boasting in them. She did not seem proud of her duplicity. 

Now François Hollande weighs in. A few days before the year ended, the former French president gave a lengthy interview to The Kyiv Independent. In it he made the Franco–German position perfectly clear: Yes, Merkel and I lied to the Russians when we negotiated the Minsk I and Minsk II Protocols in September 2014 and February 2015. No, we never had any intention of making Kyiv observe them or otherwise enforcing them. It was a charade from the first and—the part of this interview that truly galls—Hollande advanced this as wise, sound statesmanship.

Let us count the betrayals we must assign to the hapless Hollande and the inconstant Merkel. 

The betrayal of Russia and its president will go without saying. It is a matter of record that Vladimir Putin, who participated directly in the Minsk talks, worked long, long hours in the cause of a settlement that would leave Ukraine stable and unified, a freestanding post–Soviet republic on the Russian Federation’s southwestern order.  

Here I will remind readers of the animosity Putin expressed in his New Year’s address, three days after Hollande described the Franco–German sting operation in detail:

The West lied to us about peace while preparing for aggression, and today, they no longer hesitate to openly admit it and to cynically use Ukraine and its people as a means to weaken and divide Russia.

Zelensky: Time's 2022 Man Of The Year

Time |  The call from the President’s office came on a Saturday evening: Be ready to go the next day, an aide said, and pack a toothbrush. There were no details about the destination or how we would get there, but it wasn’t difficult to guess. Only two days earlier, on the 260th day of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russians had retreated from the city of Kherson. It was the only regional capital they had managed to seize since the start of the all-out war in February, and the Kremlin had promised it would forever be a part of Russia. Now Kherson was free, and Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to get there as soon as possible.

His bodyguards were urging him to wait. The Russians had destroyed the city’s infrastructure, leaving it with no water, power, or heat. Its outskirts were littered with mines. Government buildings were rigged with trip wires. On the highway to Kherson, an explosion had destroyed a bridge, rendering it impassable. As they fled, the Russians were also suspected of leaving behind agents and saboteurs who could try to ambush the presidential convoy, to assassinate Zelensky or take him hostage. There would be no way to ensure his safety on the central square, where crowds had gathered to celebrate the city’s liberation, within range of Russian artillery.

 

The Twitter Drop Elicited Orchestrated Subjective Responses

mediaite |  27 tweets that are essentially identical

Construct Tweet: [Say formerly respected or once great, etc.] Matt Taibbi [call it PR or comms or like that] for the [world’s richest man, the richest person in the world, so on]. Quote tweet thread.
eg
Wajahat Ali
@WajahatAli
·
Follow
Matt Taibbi…what sad, disgraceful downfall. I swear, kids, he did good work back in the day. Should be a cautionary tale for everyone. Selling your soul for the richest white nationalist on Earth. Well, he’ll eat well for the rest of his life I guess. But is it worth it?

Watching some of the most famous, most powerful and richest men red-pill themselves into disaster. Pretty wild!

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 2, 2022

Imagine volunteering to do online PR work for the world's richest man on a Friday night, in service of nakedly and cynically right-wing narratives, and then pretending you're speaking truth to power.

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) December 3, 2022

From calling Goldman Sachs a “vampire squid” to giving free PR to the world’s richest billionaire. Man, what a career journey

— Simon Owens (@simonowens) December 3, 2022

The Twitter Drop Was An Orchestrated Subjective Disclosure

NYTimes |  It was, on the surface, a typical example of reporting the news: a journalist obtains internal documents from a major corporation, shedding light on a political dispute that flared in the waning days of the 2020 presidential race.

But when it comes to Elon Musk and Twitter, nothing is typical.

The so-called Twitter Files, released Friday evening by the independent journalist Matt Taibbi, set off a firestorm among pundits, media ethicists and lawmakers in both parties. It also offered a window into the fractured modern landscape of news, where a story’s reception is often shaped by readers’ assumptions about the motivations of both reporters and subjects.

The tempest began when Mr. Musk teased the release of internal documents that he said would reveal the story behind Twitter’s 2020 decision to restrict posts linking to a report in the New York Post about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son, Hunter.

