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Thursday, 28 May 2015

Jade Helm as Itself a Psy Op

Art by David Dees.

For most consumers of alternative news and media, the lineup of the players constitutes the tyrants and their systemic control, and the enlightened underground, with both sides fighting the great battle of winning the hearts and minds of the rest of the public.  For the alternative news and information community, the possibility of large-scale psychological operations within alternative media itself are generally outside the spectrum of the possible.  Indeed, crowds today are sill cheering on Assange and his Vaudeville Whistleblower Roadshow with Bradley-Chelsea Manning, and more recently finding themselves intellectually snowed in by our last hero, Snowden.

Jade Helm 15

In 2015, the focal point has become the Jade Helm 15 training operation across at least 7 states, with SOCOM running the training exercise for realistic military training. The brief document lists role-playing involving Texas and Utah as “hostile” areas, with insurgents in Southern California and other states like Colorado, California and Nevada as “friendly.”  On the surface, the exercise gives credence to the ultimate fears and paranoia of tea party and militia groups – clearly the U.S. government is prepping for everything from “martial law,” to “economic collapse,” and everything else under the sun that can be gleaned from a Google search and baseless YouTube speculation.

Fending off the mainstream media’s dishonest portrayal of the patriot and alternative media’s fears, Alex Newman of The New American concludes:

“Of course, critics of Jade Helm and the Obama administration should stick to facts that can be proven, rather than speculation. Most have done that, including many of those being dishonestly smeared by the deceitful media. However, the establishment press has an even more serious responsibility and duty to do the same — stick to the facts, do not deceive readers, question those in power, and adhere to basic journalistic ethics. Instead of sticking to the facts and being honest, though, establishment propagandists masquerading as journalists have once again shown the world why they cannot be trusted. As such, it is no surprise that so few Americans trust the “mainstream” press and are flocking to the alternative media by the millions.”

Common Sense Show host Dave Hodges has argued the end goal of Jade Helm is the imminent roundup, gulag confinement and gun confiscation of all Americans who have been marked as rebellious, with bank account confiscations, martial law and false flags just around the corner.  Infowars reporters Joe Biggs and David Knight have argued similarly that the threats are rather constant, slow build ups to condition the American public into the acceptance of moving towards a third world, banana republic scenario.  However, what all these portrayals have not delved into is the possibility that Jade Helm 15’s “leak” to the alternative news and patriot community itself might be a psychological warfare operation.  In order to understand this possibility, it is necessary to understand the purpose and goal of PsyOps.

Psychological Warfare Operations

Psychological warfare operations are at once mysterious, yet fairly well-known.  Most educated readers are familiar with World War II propaganda or the notion of “black operations,” but more precise and technical ideas of PsyOps are not as well known.   Retired Maj. Ed Rouse explains of the goals of PsyOps:

BAM!

BAM!

“Psychological Operations (PSYOP) or Psychological Warfare (PSYWAR) is simply learning everything about your target enemy, their beliefs, likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities. Once you know what motivates your target, you are ready to begin psychological operations.

Psychological operations may be defined broadly as the planned use of communications to influence human attitudes and behavior … to create in target groups behavior, emotions, and attitudes that support the attainment of national objectives. The form of communication can be as simple as spreading information covertly by word of mouth or through any means of multimedia.

A psychological warfare campaign is a war of the mind. Your primary weapons are sight and sound. PSYOP can be disseminated by face-to-face communication, audio-visual means (television), audio media (radio or loudspeaker), visual media, (leaflet newspapers, books, magazines and/or posters). The weapon is not how its sent, but the message it carries and how that message affects the recipient.”

With that basic definition in mind, we can consider the possibility of Jade Helm 15 itself as having multiple potential uses.  Rather than the simple, binary dialectic of tyrannical fascist system versus liberty-loving, God-fearing patriot, the effect of Jade Helm 15’s “leak” upon the public and their reaction are far more interesting and relevant than the operation itself.   In fact, if we think back to recent years, alternative media outlets were in a tizzy over National Level Exercise 09, and then over NLE 11, etc.  In neither case did imminent apocalyptic doom manifest, but what did occur was a labyrinth of fractal speculation and orgiastic frenzy of bloggers, YouTubers and eschatological doomsayers, as these “leaked” exercises took on a life of their own.

