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Army Psy Ops Units Targeted American Senators
Weezul writes "The US Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in 'psychological operations' to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war. An officer who tried to stop the operation was railroaded by military investigators. (see also the Hatch Act of 1939)."
So basically the army used its soldiers as lobbyists?
He asked them to provide him with background on the politicians and a methodology to get them to support the war. This guy did less than McDonalds does to sell a big mac, and the guy who "blew the whistle" has an overinflated view of his "skills and training".
The only morally correct way to convince someone of your position is to present the evidence (and the rationale).
Any manipulation beyond that is a deliberate attempt to derail the other person's rationality and force them into making a decision that might not be in properly alignment with their loyalties and interests, and hence is potentially harmful to the person and hence morally wrong.
PsyOps is a weapon, and has the same moral status as any weapon. Firing weapons at our own senators is also morally wrong.
I think it is more like the character George Clooney played in The Men Who Stare at Goats.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
We gave up any meaningful right when we signed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, & any remaining freedoms with the PATRIOT Act of 2001, so what say you, puny civilians?
Holy cow are you people starting to sound like broken records. Is this the answer to all questions? The Federal Reserve Act?! What is wrong with our schools?
RTFA. This was more than looking up voting records. They were targeting their fellow Americans with techniques designed specifically for use against the enemy, which is prohibited by law for good reason. It's no different than if a soldier pointed his rifle at a visiting politician and said, "Senator, vote for the new defense appropriations bill or I'll blow your head off."
You may be right that it's the same thing any business or news organization would do. The difference is that We, the People, do not invest in Microsoft or the New York Times the authority to kill people in our name. The rules are different for the military, and they damn well should be. If you want to live in a country where the military runs like a business, there are plenty of places in the world for you to try. Most of them aren't very pleasant places to live. Why don't you give it a shot, so to speak -- the experience will be very educational for you, if you survive it.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I think it is more like the character George Clooney played in The Men Who Stare at Goats.
That movie was so much better than The Men Who Stare at Goatse. I really need to pay better attention when picking a theater.
That slope is very slippery.
As convinced as you are that your position is the correct one, it is always possible that you are simply mistaken. In that case, someone else's objective position might save a lot of people from the bad consequences of your mistake. That is one reason why brainwashing (or equivalent) is morally wrong....you might force someone to agree with you when you should have been disagreed with.
If you can't convince your audience via reason and evidence, then you don't deserve their agreement.
Of course......if our senetors are actully outright corrupt then they should be overthrown....though that is a different situation entirely.
Put on your tinfoil hats, cause this is how it works: The rich elite that control the central banks finance the politicians that run the military that invade the land of the sand people to take their oil to benefit the bankers that have conveniently invested in the most wasteful forms of energy because waste means profit through cyclical consumption & designed obsoletance which is the same reason you can't clean the fucking fan so it runs out of warrantee so you end up having to run to the store to buy another one because it's broken so open the door get on the floor everybody walk the dinosaur.
uhhh... i hear you on the patriot act, but you do realize that the fed was brought into existence not because of some retarded senator palpatine style freedom destroying plot, which seems to be the way you think, but because people were sick of banking panic after banking panic laying waste to the economy and people's lives and financial well being:
http://history1800s.about.com/od/thegildedage/a/financialpanics.htm
and although i'd really love to hear your john birch society conspiracy theories about the fed, i'm sorry, but i have an appointment with economic reality and psychological stability that i really must keep, adieu
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I believe his exact argument was "KaChing!" with some fist pumping gestures.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Didn't work, did it? The panics of 1930-1933 were the worst yet.
Holy cow are you people starting to sound like broken records. Is this the answer to all questions? The Federal Reserve Act?! What is wrong with our schools?
The US school system used to be one of the best. But it was never the same after the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
people were sick of banking panic after banking panic laying waste to the economy and people's lives and financial well being:
Good thing they put a stop to that, then!
You can't take the sky from me...
Except we had the First Bank of the United States and the Second Bank of the United States, which were essentially central banks and they didn't help.
And the Fed not only didn't help avert the Great Depression, they admitted to making it worse thru over contraction of the monetary supply.
