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Countering cognitive warfare: awareness and resilience

The Alliance faces a range of challenges in emerging domains of conflict. These domains can arise from the introduction of new and disruptive technologies. The domains of space and cyber, for example, came out of developments in rocket, satellite, computing, telecommunications, and internetworking technologies. The increasingly widespread use of social media, social networking, social messaging, and mobile device technologies is now enabling a new domain: cognitive warfare.

In cognitive warfare, the human mind becomes the battlefield. The aim is to change not only what people think, but how they think and act. Waged successfully, it shapes and influences individual and group beliefs and behaviours to favour an aggressor’s tactical or strategic objectives. In its extreme form, it has the potential to fracture and fragment an entire society, so that it no longer has the collective will to resist an adversary’s intentions. An opponent could conceivably subdue a society without resorting to outright force or coercion.

The aims of cognitive warfare can be limited, with short time horizons. Or they can be strategic, with campaigns launched over the course of decades. A single campaign could focus on the limited aim of preventing a military manoeuver from taking place as planned, or to force the alteration of a specific public policy. Several successive campaigns could be launched with the long-term objective of disrupting entire societies or alliances, by seeding doubts about governance, subverting democratic processes, triggering civil disturbances, or instigating separatist movements.

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New Owner of Politico Accepted Millions From the CIA to Print State Propaganda

The new owner of Politico, a mainstream media news outlet, has a lengthy track record of collusion with the Central Intelligence Agency to print stories considered favorable to the agency’s policy preferences.

Axel Springer SE is a German media conglomerate set to acquire Politico for a billion dollars by the end of October. The company, founded by and named after a German journalist who started his career writing for an antisemitic newspaper affiliated with the Nazi Party, accepted millions of dollars during the Cold War era to print editorial content at the behest of the CIA. Journalist Murray Waas has cited sources within the intelligence community who indicate Springer had accepted more than seven million dollars in the 1950’s to print CIA propaganda. Axel Springer’s relationship with the American CIA seems to have continued for several decades, with the corporation going so far as to train Afghan mujahideen armed and equipped by the CIA to film their encounters with Soviet forces.

An editor of Axel Springer’s flagship magazine Bild- fired this week for sexual misconduct with subordinate employees of the publication in the workplace- had accused journalist Glenn Greenwald and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden of enabling terrorism and cooperation with Al Qaeda.

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Former Surgeon General Blames Unvaccinated Americans For Death of Colin Powell

Despite him being 84-years-old with an impaired immune system as a result of fighting blood cancer, former Surgeon General Jerome Adams blamed the death of Colin Powell on unvaccinated Americans.

It was announced yesterday that Powell had died form COVID-19 despite being double vaccinated.

Instead of asking whether the fact that Powell being double jabbed raised questions about the long term efficacy of the vaccine, Adams simply went straight to blaming the unvaccinated.

“In terms of his passing and how he would want it understood, what do you say about the idea that Powell passing while being vaccinated is proof that the vaccination is not necessary?” Adams was asked by CNN host Chris Cuomo.

“It’s absolutely untrue,” responded Adams. “We’ve got people out there who are in the vaccine-resistant crowd. We’ve got people who have completely different agendas, agendas that have nothing to do with vaccines, and as you mentioned, want to divide us. We’ve got a lot of people out there who are just thrown, who react to misinformation. They need the correct facts.”

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Democrats’ Carbon Tax Would Force Struggling Americans To Pay For The Emissions Of The Rich

As if middle-class Americans didn’t have enough inflation to cope with, Democrats want to squeeze struggling families even more. The New York Times reported over the weekend that the opposition of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., a key element of President Biden’s agenda has some Democrats considering adding a carbon tax in their $3.5 trillion spending extravaganza.

Imposing a carbon tax would represent but the latest instance of Democrats violating President Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class.

Claims in tweets aside, Biden’s record shows he does not practice what he preaches—not on rich people “paying their fair share,” and certainly not on taking action against global warming. Instead, Biden’s carbon tax would raise prices on struggling families to offset the massive carbon emissions of he and his wealthy friends.

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Pope Francis calls on social media platforms to censor more “misinformation”

In a virtual meeting during the weekend, Pope Francis called on tech companies to be more responsible about the spread of “misinformation.”

The Pope made the remarks during the World Meeting of Popular Movements, which, according to Reuters, is “a grouping of grassroots organizations and social movements which bring attention to inequality in labour, land ownership, health care, and other social issues in the developing world.”

The pope noted that “the pandemic had laid bare the social inequalities that afflict our peoples.” He added that “technology can be a tool for good, and truly it is a tool for good, which permits dialogues such as this one, and many other things, but it can never replace contact between us, it can never substitute for a community in which we can be rooted and which ensures that our life may become fruitful.”