From the perspective of PsyOps, the potential of Jade Helm to “learn everything about your target enemy, their beliefs, their likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses,” etc., would thus have numerous applications here.  On one level, the inter-contextual dialectic of tyrannical military versus veterans and patriots is the out playing of the intended war gaming scenario.

Multi-level Game Theory and Algorithmic Tracking

On a higher, meta level, the intention is to gather game theory-style data on the target audience, which in this case is not merely the alternative media and tea party niche, but also the mainstream media and its response to the tea party response, and back and forth.  Like a game of Pong, the game theorist can sit back and watch mass trends, movements and reactions between these two sides with social media and search engine algorithmic tracking.

Titan Supercomputer.

Titan Supercomputer.

For example, a Raleigh-based firm boasts of its ability to track “suicide bombing” with its collection of Pakistani bombing information.  WNCN reports:

“In analyzing the information, they realized that they have the blast signatures for the terrorist organizations. “I can tell you who did the attack with 93 percent accuracy, based on the way they make the bombs,” Usamani said.  They looked at what they call geo-political indicators, which includes things like political events, weather patterns, even the date on the calendar.  Burns said there are more than 150 such indicators. “You have to combine all of those,” he said. “You have to determine which combination is going to develop the risks for a particular area.”

Despite limitations in this type of software, numerous companies have arisen with the technological capability to offer some form of predictive algorithm programs to service law enforcement and intelligence agencies in “pre-crime.”  One of the many goals of Jade Helm style operations that are consistent, ongoing military praxis would be the overcoming of these limitations and moving closer to the unachievable accuracy of 100%.

In other words, perfection, or the nearest thing to, requires a lot of practice.  Jade Helm is therefore an exercise that is far more relevant for data collection in terms of risk management and game theory for intelligence agencies and front tech companies, than anything to do with martial law, imminent gun confiscation or the blood moon asteroid crashing into the Wal-Mart turned FEMA camp guillotine gulag.

In the wake of ongoing exposure of mainstream media’s consistent usage of staged, faked, and computer-generated “news,”  alternative media outlets and consumers should be reminded of the possibility of alternative media falling into this same pattern of sensationalizing and disregarding facts for ever increasingly clickbait, tabloid-style online media gimmickry in both alternative and mainstream sources.

When considering the possibility of large-scale psychological operations in relation to purported “leaks” and “whistleblowers” who become the darlings of mainstream media and begin negotiating book and movie deals, John Young of Cryptome.org gave an analysis concurrent with the above to RT in 2011:



If the military wanted to keep Jade Helm secret, it could have been kept secret.  The decision to run a mass drill in several states was intentionally done and purposefully allowed to “leak.”  The consequences of such a public revelation are much more useful for war gaming and future predictive responses than any imminent threat of martial law.  Just like Assange and Snowden, Jade Helm is the establishment’s middle finger in the face of the ridiculous naiveté of the Tea Party crowd.

Putin: Expansion of global terrorism is the U.S.'s fault -- he's right


China and Russia shoulder to shoulder, Victory Day

    
Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks with uncommon bluntness against the foreign policy of the United States. He wants an alliance with China and the BRICS states, to close the security gaps that arise from US foreign policy: The illegal interventions of the West are what first gave strength to the Islamic State. The BRICS countries should safeguard against such developments.

At a meeting Monday with the security chiefs of the BRICS countries, Putin declared, according to TASS:

We all know what is happening now, say, in the Middle East or in North Africa, and we are aware of the problems connected with the terrorist organisation that calls itself the Islamic State. However, prior to unacceptable external interference carried out without any sanctions from the United Nations Security Council, the countries where this organisation now flourishes had no terrorism at all. The consequences are clearly grave and everything that happened in the past years on the international arena needs to be adjusted.

Putin sees danger for other nations of the world in the West's aggressive policies: "It is also obvious that our countries have to face serious threats due to violations of international law and the national sovereignty of states in various spheres of activity."

