As The Right Spins Its "False Flag" Flatus Let's Not Conflate Conspiracy Crackpots With Actual Conspiracy Theorists -Researchers

Alex Jones (left) is a conspiracy kook, while Mark Lane is a conspiracy analyst. It's time the scribes in the mainstream media began to learn the difference!

As noted in my post of Oct. 24, it was mere hours after the news broke that explosive devices had been sent to George Soros, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats, that  deranged conspiracy ideation  (I refuse to dignify it with the term 'theory') was spawned in certain corners of conservative media.  The bombs, according to this hogswill, were not actually part of a plot to harm Democrats, but were a “false flag” operation concocted by leftists in order to paint conservatives as violent radicals ahead of the elections next month.  As Matt Miller put it last night ('Last Word', MSNBC) "This is coming from conservative circles that this was somehow a liberal plot to distract from the caravan  which they believe is what the election ought to be about. So again, you have this idea that because they were Democratic targets it's not a national crisis, but something we can again fight over - which is obviously a really reprehensible idea."

Sound familiar? If it does you might recall it comes right out of the playbook of  über -kook Alex Jones who fabricated the false flag bunkum that the Sandy Hook/Newtown massacre was a federal "false flag" operation. Those twenty  kids weren't really slain, they were merely child actors- as well as the teachers- in an elaborate script to befuddle the public and make them demand gun confiscation across the land. (Jones was also one of the nitwits who confected the cockeyed conspiracy codswallop that the Parkland shooting victims, who became gun control activists-  were all actors.)

Many of these lowbrow kooks, which is what they are, were  also foursquare behind helping to spread Michael Flynn's  Pizzagate conspiracy, i.e. that Hillary Clinton was keeping child sex slaves in the basement of a D.C. pizza parlor and exploiting them.

So no one need be a Mensa brainiac to know the template for this latest false flag conspiracy B.S. has been in existence from the Right's stooges and trolls for some time. Hence, it ought to have been of minimal surprise to learn this latest iteration shares the same deranged heritage, or "DNA" if you will. In this case, a wacko named  Jacob Wohl-   a pro-Trump twit who writes for Gateway Pundit (a Right wing troll farm)-   tweeted  the  refuse that the assorted pipe bombs were props, planted by Democratic operatives and amplified by a biased liberal media.  In other words, all a ruse to drive voters to the Dems. No, folks, you cannot make this shit up, this is real and happening in Rightist Trump World.

One is led to inquire what engenders this degenerate crap.  What defects in the brains of these losers causes them to spawn such bollocks, say instead of applying what gray matter they have to researching real conspiracies?  Well, one answer is that researching the real ones - like the JFK assassination  - actually takes hundreds of man hours of real work.  Just plowing through Oswald's CIA files - e.g. the  OS-351- 164 file from his  201- 289 248 CI/SIG file or his 74-500 file. as reported in the Appendices of  John Newman’s book, ‘Oswald and the CIA’- can take hours.   It's a damned sight more exacting than merely scribbling  an imbecilic text on 4 Chan, Reddit or Gateway Pundit.

Sadly, columnist Kevin Roose, in a recent  NY  Times piece : ' False Flag Theory on Pipe Bombs Zooms From Right-Wing Fringe to Mainstream',  appeared not to be able to distinguish this latest right wing baloney from serious conspiracy research. That is the nature of the work done by Mark Lane  - who would be called a REAL conspiracy theorist or better, conspiracy analyst.  (The analyst having often shown facts, evidence, data beyond the conjectures of theorists.)

 As articulated by Dr. Pat Bannister, the conspiracy research community is the province of mature, rational, educated adults. Serious people possessing some measure of intellect who bring their scientific, mathematical and other aptitudes to the investigation of multiple aspects of a putative real conspiracies - whether the BCCI banking conspiracy, Iran-Contra or the JFK assassination. These people put in real man hours and actually published their work in authoritative media and respected forums as opposed to spreading bunkum through the lowest dreg regions of the net.

