@strollingone

In Ireland and Britain

http://atriptoireland.com/2013/06/03/what-are-wishing-treesmay-bushes/

You offer a prayer as you tie on the ribbon. When it rots away your prayer will be answered.

Never heard the goat story. Interesting way to dismiss sins...

#1

In the olden days, the tribes would gather to tie their sins with ribbon to the hairs of a goat and then drive the beast into the wilderness. The goat might be driven away if chanced upon, but must not be killed or maimed.

Nowadays, we gather together to elect our goats to public office. We may pin our hopes to them, but we tie our sins as well. We have many sins so we must have many goats: the greater the sin, the higher the office. The goat may be mocked and reviled, but must not be prosecuted. Thus, like the tribes of old, we need not confront our sins, but merely avoid them as they run to and fro in that wasteland known as politics.

@Big Al That is, if we factor in the entire history of the US empire from 1789 onwards.

#2 20 - 50 million since WWII, deaths caused by U.S. wars and imperialism. The killed around 30% of the North Koreans during the three year war.

Humans can be evil and we have more than our share controlling our country. I do think most people would agree with that.

@snoopydawg

How many of the comments supporting atrocities might be by those paid or otherwise having incentive to do so, in order to give the impression that much of society is supporting these which, since it's made to appear that so many others are going there and right over the cliff, is supposed to recalibrate everybody's moral compass to also get lost with the herd by going in entirely the wrong direction?

Boy, once prolific examples in some areas are getting harder to find on the internet... plenty of unrelated stuff and dead sites, though.

http://voxnews.com/index.php/media-watch/item/93-covert-infiltration

How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations

Written by Voxnews Friday, 18 April 2014

One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.

Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking “Five Eyes” alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.”

By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse “hacktivists” of using, the use of “honey traps” (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.

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. ...
...Government plans to monitor and influence internet communications, and covertly infiltrate online communities in order to sow dissension and disseminate false information, have long been the source of speculation. Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser and the White House’s former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites, as well as other activist groups.

Sunstein also proposed sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups” which spread what he views as false and damaging “conspiracy theories” about the government. Ironically, the very same Sunstein was recently named by Obama to serve as a member of the NSA review panel created by the White House, one that – while disputing key NSA claims – proceeded to propose many cosmetic reforms to the agency’s powers (most of which were ignored by the President who appointed them).

But 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 and harm the reputations of targets. Under the tactics they use, the state is deliberately spreading lies on the internet about whichever individuals it targets, including the use of what GCHQ itself calls “false flag operations” and emails to people’s families and friends. Who would possibly trust a government to exercise these powers at all, let alone do so in secret, with virtually no oversight, and outside of any cognizable legal framework?

Then there is the use of psychology and other social sciences to not only understand, but shape and control, how online activism and discourse unfolds. Today’s newly published document touts the work of GCHQ’s “Human Science Operations Cell,” devoted to “online human intelligence” and “strategic influence and disruption”: ...

...Under the title “Online Covert Action”, the document details a variety of means to engage in “influence and info ops” as well as “disruption and computer net attack,” while dissecting how human beings can be manipulated using “leaders,” “trust,” “obedience” and “compliance”: ...

... These agencies’ refusal to “comment on intelligence matters” – meaning: talk at all about anything and everything they do – is precisely why whistleblowing is so urgent, the journalism that supports it so clearly in the public interest, and the increasingly unhinged attacks by these agencies so easy to understand. 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.

Whatever else is true, no government should be able to engage in these tactics: what justification is there for having government agencies target people – who have been charged with no crime – for reputation-destruction, infiltrate online political communities, and develop techniques for manipulating online discourse? But to allow those actions with no public knowledge or accountability is particularly unjustifiable.

Documents referenced in this article:

The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations

#4

but too many of them think that we had/have the right to do this. As I have stated before, I live by Hill Air Force base in Utah and worked with many people who had families in the military and I never heard one person question why their families were in Afghanistan or Iraq. Plus most of the people who comment on my local news website say things that are in favor of our military actions. Since people in the Middle East have been fighting for centuries, it would be okay for us to nuke them and other types of nonsense comments.
I was surprised today after reading about the bombings in Somalia where close to 300 people were killed. Most of the comments expressed sympathy for the deaths.