Episode 325 – The Information-Industrial Complex
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Half a century ago, outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the term “military-industrial complex” to describe the fascistic collusion between the Pentagon and America’s burgeoning armaments industry. But in our day and age we are witnessing the rise of a new collusion, one between the Pentagon and the tech industry that it helped to seed, that is committed to waging a covert war against people the world over. Now, in the 21st century, it is time to give this new threat a name: the information-industrial complex.
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TRANSCRIPT
When WWII ended and the American deep state welded the national security establishment into place with the National Security Act, the world entered into a new era: the era of the military-industrial complex. But when the Cold War ended and the “Clash of Civilizations” became the new existential threat, the deep state found an opening for another paradigm shift. As the all-pervasive threat of terrorism became the carte blanche for total surveillance, the powers-that-shouldn’t-be found the organizing principal of our age would not be military hardware, but data itself. Welcome to the age of the information-industrial complex.
This is The Corbett Report.
Of all the things that President Dwight D. Eisenhower did during his years in office, it is for a single phrase from his farewell address that he is best remembered today: “the military-industrial complex.”
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
It is not difficult to see why these words passed so quickly into the political lexicon. Think of their explanatory power.
Why did the US use inflated estimates of Russian missile capabilities to justify stockpiling a nuclear arsenal that was more than sufficient to destroy the planet several times over?
The military-industrial complex.
Why did America send 50,000 of its own to fight and die in the jungles of Vietnam, killing untold millions of Vietnamese (not to mention Cambodians)?
The military-industrial complex.
Why did the US use the public’s fear and anger over 9/11 and a phony panic over non-existent weapons of mass destruction to justify the illegal invasion and trillion-dollar occupation of Iraq?
The military-industrial complex.
Why did Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama expand the fictitious “war on terror” into Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, refuse to close Guantanamo despite his earlier promises to the contrary, commit US forces to “kinetic military action” in Libya without so much as seeking Congressional approval, and launch a new era of covert drone warfare?
The military-industrial complex.
Why has Trump not only continued but further expanded the US military presence in Africa, increased US aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia, actively enabled the war crimes in Yemen that have led to the largest cholera outbreak in human history, and killed more civilians in his first six months in office than former drone-king Obama killed in his entire eight-year presidency?
The military-industrial complex.
When you think about it, it’s rather remarkable that such a phrase was ever uttered by a President of the United States, much less a former five-star general. Could you imagine any modern-day President talking about something like the “military-industrial complex” and its attempted “acquisition of unwarranted influence” without immediately dismissing the idea as a conspiracy theory? Over the decades there has been much speculation about Eisenhower’s use of the phrase, and what precisely he was warning against. Some have argued that the phrase was prompted by Eisenhower’s discovery that the Rand Corporation was grossly misrepresenting the Soviet’s military capabilities to John F. Kennedy, who ended up using the Rand invented (and completely fictitious) “missile gap” threat as a cornerstone of his 1960 presidential election campaign.
Whatever the case, it is perhaps time to revisit Eisenhower’s most famous speech. What Eisenhower is ultimately describing is the rise of American fascism; the merger of government and corporate power. What term can better capture the nature of early 21st century American political life? Is there any longer any doubt that the military-industrial complex has reached its ultimate expression in firms like Blackwater (aka “Xe” aka “Academi”) and its military contractor brethren? Is there any other word but “fascism” to describe a state of affairs when a Secretary of Defense can commission a study from a private contractor to examine whether the US military should be using more private contractors, only for that same Secretary of Defense to leave office and become president of the company that conducted the study, only to leave that company to become Vice President of the US and begin waging a war that relies heavily on no-bid contracts awarded to that same company based on the recommendation that it made in its original study? Yet this is precisely the case of Dick Cheney and Halliburton. It would be difficult to think of a more blatant example of the military-industrial complex fascism that Eisenhower was warning of.
But as it turns out, there was another warning about fascism embedded in that farewell address that has received far less attention than the “military-industrial complex” formulation, perhaps because there is no catchphrase hook to describe it:
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.”
Given that this warning came in 1961, before the age of communications satellites or personal computers or the internet, it was a remarkably prescient observation. If scientific research half a century ago was dominated by federal grants and expensive computer equipment, how much more true is that for us today, half a century later?
So what is the problem with this? As Ike explained:
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Here, again, the warning is of fascism. But instead of the military-industrial fascism that dominated so much of the 20th century, he was describing here a new fascistic paradigm that was but barely visible at the time that he gave his address: a scientific-technological one. Once again, the threat is that the industry that grows up around this government-sponsored activity will, just like the military-industrial complex, begin to take over and shape the actions of that same government. In this case, the warning is not one of bombs and bullets but bits and bytes, not tanks and fighter jets but hard drives and routers. Today we know this new fascism by its innocuous sounding title “Big Data,” but in keeping with the spirit of Eisenhower’s remarks, perhaps it would be more fitting to call it the “information-industrial complex.”
The concept of an information-industrial complex holds equally explanatory power for our current day and age as the military-industrial complex hypothesis held in Eisenhower’s time.
Why is a company like Google going to such lengths to capture, track and database all information on the planet?
The information-industrial complex.
Why were all major telecom providers and internet service providers mandated by federal law to hardwire in back door access to American intelligence agencies for the purpose of spying on all electronic communications?
The information-industrial complex.
Why would government after government around the world target encryption as a key threat to their national security, and why would banker after banker call for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to be banned even as they plan to set up their own, central bank-administered digital currencies?
The information-industrial complex.
The effects of this synthesis are more and more felt in our everyday lives. Every single day hundreds of millions of people around the world are interfacing with Microsoft software or Apple hardware or Amazon cloud services running on chips and processors supplied by Intel or other Silicon Valley stalwarts. Google has become so ubiquitous that its very name has become a verb meaning “to search for something on the internet.” The 21st century version of the American dream is encapsulated in the story of Mark Zuckerberg, a typical Harvard whizkid whose atypical rise to the status of multi-billionaire was enabled by a social networking tool by the name of “Facebook” that he developed.