Mr. Musk, who has accused tech companies of censorship, then pointed readers to the account of Mr. Taibbi, an iconoclast journalist who shares some of Mr. Musk’s disdain for the mainstream news media. Published in the form of a lengthy Twitter thread, Mr. Taibbi’s report included images of email exchanges among Twitter officials deliberating how to handle dissemination of the Post story on their platform.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi framed the exchanges as evidence of rank censorship and pernicious influence by liberals. Many others — even some ardent Twitter critics — were less impressed, saying the exchanges merely showed a group of executives earnestly debating how to deal with an unconfirmed news report that was based on information from a stolen laptop.

And as with many modern news stories, the Twitter Files were quickly weaponized in service of a dizzying number of pre-existing arguments.

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who often accuses liberals of stifling speech, made the claim that the “documents show a systemic violation of the First Amendment, the largest example of that in modern history.” House Republicans, who have called for an investigation into the business dealings of Hunter Biden, asserted with no evidence that the report showed systemic collusion between Twitter and aides to Joe Biden, who was then the Democratic nominee. (Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive at the time, later reversed the decision to block the Post story and told Congress it had been a mistake.)

Former Twitter executives, who have lamented Mr. Musk’s chaotic stewardship of the company, cited the documents’ release as yet another sign of recklessness. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, said that publicizing unredacted documents — some of which included the names and email addresses of Twitter officials — was “a fundamentally unacceptable thing to do” and placed people “in harm’s way.”

 

Do You Think That Elite Narrative Hegemony Has Reached A Tipping Point?

amidwesterndoctor |  One of my favorite fables is The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs, which concludes with the owner deciding he wants more gold than the goose can produce by laying eggs and cuts it open to get the rest, only to discover nothing is there and losing everything as a consequence of his greed. The nature of many industries are to voraciously expand as much as possible, and since the pharmaceutical industry has established a monopoly on the practice of medicine (and thus “life or death”), this “growth” can be gotten away with to the point the ever-growing healthcare spending now accounts for one-fifth of our GDP. 

My sincere hope with COVID-19 was that the flagrant greed of the pharmaceutical companies would finally awaken the populace to their conduct and end pharma’s Golden Goose (a few signs of which are now emerging as childhood vaccine uptake has dropped). A critical reason why this awakening is possible now is because the traditional form of propaganda, regardless of how much further developed it becomes, is no longer able to function in the modern environment created by the internet.

A fascinating article (by a multidisciplinary collaboration aiming to reform propaganda) I read on this subject makes the case that since anyone can now create their own evidence for competing narratives, the vertical advantage previously held by those with the resources to monopolize the airways with a tailored message has evaporated. For example, with no cost except my own time, I can take a day out of my life to put together a well-thought-out rebuttal to the media’s current propaganda campaign which is seen and believed by thousands upon thousands of people. If it was just me, it probably would not matter, but there are many, many, many, more people doing the exact same thing as we speak and it is my belief that they have played a large role in shaping the direction of history over the last seven years.

Because of this, the old models of propaganda simply don’t work anymore, and each media platform has been trying to combat this reality with stricter and stricter censorship (especially online) alongside more and more audacious lies. Each time they do it, however, it simply leaves the public with the side effects of excessive propaganda: being more confused, fragmented, polarized, and less trusting of authoritative sources than they were before, exactly what every propaganda campaign for a national interest strives to avoid. 

At this point, the article’s authors see three paths forward. Continue our current path (which will likely prove disastrous), adopt a Chinese-style system of complete internet censorship (which many in Big Tech and likely other industries are pushing for but many are effectively resisting), or adopt the alternative to mass propaganda originally proposed when all of this started a century ago (Elon Musk through his conduct at Twitter and elsewhere appears to endorse this option).

A central debate that waged since the early days of propaganda was if it was acceptable in a Democracy. Its proponents argued that society had become too complex for the average citizen to be able to make decisions of importance, that propaganda was remarkably effective in meeting the needs of the nation (e.g. winning the world wars), and if the government did not use it, others like the Nazis would use it against us and take over the world. Its opponents however were adamant a Democracy could not exist if it was run by propaganda and argued the solution to all of this was to improve the educational standards so the masses could understand and actively participate in the complex decisions of the modern era.

