Memetracking and PSYOPS

We are the cause of our own suffering.

This is a phrase that is running through my mind more and more each day. Maybe its the epic practical joke otherwise known as the U.S. Presidential elections that is creeping up upon us, or simply the bluntness of the headlines as revelation of method creeps into overdrive. Either way, the common American glories in their own enslavement as no other peoples in history ever have before. Let us simply consider two recent items, one concerning the social media, the other addressing PSYOPS in the MSM. We shall begin with the so-called 'vengeful librarians' and their infiltration of the social medias:

"The Associated Press reports that the CIA maintains a social-media tracking center operated out of an nondescript building in a Virginia industrial park. The intelligence analysts at the agency's Open Source Center, who other agents refer to as "vengeful librarians," are tasked with sifting through millions of tweets, Facebook messages, online chat logs, and other public data on the World Wide Web to glean insights into the collective moods of regions or groups abroad. According to the Associated Press, these librarians are tracking up to five million tweets a day from places like China, Pakistan and Egypt...

"The CIA facility wasn't built specifically to track the ebb and flow of social media: The program was established in response to a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission with the initial mandate to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation. According to the Associated Press, the center shifted gears and started focusing on social media after watching thousands of Iranian protesters turn to Twitter during the Iranian election protests of 2009, challenging the results of the elections that put Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power.

"In the past few years, sentiment and mood analysis have become mainstays in the defense and intelligence communities. Last October, an Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit revealed how the Department of Homeland Security has carefully monitored a variety of public online sources, from social networks to highly popular blogs like Daily Kos for years, alleging that 'leading up to President Obama's January 2009 inauguration, DHS established a Social Networking Monitoring Center (SNMC) to monitor social-networking sites for 'items of interest.' 'In August, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), invited analysts to submit proposals on the research applications of social media to strategic communication. DARPA planned on shelling out $42 million in funding for 'memetrackers' to develop 'innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems.' "

Yes dear reader, DARPA has know embraced 'memetrackers.' Let us briefly consider the meme.

"Attempts to understand the tidal wave that is the copycat effect have also been undertaken by the protoscience of the meme or 'idea virus.' In terms of the history of the acceptance of the copycat effect, this is significant because the concept has moved from acceptance to explanation.

"While the concept had been in the air since 1976, Richard Dawkins formalized the notion of memes in his 1990 book The Selfish Gene. A meme... is a contagious idea that replicates like a virus, passing from mind to mind. 'Memes function the same way genes and viruses do, propagating through communication networks and face-to-face contact between people,' noted David S. Bennahum, editor and founder of the newsletter MEME in 1995. ' 'Memetics,' a field of study, postulates that the meme is the basic unit of cultural evolution. Examples of memes include melodies, icons, fashion statements and phrases.' "
(The Copycat Effect, Loren Coleman, pgs. 253-254)

The effects of memes can go well beyond trivial things such as fashion trends, however.

"Memes are applied to suicides and murders via the Werther effect, of course, the concept coined by David Phillips. One of Phillips's first associates, Paul Marsden, has been working on a book called Contagion: The Science of Infectious Ideas, which essentially reworks his psychology doctorate thesis. The subjects he covers illustrate how widespread the memetics people think memes are: reflex contagion (e.g., yawning and laughter), emotional contagion (e.g. fear, anxiety, sadness, and depression), crowd contagion (e.g., aggression and panic), hysterical contagion (e.g., psychogenic disorders such as anorexia, deliberate self-harm, and chronic fatigue syndrome), suicide contagion (e.g., suicidal thoughts and acts), financial contagion (e.g. speculative trading) and consumer contagion (e.g. fads, fashions, and crazes).

"Marsden has become a firm convert to the meme. He feels that 'mind viruses spread through a Darwinian process of imitation. We know for example that if a suicide is reported in the mass media, the suicide rate will rise in the following month. A few people with poor immunity to this mind virus will become infected and display similar symptoms to the original victim -they will commit suicide.' Furthermore, writes Marsden, 'the amount of violence seen on US television screens correlates positively with US homicides. We know as well that suicide victims following a publicized suicide story will more likely than not resemble the reported victim.' "
(ibid, 254-255)

I will now remind the reader that the Arab Spring revolts were essentially triggered by the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire, an event that received mass media coverage in addition to setting social media networks ablaze (har har). The CIA (specifically the after mentioned 'vengeful librarians') claims that it was able to predict the revolution that spread to Egypt via these various social media networks:

"From Arabic to Mandarin, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the analysts gather the information, often in a native tongue. They cross-reference it with a local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House. There might be a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, or perhaps a prediction of which Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.

Yes, they saw the uprising in Egypt coming; they just didn't know exactly when revolution might hit, says the center's director, Doug Naquin.

The center already had 'predicted that social media in places like Egypt could be a game-changer and a threat to the regime,' he said in an interview."

As much as I love the Internet, it is an invaluable data mine for organizations like DARPA and the CIA. The notion of 'memetracking' that is being publicly revealed is possibly the most effective way of predicting the future (other than creating it, of course) available to the Cryptocracy. This blog itself is something that I've often been torn over in that I have a burning desire to bring more attention to obscure pieces of history, religion, and myth but am also afraid that it will do more harm than good. The vengeful librarians are yet another consideration in the latter feeling.

As for PSYOPS, consider this nugget:

"Environmental activist Sharon Wilson showed up to an oil industry event in Houston last week and caught a startling glimpse into how the fracking industry approaches residents in towns where they drill.