Lane, for example, was the first to expose the misdirection and artifice to do with Lee Harvey Oswald's USMC rifle test scores. This was in conjunction with the Warren Commission's questioning of Major Eugene D. Anderson in reference to Commission Exhibit No. 239.  Thus, the WC simply published Anderson's ambivalent speculations on what  weather conditions  for May 6, 1959 might have been, i.e. at first asserting "it was an ideal day".   But it was Lane who pointed out, 'Rush To Judgment', p. 124:

"Although the Commission adopted and published the major's speculation on what the weather 'might well have been'  there was no need for imprecision on this point. Whenever weather is a factor in a court case in the United States, the records of the United States Weather Bureau are subpoenaed and presented as a matter of course.  ... The Weather Bureau records show that the day was not 'windy, rainy, dark', it was sunny and bright and no rain fell."

 That, I submit, is the work of a serious researcher, not a wacko like  Jacob Wohl, Michael Flynn or Alex Jones.   Alas, Mr. Roose - unable to make any critical distinction between genuine theorists-analysts like Mark Lane and ignorant poppets such as Alex Jones, Jacob Wohl et al, writes:

"Conspiratorial thinking has always been with us — the grassy knoll, the moon landing, the Freemasons. But it has been turbocharged in the Trump era..."

Thereby conflating conspiracy thinking and analysis with paranoid ideations and blatant nonsense.  This occurred as soon as he dragged in "the grassy knoll".  Following on from his book 'Rush To Judgement', Lane prepared a video with eponymous title, in which actual assassination witnesses were interviewed including: S.M. Holland, Lee Bowers, Aquilla Clemmons,  Orville Nix and others. In the case of S. M. Holland, e.g.

Lane escorted him to the top of the Triple Underpass overlooking Dealey Plaza to assess the full layout including the grassy knoll, and the curve of Elm Street around the Texas School Book Depository. Subsequently,  Lane actually walked with Holland  to the picket fence on the grassy knoll, clearly revealing its height would have concealed an assassin. Holland also recounted for Lane the questions never asked him by the Commission.

The interview with railroad worker Lee Bowers (later found dead in a suspicious car accident) disclosed the movement of men and a vehicle ('58 or '59 Chevy, tires covered with mud) behind the picket fence on the knoll just before the assassination.

Lane's preliminary work in many ways set the stage for the research of D.B. Thomas (published in the journal Science and Justice, Vol. 41, p. 21, 2001) which showed the putative origin of the kill shot in the assassination, traced to the grassy knoll using echo correlation analysis. This was based on the inferred geometry:

Thomas incorporated  both the original acoustic data (in dictabelt recordings) from Nov 22, 1963 and  more recent evidence from August 1978, when a test shot was fired in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza to provide a fiducial mark for the putative Grassy Knoll shot.   This integration was such that the test shot could be compared with the impulse record obtained on Nov. 22, 1963, e.g.

 This enabled the  fiducial mark to be lined up to events recorded on the Zapruder film. Thus, the test evidence (mainly in terms of echoes and echo delay times received via an echogram from a test shot (See Fig. 1) was essentially used to confirm the microphone recording & positions for the shots made on the actual date, by resort to microphones placed at the same (or approximately so) locations.

The hypergeometric p-function was then used for differing weighting factor distribution sets, H{M..N, n, i} to assess significance or likelihood of occurrence. It's based on the number of echo  'windows'  M,  with each spanning 190msec (total time)  at 2msec width per window and n for assigned impulses in the evidence pattern, with 'i' the "coincident impulses" or those matching the original (11/22/63)evidence and the test result. 

The question was whether a succession of first impulses of given amplitude could be manifesting a signal or was merely random noise. Thomas found that for a given configuration for 2 motorcycles at designated locations, 1 for (Grassy knoll) shooter location and one for alignment of muzzle blasts with one pair of echoes, the p -value is 0.000012 or about 1 in 100,000 against the null hypothesis, i.e. that the impulses were from random noise. An alternative way to put this is that the odds are 100.000 to 1 against being random noise. Hence  in favor of the impulses comprising actual rifle shots.