But how many people know the flip side of this coin, the one that demonstrates the pervasive government influence in shaping and directing these companies’ rise to success, and the companies’ efforts to aid the government in collecting data on its own citizens? How many know, for instance, that Google has a publicly acknowledged relationship with the NSA? Or that a federal judge has ruled that the public does not have the right to know the details of that relationship? Or that Google Earth was originally the brainchild of Keyhole Inc., a company that was set up by the CIA’s own venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, using satellite data harvested from government Keyhole-class reconnaissance satellites? Or that the former CEO of In-Q-Tel, Gilman Louie, sat on the board of the National Venture Capital Association with Jim Breyer, head of Accel Partners, who provided $12 million of seed money for Facebook? Or that, in 1999, a back door for NSA access was discovered in Microsoft’s Windows operating system source code? Or that Apple founder Steve Jobs was granted security clearance by the Department of Defense for still-undisclosed reasons while heading Pixar in 1988, as was the former head of AT&T and numerous others in the tech industry?
The connections between the IT world and the government’s military and intelligence apparatus run deep. In fact, the development of the IT industry is intimately intertwined with the US Air Force, the Department of Defense and its various branches (including, famously, DARPA), and, of course, the CIA. A cursory glance at the history of the rise of companies like Mitre Corporation, Oracle, and other household electronics and software firms should suffice to expose the extent of these relations and the existence of what we might dub an “information-industrial complex.”
But what does this mean? What are the ramifications of such a relationship?
Although the signs have been there for decades, perhaps the most startling example of what lies at the heart of this relationship has been revealed by the whistleblowers at the heart of the National Security Agency, one of the most secretive arms of the American intelligence apparatus. While Edward Snowden has received the most attention with his “revelation” of the PRISM program, much of the information about the NSA’s ability to surveil all electronic communications has been revealed over the past decade by NSA whistleblowers like Russ Tice, William Binney, Thomas Drake and J. Kirk Wiebe, third-party contractors like Snowden and AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, and independent journalists like James Bamford. Together, the story they tell is of a truly Orwellian society in which all communications are being captured and analyzed by the NSA, and, with the advent of facilities like the new data center in Utah, presumably stored indefinitely for use at any future time in any future investigation for any pretense by anyone with authorization to access that data. According to Snowden, this includes lowly third-party contractors like himself operating at NSA subcontractors like Booz Allen Hamilton in the vast (and expanding) private intelligence industry that has grown up around the information-industrial complex in the exact same way as private military contractors like Blackwater formed around the military-industrial complex.
In some ways, this information-industrial complex is even more insidious than its military-industrial counterpart. For all of the ills caused by the military-industrial complex (and there are many), at the very least it required some sort of excuse to drain the American people’s resources, and its failures (like the Vietnam quagmire or the debacle in Iraq) happened in the clear light of day. In the information-industrial complex, where vast spying programs happen in the shadows and under the cover of “national security,” it takes whistleblowers and insiders willing to risk it all even to find out what is being done by these shadowy agencies and their private-sector contractors. Even worse, the entire Orwellian spy grid is being run on the flimsiest of pretenses (the “war on terror”) that has no defined end point, and “justifies” turning that spy grid inward, on the American people themselves.
Surely Eisenhower never envisaged the monstrosity that this information-industrial complex has become, but the foresight he had in identifying its early stages over half a century ago is remarkable. The problem is that we are even further away from heeding the warning that he delivered in that 1961 address than we were at that time:
“It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system—ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”
If only this were the rhetoric that was shaping today’s debate on the issue, instead of the well-worn canard that we must “strike a balance” between freedom and security. Sadly, until such time as the National Security Act of 1947 is repealed and the cover of national security is lifted from the dark actors that populate this sector, the information-industrial complex is unlikely to be quashed—or even hampered—anytime soon.
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Great video!
Although the information is very disturbing it’s an excellent summary of the state of the modern world. At the plus side at least we have a word for it now “Information Industrial Complex”.
Sorry. Information industrial Complex is a misnomer.
There was a technological revolution in electronics that started 60 years ago with the invention of the transistor. This invention, along with others, has led to increasingly sophisticated computing devices, telecommunications and relay satellites, the internet, and the mushrooming of software applications, including advanced cryptographics. INFORMATION, specifically digital information, is a byproduct of all that technology.
The adjective INDUSTRIAL refers to the mechanical (usually assembly line) tools for manufacturing capacity, and more specifically for large scale deployment of that manufacturing capability. The production units of industrial manufacturing can include steel, machined parts, electronics, petroleum refining, and synthetics like plastics and carbon fibres, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. It is a very long list.
With the offshoring of much of standard American manufacturing capacity, the weapons and armaments industries are among the few remaining behemoths. A significant portion of industrial and university-based Research and Development is in aid of advanced weapons systems, cross-linked with the similarily huge R&D into computing/telecom capabilities that tie all these systems together.
Information and industrial production are tools towards an end. It’s the people and organizations that deploy these tools who are the real COMPLEX, and it’s these people and organizations that are the culprits if the information and industrial production is generated to the detriment of the American public, and the peoples of the world.
The US military has a defacto junta in Washington now, and ever since World War II has had a place at the top table in foreign policy making. The US security agencies work with this junta, and often provide the opportunities overseas to permit the US military to operate.
The Bank of International Settlements, through the Federal Reserve and the Wall Street banks, runs the US domestic economy, but what is running the US foreign policy (and more and more the domestic policy as well) is a MILITARY SECURITY COMPLEX. That term more aptly describes the nature of a fascist police state, too.
Well Herrqlys, I respect and largely agree with your point of view, and in fact, I began this comment with the idea of defending it…but veered en route.
Military is a tool that can be used for good or bad (depending on the context and even if one does not believe in institutionalized agression and murder.).
