Charlie Chaplan’s ‘Great Dictator’ Speech
Anonymous Lays Down the Smack! #OpSweden – #OpPhillipines – #OpNDAA
TrapWire Updates – Training Courses Uncovered, Links to Anti-Occupy’Tartan’ Program
What is TERRORISM?
Homeland Security Fusion Centers Invading Privacy, Breaking Laws, Collecting SQUAT!
Truth Drugs In Use at Guantanamo – Insider Testimony
Stephen Colbert’s Two-Birds with One Drone Mockery
You Might Be a Terrorist If….
Show Transcript
Show Introduction and Tonight’s Topics
Welcome to the Decrypted Matrix on Revealing Talk Radio. Tonight we are making waves. We have ops waking up, Philippines, NBA, a ton of stuff to talk about. We have Trapwire updates, surveillance training courses, and facial recognition technology that is sweeping the country. We have fusion centers soaking up tons and tons of useless info at taxpayer expense. We will talk about that.
I also have a video for you from my friend Glenn Greenwald, a writer and contributor to Salon and also The Guardian. He talks about terrorism propaganda and really breaks it down. How this propaganda term “terrorism” is so loosely used now that it is a real slap in the face when you realize how significant that is to what is being taught and what is taking place every day. We will run through the news from places like Guantanamo Bay and cover some insider insight tonight on the show.
I also want to touch on a US Army document about how being frustrated with mainstream ideology might make you a terrorist. We are going to run with that tonight and play the “You Might Be a Terrorist” game, because some of the things they say might indicate terrorism are not what you would expect from the State Department.
Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator Speech
I want to start out tonight with something really moving. A statement, a quote, a clever and powerful way to restructure your mind. Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator speech is so powerful. We are fired up here, so let us listen to this speech. It is about four minutes long and it is incredibly powerful because it is so relevant even though it was made a long time ago. It is very relevant to what is actually taking place today and the types of conflict the world finds itself in.
Those are powerful words from Mr. Charlie Chaplin. I appreciate that very much. Every couple of weeks I revisit it just for myself, to remind myself why I do this, why I am here, why I take the time out of the day to put the show together. It can get exhausting sometimes, trying to make a radio show about topics that the public needs to know about. It does not seem very difficult lately to find relevant topics that just are not being discussed in the mainstream. So let us dive in.
Anonymous Operations: Sweden, Philippines, and NBA
There is a lot happening with Anonymous, the internet’s immune system if you will. Those who have been bold and brave enough to fight back against censorship and this movement toward complete control over the internet.
First, there is Operation Sweden. In the last couple of days, this has been retaliation for the raid on The Pirate Bay, supported by the Pirate Party in Sweden. The real story is apparently the government came down on The Pirate Bay. The file sharing site was down for twenty-four hours before backup servers got things sorted out. Operation Sweden was retaliation against the government of Sweden. They have been very big on the radar for a while due to the ongoing situation, but recently they attracted attention because of this raid.
Next is Op Philippines. Draconian cyber legislation recently passed there, and Anonymous has attacked their infrastructure. Multiple sites in the Philippines have been taken down through various attacks and DDoS bombardment. Anonymous does not assimilate; they are just on fire right now. The thing about Anonymous is there usually does not need to be obvious reasons. Clearly, these oppressive laws are enough.
The last one is Op NBA, and this is retaliation against a judge who allowed for an extended stay on the block. Basically there was a bill blocking the legitimacy of something, and now there is another bill blocking that stoppage. An extended stay was granted, and so Anonymous has doxxed the judge, released public information, and made sure that the judge gets calls and emails all throughout the night. Eventually they may have to move. It can get that bad. Anyone who sides with this type of legislation gets called out. Anonymous drops their public documents, identification, phone numbers, addresses, phone numbers of people they know, relatives, Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts. Anonymous is fighting back.
