More ex-CIA Stepping up and Stepping it up at Counterpunch

by **Gouda** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 8:37 am

Deep ethics and sexy, irresistible lure of security clearance. The latest feature in Counterpunch's ongoing series highlighting former intelligence officials gone sane. This is RICHARD THIEME's (an author and speaker focused on the deeper implications of technology, religion, and science) interview with David MacMichael (former CIA Analyst, US Marine and historian). <blockquote>Quote:<hr>MacMichael started The Association of National Security Alumni, an organization to expose and curtail covert actions, and is a steering committee member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).<hr></blockquote> *** "The CIA: Cowboys, Indians and Whistleblowers" - An Interview with David MacMichael <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/thieme04032006.html">www.counterpunch.org/thieme04032006.html</a> Teaser: <blockquote>Quote:<hr> RT: David, we discussed technology and the intelligence community DM: That's a term I hate! It sounds so warm and fuzzy. RT: What do you prefer? DM: Intelligence system. RT: OK. Technology and the intelligence system. DM: For years I worked at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) and Uri Geller and people like that were always floating through. I was supposed to be a voice of sanity but they did get me thinking about certain things that show up in your piece on technology (MacMichael reviewed my essay, The Changing Context of Intelligence and Ethics: Enabling Technologies as Transformational Engines) and what is happening there in the intelligence community. Jacques Ellul wrote of how technology defines the way the world operates and if it has an evil purpose or one that is wrong by previous standards, it will be used anyway. I was a history professor, and I think of Diderot in the 18th century France. The Encyclopedia was really a technical manual that exposed what had previously been referred to as "the mysteries" of the craft guilds. Transforming mystery into knowledge became a basis for the industrial revolution. That kind of change is significant and impacts the issues you raise on the ethical side about the intelligence system. Which brings me to an important question: What has all of that got to do with "intelligence?" I think of all the crazy science they did in MKULTRA and MKSEARCH and programs like that. How did that relate to gathering intelligence in order to inform policies? Another point you make is that transformation imposed by global multi-national corporations that transcend all national boundaries make the concept of nation states in conflict highly questionable. In the 19th and 20th centuries, conflicts were between nation states. But even so, you can go back through any historical atlas and look at the post-Roman empire and its like a kaleidoscope as you turn through the maps as the borders and shapes of geographical structures change. RT: The maps in people's minds are more permanent than the territories represented by the maps. Now neuro-science is mapping regions of the brain- DM: Yes, and from Ellul's perspective, that translates into control. Control is what programs like MK Ultra were about and that raises critical ethical issues. I worked at Stanford with Harvey Weinstein a psychiatrist who headed student psychiatric services for the university. Harvey became a psychiatrist because his father was a victim of MKULTRA experimentation. His father deteriorated into depression and worse as a consequence of Ewen Cameron's crazy science, but the family was told his father was going through this because he was not sufficiently cooperative with his treatment. That pushed Harvey into psychiatry. In the late seventies, after the revelations of the Church and Pike Committee hearings, he became aware of the real causes. ... <hr></blockquote>