Information is a tool that can be used for good or bad (learning about the undeniable use of information to control in the form of blackmail for example).
It’s the misuse of the military that violates human life.
It’s the misuse of Information that violates human life.
The terms Military Industrial complex would seem to indicate coordinated Mass-produced Military material for some sort of profit and control
just as Information Industrial complex is the coordinated mass-production of information for some sort of profit and control.
Since police were involved in the rape, torture and murder of my sister I have trouble associating the word “Police” (even with the word “state” tagged on) with “Security” and vice versa.
So finally, the terms Information Industrial Complex and Military Security Complex are equally subjective and semantically malleable.
So ultimately, perhpas it’s the word “complex” that’s “complex”…?
Respectfully, and just for the very tired sake of argument… and I’m probably missing something as usual…
I sympathize with herrqlys too. In my view the problem (and this is a familiar problem to me as a copywriter) is that we want to see 5 or more concepts in there. But if we go beyond three words, the expression becomes less likely to resonate or catch on
I think herrqlys might find the lack of reference to police/military power in “information industrial complex” frustrating. I know I do.
“Military industrial complex” had that in there and that phrase, repeated often around me since I was a boy, has always conjured up the helmeted, weaponized world I recognize all too well.
But if we take out “industrial” as I was tempted to do, we end up without that other very important reference to “industry,” the immediate cause of much of the wealth and blight around us. Not sure there is an answer.
MBP, I have not been able to forget it since reading about your sister. Sometimes we converse on these boards forgetting that many of these things we discuss are in fact immediate life and death matters for some of us and our families. Nowhere near as horrible, but my divorced brother-in-law, with no record, weapon or desire to live at the moment, was killed by the police for the crime of being depressed, mute and sarcastic while holed up unarmed in a motel room.
The biggest problem I have now is that my son, whose favorite uncle that was, and who has been abused by the police too, HATES POLICE and that hatred is very dangerous. To our health in the long run, of course, but also (as I know from personal experience) hating police can lead us to make critical errors when dealing with them, and that can easily cost us our freedom or even our life. I am less worried as he gets older, but then, the cops are getting scarier too.
This has all been hard to deal with and I was just his brother in law. I cannot imagine how you feel.
“The police state” or “security state” is not just a matter of people reading our mail and finding new ways to control us electronically. People get killed or locked up for no reason by the police every day in America.
Excellent report James Corbett I am supposing that Brock West had a hand in its creation too. There seems to be some irony in the fact that neither of you are American in citizenship. However as weak in intelectual curiosity as I try to express ,you two exhibit an American trait of seeking the root truth of the matter at hand, and hold these truths to a higher standard of fair and just understanding and application if action need be taken. Americans are an impatient people. We do not as Americans ,think things out, we act, often to our determent. As I am an American , I am guilty of such qualities. I can’t set idle in view of an injustice and gross abuse of ‘fair play’.
We have as Carroll Quigley spoke of a dual mentality in our national character. I come to understand late in life, that our national character is skitzefrintic or as you say ‘psychopathic’ . Either way we have become the technocracy-kkacistocrocy you so brillenty put forth.
It is to my, and my countries citizens shame that the professor of this realization is not an American , but a voice from the Queens dominions. I think they speak not from a want to be and have what Americans take for granted, but from the voice of all sane people who despise fascism and all the historical weight of what we are becoming.
Corbett is showing and warning us, Americans ,America, what dangerous future is in store if we continue to embrace Fascism, delberatly or by stealth. Have any one of you read the Constitution and truly know what it means. The document has been subverted and subjected to the decay and harm of a Fascist takeover.
Corbett and Company explains that brilliantly! Time of the hour is near. R.I.P..Bill.
Spot on! This is one of his very best observations!
Ditto.
Good post, General.
“…Carroll Quigley spoke of a dual mentality in our national character…”
Can you expand on that? Ref? I lent my mostly unread Quigley books to some libertarian who will never read them either (you know who you are) and Joe Plummer is on my Christmas list.
Certainly Eisenhower (and his speech writer? does anyone know the history of this speech? I will look it up when I can) is speaking from one half of the American psyche, while the other half was cutting deals with the MIC and the “mushrooming” CIA right and left.
I could but it would take as in Quigleys case some 350 pages. He compares our development with that of the Russians. The root to our dualism he says is our puritan( 1700s ) rooted stock with the nineteenth century ( 1800s) trend emphasizing mans animal nature. “Based on a duelistic creature in which an external spiritual soul was encased, temporarily, in an ephemeral, material body. The outlook behind these achievements( escaping the 1700s for the 1800s) may be symbolized by Charles Darwin…, and of Sigmund Freud.” Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quigley pg.832. Index- Dualism 84,86, 101-5,(Russian.) 832-1186, 1227-8,1238-9-1276.
So John-O , its about the clash of religion and sex. Can’t think of a more qualifying way of describing what it is to be a Nazi. Paper-Clip was another of those American not thinking it through moments. Should have vetted them more closely.
Excellent comments by many others as well. May we all have a
Mercy Christmas!
Bravo, great comment general. I fear “the information-industrial complex” train has left the station and has reached the speed of light.
Indeed RIP, Bill Cooper. They are still working the game:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html?action=click&contentCollection=Arts&module=Trending&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article
Thanks for all the tips!
Brock, excellent job with the style and delivery of this video. I like the feeling it created right from the beginning. Very well done. And of course, the content is as potent as ever.
Thank you very much Briar. James’ brilliant writing & research are what allows me to piece together the visuals in such a way. Glad to see the it’s having such a positive response from the subscribers. Spread the word folks!
My hat is off to you Broc!
Your visuals bring the topic home!
Yes, yes, of course. I meant to tag James on the remark that “the content is as potent as ever.”
Another Corbett Super-Classic. Thank you, James and Brock, both.