Trapwire: Facial Recognition and Mass Surveillance
I want to continue the discussion on the Trapwire situation. There is new information now on Trapwire. This is the facial recognition system I talk about all the time. It is the most significant surveillance technology being used right now in the modern era. Cell phones, you know, you always expected them to be all up in your business with that. But now it is your face and your license plate, where you go, everything in real time. GPS is not even in the equation anymore. In some cases it is almost more accurate than GPS technology, because between your face and your license plate being photographed everywhere while you are out, and those things being categorized in real time and analyzed in real time by a computer, they know where you are and everything about your movements without you even having to carry a tracking device. It is a ridiculous amount of privacy invasion right now.
We are seeing Trapwire tied directly to monitoring Occupy Wall Street. There is evidence that Trapwire is linked to a subsidiary called Abraxas, part of the Cubic Corporation. Their website says they use key influencers and hidden connections in social networks using mathematical algorithms for objective, unbiased output. They are mathematicians and computer scientists continually exploring new data mining and visualization techniques to better analyze social networks. Their website links to an exclusive summary of a case study from this year, the same social connection mapping, supposedly locating hidden ties within an underground movement that was anchored on political activists and even public broadcasting.
This is why they are using Trapwire’s facial recognition technology to label protesters and activists, to monitor them on the grid in real time. These are treated as threats to the system, because the system is in self-preservation mode. At this point it is not looking out for humans, so anybody looking out for humanity is actually a threat to the system. That is where you are seeing projects like Trapwire being enabled by companies like Cubic and Abraxas. Abraxas actually has connections to big corporations, and these people on the inside have connections to the intelligence agencies.
They make it very complicated to figure out who they are in the first place, but that journalistic work has been done, in part by Barrett Brown. He is in jail right now. He was behind Project PM, researching these connections. He got a little too deep and ended up threatening the wrong people, which is a no-no. But his research was very good and very interesting in regards to proving these connections between Trapwire, Abraxas, Cubic, and the intelligence community. They are all working together in the private sector to exploit that information in any way possible.
Lately it is all about the information they can soak up from traffic cameras. All the ATMs are snapping your picture every time you walk by. They are not just taking a picture when you are standing there; they are always watching. Any camera connected to the grid can now be watched by this artificial intelligence software that is capturing pictures, mapping them, and sending them back to home base over the internet in seconds.
There are training courses about Trapwire that have been revealed, indicating the real reasons for its creation. They are teaching people how to use it to enhance overall security awareness and improve understanding of terrorist and criminal pre-attack surveillance and intelligence collection operations. It is just becoming more and more invasive, being deployed domestically against Americans, when there really is no legitimate terrorist threat. Every terrorist attack you look at has been a setup. Researchers have shown this time and time again. They are all linked to the FBI. They are all patsies who were in the right place at the right time. Look, the suspect just happens to have a bomb. Never mind, he got it from the FBI. He was totally led along the path the whole time.
Homeland Security Fusion Centers: Waste and Civil Liberties Abuse
Now let us talk about homeland security fusion centers. I have mentioned these before. They are connected to the broader surveillance apparatus. Jesse Ventura also looked into them on his Conspiracy Theory show. He went on site and tried to talk to one of the big fusion centers and did not get many answers. There is no oversight. No one is watching the watchers at these fusion centers. They are soaking up so much information, and it is all absolutely useless. Nothing good or positive has been gleaned from any of it. The more you look into it, the more obvious it becomes that the real terrorist threat comes from our own government’s drone program, striking at weddings from twenty thousand feet. That creates enemies.
There is a new report on NBC News about how the ranking Republican on a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday accused the Department of Homeland Security of hiding information about so-called fusion intelligence centers and charged that the program has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars. The report, released late Tuesday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said that Homeland Security has funneled up to one point four billion dollars in funding to fusion centers, these regional intelligence sharing centers, that produced useless reports while at the same time potentially violating the privacy rights and civil liberties of American Muslims.
