General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"there's been an awful lot of chatter out there,"
"The one thing we can talk about is the fact that there's been an awful lot of chatter out there,"
"This is the most serious threat that I've seen in the last several years,"
"This specific threat, that we've been briefed about over and over again, have reached a new level,"
treestar
(82,383 posts)They seem to be against spying generally.
IDemo
(16,926 posts)But that should be evident to anyone who has paid attention.
treestar
(82,383 posts)Or you are projecting onto them. The signs seem to say spying is wrong, stop spying. On anyone.
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)But look closer and you will see others with signs that oppose spying, period, the way they are worded.
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)signs are like bumper stickers.
There is no realistic public question or debate right now as to whether the NSA will stop all spying.
The question before the public, and the gov't, is whether they should do mass surveillance and mass storage.
That's what sparked the wave of controversy and what has protesters out with signs.
SaveOurDemocracy
(4,400 posts)Just makes them look .... you know ... stoopid.
RC
(25,592 posts)What make you think anyone is feigning?
SaveOurDemocracy
(4,400 posts)... so obviously obvious, or I see a total bullshit post.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Nice observation.
pnwmom
(108,955 posts)The OP is the one who clearly connected comments about "chatter" picked up in international spying with photos of people protesting internal US surveillance.
SaveOurDemocracy
(4,400 posts)What's it like living in your 2 dimensional, monochromatic world? Will critical thinking skills ever make a comeback?
SaveOurDemocracy
(4,400 posts)... and a smidgen of common sense, knows what is being protested here.
pnwmom
(108,955 posts)internal U.S. surveillance.
But the OP, through the quotes, is falsely connecting the protests with the issue of our spying on foreign terrorists or their associates.
IDemo
(16,926 posts)I'm questioning the serendipitous timing of the announcement of "chatter" (yes, it was a favorite term of the Bushies, too) given the heat that the NSA has been getting lately, not only from protesters but US senators. It's a predictable response to color the NSA as the good guys and crowd out dissent.
pnwmom
(108,955 posts)And they were applauding when Snowden shared information about our spying on China and Russia; and when Manning released hundreds of thousands of unredacted diplomatic cables.
I think some people need a reminder that there is a purpose to NSA's international spying -- even if the NSA has overstepped its limits in the US.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)pnwmom
(108,955 posts)just as the Obama administration was about to begin negotiations with Putin. You heard about that, right? People in Russia are just as capable of reading Snowden/Greenwald interviews as people anywhere else.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)SaveOurDemocracy
(4,400 posts)...terra scare.
The level of MSM chatter might, of itself, cause one to wonder if we're once again being manipulated to serve some agenda. A scared public is a useful tool, you see. A cynical response is often the result of too many lies (aka 'least untruthfuls') being served up over a long period of time.
Unless we start LOUDLY asking questions, and VIGOROUSLY challenging the manufactured message(s), we'll continue to lose our rights AND our country.
Autumn
(44,976 posts)Recommended.
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)It sounds like the zombies, sockpuppets and psyop whores have finally recognized that their message makes them sound like utter mental defectives, and they have gone quiet, at least for a while. Now I wonder if they have or will start developing new DU personas, change tactics with the old personas, or a combination.
It really makes me wonder how long the message manipulation and crowd control has been ongoing, not just here, but all over the web.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)They had the weekend off.
rug
(82,333 posts)..............................
You are sooooooooooooo lucky I hadn't sipped my iced tea ...
RC
(25,592 posts)40 hour weeks, with weekends off and all.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)I think they spend a little time cooking up new talking points and putting them through focus group testing.
Notice how right after the Snowden story first broke, their first wave said "Hold it, wait, we haven't seen what this person's like yet. We've got to reserve judgment." The second wave had the first smears.
But of course, there is no such thing as professional astroturfing or psy-ops here at DU. Why, suggesting such a thing hurts people's feelings.
I try to question whatever the news cycle is currently pushing. It makes me sound a little delusional and paranoid but I don't like to just swallow hook, line, and sinker, because that would make me a sucker.
I have never believed in 'al qaeda' I have generally believed it was an invention of the CIA, to give us a reason to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. I would not be surprised to know they are behind the jail breaks.
There needs to be a current credible threat to make Snowden, the boogie man, they want him to be. If he hasn't created the the big security breach, which he is accused of, if they do catch him, what could be proven, that he aided the enemy?
Now, someone can eventually say, that he maybe responsible for the inconvenience of closing the embassies around the world and causing travelers, discomfort.
I tend to massage my brain with crazy thoughts, such as, who but the CIA could have the resources to jail break those jihadists out of prison in several countries. I'm surprised they haven't jail braked, Gitmo, in dingies, to row to Syria.
Who has more motivation to continue security threats for job protection than our own Spooks?