In our arch-conspiracy theorizing, which sometimes sees every move on the board as just another maneuver by master-dialectical players above, it is worth mentioning that I truly believe this Nebraska farm boy who went off to West Point and became a 5 Star Victorious WWII General, the leader of the most powerful war machine ever up to that time, who was elected the President of the USA when the CIA was still an infant, and when local interests, however corrupt, still drifted up through smoke-filled rooms to choose Presidents, I truly believe he was sincere.
Incredibly naive as it seems now, people in the USA really did believe in freedom once. We lost it trying to defend it.
“Informational Industrial Complex.” Good coinage. More powerful than “Big Data.”
I call it “The Cyber Slave-War Machine.”
It is a Corbett Super-Classic!
We all should spread this around.
The specific goals set out in ‘silent weapons for quiet wars’ go far beyond the sense of personal surveillance as the involvement with individuals – though that will arise for anyone of any influence in any issue deemed worthy of manipulating outcomes.
I have the above within the download: BEHOLD A PALE HORSE by William Cooper – but it can be found as a stand alone.
The primary mindset of the anti-life movement of a dissociated private agenda is define, predict and control.
Within its definitional structure – there is no freedom – and reaction or rebellion is picked up, nurtured and captured if a useful gatekeeper or taken out.
So the response to this needs to become an expression of a different purpose than define, predict and control. in its own terms and not in the false framing of the idea of power over life.
So in essence, a lie and the father of it is given disregard, while attending to truth within, so as to know whether to speak or act and what to say or do but in any case giving witness to the movement of being that moves directly in life – and not through the filtering distortions of ‘narrative identity control’.
What is overlooked when focussing upon the ‘dynamics’ of conflict and fascination in horror, is the part we play in the induction and expression of the define, predict and control mentality. For it is simply the expression writ large of the wish for power in self-specialness or ‘private gratification’. But masked in the forms of social acceptability or ‘justification’.
If we are being hacked or scanned for hacking – the response is not fight or flight, but attention to every vector of triggerable susceptibility. We also pass our communication through our heart to pick up on where our mind is already hacked and mouthing the mindset of fear and control when a more honest, direct and open communication holds a unified purpose instead of indulging in persona-reaction.
There is something that the define, predict and control mind is not aware of – because it thinks that it knows.
This is You. It does not know or see you nor can it imagine you – except perhaps a sense of exclusion from something outside its range – perhaps the Enemy! that it seeks in everything at all times – for it seeks Life in order to kill it – but never finds it because it is not IN a concept, image or model of self or life.
The war-mind cannot operate without an ‘enemy’, and needs to bait reaction to induce conflict by which to block a true self-awareness. Not a subjective strategy – but an intimate awareness of being.
There is no basis to understand what I have just written within the definitional mindset of define, predict and control, and so it is assigned disregard automatically – or after assigning it ridicule or heretical intent.
This learned discipline needs to be replaced with the conscious disregard of meaninglessness instead of taking the bait.
I am not addressing a social activism here, but an awakening to a quality of integrity that opens genuine social communication and alignment.
The ‘descent’ into terror and madness is a result of feeding it because we are already mad under fear – and need to wake from dissociative thinking to live this moment – and this day – well. There is no one ‘else’ to wake up – but our own acceptance to embody. The release of the dreadful burden of control cannot be imagined. But as a deep habit, it seems to come back in – and that is where discipline grows new conscious habit-paths – which are not set in form, but living the qualities of who you truly are – through whatever moment you are the embodiment of. If you are “mad as hell and you aren’t going to take it any more!” – watch Network – or more seriously, feel what you feel so as to release whatever allows you to identify what is hurting and how it is targeting you. How you (your mind) is defining the situation. Because that is where we need vigilance for truth and not the reaction to a false flagged identity theft. If we want to embrace Life on Earth rather than enslave it.
The ‘ego’ finds what it does not expect. Nothing is as we think it is. But reacting as if it is, makes it so.
One of your best ever! I want everyone to hear this
What a tremendous episode. Thank you James.
The bit about Cheney is almost funny, chilling and preposterous as it is.
This is a lecture given in 2003 to the Main Department of the FSB (successor to KGB for state security) in St. Petersburg. The lecturer is Viktor Alekseyevich Efimov. As he explains to his audience part way through the lecture (audio is in Russian), he is a Physics Phd but has not limited his studies to Physics, and has researched the larger picture, particularly Economics, for the previous 15 years.
Two videos, same lecture, but with English descriptors that vary because of the translators.
The six priorities of global manipulation – Viktor A. Efimov full lecture (2:01:37)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuf9d3sci-w&t=1140s
This is in Romanian, but you can go to video Options and select Romanian subtitles, then go to Options again and select translate from Romanian to English, however that automated translation isn’t as good as the one with English subtitles (despite those being harder to read and including some phonetic misspellings) in the shorter version below:
How to rule the world – Viktor A. Efimov first half of lecture (1:06:15)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuf9d3sci-w&t=1140s
The second half of this lecture will eventually be translated into English, but for now this is all – but it’s plenty.
Ooops. (This may not make much sense until my prior post clears moderation.)
The URL for the first video – the full length one – is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD7-DYXvl0I
I checked my spelling, but forgot to check the most important things before posting. Measure twice, cut once.
Herrqleys, this link should be seen by all. There is from time to time small exquisite gems that are offered up by the Cornet community and this is one of them. What a gem!Thank you where and how did you come across this? What he says about drugs,tobacco and alcohol is telling.
“In this case, the warning is not one of bombs and bullets but bits and bytes”
Was it? Not what I heard. What I heard was “a scientific-technological elite”. Of course there is an overlap, but it’s quite clear he wasn’t referring to Big Data (which he could have, given the nazis’ use of IBM computers to catalog Jews for eviction and eventual death), but to government control, and thus also to “unwarranted influence” from the infamous MIC, of research, transforming academia into a Ministry of Truth. This would’ve been a plug for ‘Rockefeller Medicine’ (Big Pharma/Big Oil, not so much Big Data), and Polanyi’s ‘Republic of Science’ (https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=18856), which he published about 18 months after Ike’s memorable farewell.