These fusion centers were created under President George W. Bush and expanded under President Barack Obama. They consist of special teams of federal, state, and local officials collecting and analyzing intelligence on suspicious activities. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the centers the centerpieces of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts. But Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican, charged that Homeland Security buried evidence of problems. The centers have resisted oversight. The report stated that the department opted not to inform Congress or the public of serious problems plaguing its fusion centers and counterterrorism efforts. When the subcommittee requested documents that would help identify these issues, the department initially resisted, claiming they were protected by privilege or confidentiality agreements that did not exist at all. Senator Coburn said the American people deserve better and he hopes the report will generate reforms that keep our country safe.
The American Civil Liberties Union also issued a statement saying the report underscores problems they and other civil liberties groups have highlighted for years. Back in 2007, the ACLU warned that fusion centers posed threats to privacy and civil liberties and called for clear guidelines and independent oversight. Michael German, ACLU Senior Policy Counsel, said this report is a good first step and called on Congress to hold public hearings to investigate fusion centers and their ongoing abuses.
In addition to questioning the value of much of the fusion centers’ work, the Senate panel found evidence of what it called troubling reports from some centers that may have violated the civil liberties and privacy of US citizens. The evidence cited could fuel continuing controversy over claims that the FBI and some local police departments, notably New York City’s, have spied on American Muslims without justifiable law enforcement reason.
The examples in the report are telling. One report offered reading suggestions for a Muslim community group and listed ten book recommendations. The report noted that four of the authors were listed in a terrorism database. Homeland Security officials in Washington chastised the fusion center, saying we cannot report on books simply because the authors are in a terrorism database. The writings themselves are protected by the First Amendment unless you can establish that something in the writing indicates or advocates violence or other criminal activity.
Another fusion center in California prepared a report about a speaker at a Muslim community center who was giving a daylong motivational talk and a lecture on positive parenting. No link to terrorism was alleged, yet they filed a report. Another fusion center filed a report on a US citizen that speculated, based on his appearance and the fact that he may have been enlisted, that he may have been attempting to raise funds and recruit for a foreign terrorist group.
The number of things that are scary about this report are almost too many to wade into. Homeland Security’s own review noted that the events described were constitutionally protected activity: public speaking, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. Several of the reports, including three particularly problematic ones, were drafted at fusion centers and then flagged by officials in Washington who raised concerns that the documents potentially endangered civil liberties or violated privacy protections of US persons. Despite being scrapped, the fact remains that these reports should never have been drafted in the first place. This is a total violation of the US Privacy Act, which prohibits federal agencies from storing information on US citizens’ First Amendment-protected activities if there is no valid reason to do so. You can only imagine the dossiers they have. What about you? You might be in a fusion center database somewhere because of a text message you sent or an email you wrote. You never know how deep their reach goes.
Scopolamine: The Truth Drug Used at Guantanamo Bay
I definitely want to talk about this revelation regarding the use of truth drugs. This is serious. People are ending up in Guantanamo and being subjected to these substances. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting on how the US military’s use of a truth drug has been revealed.
All Guantanamo Bay detainees, including David Hicks, were drugged involuntarily with a substance that has a history as a truth serum. Recently declassified US documents revealing medical procedures have shown that scopolamine was administered to all detainees taken to the Cuban detention center. The documents, which are standard operating procedures for nursing staff, were obtained by the US news outlet Truthout and reveal that the rationale given for the drug was to prevent motion sickness.
We have covered scopolamine in a previous episode. It is a crazy drug. It can be turned into a powder, put into anything, blown in your face. It can be applied in a multitude of ways, and if it hits your skin or makes it through your system, you become a zombie immediately and you will do anything people tell you to do. It is a really creepy drug.
US military experts have noted that scopolamine is not recommended for motion sickness because of its severe side effects, so that rationale is obviously bogus. The US government has not adequately responded to questions about drugs given involuntarily to detainees. It was revealed that Mr. Hicks and other detainees were drugged against their will with unknown substances, and that the detainees’ medical records, complete with names and dosages of drugs, had details of mistreatment removed.