For the test shot, using Thomas' sonar model and the muzzle velocity for a Norma 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano (which is very doubtful that the GK shooter used), one arrives at a 171 msec time for the shock wave to take the defined path to the microphone, from a distance of 28.3m.  (See geometry diagram above)  One must then add the time taken for the putative bullet to travel the distance to the time for the shock wave. In this case: 126 msec + 45 msec. The first parameter is relatively fixed since the distance from bullet to test microphone is fixed at 44.2m and the speed of sound defined for the sonar model was 350 m/s.

The second component changes depending on the muzzle velocity. A German Mauser, with muzzle velocity not much greater than 760 m/s will have its bullet traverse the 28.3 m distance in 37 msec, so that the time will now be: 126 msec + 37 msec or 163 msec, which is some 8 msec shorter. If the rifle used was a Remington Fireball with muzzle velocity 825 m/s then we have a total time: t1 + t2 = 126 msec + 34 msec = 160 msec, or 3 msec shorter.

In the “analytically determined” schema (e.g. actual data obtained on 11/22/63), all the above values change slightly. For example, the distance to Kennedy (from the GK shooter) becomes 30.5 m, and the speed of sound is 342 m/s given the air temperature was 18  C (64.4 F)  at the time of the assassination. The distance from the (GK) assassin to the nearest motorcycle was 67 m leading to the muzzle blast arriving at the motorcycle some D t = [67m/ 342 m/s] = 196 msec, after the shot. When air resistance is corrected for by + 11.5% (from the shooter location) the muzzle velocity resulting becomes 748 m/s (using a starting assumed bullet speed of 672 m/s). Because of a shooter “location uncertainty” of +/- 1.5 m (A<-> A') the muzzle velocity uncertainty is at least +/- 32m/s, so one is left with a range of: 748 +/- 32 m/s. Assuming Thomas’ parameters are correct, then this excludes a Remington Fireball as a possible candidate weapon, but it does permit either a German Mauser or a .30-30 Winchester.

The bottom line is that Thomas' investigation soundly reconfirmed the original acoustic tests and that the kill shot came from the grassy knoll.

My point in writing this post and undertaking this exercise is to show the need for more scrupulous attention to details, as opposed to recklessly and lazily employing throwaway terms like "the grassy knoll"- to conflate one of the few genuine conspiracies with current wacko ideations.  The  latter referring to the false flag idiocy spewed by the Right's parade of morons, paper patriots  and shameless knuckledraggers.

By also showing more perception, intelligence and insight, writers like Roose will command more respect, especially in being able to discern poppycock from actual events that merit close analysis and research of the type I have shown.  Writers like Roose thereby emerge as more competent and informed when they write pieces on claptrap, paranoid conspiracy ideations - such as circulated by Jacob Wohl and Alex Jones.  The takeaway for serious journalists?  Do not insert "grassy knoll"  phrases or references as a kind of cheap homage to "conspiratorial thinking"  when criticizing today's incarnations of paranoid bunkum.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/08/research-into-conspiracism-undermined.html

And:
Here Are 5 of the Worst Far-Right and White Supremacist Terrorist Attacks of Recent Years

Mail Brane Blog: Readers Seeking Answers to Questions

Q.  Ok, I'm curious. In your Sept. 28 Mail Brane Blog the second questioner('Davante')  asked if he could go to FLA and "teach your cracker brother some manners". There's a link to his racist blog in your response but when I click on the link I get a message:

"Sorry, the blog at mytalkandthoughts.blogspot.com has been removed.  This address is not available for new blogs."

So what happened to it? - Julie, Ann Arbor, MI

A. I have been informed by a reliable source that Mike voluntarily removed it as he was "appalled" at the hate he'd spewed out again.  Of course, he's done this on at least two occasions earlier before changing his mind and resurrecting it again. So, who can say what the real reason is? My theory is - if he did take it down on his own - it was more likely a result of being blistered with comments, emails complaining about the content. He simply got tired dealing with all the flack so simply pulled the whole blog.