These two sides vied for control (e.g. America used propaganda throughout World War 2 on its citizens, but after the war, doing so was banned by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948). In tandem with increasing corruption in our government, in 2012 Obama signed the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, essentially repealing the 1948 law under the need to support the war on terror. This rapidly accelerated the glut of government propaganda citizens were fed and I suspect that glut played a key role in killing the government’s Golden Goose of propaganda.

In many ways, it appears the tables have reversed from how they were a century ago, as it is now the propagandists rather than the crowds that lack the sophistication to keep up with the complexity of the current era (e.g. message boards at the periphery of the internet can produce meme campaigns that run circles around institutional sources of propaganda like the CIA or CNN). 

For all of these reasons, as the authors of the aforementioned article mentioned it may be in everyone’s interest, including those in power, to take the third choice and switch to the model originally advocated for by John Dewey. Focus on creating an educational system that creates critically thinking citizens who actively participate in the decision-making process in order to arrive at the best result for society (e.g. not sacrificing citizens is secret for the “greater good”) and design internet platforms that foster an open discourse rather than aggressively promoting specific narratives while censoring dissenting opinions or incentivizing inflammatory and polarizing content.

With everyday citizens empowered by the Internet now seeking and gaining access to databases for themselves, we face a choice. Either drop the pretense of being an open society, close off access, and solidify the gap between “the masses” and the “expert class,” or build the education and information infrastructure necessary to become a more open society.

I am very hopeful for this future but simultaneously recognize that power is one of the hardest things to let go of, so we will likely see a very rocky transition as we move towards it. In the meantime, I believe one of the most important things you can do is begin to open your eyes to the common PR techniques out there. Once you do, it's astounding how differently everything looks.

What Was The Point Of Calling Those Ukrainian S-300 Missiles That Hit Poland "Russian-Made"?

apnews |  Poland said early Wednesday that a Russian-made missile fell in the country’s east, killing two people, though U.S. President Joe Biden said it was “unlikely” it was fired from Russia.

The blast, which Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy decried as “a very significant escalation,” prompted Biden to call an emergency meeting of G-7 and NATO leaders. A deliberate, hostile attack on NATO member Poland could trigger a collective military response by the alliance.

Poland: The S-300 strike seems to have come from the Ukrainian side.

US: Because of the trajectory, it’s unlikely to be a Russian strike.

British media, naturally: pic.twitter.com/auyho2C2vt

— Nina 🐙 Byzantina (@NinaByzantina) November 16, 2022

But key questions around the circumstances of the missile launch remained amid the confusion caused by a blistering series of Russian airstrikes across the nearby border in Ukraine, none larger than who fired it. Russia denied any involvement in the Poland blast.

Three U.S. officials said preliminary assessments suggested the missile was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one amid the crushing salvo against Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure Tuesday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

That assessment and Biden’s comments at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia contradict information earlier Tuesday from a senior U.S. intelligence official who told the AP that Russian missiles crossed into Poland.

The Polish government said it was investigating and raising its level of military preparedness. Biden pledged support for Poland’s investigation.

A statement from the Polish Foreign Ministry identified the weapon as being made in Russia. President Andrzej Duda was more cautious, saying that it was “most probably” Russian-made but that its origins were still being verified.

“We are acting with calm,” Duda said. “This is a difficult situation.”

Biden’s decision to convene the emergency meeting upended schedules for the final day of the Group of 20 meeting in Indonesia.

Biden, who was awakened overnight by staff with the news of the missile while attending the summit, called Polish President Andrzej Duda to express his condolences. On Twitter, Biden promised “full U.S support for and assistance with Poland’s investigation,” and “reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to NATO.”

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the meeting of the alliance’s envoys in Brussels. The U.N. Security Council also planned to meet Wednesday for a previously scheduled briefing on the situation in Ukraine. The strike in Poland was certain to be raised.