Considering the number of recessions, the modern name for bank panic, after the creation of the Fed, what exactly is your argument? They certainly haven't either slowed down or flattened out the severity of any, including the current, the ones in the 1980s and all the ones past.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
yes, so we got the FDIC added, along with the glass steagall act banking protections... which were underminded starting with reagan, legislated around further through clinton, and gutted under bush ii (hey SEC: stop doing your job, there's no guy pulling off a giant ponzi scheme, naaah). leading to, surprise! the crash of 2008
anything else i can help you with?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Having spent some time in the Army, and having had some exposure to PsyOps attempts... I have concluded that PsyOps earns its stripes at the strategic level, not the tactical level: they don't really mold minds on an individual basis.
Steering whole units OVER TIME with ruses, not a room-full of VIPs in a few afternoons with jedi mind tricks.
If you really think that PsyOps is some jedi mind trick bullshit, you've watched too many movies. At best it is some pogues in the woods with loudspeakers on thier HMMWV trying to make the enemy scouts tell their commander that they hear tanks when there really aren't any.
These aren't psychologists, hypnotists, or jedis... they operate based on very basic ideas and techniques. And already /. is filled with comments from pasty basement dwellers who love Clancy books and SciFi movies, commenting with wild-eyed amazement at the thought of such amazing intrigue.
THL phish sticks
My point was, the evidence of the past 2 centuries does not bear out your argument. The advent of central banking in the United States has not significantly reduced the number of nor severity of economic "panics".
You linked to a list of bank panics of the 19th Century, but neglected to differentiate between the ones that occurred with and without central banks. You also didn't compare and contrast to a list of bank panics in the 20th Century, after the creation of the Fed.
You said "this was bad" and "here is the fix", but didn't actually look at any evidence of whether or not the fix WORKED. And in this last post you resort to ad hominem attacks.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
But that's not how it went. The Psy-Ops guys were asked to study the dignitaries in order to find our how to manipulate them, and to sit in on meetings with them without identifying their role. They weren't asked to show off how articulate they were.
No, he's saying that the laws as originally legislated would have prevented a lot of the recent banking problems. It wasn't until people disobeyed them, legislated additional loopholes, or decided not to enforce it that things started to really spiral out of control.
Or, that's what I believe he's saying.
"...invade the land of the sand people"
The Sand People are easily startled but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers. Take that rich elite!
Thus far in my life, I have never gone to the bank and asked to make a withdrawal of money I had in account, and been denied. I think this is nearly unheard of. My great-grandmother told us some different stories (before and after 1913). My parents do not in their lifetime recall having been denied, nor did my grandmother who was born somewhere around 1928 (though during her early years it must certainly have been common, she would have been too young to recall it).
In my lifetime I recall 3 major economic downturns, each worse than the last, during which I personally experienced temporary devaluation of my investments, and generally slower growth than I might have expected based on prior data. In spite of this, all my investments are worth more than what I put in to them, even right now, though I do expect when dealing with "investments" that I may lose money. If I didn't want to lose money I wouldn't "invest", I'd put it in an insured bank account, or not trusting that, buy non-perishable commodities and try to hide them around the house.
So though I suspect your comment was snarky, I think we did put a stop to that. The question is have we let enough safeguards erode such that our overall economic stability might return us to my great-grandmothers time of bank panics and shortages.
If it's not too much to ask, could you please elaborate a little so kiddies like me can understand what's going on? I'm trying to go through it but it's a lot to work with for someone who started with Clinton.
In order to form your own opinions, I would suggest you read at least a putatively objective account of the legislation being referenced. Biased explanations by those who are already pushing their point are unlikely to help you in this regard. Reading these will give you a start, but you had better be prepared to develop your own ideas about economic theory and political theory as well. Despite economists' belief that they study a science, and the words "political science" used by those who study political theory, neither resembles more traditional scientific disciplines. Both are more about pushing theories than proving them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garn–St._Germain_Depository_Institutions_Act
It created our central banking system. The fact that every other civilized country on Earth has a similar system only makes it more sinister in the eyes of our lunatic fringe.
Anytime someone utters the words "Federal Reserve Act of 1913", it's 50-50 odds what happens next. Half the time they'll follow it up by declaring that income taxes are invalid, money is only money if it's backed by gold, and fluoride treated water is a government mind control tool. The other half of the time they'll just hole up in their fortified compound and start shooting.