Great report James, and excellent production Broc (you scared the shit out of me!!)
The phrase “scientia potentia est” (or “scientia est potentia” or also “scientia potestas est”) is a Latin aphorism meaning “knowledge is power”. It is commonly attributed to Sir Francis Bacon.
The earliest documented occurrence of the phrase “Knowledge is power” is from Imam Ali (599-661 CE). I also read the same concept in the Art of War by SunTzu.
So, there is nothing new here.. What has changed is, now they can get at it very easily (we actually volunteer the knowledge, and pay them for collecting it 🙂 )
There is a positive side to this story, that may enable Corbetteers to reduce their stress.
In the old days, Knowledge was hardware (recorded in books,files and peoples minds), which was very difficult to duplicate or steal.
In today’s world, Knowledge is all software based (recorded in digital format), which can be duplicated infinite number of times with fidelity, and stolen across copper wire/fiber optics/ or even wavelengths.
So, to fight “The Man”, we Corbetteers need to invest in understand the new digital platform. By the way, there is no encryption or cipher that can not be broken given a time. (the NSA have been doing it for years, and now they can decrypt all gadgets out there in matter of minutes.)
I found this today. I have no idea who this guy is, and when I hear that we are going to need satellites, I get mistrustful and discouraged, because deep down I am a Luddite, who still mistrusts the wheel, the saddle and the raft, but I do like his motto:
“Save the Web from the Internet”
And I do believe that until someone comes up with a truly decentralized peer to peer WEB, that does not rely on the Darpanet, its Internet is just a way to get us hooked on the new “freedoms” that come with control of our conversations and the digitalization of our commerce.
https://staltz.com/a-plan-to-rescue-the-web-from-the-internet.html
John o says, did you ever find who wrote the farewell speech that Pres.Eiz. ..gave?
While I draw the conclusion that , what James calls the M.I.C., was born of the Nazi adopted by the pre-industrial post war milatary . James a question , Was the fascism present in industry before the Nazi collaborators absorbed their mindset into what you are calling the M.I.C.?
The reason I ask comes from a book I’ve just started ” Let the record speak “by Dorothy Thompson 1939. In the first two pages she says”from the beginning , National Socialism was designed for export; the Nazi Germany would found a’Fascintern’,with the object of taking over the world-revolutionary role once assumed by the Comintern;and in this capacity would be more efficient, shrewd brutal and successful than communism ever was.” Written in 1939.
So what came first, pre-war fascist American industrial establishment or the absorbed abrogating Nazi techno-orphans post 1950 M.I.C.?
Also , it really illustrates that dualism in the American psychi.
The fight against communism by use of a supper Fascintern.i.e. M.I.C., freedom and democracy destroyed. We are becoming what we feared most. What irony born of apathy.
I can’t find an actual attribution but Ike’s main speechwriter was Malcom Moos, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Moos
The question of the relationship between the industrial American fascist conspirators foiled by Smedley Butler and the post-war MIC is really a good one. It seems the rise of the CIA, the Bushes and the Dulles brothers is exactly the story of the long term reaction to that loss. We are still living in it.
And thanks for the Quigley stuff, general. Very interesting.
Ah yes John-O , I completely forgot about Gen.Smedley Butler. He is a modern day Nathan Hall type. Except they should have hung every last one of the conspirators. Americans need to know more of Gen.S Butler. Quigley is silent on Gen.Butler in Tragedy and Hope. No surprise there.Probably nothing in American Anglo- Establishment either. Thanks for the reminder and link to Moos.
P.S. J-O.on Moos you see how the deepstate deals with dangerios minds like Moos. They put them to work to shut them up and control what they produce. Hired by the Ford foundation and Nelson Rockefeller. If that doesn’t prove cunning I don’t now what does. Very telling what kind of man he truly was in his later years. Fascinating! When will the deepstate come after Corbett with that offering. He just might turn them down.
Thanks for the link john.o..
Disruptive Innovations
I am seeing this term more and more.
“Disruptive Innovations” could enslave us further or help to break the shackles.
I really don’t fear the Information-Industrial Complex all that much to be honest, for the same reason I speak my mind on forums such as this, simply because if the right legislation is in place, then it will help keep corporations and governments in check.
For example: Net Neutrality.
Net Neutrality currently prevents ISP’s from selling our captured data, including our browsing history, to any 3rd party, unless we consent of course.
Also, police agencies in most countries need what is called a FISA warrant in the US, if they are to collect any data on a particular individual. This data needs to be collected within a certain time frame within the FISA warrant itself, assuming that a Judge agreed that there was sufficient evidence to move forward and grant the FISA to the police, since any data collected without a FISA would be considered illegal and unconstitutional, and would not be admissible in court.
Let me preface by stating that Net Neutrality rules differ in every country.
also a correction to my previous post: apparently the FCC rolled back the regulatory framework for the net neutrality rules by a vote of 3 to 2 just last week.
However, less than an hour after the results were declared, Attorney Generals for the states of Washington and New York announced that they would be suing the FCC on its decision.
This is why voting matters, and why we must stay vigilant, always.
Wadr, PF, the use of personal data collected illegally (or legally) is hardly limited to prosecutions. That is the use of last resort in many cases. Persecution is more common.
Personal data can be used for robbery, blackmail, IRS persecution, to suppress dissent by knowing what people are thinking about before they act, and simply to remind the masses that they do not belong to themselves.
Oh, also for prosecuting some people (for instance for using prostitutes, or the kidnapping and rape of children) and NOT prosecuting others.
It has been used for every one of these things so far.
john.o,
I agree that persecution may be more common in 3rd world nations run by dictators, however data collection has been around since before the information age, take for example the church collecting “data” during the middle ages via priest confessions. The fact that since the age of enlightenment, the American and French revolutions, nations today have laws in place and a constitution that curtails such persecution.