In his speech, the Pope singled out tech platforms for aiding the spread of misinformation.

He said: “In the name of God, I ask the technology giants to stop exploiting human weakness, people’s vulnerability, for the sake of profits without caring about the spread of hate speech, grooming, fake news, conspiracy theories, and political manipulation.”

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We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage

A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears. 

Let me offer the briefest overview of the core beliefs of the Woke Revolution, which are abundantly clear to anyone willing to look past the hashtags and the jargon.

It begins by stipulating that the forces of justice and progress are in a war against backwardness and tyranny. And in a war, the normal rules of the game must be suspended. Indeed, this ideology would argue that those rules are not just obstacles to justice, but tools of oppression. They are the master’s tools.  And the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house.

So the tools themselves are not just replaced but repudiated. And in so doing, persuasion—the purpose of argument—is replaced with public shaming. Moral complexity is replaced with moral certainty. Facts are replaced with feelings.

Ideas are replaced with identity. Forgiveness is replaced with punishment. Debate is replaced with de-platforming. Diversity is replaced with homogeneity of thought. Inclusion, with exclusion.

In this ideology, speech is violence. But violence, when carried out by the right people in pursuit of a just cause, is not violence at all. In this ideology, bullying is wrong, unless you are bullying the right people, in which case it’s very, very good. In this ideology, education is not about teaching people how to think, it’s about reeducating them in what to think. In this ideology, the need to feel safe trumps the need to speak truthfully. 

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Joe Biden Jetting Planeloads of Cabinet, Aides to Europe to Combat Climate Change

Joe Biden will demonstrate his determination to fight climate change by flying more than a dozen Cabinet members across the Atlantic next week — in several passenger jets consuming tons of fossil fuels at high altitudes.

Plus, of course, Biden’s own customized 747 Air Force One with remote-control window shades. Biden will take the four-engine goliath another 2,450 miles to Rome and back for what seems like yet another monthly G-20 meeting. And then, of course, when in Rome, the ardent abortion advocate will flaunt his Roman Catholic faith in an audience with Pope Francis, trying to snuff simmering rumors of his impending excommunication.

All this for the Democrat to show participants in the U.N.’s Climate Change Conference in Glasgow how all-in he is to save the global environment from the terrible things that other wanton humans are doing to cause and worsen global warming for their own ends. As one site called it, “a meaningless meeting of useless people.”

And, as usual, to contrast himself after the four-year presidency of you-know-who, who withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accords of 2015 because he said they were a waste of time and crippled the U.S. economy without forcing worse polluters like China and India to do much.

These regular U.N. conferences all over the world are single-handedly responsible not only for bloated expense accounts but also for deforesting countless acres for the paper to print their reports, addendums, appendices, and reports on the reports.

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The Finders: CIA Ties to Child Sex Cult Obscured as Coverage Goes from Sensationalism to Silence

WASHINGTON — In February 1987, an anonymous phone tip was called into the Tallahassee police department reporting that six children were dirty, hungry, and acting like animals in the custody of two well-dressed men in a Tallahassee, Florida park. That phone call would kick off the Finders scandal: a series of events and multiple investigations even more bizarre than the initial report.

The trail would ultimately lead to allegations of a cult involved in ritual abuse, an international child-trafficking ring, evidence of child abuse confirmed and later denied, and ties with the CIA, which was alleged to have interfered in the case. No one was ever prosecuted in the wake of the initial 1987 investigation or a 1993 inquiry into the allegations of CIA involvement: official denials were maintained, and authorities stated that no evidence of criminal activity was ever found. However, documents that have emerged over time beg significant questions as to the validity of the official narrative.

In contrast with other historical human trafficking rings covered in the independent press, including those I have previously discussed, the Finders scandal presents as something of a phantom. This is in consequence of the lack of adult victims who have come forward, an absence of hard evidence viewable to the public, and an absence of extensive trials or convictions. Further impeding the willingness of most journalists to cover such a story were claims of ritualistic abuse that were hyped by corporate media at the time of the incident, as well as allegations of a CIA-led coverup that were less widely recognized by the legacy press.

The story is further complicated by the fact that it takes place in three basic stages: the initial 1987 investigation spread across multiple states and law enforcement agencies; a subsequent 1993 inquiry into allegations of a CIA coverup and interference in the 1987 investigation; and the emergence of Customs Service documents detailing new aspects of initial searches of Finders properties which was followed by the publication of hundreds of documents from both investigations to the FBI vault in 2019.

By initially sensationalizing the issue via the framing of the Finders as a satanic cult, the media profited from immediate shock value while permitting this very sensationalism to become the premise for dismissing other aspects of the story and Finders ties to the CIA to remain unexplored.

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