by **hmm** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:48 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>RT: The maps in people's minds are more permanent than the territories represented by the maps. Now neuro-science is mapping regions of the brain- DM: Yes, and from Ellul's perspective, that translates into control. Control is what programs like MK Ultra were about and that raises critical ethical issues.<hr></blockquote> The map is not the territory one of my altime favourite statements.. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_map_is_not_the_territory">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The..._territory</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>The map is not the territory is a related expression meaning that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself, e.g., the pain from a stone falling on your foot is not the stone; one's opinion of a politician, favorable or unfavorable, is not that person; a metaphorical representation of a concept is not the concept itself; and so on. A specific abstraction or reaction does not capture all facets of its source — e.g., the pain in your foot does not convey the internal structure of the stone, you don't know everything that is going on in the life of a politician, etc., — and thus may limit an individual's understanding and cognitive abilities unless the two are distinguished. "The map is not the territory" is also an underlying principle used in neuro-linguistic programming, where it is used to signify that individual people in fact do not in general have access to absolute knowledge of reality, but in fact only have access to a set of beliefs they have built up over time, about reality. So it is considered important to be aware that people's beliefs about reality and their awareness of things (the "map" ) are not reality itself or everything they could be aware of ("the territory" ). The originators of NLP have been explicit that they owe this insight to General Semantics. (Main article: Principles of NLP) <hr></blockquote> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Semantics">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Semantics</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>General Semantics (also known as time binding) is an educational discipline created by Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950) during the years 1919 to 1933. General Semantics is distinct from semantics, a different subject. Advocates of General Semantics view it as a form of mental hygiene that enables practitioners to avoid ideational traps built into natural language and "common sense" assumptions, thereby enabling practitioners to think more clearly and effectively. General Semantics thus shares some concerns with psychology but is not precisely a therapeutic system, being in general more focused on enhancing the abilities of normal individuals than curing pathology. According to Alfred Korzybski himself, the central goal of General Semantics is to develop in its practitioners what he called "consciousness of abstracting", that is an awareness of the map/territory distinction and of how much of reality is thrown away by the linguistic and other representations we use. General Semantics teaches that it is not sufficient to understand this sporadically and intellectually, but rather that we achieve sanity only when consciousness of abstracting becomes constant and a matter of reflex. Many General Semantics practitioners view its techniques as a kind of self-defense kit against manipulative semantic distortions routinely promulgated by advertising, politics, and religion. Philosophically, General Semantics is a form of applied conceptualism that emphasizes the degree to which human experience is filtered and mediated by contingent features of human sensory organs, the human nervous system, and human linguistic constructions. The most important premise of General Semantics has been succinctly expressed as "The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing defined." ~snip~ Much of General Semantics consists of training techniques and reminders intended to break mental habits that impede dealing with reality. Three of the most important reminders are expressed by the shorthand "Null-A, Null-I, and Null-E". * Null-A is non-Aristotelianism; General Semantics stresses that reality is not adequately mapped by two-valued (Aristotelian) logics. (See also: Abductive reasoning) * Null-I is non-Identity; General Semantics teaches that no two phenomena can ever be shown identical (if only because they may differ beyond the limits of measurement) and that it is more sane to think in terms of "sufficient similarity for the purposes of the analysis we are currently performing". * Null-E is non-Euclideanism; General Semantics reminds us that the space we live in is not adequately described by Euclidean geometry. <hr></blockquote> i'm pretty amazed that this was published in counterpunch, mentioning mkultra, mksearch and cameron would normally relegate your whole subsequent argument to the conspiracy dustbin? many people dismiss the idea of neuro-linguistic-programming but i find it significant that a segment of the marketing community takes it seriously and makes use of its techniques. In the hacker community this is referred to as "social engineering", it is generally considered easier by them to hack a human being than it is to hack a computer to gain access to information and networks.

by **hmm** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 9:28 am

i thought that counterpunch piece deserved more attention than it got, added this because it seems relevant and i couldnt just kick the thread without saying anything.. <a href="http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/business/article.jsp?content=20050523_106182_106182">www.macleans.ca/topstorie...182_106182</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>In fact, some advertising executives are forging a new, controversial field of marketing research using brain scans. Called neuromarketing, it studies the impact on the brain of advertising and branding efforts. The research holds out the promise -- seductive to marketers; sinister, potentially, to consumers -- of providing scientifically sound answers about what might prompt people to spend their money. Using functional MRI scans, researchers are looking for the holy grail of the advertising industry: What makes the brain's pleasure centres light up? How do you make those spots shine even more brightly? Where is that elusive buy button? ~snip~ Neuromarketing got a kick-start with a brain-scan study of a blind Coke-Pepsi taste test, published last year in the scientific journal Neuron. Both drinks lit up the reward centres in the brains of participants, who were evenly split about which pop they preferred. But when subjects were informed which soft drink they had been given, their brains registered activity in a new region, and threequarters of them said they preferred Coke. "This demonstrates in a fairly dramatic way that brand matters," Moore states. ~snip~ In another experiment, Calvert recorded brain activity in response to smell and colour. As the scent of strawberries was wafted under subjects' noses, Calvert noted the area of the brain that lit up. Then, as subjects smelled the strawberries, they were shown a screen infused with a strawberry-red colour and, lo and behold, the activity in the brain intensified dramatically. The next step was to replace the red screen with a blue one -- "you probably wouldn't eat blue strawberries," Calvert points out -- and the brain activity dropped to a level even lower than when the smell was alone. "The total of your senses is greater than the sum of its parts," Calvert concludes. "This is something the food industry is very interested in." PHD Media, which plans and buys advertising for clients, recently wrapped up research with Calvert's group into how different media impact the brain -- and which are best at delivering what types of messages. Subjects were exposed to audio ads, a combination of audio and visual ads, and just visual ads as their brains were scanned. Out of its research, PHD has created a tool that helps ad planners choose the most appropriate communication model.<hr></blockquote>

by **Gouda** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:36 pm

James Ridgeway again at Counterpunch, emotionally reinforcing the the 911 boundaries with the Betty Ong flight 11 recording over footage of normal life on a normal day in NYC... <a href="http://www.ridgewayng.com/video/InMemorandum.mov">www.ridgewayng.com/video/...randum.mov</a> added on edit: Does this qualify as a product of "neuromarketing," perhaps? Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=gouda@rigorousintuition>Gouda</A> at: 4/10/06 12:04 pm

More ex-CIA Stepping up and Stepping it up at Counterpunch

More ex-CIA Stepping up and Stepping it up at Counterpunch

Re: More ex-CIA Stepping up and Stepping it up at Counterpun

behaviour modification or mindcontrol

Re: betty ong

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