So, just to be clear, your position is that, when Bill Clinton used electronic surveillance to bring down his Republican impeachers, this was somehow mitigated by the Enlightenment and the Constitution?
In case you hadn’t heard, one President of the United States called the Constitution “just a goddamned piece of paper.” Following him was a “Constitutional Law” scholar, who executed American citizens without trial and applied anti-spying laws to the press. I doubt the current President has ever read it. The previous Supreme Court Justice wrote into law the position that exercising 5th Amendment rights is an indication of guilt!
In case you hadn’t noticed NOBODY cares about the Constitution anymore! They hardly even mention it in the schools. Or it is treated, effectively, as a historical document like the Magna Carta.
Those who seek protection that way look increasingly to me like the schizophrenic street person I saw the other day. He was cold. So he covered himself with big loose netting and sat on the sidewalk shivering.
john.o
So, just to be clear, my position is that, the Constitution isn’t “just a god-damned piece of paper†and voting does matter. By the way, Bush suffered politically when he purportedly ushered those words!
The Supreme Court still guarantees that exercising 5th Amendment rights is NOT an indication of guilt!
Many Americans and people such as Comey and Mueller still care for the US constitution.
* very important read right here, take note*
In March 2004, James Comey, then deputy attorney general, was summoned to the hospital bed of his boss, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft. Ashcroft, weak from gallbladder surgery, was under pressure from White House officials Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to sign papers reauthorizing the domestic surveillance program secretly launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Ashcroft’s wife was distraught about the visit from the White House counsel and chief of staff, according to testimony Comey later gave to a Senate committee. She called Comey to stop the uninvited visitors. Just the previous week, her husband had agreed NOT to reinstate the program.
Comey called in help, asking Mueller, then the FBI director, and several top aides to meet him at the hospital, and they put an end to the unconstitutional domestic surveillance program.
I’d like to add that the impeachment of then President Clinton was an act of persecution.
Lewinsky, a naive Jewish girl, was used by the Zionist hard right in Israel to punish Clinton for the Oslo Accord.
You are correct about the operation against Clinton. (I have a feeling it goes deeper than just Israel, but who really knows?).
Almost all of Washington is a game of blackmail poker, really.
That doesn’t change my point about how ostensibly “Constitutional” powers were used for extra-Constitutional purposes. It reinforces it.
Oh! Another fibbeyond tadpole credulity. Prosecution must of been what you meant to type. To think that Clinton was persecuted may lead you to vote for his sainthood next in the pantheons of psychopaths. Bless You so funny really belly-roll laughing imagining Clinton being persecuted.
Moussaoi was not tortured, or rather, I imagine he was, but there is no official evidence of torture. The torture of Khaleid Sheikh Mohammed was used to convict Moussaoui though.
There was NO evidence other than that torture-fed testimony to connect Moussaoui to the actual particiation any 911 p. He knew about it and he was admittedly a part of a different plot that never came off. Of course a real trial would have been able to go into the whole story of how these Al Qaeda operatives were all working studying and learning how to fly in Norman Oklahoma right under the nose of David Boren, the former chairman of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Old fashioned closeted homosexual spy-intrigue in Norman OK around Boren is not hard to spot.
Two interesting things about Moussaoui:
1) He is, as I mentioned, the one time in US history where the power structure became extremely concerned for the constitutional rights of a terrorist suspect, even though the local FBI office knew he knew something about the plot.
The blocking of the investigation onto Moussaoi’s laptop is what alerted Agent Rowley at the local FBI office that HQ was playing some other game altogether. While Moussaoui did not participate in 911, it is widely recognized that the contents of his laptop would have led to a part of the plot. The two people responsible for blocking the FISA warrant for Moussaoui got promotions. Rowley was persecuted out of the FBI.
2) He knew and used the password of Nicolas Berg who was beheaded in Irag under very suspicious circumstances and whose beheading played a huge part in the war fever in the US.
Spooks everywhere. Berg, I believe, but can’t prove it, was (wittingly? probably) part of a plot to plant chemical weapons in Iraq to be found by the “liberators”. Before he headed off there, he attended a session at Dugway Proving grounds no one will talk about. He was also an electronics spy.
I don’t know how my Moussaoui posts ended up here and I suspect a plot!
How did Bush “suffer politically?” Do you think the Bushes care about polls after they have started their wars and put what they wanted, like the Patriot Act, in place?? They know very well, as George I did (checking his watch while losing to Clinton in the debate) that their successors are on the same team in the long run.
And sorry, PF, that Comey storey is pathetic! You fell for it. It was an obvious maneuver to pass practically the same laws with few changes: — look up what Comey actually opposed versus what was kept — and you will see it was theater.
We’ve come full circle to my original post.
Incremental changes are needed to avoid civil war. The USA Freedom Act replaced the Patriot Act. The act imposed new limits on the bulk collection of telecommunication metadata on US citizens by American intelligence agencies. It also restored authorization for roving wiretaps. Two key provisions, that Comey and Mueller supported.
Furthermore, during the Obama administration, the FCC added new Net Neutrality restrictions, that Trump has just recently done away with.
Trump is a Netanyahu stooge, I think the Jerusalem declaration proves that.
Even Wikipedia notes:
“Critics assert that mass surveillance of the content of Americans’ communication will continue under Section 702 of FISA which does not expire until 2017[9][10] and Executive Order 12333[9][11] due to the “unstoppable surveillance-industrial complex”[12] despite the fact that a bipartisan majority of the House had previously voted to close backdoor mass surveillance.”
Watch FISA Title VII get renewed any day now.
It contains this: “May not intentionally target a U.S. person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States”
One year earlier, they killed US Citizen Awlaki overseas, in violation of the Constitution itself. Do you think that puny rule prevents them from bugging anybody?
As far as voting, I agree. Sometimes.
Back in the 80s I lived where the Bloods and Crips were at war. The Bloods leader was crazy and mean and innocent people and kids were getting killed. The Crips were just as murderous on the streets, but took a little more care with the community.