During his meeting with the representatives of China, Putin and his guests aired their views of "color revolution" risks: one such took place in Ukraine, and Moscow expects that the US was firmly behind the removal of president Yanukovich and the subsequent Maidan unrest. It is also indisputable among western observers that the US was meddling in the background.

Just lately has a secret Pentagon report revealed that the US long since had indications that an Islamic state could be established, yet the government in Washington took no action against the IS, because strife between Muslims was in keeping with the geostrategic orientation of the US government.

Remarkable is the fact that Putin now puts forward a linkage between the territorial spread of Islamic terror and US foreign policy in the Near East.

Putin is apparently attempting to increase pressure on the West: The Alliance is making no progress against the splintered fighters in Syria. Lately David Cameron asked Putin to help find a way out of the Syrian morass. Putin, who supports Assad, could charge a good price for his help. His plain words against the West in connection with the rise of the IS give a foretaste of the direction Putin will take in the next hand of Middle East poker. It will certainly not be a position of weakness.

Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten
Translated from German by Tom Winter (Putin's quotes replaced by Sott.net with official translation)

Elderly woman attacked by bear in Japan

Image

© Guérin Nicolas/Wikimedia Commons
Asiatic Black Bear

    
Officials in Mie Prefecture have apologized to neighboring Shiga Prefecture after an elderly woman was attacked by a moon bear 6 km from where they released such an animal.

The 88-year-old woman from Taga suffered severe injuries including a broken right cheekbone after being attacked by a bear at around 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday while praying to a Jizo statue along the prefectural road in Taga's mountains.

Jizo statues are Buddhist icons that are believed to help protect travelers, women, children and the weak. They are usually found at crossroads, and are often looked after by elderly people living in the area.

According to Shiga Prefectural Police, the bear roared at the woman from behind and swiped at her with its paw before it ran away.

They said the woman's injuries were not life-threatening.

Taga, a small town in Shiga Prefecture, is situated 6 km from the border area where Mie Prefecture officials released an Asian black bear (also known as moon bear) in early May.

While it has not been confirmed that the bear that attacked the woman was the same animal, Taga Mayor Hisayoshi Kubo criticized the release.

The town said that no wild bear had been spotted in Taga since 2004, until the latest incident occurred.

Mie Prefecture officials visited Taga to offer an apology for failing to inform Shiga authorities about letting the bear loose.

The prefecture said a moon bear, which is an endangered species, was discovered on May 17 caught in a hog trap in a mountainous area in Inabe.

After anesthetizing the bear, they transported it by truck, releasing it in the border area in accordance with prefectural guidelines.

"With the recent incident in mind, we will need to revise our guidelines," said Takahiko Uda, head of Mie Prefecture's wildlife management and damage prevention office.

He said current guidelines did not impose any obligation to inform authorities in neighboring municipalities of a release of wild animals into the mountains.

At least 18 dead in Texas, Oklahoma flooding as region is again battered

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© Reuters / Daniel Kramer
Motorists survey the flood waters in southwest Houston, Texas May 26, 2015

    
The record-breaking weekend storm that pounded parts of Texas and Oklahoma with heavy rains and spawned widespread flooding has claimed upwards of 18 lives as of Wednesday, officials say.

According to Reuters, the death toll from the floods now stands at 18, up from 10 only a day earlier. Authorities were still looking to locate 13 people who vanished during the storm, CNN reported.

Five of this week's fatalities occurred in Houston, Texas--the fourth most-populous city in the United States--where a new flash flood warning was announced by the National Weather Service on Wednesday, as nearly 2.2 million Texans are reeling from the weekend's disaster.

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"This rain has the potential to cause additional street flooding so residents are advised to be careful as they commute to work," city officials in Houston announced on Wednesday.
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© Reuters / Daniel Kramer

    

Earlier in the day, warnings were issued after a dam on Padera Lake in the town of Midlothian suffered from the heavy waters and authorities feared a breach was imminent. Hours later, Captain John Spann with the Midlothian Police Department told reporters that officials were "standing down" as concerns of further disaster started to subside.