I don't really believe what I wrote. I do know better. But by the Goddess, I still have the right to entertain, the opposite of what is shoved down our throats by our media. I have to question the official narrative.
bahrbearian
(13,466 posts)MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)..." how long the message manipulation and crowd control has been..." I'd say as long as they invented newspapers, which certainly found a rich non-persona resource via internet chatrooms or boards like this one.
I like to fuck with these persona types here every now and then... used to a great deal i the "dungeon" before it became "creative speculation"...
PufPuf23
(8,754 posts)There was a news story back in 2005 that ran several years and had a number of forums where the story was the prime topic.
Over several years it turned to a polarized internet subculture with board wars etc.
Within 2-3 days of the event 5 linked neo-con oriented forums became popular and single issued or came into existence. Numerous other forums came to be over the next two years.
The most popular was a blog for the first month that then went to a forum set-up. Virtually all my posts were deleted on the blog so when I joined the forum format I had a new screen name and pretended to be one of them.
There were various conspiracy theories that were actually started by early moderators (eg political and propaganda aspects of a seemingly non-geo-political event).
Several posters befriended me (actually the place was much more friendly than DU but most of the privately friendly people turned out to have agendas).
There was a members only Question and Complaints forum.
One poster taught me how to read site meters. I first learned to see when I logged on and off.
Another poster befriended me by PM after I made a post that indicated my knowledge of helicopters, data collection by remote sensing, and the like. I was a Fed USDA employee from 1969 to 1985 and had been involved in an obscure project where trials were done by USDA but funding and the project was DoD R&D. We started PMing and I mentioned the really obscure project from circa 1980 and we had a common interest. The project was developed for civilian use by USDA but had major military applications. He told me he was posting from his job computer on xxxx military base. So I watched the site meter to see when he came on and off. I was fascinated by all the .gov . .mil , and foreign government posters and lurkers.
There were other forums for Politics, Lounge, etc. for other than the main interest where there was a continuous discussion thread and topic threads. I had fun there doing things link posting verbatim groups of headlines from Drudge mocking one of the site "owners".
An "evil" moderator was banned.
A poster that was in the local media of the story PMed me and told me inside info but not to share and agreed on the theory in that the story was cover for a geo-political event(s). I thought it was cool as the individual was a regular on Faux, quoted in the NY Post, and appeared in other channels on the TV. We talked about her marital troubles a lot and the multitude of BushCo connections to the story too in email rather than PM at her request.
Then Katrina hit and a Katrina forum was initiated. My helicopter friend and I disagreed on the open forum and I PMed he should not be propagandizing on the job and from a military computer. He started harassing me the next several days wherever I posted.
Somewhat in retribution, I posted in the members only Questions and Complaints forum that sometimes over 50% of those signed on were .gov , .mil, or .foreign government and that the .gov and .mil posters should not be using their work computer nor time on job to catapult propaganda about Katrina and politics in general. Some of us had become open in the opinion that the story was used by media for geo-political cover and I also noted that the government presence among the posters supported this opinion.
Suddenly my account was apparently banned. I could not sign on nor post. Weirder yet, someone else someone else was operating my screen name and had a conversation with the poster that was Mrs. Site Owner about the forum-associated web site Café Press products and all my purchases and great enjoyment thereof.
About a week later I could sign on and post but most of the .mil and .gov ISPs were no longer on site meter. However, days later the forum crashed. We were all sent emails saying we had to rejoin and that 3 months of posts were irretrievably "lost". Many of us were not allowed to rejoin but conveniently two more liberal forums came into existence for the us "refugees", one that was heavy to the international posters.
When I joined the new more liberal forum, one of the moderators there PMed me with a welcome. This Mod had been a Mod at the forum where I could not rejoin. Boo Hoo. I mentioned the above event about my .mil friend and post in Questions and Complaints. The Mod said that the same poster was also the "evil" mod that had been earlier banned and he wasn't military at all but some loser in his mother's basement sexually harassing female posters on the forum and in real life. The Mod PMed various emails about the Mod / poster and the women he had harassed. I thought well OK but held my thought that the poster did post from xxx military base with a .mil ISP and I had watched/stalked for months on the site meter and we knew this obscure USDA/DoD project. I watched the site meter so much I had compiled a written list of the .mil and .gov posters.
I had made one real friend and we talked nearly every day on phone or email and often worked in tandem. RIP Fall 2008 Diane from breast cancer. She did not live to see the election but turned me on to POTUS Obama and was one of the indirect factors that brought me to DU. She lived in Manhattan and was already acquainted with a personality that was often on the counter side of the story on Faux. She and I and the local media person above fed this media head talking points and he actually outed her by real name on Faux in thanking her for our research. Only this media person and one other poster knew that Diane and I were close and no one knew just how close we were and could not know because we communicated by phone and email and not PM.
At the liberal "refugee" forum it became known there was a "hidden" forum for a select few that fed much of the "red meat" to the forum. When the "hidden" forum became known (probably by design), they went off to their own forum "clubhouse".