Q. Reading your assorted posts on the framing of Oswald by the CIA, the Oswald doppelgangers and so on, has my head spinning. Can a conspiracy really be this complicated? - Oscar W., London, Ontario

A. Of course! The mistake too many make is assuming simplicity along the same theoretic lines as for physical theories. Obviously, we opt to have physical theories,( i.e. quantum theory, Newtonian gravitation etc.) that are simple and elegant, minimal hypotheses and no loose strings, because these are also more amenable to mathematical formalism. Thus, the widespread presumption that any viable physical theory needs to be a hallmark of simplicity - not complication.

But let's be realistic here: human beings are not inanimate, unconscious objects like planets and moons in defined orbits,  or billiard balls - say that collide according to Newton's 2nd and 3rd laws of motion- making their future paths predictable. Humans by their nature possess the capacity for duplicity, formulation of self-determined agendas and concealed motives as well as the ability to misdirect others toward their (hidden) agendas. In any conspiracy of any magnitude (say like assassinating a President), therefore, one fully expects such devious capacities to overwhelm straight line logic - given the conspirators already know any would-be investigators would start off with that form of approach.

Hence, for the conspiracy to be ultimately successful, it would have to cover all the (ex post facto presumed linear logic) bases in advance, and build in misdirection at multiple junctures. The use of Oswald "doppelgangers" (actually impostors, and at least one physical double - deployed in Big D itself) accomplishes this. Yes, it is liable to make certain heads "burst"  and others spin- but then those heads, brains are too wedded to pedestrian and prosaic (what I call linear) logic anyway. They will always be the first to throw their hands in the air, and say 'I give up - this is too complicated' and opt to chose the simplest alternative, albeit totally wrong - which is the lone assassin bollocks.

This is why seriously pursuing something like the JFK assassination is not for everyone. The false leads, framing complexities, arcane CIA mischief -  false names, cut outs, constellation of differing files-documents as well as covert operations, narratives are usually too much except for deep politics mavens. Most Americans, sadly, can barely keep pace with our standard politics, far less deep politics. But those of us who want to get to the bottom of this dastardly crime of the century aren't easily dissuaded, nor are we easily distracted by lone assassin bunkum, tales or fake  "revelations" (which supposedly REELZ-TV plans to put on tonight). We know better, through long years of experience and having been already led down many dead ends and into false leads.

Basically then, there are few options for anyone really interested in the case:

1) You can hurl yourself into it and dig up thousands of files, documents and pore through them like the rest of us (researchers) have.

2) You can take the easy path, and just accept the simple (but wrong) lone assassin narrative - sticking with the likes of Gerald Posner, Vince Bugliosi, Philip Shenon etc.

3) You can adopt an "agnostic" approach and just say the case is too difficult to find any reasonable resolution, but knowing in the back of your mind, many of us already have (to within perhaps 95% probability).

Q.  I was shocked to read in your Sept. 25 blog of the persistent after effects from the radiation treatment for your prostate cancer. I would have thought given such significant effects the psa would surely have dived but in your blog post of Nov. 2 you say it's gone up.  How is this possible?- Anne, Dublin, Ireland

A. Sadly, Anne, no one knows the answer. All anyone can do is guess. Who knows why some 10 percent or so of patients hit the psa nadir within months of treatment, and it never goes back up? And why others (like me) experience a "PSA bounce" and then have to closely monitor the PSA over time for signs of "treatment failure". No one really knows and this is why more longitudinal studies over time for the different treatment modalities are badly needed.

One more interesting aside: When I had the PSA test done at LabCorp, I had to sign a form agreeing to pay for the test ($127) if Medicare didn't, given Medicare regards those in my "condition" as no longer needing it!  Now, this is strange, but maybe not. It suggests that Medicare regards the fact that once you've had treatment as ending the matter. Hence, a series of PSA tests - with rising numbers - led you to get treatment, but now that you've had treatment you need no further tests. Of course, this takes no account at all of the possibility of treatment failure or that the numbers can go back up. But given Medicare's solvency problems I guess it's understandable, so I expect to probably have to pay!