Sometimes I favor a politician, just as I favored the Crips. But when it’s Snidely Whiplash vs. Cruella DeVille, I’m out.
Even Wikipedia notes: Blah blah blah, which is, what I said earlier, not without a FISA warrant, which means anything else is inadmissible in court, legally this is a huge difference! You have rights!
Do you think that puny rule prevents them from bugging anybody? They can bug the hell out out of me man, I seriously don’t care, unless they have a FISA warrant, then that changes everything, but even then, I get to face my accusers in court!
As far as Bloods or Crips, I’m the Corbett’s residential socialist remember?! If this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMZi25Pq3T8 don’t show my “true” color, nothing will.
In all of my research, I have only found one situation where it was hard to get a FISA warrant: Moussaoui.
I hope, if they get one on you, you get a fairer trial.
Haven’t followed the Moussaoui trial all that much, but if 9/11 was indeed an inside job, then this guy was a willing participant, and deserves jail time.
Just because a crime is contrived doesn’t mean there ain’t willing patsies, and Moussaoui seemed to have been one of them.
I am sure that Moussaoui enjoyed all the waterboarding prior to his trial. 183 times must be fun.
American justice.
Yes. Trust our leaders.
I need authorities.
I want very important people to dictate how I live and to help make me feel secure and assure me that everything will be taken care of.
Good.
I can go relax now…maybe watch more of “The Voice” and “America Got Talent” shows. “Jersey Housewives” should be fun.
I tried to post here on Moussaoui but it ended up above somehow.
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
PeaceFroggs, you say “I agree that persecution may be more common in 3rd world nations run by dictators…..”
I live in a 3rd world nation that is under a dictatorship, and i enjoy more freedoms (in different forms) than the United States of America. eg. Police cannot enact “Civil forfeiture” just because they fancy it. and my home is still my castle.
So you admit you live under a benevolent dictatorship, nice.
Hello PeaceFroggs…
Stop twisting people’s words…
I said i live under a dictatorship, run by a dictator. and it also happens to be a police state.. yet I enjoy freedoms better than the average American.
benevolent is all yours my friend. 🙂
Stop twisting people’s words? Do you not know what “benevolent” means?
PeaceFrogs,
Watch out. I might just insult you and call you an AMERICAN for “running half-cocked”.
https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-323-the-saudi-purge-is-a-global-crisis/#comment-45570
😉
Hello PeaceFroggs,
You misunderstand my point. I am not showing off or praising my country.. I am trying to make the following point.
When i was a kid (cars looked magnificent then), the whole world dreamed of moving to the USA because of its Freedom….
Today, someone living in a dictatorship (like me) prefers to stay were he is because he has more freedom than the USA (different forms of freedom)
So, my message is for ALL my american brothers and sisters. Wake up and save your country before you end up like me.
The Consitution is not just “a god-damned piece of paper” for those
who use and abuse and have invested all their chips in Legalese.
It’s an imperfect reflection of human ideals. Do not, for Ego, throw the baby out with the bath water.
Abandon it at your peril. Even if it doesn’t figure in the future you want to see. Even if you think it’s not what it appears to be.
Even the Doms have rules…and superstitions…and doubts…
What do you gain by burning it? When powerful others crave so much to do so?
Play your cards close to your chest. And don’t give any discounts.
I agree with this. Nothing above is meant to suggest that we abandon whatever is left of Constitutional protection, especially of the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers. But both of those are barely alive.
The US has been at war somewhere my entire life. And yet, no war had ever been declared by Congress. Even the puny protections in the War Powers Act are routinely ignored. The average American no longer even knows what the President’s job is supposed to be! Congress is kakistocratically controlled by money and sexual blackmail, the Judiciary, the same, and taken over by spooks.
Don’t burn it, just don’t think it is protecting you from much. And remember it is protecting you less every day.
But, what do they really want to know about us?
They want to know how to conduct the longest war…the never ending war against the enemy they declared to be us.
The war is hundreds, possibly thousands of years old.
We the people were named as the enemy in the “Trading With the Enemy Act” when it was modified during the 1930’s.
Mostly, we are ignored. And mostly, that works.
To be sure that it works and to make sure that all dissenters are led by their own people, they need to monitor any attempt by the people to coalesce.Then co-opt whatever grass roots organization forms.
Or, they create a competing organization and promote it to siphon off the strength of any legitimate group.
This is done all over the world with one goal…installation of an actor -aka meat puppet – at the top of every country. This is now complete or nearly so.
So, when you see a politician saying or doing something crazy or stupid, they are just over acting – all the good talent is busy doing movies or porn.
Beautify stated Skepticon!
Hello Corbetteers…
I have just finished watching a movie called “Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief (2015)”….. Wow… it is a mind opener….
OK.. before i go any further. This post has nothing to do with religion or peoples believes. I believe religion is a personal “thing” between an individual and his god, and it involves no one else…
So, What amazed me about this movie is once you understand Scientology, you will be amazed how similar it is to other movements like:
– ISIS – Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
– MB – Muslim Brotherhood
That leads me to ask the question. Was Scientology an experiment in psychology to prepare for ISIS and MB?
This film also highlights a very important fact. The only way to fight “The Man” is by “Organizing”. ISIS got organized and took Iraq and Syria. MB got organized and took Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia (for a short period of time), and Scientology got organized and took the IRS (and the USA Gov) and won.
Lesson learnt. Unless we organize and very soon.. we will be further enslaved. and i suspect our children and children’s children will be just the equivalent to a Scientology member.
What amazed me the most is how smart or average people took part in Scientology, and stayed there for 20 and 30 years, and choose to turn a blind eye to horror right in front of their eyes and sometimes committed on their orders.
https://www.corbettreport.com/bitcoin-10000-what-does-it-mean/#comment-46125
¿Como?
Pablo, what are you saying? That we should all just follow orders and do as the Masters says and does? Really?
Ok. I will not use that term!