There was a personality in the first 5 days or so of the story back in May/June 2005 that appeared to orchestrate much of the events and was on Faux and also made some cryptic posts on the forums that were de-cyphered time and time again for several years. The personality abruptly departed and many thought he was a CIA agent. I thought he was critical. The local media poster emailed me and asked me to stop posting about the man because he was an innocent that had been drawn into the story. He lived in her neighborhood and had bought his retirement home from her parents. I complied on the public forum but told Diane.
A bunch of posters with similar opinions were PMed invitations to a new private forum of 20 posters. I thought it was a honey pot but went along as did Diane. The owner/founder and one of two Mods told us of the "hidden" forum with seven members that had gone on to their "clubhouse". She told me in private that she of the seven had gone rogue and that she was ex-military intelligence and a PI/skip tracer married to an auto dealer in St. Louis.
Other members of the "clubhouse" included the poster that had taught me to read site meters (also gone rogue to this new forum from the "clubhouse" , my "friend" in the local media of the story, and a ubiquitous member but not very active on all the forums that happened to be the Chief Scientist at the public/private agency in The Netherlands that assigned ISP numbers for Europe and the Middle East. His avatar on the agency site was an animal but with glasses that closely resembled his picture of key personnel at the agency. I cannot find the site nor wiki for this agency today.
The 2nd Mod of the new forum PMed me and also gave me the same debunking emails of the military but really "evil" mod / poster from the initial forum I had joined and been banned.
Then the poster that taught me site meters and ex-member rogue of the clubhouse was banned by closing the new forum and forming a new private forum. We were not told why.
One day I went to the link of the closed forum to find an old post of mine and saw that it was active and I could still get in with my password. They were there building real life data sets on posters in a forum that had been private and invisible to the rest of us but was open now. Ooops. I told Diane who shared with several others privately. Next thing I know, Diane and another poster were been banned by Mod #2 of our private forum.
I confronted in the private forum Mod #2 and told the others that she had lied to us all about the circumstance for the ban and communications with Diane. The Owner (ex military intelligence and PI skip tracer) banned Mod #2 and asked me to be Mod. This was by email and telephone. I was using an AOL account and my ISP showed up in a city 400 plus miles away and essentially functioned as an anonymous proxy (I am not now nor then that internet savvy). I expressed my disinterest and realized they did not realize I was the one that stumbled into their data base or did not care.
Meanwhile back at the "refugee" forum there was a private members only "Fight" Forum and all of us in the private forum of like mind and rogue "clubhouse" posters were outed as sleuth's and collectors of private information on other posters. This was not true except for the owner and "banned" mod and "banned" site meter reader teacher of the private honey pot but we were all slimed. I sat quietly in both forums. My behavior was somewhat dodgy because I had made a habit of watching the opinion leaders based upon my initial supposition that the story was a cover for geo-political maneuvering and observation of all the .mil and .gov posters. Mostly they approached me. We all have a learning curve.
We began to recruit for our private forum / IMHO honey pot. A poster in other forums would be invited with 100% support. I sponsored a gay guy with AIDs whose Democratic Congresswomen in Baltimore was trying to get him a liver transplant. Several months later he turned a 180 in the private forum (got me banned) and became the biggest troll of the liberal "refugee forum.
Diane passed away right before the 2008 election and the story also essentially faded out in 2008 except a Lifetime movie and various other detritus.
If anyone has read this far, yes these are the ravings of a paranoid madman.
My conclusion was that the story was real but was used in a major media PsyOps and cover for geo-political activities.
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)I'll never have enough kung foo to figure out who it is that I converse with here.
But, I gotta tell you, that was one mother stream of consciousness you gave. I don't doubt you learned how to tell where people were coming from. I'd rather just imagine where and not r-e-a-l-l-y know...
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)But I agree it has been much more pleasant this week as the volume has decreased.
Peace, Mojo
AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)They used it whenever they were in embarrassing political situations.
millennialmax
(331 posts)but I'm not cynical or paranoid enough to believe this alert has any nefarious purpose.
kentuck
(111,052 posts)Isn't that the responsibility of each host country that has an embassy? This does not look good for America.
pnwmom
(108,955 posts)pnwmom
(108,955 posts)connected with terrorism against us here or abroad.
I DON'T think they should be spying on people in the U.S. without a warrant.
Blanket protests against the NSA fail to make this distinction.
IDemo
(16,926 posts)Most protest signs are pithy and don't necessarily contain a great deal of information. It's left to the viewer to have enough knowledge of the subject to ascertain that the "don't spy" message means don't abuse the power you were given to monitor genuine terroristic threats by sweeping up data on harmless citizens.
pnwmom
(108,955 posts)The OP linked photos of the NSA protests with comments related to foreign "chatter" obtained through international spying.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)Unless they're trying really hard not to, that is.
pnwmom
(108,955 posts)Comments about foreign "chatter" were connected with photos of protests against the NSA.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)midnight
(26,624 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Good people!