Mr. Hicks’s claims of abuse were about to emerge publicly, prompting legal action to try to stop revenue from his book about Guantanamo. Previously secret documents backed up Mr. Hicks’s longstanding claims of abuse. Commonwealth prosecutors decided that the proceeds-of-crime case would not stand up in court and dropped the action. Details about the use of scopolamine emerged last week. Mr. Hicks said he was given the drug during his journey to Guantanamo Bay, which left him drowsy and disoriented. He said it was administered directly, not via a patch, but in his ear as described in the standard operating procedures. Information released by the CIA has revealed that because of its many undesirable side effects, experts consider the drug dangerous. It causes hallucinations and complete loss of connection to reality.
Glenn Greenwald on the Propaganda Term “Terrorism”
Glenn Greenwald, writer and contributor to Salon and The Guardian, breaks down the term “terrorism” and how it is used. The words that our political system uses most frequently, the ones designed to have the greatest impact, are often the words that are the most ill-defined and therefore subject to manipulation and propaganda.
The word “terrorist” is something that pervades almost all political discussion. We are essentially at the point where the government points to somebody and instantly, whether it is Republicans or, now under President Obama, Democrats as well, people will cheer for whatever is done to them, no matter how extreme, no matter how little evidence is presented to justify it. The mere fact that someone has been labeled a terrorist is enough to cause a majority of people to sanction whatever follows.
The word “terrorism” really is a term that has no fixed meaning. It is simply a term that means whatever the person wielding it wants it to mean. Originally there was a sense that it meant deliberate, indiscriminate attacks on civilians. And yet we see all the time that a Muslim who attacks a military base at Fort Hood and kills soldiers who were being deployed to a war is called a terrorist. And someone in a country like Iraq who insists on using violence against an invading, occupying army is called a terrorist. The term “terrorism” and “security” have essentially become nothing more than labels applied to Muslims who engage in violence against the United States or who otherwise challenge the worldview of the United States.
What is amazing is you can talk to people who claim to be sympathetic to civil liberties concerns. Greenwald described being on a liberal public radio station where the host was saying essentially that he was thrilled when Anwar al-Awlaki was killed, because he said, “I know he is a terrorist.” The reality is that he has no idea whether or not al-Awlaki was a terrorist, because the term does not even have a clear meaning. There is no idea whether al-Awlaki ever actually carried out attacks, because no evidence was ever presented. What al-Awlaki argued was that the United States was bringing huge amounts of violence to the Muslim world and that Muslims have the right and the duty to fight back. That is advocacy. That is pure First Amendment free speech expression.
Because the word “terrorist” is so powerful and shuts down all debate, the application of that label by the government, anonymously with no evidence, has made huge numbers of people stand up and cheer the most radical government power there is: the power to target one’s own citizens for death, for assassination, in total secrecy and with no due process. That really illustrates the potency of how these government-administered terms are wielded.
So Greenwald breaks it down: “terror” and “terrorism” are meaningless propaganda terms. Anyone is a terrorist just because the state says they are. A military-aged male in a foreign country that has an invading force, if they fight back against the invading force, they are terrorists. That seems a little unfair, especially when you look at the new propaganda movie Red Dawn, where Korean forces invade the United States and American teenagers band together to resist. Obviously they are not being called terrorists for fighting back against the occupying force. So be careful how the word is used. Tell your friends and family. That word should probably never be used, because there are so few cases where it actually applies.
The Drone Program and Civilian Casualties
The United States government’s covert drone program is being made into a joke, but it is deadly serious. Stephen Colbert satirized it perfectly. He said the covert plan that is unfortunately killing civilians hurts America’s moral standing, but the issue has a solution. He quoted a White House official: “We have the standards for what gets targeted in counterterrorism operations. In any action we take, there is a particular operation against a specific individual. We think we have a high degree of confidence that the individual being targeted is indeed the terrorist we are pursuing.”
That is a very high bar. It is supposed to be comforting. But think about how strange it is that any high level of confidence in killing the right person has become a household standard. The President makes the kill list. He sits there with what are essentially baseball cards with pictures and stats on suspected terrorists, and then of course he gives the order.