"Wilson recorded industry insiders confirming they hire military psychological operation veterans, and use procedures pulled straight from the Army's counterinsurgency manual."

The article from Business Insider goes on to give various examples of how PSYOPS are possibly being used by multinational corporations on the general public. Of course, this is nothing new -Corporations have been engaged in PSYOPS on the public for decades now, most notably in the entertainment and media industries. Consider this piece from the Washington Post (which was a major part of Operation Mockingbird) on the perception change the movie Top Gun had on the American public's view of war and the military:

"A country questioning its overall military posture, and a military establishment engaging in a counter-campaign for hearts and minds — if this feels like deja vu, that’s because it’s taking place on the 25th anniversary of the release of 'Top Gun.'

"That Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster, made in collaboration with the Pentagon, came out in the mid-1980s, when polls showed many Americans expressing doubts about the post-Vietnam military and about the constant saber rattling from the White House. But the movie’s celebration of sweat-shined martial machismo generated $344 million at the box office and proved to be a major force in resuscitating the military’s image.

"Not only did enlistment spike when “Top Gun” was released, and not only did the Navy set up recruitment tables at theaters playing the movie, but polls soon showed rising confidence in the military. With Ronald Reagan wrapping military adventurism in the flag, with the armed forces scoring low-risk but high-profile victories in Libya and Grenada, America fell in love with Maverick, Iceman and other high-fivin’ silver-screen super-pilots as they traveled Mach 2 while screaming about 'the need for speed.'

"Today, 'Top Gun' lives on in cable reruns, in the American psyche and, most important, in how it turned the Hollywood-Pentagon relationship into a full-on Mav-Goose bromance that ideologically slants films from their inception.

"The 1986 movie, starring Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis, was the template for a new Military-Entertainment Complex. During production, the Pentagon worked hand-in-hand with the filmmakers, reportedly charging Paramount Pictures just $1.8 million for the use of its warplanes and aircraft carriers. But that taxpayer-subsidized discount came at a price — the filmmakers were required to submit their script to Pentagon brass for meticulous line edits aimed at casting the military in the most positive light. (One example: Time magazine reported that Goose’s death was changed from a midair collision to an ejection scene, because 'the Navy complained that too many pilots were crashing.')

"Although 'Top Gun' was not the first movie to exchange creative input for Pentagon assistance and resources, its success set that bargain as a standard for other filmmakers, who began deluging the Pentagon with requests for collaboration. By the time the 1991 Persian Gulf War began, Phil Strub, the Pentagon’s liaison to the movie industry, told the Hollywood Reporter that he’d seen a 70 percent increase in the number of requests from filmmakers for assistance — effectively changing the way Hollywood works."

Earlier we noted that the US Intelligence community is looking for a few good memetrackers. Here, we see that PSYOPS is being directly used by multinational corporations on the American public, especially via the media and entertainment industries. This means that not only are the spooks tracking memes, but they're directly implanting them into the Group Mind. In fact, DARPA is attempting to make an actual science out of storytelling (and by default, the memes that weave their way through the stories). Wired notes:

"Mark Twain once tried to distinguish between the storyteller’s art and tales that a machine could generate. He observed that stringing 'incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities,' was the province of the American storyteller. A machine might imitate simple formulas behind yarns, but never quite master them.

"The Pentagon’s freewheeling research arm is hoping to prove Twain wrong. Darpa is asking scientists to 'take narratives and make them quantitatively analyzable in a rigorous, transparent and repeatable fashion.' The idea is to detect terrorists who have been indoctrinated by propaganda. Then, the Pentagon can respond with some messages of its own.

"The program is called 'Narrative Networks.' By understanding how stories have shaped your mind, the Pentagon hopes to sniff out who has fallen prey to dangerous ideas, a neuroscience researcher involved in the project tells Danger Room. With this knowledge, the military can also target groups vulnerable to terrorists’ recruiting tactics with its own counter-messaging.

“ 'Stories are important in security contexts,' Darpa said in an Oct. 7 solicitation for research proposals. Stories 'change the course of insurgencies, frame negotiations, play a role in political radicalization, influence the methods and goals of violent social movements.' The desire to study narratives has been simmering for a while in the Defense Department. A Darpa workshop in April to discuss the “neurobiology of narratives” added momentum to this project...

"Once scientists have perfected the science of how stories affect our neurochemistry, they will develop tools to 'detect narrative influence.' These tools will enable 'prevention of negative behavioral outcomes … and generation of positive behavioral outcomes, such as building trust.' In other words, the tools will be used to detect who’s been controlled by subversive ideologies, better allowing the military to drown out that message and win people onto their side.

“ 'The government is already trying to control the message, so why not have the science to do it in a systematic way?' said the researcher familiar with the project.

Indeed. It is for this reason that I'm often wary of addressing pop culture, especially newer music and films, in this blog. Many across the blogosphere are obsessed with 'exposing' the occult symbolism that dominates the entertainment industry. Unfortunately, I think this quest simply provides a justification to continue watching and listening to the products of what can be charitably described as highly comprised industries. Thus, they same memes that are implanted by the US Intelligence community continue to spread regardless of whether the individual in question is 'awakened' or not. What's more, even those that are 'awakened' are being manipulated towards negative actions. Hence, the rise of what I like to think of as the 'Soldier-of-the-Apocolpyse' types that have watched Fight Club and V For Vendetta one to many times. I've already chronicled the fall out of to much V For Vendetta before here.

Be wary dear readers.