Q. In your Oct. 30 post ('Pills Made from Poop') you wrote that your wife got c. diff. after taking amoxicillin, but then to relieve it she was put on another antibiotic called flagyl- which didn't work- so then she was put on vancomycin. What I don't get is how an antibiotic can cause c. diff. but then it takes an even stronger antibiotic to snuff it out. How can that be? Shouldn't the strongest antibiotic make the symptoms worse if a lesser one starts them off? - Andre, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

A. Sorry, antibiotics don't work in that particular way. First, there appears to be a category of antibiotics which predisposes one to c. diff. Amoxicillin is one of these, and there are others which you can learn about by googling: "antibiotics predisposing to c. diff".  Let's also grasp that the initial introduction of amoxicillin essentially killed off nearly all the good bacteria which allowed the bad bacteria, the c. diff. to spread. By this stage, then, with the harmful bacteria spreading, an antibiotic powerful enough to kill them is what's needed. These are flagyl and vancomycin. The only possible effect these could have is: no effect (i.e. on antibiotic resistant bacteria) or eliminating the bad bacteria enough to allow the good guys to proliferate again.


Q. Reading your post 'The United States Of Tex-Ass' on Oct. 26 was a wake up call since I now live in Dallas. I never realized what a hotbed of hate the city was back in 1963, and to me it might explain for why Kennedy was killed there. Are they any other sources about the city back then, say from online sites, that I can read about it? I plan to get 'Dallas 1963' but in the meantime would like to see some other stuff. - Jared, Dallas, TX

A. A recent set of articles - blog posts has been appearing by Russ Baker on www.smirkingchimp.com based on his bestseller, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. 

These appeared in seven installments on smirkingchimp.com with full article accounts in a separate blog link at www.whowhatwhy.com.   You can read his Dallas account here:

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/10/24/bush-and-the-jfk-hit-part-6-the-cold-war-comes-to-dallas/

It's headed up:  A Cauldron of Right Wing Americans, Right Wing Russians, and Nazis

 Be thankful you're not living in the Dallas of 1963!


Q. Why do you think the American congress is so reluctant to put a leash on the NSA, especially after they have spied on European allies and broken into Google's cloud sites to collect so much data? - Gerhard Remke, Bielefeld, Germany

A. My suspicion is that the spooks have tons of stuff on all congress critters, so effectively the threat of black mail is enough to halt any ability to pass effective control legislation now. I also suspect that they have loads of material on Angela Merkel, France's François Hollande and the UK's David Cameron.  Given this hidden leverage it was no surprise all the allies could be deterred from accepting Edward Snowden as a whistle blower refugee. The leaders were all too intimidated to do so. To read more from the actual author of this theory, see:
 http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-lindorff/52437/what-s-done-abroad-can-be-done-at-home-too-is-nsa-spying-really-about-blackmail

The Biggest Conspiracy Theorist of All: Government!

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge truth or falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."- John F. Kennedy
Emmanuel Goldstein - the Ultra "terrorist" in '1984'. Oceania's enforcers went batshit crazy trying to ferret out all his allies for 'thought crimes'. Are we near such a future in the U.S.?

In the popular  media stereotype, the "conspiracy theorist"  directs his particular brand of paranoia at the government: The CIA implemented JFK's assassination. NASA faked the moon landing.  9/11 was an inside job . The UN plans to invade our grand nation with black helicopters and the gov't is setting up FEMA concentration camps to help them. Oh, let's not forget that the CDC has designed flu shots to give you the flu not help prevent it!