"We're just going to monitor and they're not expecting any time of catastrophic failure at this time," Spann told a local Fox News affiliate.

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The toll of the Memorial Day weekend storm includes damages to around 1,400 structures in Houston, the city said.

According to the Associated Press, around 700 homes in the greater Houston area have been damaged by the storm, and Reuters reported that more than 200 flights scheduled to either arrive or depart from airports in Dallas and Houston on Wednesday had been canceled.

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© Reuters / Tamir Kalifa

    

Russia envoy to NATO: NATO blaming Russia for aggression gives Kiev carte blanche to seek military solution

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© Reuters / Ints Kalnins

    
NATO is destabilizing the Ukrainian crisis by turning blind eye to Kiev's aim for a military solution, Moscow's envoy to NATO said, warning that alliance's rhetoric of shifting all responsibility onto Russia is not consistent with real state of affairs.

"NATO continues to position Russia as a participant in the conflict, which is far from reality and has a serious confrontational potential because, in essence, it gives Kiev carte blanche to seek a military solution to the conflict," Russian envoy to NATO Aleksandr Grushko told Rossiya 24 TV channel.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced earlier on Wednesday that the alliance will create up to eight new command and control units on its eastern borders.

"We are establishing six command and control units in the three Baltic countries [Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia] and in Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania. And probably also [there will] be two more of those in two more countries," Stoltenberg said.


Calling the alliance's belligerent rhetoric towards Moscow an "outdated" tune, Grushko added that NATO's approach is not consistent with the real state of affairs in Europe. The envoy hinted that NATO's perceptions of a threat is artificially created with the help of the Baltic countries which beef up an anti-Russian stance with baseless accusations of security threats.

"It seems like some states, for various reasons, including internal political, enjoy being in the front-line, requiring special attention, special protection. And what is most important, [these countries] continue to search for more enemies and to write off their own mistakes whether in foreign policy or internal under the guise of some mythical threat from Russia," Grushko said.

The exaggeration of the "Russian threat" and the buildup of NATO forces along its borders does not correlate with the real needs of security in the region, Grushko said, calling the situation "completely inadequate to the risks that exist in this region."

According to the diplomat, NATO has been boosting its activity in the region that for decades was absolutely safe in terms of "conventional threats." The alliance is now hosting over 30 jets in the Baltics, while before 2004 the region did not host any NATO air power, Grushko stated, also noting the increase in surveillance flights.

"Russia has increased its air activity by around 50 percent, so that is one of the reasons we have increased air policing on the NATO side," Stoltenberg explained during a conference at the Center for Strategic International Studies. The NATO chief also stated that the alliance's "security measures" also include a doubling of NATO Response Forces, and a creation of a spearhead rapid reaction force as well as the increasing the size and frequency of military exercises.

Meanwhile the prospects for NATO's further expansion to the east are bleak, believes Grushko, despite Kiev's plans to join the North Atlantic Alliance as mentioned in Ukraine's new national security strategy. Stoltenberg said eventually it's up to Ukraine "and 28 allies to decide if NATO's going to enlarge and have a new member" after Ukraine announced it "will implement a reform program and then aim at applying for membership."

But there are not many "enthusiasts" in NATO who really believe there are prospects for Ukraine to become a member, according to Grushko . This scenario is "virtually impossible" because everyone understands what a dangerous and unpredictable "mine" that would lay under European security, said Grushko.

Court unseals photo of corrupt cops who put antlers on black man's head

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© Chicago Sun-Times

    
A shocking photo has emerged of two former police officers posing with a suspect dressed as a hunting trophy. The picture was unsealed by a Chicago judge as one of the officers fired over the incident appealed the decision.

The published the troubling polaroid on Tuesday, showing Special Operations Section (SOS) officers Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan kneeling over an African-American man with deer antlers strapped to his head. It was taken sometime between 1999 and 2003.