The process must work, because a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the single digits. That is impressive, considering the bombs are huge. But here is how they get that number: they discount all military-aged males in the strike zone as combatants. The reasoning is that since al-Qaeda is a tight-knit group, anyone near them is guilty by association, kind of the same way that anyone at Comic-Con is probably a nerd.
This is not just the president executing innocent people on a worldwide basis. There is supposedly an appeals process. Targets are considered terrorists unless there is explicit intelligence exonerating them. But the only legal process is to kill someone. They keep civilian casualty numbers down by saying that civilians do not really exist in the strike zones.
The Obama administration is drone-striking chaotic countries that the United States is not officially at war with: Pakistan, Yemen, and probably elsewhere. The deaths we know about are much more than single digits. They are in the triple digits, if truth really be told.
You Might Be a Terrorist: The Expanding Definition
Now for the “You Might Be a Terrorist” segment. What might a potential terrorist look like? We have a leaflet recently obtained by Wired Magazine that characterizes people frustrated with mainstream ideologies as potential terrorists, while framing those who believe in government conspiracies as radicals.
According to the US military, if you recently changed your entertainment choices, have peculiar discussions, complain about bias, or express frustration with mainstream ideologies, you might be a terrorist. This comes from a 2011 document on asymmetric warfare from the US Army headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. The document is intended to help identify threats within the ranks of US soldiers.
Examples of behavior considered an indication of terrorism include: complaining about bias, frustration with mainstream ideologies, being reclusive, believing in government conspiracies to the point of paranoia. Being aware of government conspiracies does not mean you are paranoid for believing in them. Visiting extremist websites or blogs is another indicator, and “extremist” is whatever the government says it is. You could look at almost any alternative media and be labeled an extremist.
Altering your eating habits is another one. Even the foundation of the Decrypted Matrix is about elevating awareness and consciousness. That would most certainly be labeled extremist. Altering your reading habits is another. When people wake up and figure out what is going on, they read voraciously. This is a very consistent theme. Having peculiar discussions qualifies. Meaning what? Talking about biology, GMOs, fluoride in water, or anything having to do with saving humanity from itself? Yeah, that is peculiar apparently. Being overly emotional, getting fired up and passionate about stuff? You might be a terrorist. If you use social networks, you might be a terrorist. If you do not use social networks, you are definitely suspicious.
There have been numerous similar publications issued by the federal government over the last decade which categorize all kinds of ordinary behavior as extremist and a potential indication of terrorism. Previous training documents for law enforcement labeled political bumper stickers expressing opposition to the United Nations or support for the Bill of Rights as indications of terrorist activity. They also characterize people who hold political opinions representative of fairly popular points of view as terrorists. Anti-abortion activists are also listed as potential terrorists, per a 2009 report published by the Missouri Information Analysis Center that was first reported by Infowars.
It gets worse. Libertarians and people with bumper stickers for Ron Paul, people who fly the US flag, are bundled in as potential terrorists. Under the FBI’s Communities Against Terrorism program, the bulk purchase of food is labeled as a potential indication of terrorist activity. Using cash to pay for a cup of coffee or showing concern about privacy when using the internet at a public terminal counts. If you are seen using VPN technology or something that hides your identity online, they want the clerk to turn you in. This is the “see something, say something” culture: spy on your neighbor for homeland security.
If you are suspicious of centralized federal authority or reverent of individual liberty, you are labeled an extreme right-wing terrorist. A recent Department of Homeland Security-funded study produced by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland characterizes Americans suspicious of centralized federal authority and reverent of individual liberty as potential extremists.
This list goes on and on. There have been so many terrorism-related laws passed that it is hard to keep up with all the things that might get you on the list of suspected bad guys. Speaking out against government policies might make you a terrorist. Protesting anything might make you a terrorist. Questioning war or saying war reduces our national security might make you a terrorist. Criticizing the government for killing innocent civilians with drones might make you a terrorist. Asking questions about pollution might make you a terrorist. Paying with cash, caring about privacy, taking pictures or videos in public places, being a returning veteran, supporting Ron Paul, caring about online privacy: all of these can supposedly make you a suspected terrorist. It comes right out of the government’s own papers.
