Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
...I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in...
My condition is: Lots of Wisdom Tooth Vicodin + I hate Valentines Day.I have been laying low and taking Vicodin after my wisdom teeth operation on Wednesday. That's five straight days of codeine, and my moods are kind of weird and raw by this point.
Introducing:
From the depths of the Intarweb comes a shadowy character known only as Pixeldusted. S/He works in the shadows, interacting with the most arcane and mysterious parts of a vast and sprawling industrial complex.
Well sort of. I'll leave it to Dusty to explain. Pixeldusted is not a fictional character, though of course, in the current climate of Information Operations, a reader cannot assume such things.
So currently our stable of contributors includes:
And that's about it. Any of our regular visitors (and irregular confused lookers-on) are invited to contact me at NOdan.feidtSPAM@gmail.com if they would like to get an account here. I am trying to expand the operation a bit here. I have the inklings of long-term plan to design a better site. I would like to get friends contributing. There are no real hard and fast rules about it, because I don't really care that much. But I know a lot of smart people that could add some stuff.
So along with this polite general invitation to the visiting public, please keep my heavy recent course of painkillers in mind when reading the rest of this post.
Because yes, the structure of the site is antiquated and needs to be replaced. The HongWiki is probably not long for this world -- I look towards a better Content Management System setup like WordPress. In my day job, I am designing a new site for Politics in Minnesota's campaign coverage. Once that is done, I will actually have a very useful template for a new HongPong.com. Sweet.
*******
I looked at my web server logs for the first time in a while, and it turns out that well, things are going pretty well on the site. We are averaging 744 visits a day in February, of which I would estimate that 30% are spammers and 30% are search engines, but that's a rough estimate.
Here are the most popular search phrases of the last 13 days: (hits, then percentages)
And i don't even have the damn cartoons. Or a Mamoon falafel. Last month's search phrases were sort of funny:
"Amadeus Pegasus Watchtower" being the supposed three names of the CIA programs bringing cocaine into the United States, which Ruppert claimed to uncover (as we noted earlier). HongPong.com is now like #5 for that on Google.
U.S. Concludes 'Cyber Storm' Mock Attacks By TED BRIDIS
The Associated Press / Friday, February 10, 2006; 8:37 PM
WASHINGTON -- The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.
Bloggers?
Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events.[......]
There was no impact on the real Internet during the weeklong exercise. Government officials from the United States, Canada, Australia and England and executives from Microsoft, Cisco, Verisign and others said they were careful to simulate attacks only using isolated computers, working from basement offices at the Secret Services headquarters in downtown Washington.
[.....]Homeland Security coordinated the exercise. More than 115 government agencies, companies and organizations participated. They included the White House National Security Council, Justice Department, Defense Department, State Department, National Security Agency and CIA, which conducted its own cybersecurity exercise called "Silent Horizon" last May.
An earlier cyberterrorism exercise called "Livewire" for Homeland Security and other federal agencies concluded there were serious questions over government's role during a cyberattack depending on who was identified as the culprit _ terrorists, a foreign government or bored teenagers.
It also questioned whether the U.S. government would be able to detect the early stages of such an attack without significant help from private technology companies. [I sense a Blackwater Offensive Hacking contract in the works -Dan]
Please recall the "Fight the Net" Defense Department concept in the "Information Operations Roadmap" (PDF) from earlier. Let's add a bit from the BBC:
A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.
Bloggers beware.
As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer. From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.
[.......]
The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.
All these are engaged in information operations.
Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.
"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.
The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.
"In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States - even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.
So your own [American] brain is a target of military spending.
Accidentally.
Tax dollars >> Military-engineered thoughts.
Now that's what I call a feedback loop of sinister proportions. As for this site, well, it got 57 hits from the military just so far this month.
Jane Cat had surgery to repair his hematoma on the same day as my Wisdom Teeth, and the feline is now kinda tired, and pretty dusty. Tragic that a cat gets dusty when it can't groom its face.
Here, through my hydrocodone haze, Jane Cat is grabbing onto "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael Ruppert, the conspiratorial work of parapolitical mega-non-fiction leading up to "Cheney did 9/11". I had pulled out this weird book because an old high school friend randomly stopped by today, and we talked about the likelihood that Wellstone was assassinated.
Could he have been Done In?
"People have been killed for less," I said. And Ruppert has an extended conspiracy theory about the subject, included in his book and featured on FromTheWilderness.com (and a followup). I tend to favor the electromagnetic pulse weapon theory – which explains the cell phone anomalies in northern Minnesota that day.
(My photo from a peace march in St. Paul on March 23, 2003)
The leading book on the Wellstone assassination theory, though, is apparently American Assassination by Don Jacobs and Jim Fetzer, a U of M professor. From a review:
Since becoming active in this issue, local residents have contacted Dr. Fetzer and related strange electronic interference in the area at the time of the crash. One experienced an odd cell-phone phenomenon with a form of noise unlike any he had heard before.
Its auditory pattern appears consistent with the use of "electro-magnetic" (EM) weapons developed by the Pentagon to take out computerized systems and wreak harm on human targets. It was part of the plan to bring down the plane using kinds of weapons of which most Americans are unaware.
These weapons can disable radio communications, stall warning systems, course deviation indicator, and electrical switches controlling the pitch of the props, causing substantial loss of control. They can render persons unconscious, incapable of muscle control, or even bring about their death.
In the wake of the crash, 69% of Minnesotans blamed a "GOP conspiracy" for Wellstone’s death.
I want to know where that statistic came from.
I got an oil change today and the mechanic noted my Wellstone bumper sticker. "We were just talking the other day about how great he was," she said. "It's always brought me good luck," I said. "Never been pulled over as long as its been on there."
And it is worth noting again that Wellstone was the only Democratic Senator to vote against the war who faced election that November. His political "survival" — assured in polls just before the election – posed a grave threat to the rationale for war - the rational public of Minnesota threatened to upset the spectacle.
And then there was all that damn bad weather (or not). Wellstone was afraid of planes, that's why he had the bus. And he was once sprayed with coca defoliant in Colombia. Tangle with the Establishment's cocaine friends in the Global South, who even knows what trouble you'd get into...
Amadeus, Pegasus, Watchtower. Information Operations.
The Vice President shoots a man, and they cover it up for 22 hours just for shits and giggles.
Time for another Vicodin. Official candy of Valentine's Day 2006.
Posted by HongPong at February 14, 2006 01:04 AM