The problem, of course, is the media is indiscriminate in conflating all conspiracies - the whacky and improbable, with those few actually proven in the sense of satisfying basic scientific criteria of adequacy of evidence and consistency. The latter set include: the JFK assassination conspiracy - including the evidence of cover-up in the aftermath, i.e. fake autopsy photos, destruction of key evidence(limo, suit coat); the BCCI banking conspiracy (which saw thousands in Barbados and around the world lose all their savings), the Watergate conspiracy - including the attempt at cover-up there, and of course, the Iran-Contra conspiracy, see e.g.  http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/10/argo-iran-contra-and-what-bob-sheiffer.html


But in his landmark book,  The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory, Jesse Walker- books editor for Reason magazine, makes the case that 'folklore' may underpin most CTs and that perhaps the biggest and most baseless and misdirected  conspiracy theorists inhabit the government! Or at least that paranoid clique within government that has been so confounded by the national security state that it's lost all perspective. After all, if gov't really was determined to sort out the primary conspiracy eating away at the nation's public trust and innards, they'd release all the files to do with the JFK assassination this 50th anniversary year. Unless, of course, they were involved at some level or had one or more branches involved, and hence had to resort to cover-up.

But no, that's not the case. What's transpired instead is such a free floating paranoia that Washington is petrified of itself. The latest example is the ferocious crackdown on leaks that has the government crippled by a fear of its own employees. How many people really know the extent of this? Probably not many!

According to an Op-ed appearing by Jesse Walker in the WaPo (8/19), the  paranoid federal effort  is called the Insider Threat Program, and was launched in October 2011". Be that as it may it certainly hasn’t diminished since Edward Snowden disclosed details of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying.  Walker cites the McClatchy reporters Marisa Taylor and Jonathan S. Landay who "have described federal employees and contractors are encouraged to keep an eye on allegedly suspicious indicators in their co-workers’ lives, from financial troubles to divorce. A brochure produced by the Defense Security Service, titled “INSIDER THREATS: Combating the ENEMY within your organization,” sums up the spirit of the program: It is better to have reported overzealously than never to have reported at all.”

Seriously?

Walker notes "the word 'espionage' appears 10 times in that pamphlet, while 'leak' isn’t used even once"  . The tragedy of this wholesale crackdown is that "it blurs the boundary between spies and whistleblowers". This means, logically, that whistleblowers are no longer honored, wanted or respected in any form but are treated the same way as traitors.

Walker adds:

"This comes, after all, at a time when the government is increasingly willing to prosecute leakers under the Espionage Act. An agent of a foreign power would fall under the program’s purview, but so would someone releasing information to the media. Leaking, one Defense Department document declares, “is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States.” 

Of course this is absolutely insane, and more than one astute pundit has observed that if this had been in place 40 years ago, the Nixon Watergate conspiracy never would have been exposed. All the leakers, as well as both Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein would have ended up like Bradley Manning or worse.

Extreme reaction? You bet! And all out of proportion, despite the fact Obama had promised government transparency. According to Walker:

"It doesn’t help that the Insider Threat Program has been adopted in agencies that have little or nothing to do with national security, including the Social Security Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Education and the Peace Corps. A tutorial for Agriculture Department employees includes a long list of 'examples of behaviors that may indicate an individual has vulnerabilities that are of security concern.' These include sleeping at your desk — that might be a sign of alcoholism — and 'expression of bizarre thoughts, perceptions, or expectations.' The list was imported, word for word, from a Defense Department document."

Jesus Christ in a cap! You know how much this sounds like the officialdom of Oceania in George Orwell's '1984'? A LOT! In that scenario, kids in INGSOC uniforms were mandated to report every bit of odd behavior detected in adults - whether 'proles' or those like Winston Smith (a kind of bourgeois 'everyman') - charged with altering the language to Newspeak!  Eventually, Winston's behavior gets him in trouble (recall his head being strapped to a cage as rats were released and shagged to his face)  as the monitoring led the INGSOC fascists to his little room hideout where he was having it on with a prole.

Like '1984',  paranoia also runs riot  in D.C., as Walker points out:

"The enemy within.....can live anywhere and look like anyone. The men and women allegedly atop the cabal might be based in another country, but their puppets are neighbors, co-workers, members of your family. Anyone could conceivably be — or become — part of the plot."

