A
number of people have asked, if there is a government UFO cover-up, why haven't
documents relating to them turned up in the massive intelligence leak by Edward
Snowden. Well, in a new document released at The Intercept, the new website devoted to publishing information
about the leaks, the flying saucers have arrived. Though where they've turned
up might be cause for concern for the Fox Mulder's out there.
That
document is a Powerpoint presentation from the British intelligence agency GCHQ
(Government Communications Headquarters), titled simply enough "The Art of Deception: Training for a
New Generation of Online Covert Operations", in which three of the fifty slides are images
of 'UFOs'. Unfortunately, there is no text related to the images, so there could
be a number of reasons for them being included - from pointing out people's
belief systems, through to them possibly being part of actual psychological
operations (psy-ops). The only clue might be that the images are listed under a
heading of "Influence and Information Operations".
Besides
the UFO references, there are a number of allusions to magic, from the mission
statement to produce "cyber-magicians", to another slide listing the
historical involvement of professional magicians with psy-ops, through to
finishing with an image of Teller beside a quote, "Conjuring with
Information".
Glenn
Greenwald has written some commentary on the
latest release of documents, pointing out how they show intelligence agencies are
intentionally manipulating online discussions:
Among
the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all
sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of
its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate
online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To
see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of
using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the
internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts
(pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to
destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums.
Returning
to the topic of UFOs, writer/film-maker Mark Pilkington is well-acquainted with
the dual topic of UFOs and intelligence agency deceptions via the intensive
research he did for his book and related documentary Mirage Men. On his blog, Mark notes that "it’s clear that [intelligence
agencies] consider the UFO subject, its attendant beliefs, and the vocal
community surrounding it, to be a useful field of operations for their
activities". He also points out that not much has changed in the last six
decades, given the similarities between the newly released document and a
research paper released in 1950 titled "Exploitation of Superstitions for
Purposes of Psychological Warfare" - right down to the listing of magicians who
have participated in psy-ops.
If
you'd like to learn more about this subject, take a look at the lecture Mark
gave a couple of years ago (embedded below), titled "The Abuses of Enchantment:
Folklore and Deception in the Disinformation Age":
As
Greenwald points out, "these GCHQ documents are the first to prove that a
major western government is using some of the most controversial techniques to
disseminate deception online... Claims that government agencies are
infiltrating online communities and engaging in “false flag operations” to
discredit targets are often dismissed as conspiracy theories, but these
documents leave no doubt they are doing precisely that... No government should
be able to engage in these tactics".
Or,
as Fox Mulder told us all those years ago: "Trust no-one".
The Abuses of Enchantment: Folklore and Deception in the Disinformation Age - Mark Pilkington from Breaking Convention on Vimeo.
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