And I urge all you other Corbetteerrorists to stop too.
Estimado John.aa
You are totally free to do what you want, just like I dooooo.
Viva la independencia y libertad
Chaoooooooooooooo
VoiceOfArabi,
I hear ya about Scientology. I have spent countless hours looking into it.
You bring up some good points about similarities. I mention some similar aspects regarding CONTROL here…
https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1240-rick-falkvinge-on-rule-41-and-the-new-online-order/comment-page-1/#comment-35367
Here are some SOURCES about Scientology and also how they identify “Psychopaths and people affected by them”.
https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-090-our-leaders-are-psychopaths/comment-page-1/#comment-41140
Not everything nor everyone in Scientology is nutty. But there definitely are & have been “Power Hungry Psychopaths” who try to run the show.
This is a published work which has some very interesting points, some of which I like. (pdf link)
https://ronsorg.ch/wp-content/uploads/Problems-of-Work.pdf
Jim Marrs, G. Edward Griffin, Psychiatrist Colin Ross
https://www.corbettreport.com/open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-39625
and
https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1273-newsbud-launches-new-funding-drive/comment-page-1/#comment-38561
Thanks HomeRemedySupply,
The above links are great and you seems to have done a lot of research on the topic.
I have done similar research on ISIS and MB, and they appear to have the same director! (or at least writer)
I like that phrase analogy…
They seem to have the same writer.
– (same script writer) –
“writer” as in…
– director –
– authorship –
– hack – (a writer who works on order or solely for commercial success, mercenary)
– hatchet man –
All cults, power elites and kakistocracies contain broad structural similarities because of two things:
1) People have real needs. This is what brings them into ANY society with others. Hence, to attract followers, there are often core insights, valuable truths and real human needs met in most cults.
2) Once any aggressive collective enterprise gets underway, compassion, empathy, love, human loyalties and FEELINGS of many kinds, are in fact costly, and must be controlled or eliminated to the degree power is sought.
I believe all groups operate this way, but most of us are not trying to take over the world so we don’t need to ERASE these qualities just modulate them so we don’t give our rent money to the first homeless person we see or refuse to compete so nobody else loses.
Thus in varying degrees I see all of these same dynamics operate in everything, starting with PTA meetings, ranging through local businesses promoting two-bit narcissistic assholes to lord it over the wage slaves, up to the sale, torture and killing of children, just to find out who is not only willing but EAGER for it.
If you are out to control the world, those are the guys you want on your team.
Hello john.o,
Very interesting and enlightening insight. What you state above does make sense and can be seen in action in many groups and corporate out there.
on a side note. I always struggled with this thought… The society sometimes appears to be made up of Sheep an Wolves… The question that always comes to mind is… Did the sheep create a need for the Wolves, or the did wolves create a need for the sheep??
The theory of evolution, of course, says that in nature they co-evolved, but the dynamics of “the sheep and wolves” METAPHOR is interesting.
There is a little detail that needs consideration. Sheep, as livestock, become dependent on their human masters, users and and slaughterers for protection from wolves.
That irony in the sheep metaphor has troubled many a Christian critic! If you lay it all out as to who is actually “protecting” and feeding God’s “lambs” we find it is “the good shepherd,” who typically, in real life, slaughters them occasionally when he, (or his god) desires one for food. (I actually think it makes the metaphor quite profound, though sobering, and I am not being cheeky or sarcastic.)
So whatever the origin of the sheep-wolf dialectic, we now have a trialectic: sheep-wolf-shepherd (i.e. protector/murderer).
Moving that metaphor from human-diabolic-divine interaction down to the realm of human-criminal-police interaction, or human-enemy-state interaction, or human-disease-doctor interaction, I think you can probably work out the details.
🙂 🙂 very interesting…
‘MSU Scholar Finds $21 Trillion in Unauthorized Federal Spending’
http://research.msu.edu/msu-scholar-21-trillion-in-unauthorized-govt-spending/
‘Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us?’ –-Laurence Kotlikoff, Forbes Contributor
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/#3a366def7aef
‘Missing $21 Trillion Means Federal Government Is Lawless – Dr. Mark Skidmore’ By Greg Hunter December 3, 2017
https://usawatchdog.com/missing-21-trillion-means-federal-government-is-lawless-dr-mark-skidmore/
“Eisenhower identified the early stages of The Information-Industrial Complex”
http://911blogger.com/news/2017-12-20/eisenhower-identified-early-stages-information-industrial-complex
IN-Q-TEL?
Hmmm…
Google this:
Future Laborotories
https://www.future.com/
Future Com: Technology Solutions
https://www.myfuturecom.com/
Contact Us – Future Com
https://www.myfuturecom.com/contact-us/
Future Com | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/future-com
Now I am getting really scared…
– Bloomberg October 18, 2017 – PEW pole –
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-18/why-some-nations-are-warming-to-technocracy
QUOTE
…What’s truly striking about the Pew findings, however, is what kind of experiment people would favor. The only nondemocratic form of government that attracts majorities in some countries is technocracy, in which experts, not elected politicians, determine how to run a nation. The list of countries where that’s a common belief is telling:….
HomeyRemedy; I have not seen the Bloomberg artical yet and will later tonight. Don’t tell me but is the number one technocracy loving country Israel? Just Guessing. Now to your link.
One tiny ray of light from the article:
“It’s in advanced democracies that experts’ allure has faded.”
Putting aside the offensive malaprop “advanced democracies,” what is really meant is that we in the Anglo-American-EU-UN-Banking Empire are already owned by the Expertocracy and smell its bullshit on our clothes.
It won’t take long elsewhere. Technocracy is very scary bullshit, but it is bullshit. It really doesn’t work, technically, and becomes very quickly the obvious manipulation of the idols and the oracles by a priesthood to assert kakistocratic power.
June 2018 – TruthStreamMedia – One Card to Rule Them All
4 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf7sY_JNQLI
Zuckerberg stole FB and settled out of court with the victims for $175 million.