Ahhhh! In 1984, recall the primo villain was the arch-intellectual Goldstein! At every interlude the hapless denizens of Oceania had to sit in a large auditorium as Goldstein's face appeared on a vast screen whereupon they began screaming at the top of their lungs: 'TRAITOR!' until they were delirious. Everyone - each man, woman- was watched carefully to detect any sign of 'Goldstein' contamination leading to thought crimes.  What did this "traitor" Goldstein preach? Ha! That continuous war was used to siphon off the wealth of society to keep people living at bare subsistence. Goldstein's exact words, for which Oceania's fascists wanted him dead:

"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. "


 But INGSOC's nabobs couldn't have any of that  'too intelligent' citizen crap, hence Newspeak: e.g. "War is Peace!"

So, really, have we now entered - or nearly so - the realm of Orwell's 1984, but 30 years delayed? I don't know, but Jesse Walker believes it might be so (though he doesn't reference '1984'). He does say:


"Today’s Leak Scare has the potential to be even more open-ended, since it isn’t rooted in fear of a particular country or subculture. There are countless motives for releasing classified or “sensitive” information to the media, from political convictions to bureaucratic turf wars. And there is plenty of material that has been classified not out of a genuine security concern but simply because it might make an agency — or someone inside it — look bad. Meanwhile, the Insider Threat enforcers’ profile of a potential security risk is vague and untested; it could send interrogators on wild goose chases, questioning employees based on groundless suspicions and poisoning the office atmosphere."

He adds, however, that the leakage isn't likely to be halted by even these draconian steps and references Bruce Schneier who wrote (when the WikiLeaks cables shook Washington in 2010), “The government is learning what the music and movie industries were forced to learn years ago: it’s easy to copy and distribute digital files.”

Well, this is the digital age after all. And the same technology that gives the gov't troglodytes vast power to snoop gives many others the vast power to disclose.

Another aspect of the bind the security fetishists are falling into is betrayed by their compulsive classification.  According to a report from the Public Interest Declassification Board last year, one intelligence agency alone classifies the equivalent of about 20 million well-stuffed four-drawer filing cabinets every 18 months. Nearly 5 million federal employees or contractors have access to at least some secret information. Even more have access to information that isn’t classified but might embarrass someone.

As Walker notes:

"That creates a double bind: The more the government trusts someone with sensitive data, the more it has reason to fear that person. Trust breeds mistrust. It’s the sort of situation that might make a person paranoid."

He then asks:

"Did anyone ever imagine a government so scared of its own shadow?"

He goes on to cite novelist and essayist Robert Anton Wilson, who observed: "Any secret police agency must be monitored by another arm of the government, lest it be infiltrated by its enemies. But then a sinister infinite regress enters the game. Any elite second order police must be, also, subject to infiltration. . . . So it, too, must be monitored, by a secret-police-of-the-third-order and so on. “

Walker adds:

"In practice, of course, this cannot regress to mathematical infinity, but only to the point where every citizen is spying on every other citizen or until the funding runs out.” The point applies not just to police but to any hierarchy with secrets to hide."

AHH-HA! 1984 and Oceania again! Exactly what INGSOC and its hyper spy recruits were all about, and then all the other INGSOC moles that spied on them, and the secondary moles that spied on them!

To quote Walker once more:

"And so the war on leaks degenerates to a government deliberately destroying its property to keep its staffers from catching sight of publicly available information.

Now there’s an enemy within"

The moral of the story is that paranoia feeds on itself. And the more that the paranoid - whether a person who sees UN black helicopters coming to seize his guns, or a government that sees every citizen as an enemy - the more draconian steps are taken for  pseudo-protection. In the end it never works, simply because paranoia is not the way to build a foundation of trust - say between citizens and government - or to build a mentally healthy nation.  The fact that recent stats disclose that more than 20% of  the U.S. population has serious mental health issues ought to be a wake up call. Instead, we behold the entire government veering into a "Goldstein-tracking" paranoid embolism of its own making.