Finnigan was convicted of leading a group of rogue cops in a string of robberies and home invasions, and given a 12-year prison sentence in 2011. Federal prosecutors shared the photo with Chicago police two years later, resulting in a 5-4 police board vote that saw McDermott's fired as opposed to merely suspended. The majority opinion stated that "appearing to treat an African-American man not as a human being but as a hunted animal is disgraceful and shocks the conscience."

Cook County Judge Thomas Allen decided to unseal the photo, although attorneys for both McDermott and the Chicago police requested it remain secret, citing concerns over the privacy of the yet unidentified man posing as the crooked cops' "trophy."

In a statement to the , the police superintendent, Garry McCarthy called the photo "disgusting."

"The despicable actions of these two former officers have no place in our police department or in our society," McCarthy said. "As the superintendent of this department, and as a resident of our city, I will not tolerate this kind of behavior, and that is why neither of these officers works for CPD today."

"Our residents deserve better than this, as do the thousands of good men and women in this department," McCarthy added.

Finnigan told federal investigators that the man in the photo had been arrested for having "20 bags of weed," reported the Sun-Times. The hunting rifles were the suspect's, Finnigan said, and the photo was taken in "the spur of the moment" at the Harrison Police District on the West Side. There was no report about the arrest, Finnigan told the FBI, because he and McDermott had let the suspect go.

McDermott left the SOS in 2003, so he was not involved in the 2007 scandal that saw the unit disbanded and Finnigan and several others charged and convicted. Former police superintendent Phil Cline praised McDermott as a "very hard-working policeman, the type of policeman I wanted working for us and his character was impeccable," according to the Sun-Times.

In a June 2013 interview with Internal Affairs Sergeant Michael Barz, McDermott remembered the photo, but not the time and place it was taken, or the identity of the man with the antlers.

"I am embarrassed by my participation in this photograph," he said at the time. "I made a mistake as a young, impressionable police officer who was trying to fit in."

Court records obtained by the indicate McDermott, who earned 74 department awards during his career, was also involved in four federal lawsuits accusing him and other officers of misconduct. The three settlements and one jury judgment cost Chicago $162,000 in payouts, as well as "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in fees to the plaintiffs' attorneys.

Russia to start construction of Turkish Stream in June

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© Sputnik/ Taras Litvinenko

    
Russian Gazprom has signaled that it will move forward with the construction of the Turkish Stream, regardless of potential political obstacles in Europe, planning to cease using its route through Ukraine in 2019, Stratfor reported.

According to US private intelligence company Stratfor, Russia's Gazprom has clearly signaled that it will push ahead the construction of the Turkish Stream, calling upon Italian energy firm Saipem and Germany's Europipe to start working on the project.

"Russia said it plans to start constructing the underwater portion of the pipeline in June. Gazprom has already told Europe that it plans to cease using its current export route through Ukraine in 2019 and shift those natural gas supplies to the Turkish Stream pipeline," Stratfor analysts emphasized.

Indeed, Moscow has resumed a contract with Europipe for 150,000 metric tons of pipe, and notified a subsidiary of Saipem that it could begin constructing the 63 billion-cubic-meter pipeline in the Black Sea.

While European experts express their doubts regarding Russia's ability to boost the project if Europe does not build its part of pipeline infrastructure to receive natural gas from the Turkish border, Moscow has already invested enough to begin construction on the first of Turkish Stream's four parallel pipelines.

Although building the entire Turkish Stream pipeline project will be a complicated process and Moscow may face a number of political and financial difficulties while implementing the project, "Russia's approach reveals a nuanced, low-risk plan for the pipeline," the analysts pointed out.

"Turkey is one of Russia's most important natural gas markets in the long term, and its natural gas demand has more than doubled over the past 10 years. By the mid 2020s, Turkey's natural gas demand could amount to the entire volume carried by the first two legs of Turkish Stream, and it will almost certainly need the amount of natural gas carried by the first leg even sooner," Stratfor stressed.

According to the analysts, by implementing the Turkish Stream the Kremlin will kill two birds with one stone. If European countries build the infrastructure, Russia will immediately jump at the opportunity to bolster its natural gas supplies to Europe. If not, the new pipeline will allow Moscow to boost its exports to the swiftly growing Turkish market.