Free Course Available

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 “Men (people) are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
 
As promised, this site, The Engineering of Society, helps you navigate your way through the murky waters of disinformation and manipulation. There is now an hour and a half course that anyone subscribing to the free sporadic newsletter can access.

In case you're reading with with an RSS feed: you subscribe in the right side panel at The Engineering of Society.

The newsletter is not going to come out often or target you to sell lots of expensive products to. You can easily unsubscribe any time. Subscribers will be sent an email with a password and the link to go to a password protected page on http://www.insubordinatebooks.com, the website for my psychological suspense series, The Agents of the Nevermind, which is fiction about social engineering topics that readers of this blog are encountering. Perhaps if you sincerely appreciate the many hours that goes into this blog entirely without pay, you'll even feel like buying one of the e-books for up to three dollars sometime and help it rise in the Amazon ranks so more readers will find entertainment that acknowledges the topics discussed here.

If you subscribe, you can read the booklet, listen to an audio version of it, and also listen to an extended version with casual commentary about every point, which functions as a simple lecture class with over 50 "assignments" or steps to take before you decide to believe what you are told. It's divided into eight recordings, so you can take it at your own pace when you have a chance.

In a way, it's basic, obvious stuff, but still, reminding yourself to do this procedure with each new bit of information, and also when reviewing old information, can be completely life-changing. Even if you do this almost every time, if you forget to do it even once, you may find yourself going off on a strange tangent naively following a disinformation agent into a conceptual abyss.

Get this practice into your subconscious so it's an automatic response to information people are selling you as fact. Never blindly believe. Always look up the background, dangers, and associations online, using only unbiased, vetted, non-Intelligence related sources.

Podcast Review: Former member of Air Force Intelligence discusses his involvement in Operation Mockingbird (the disinfo program in the news)

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Podcast: "Former member of Air Force Intelligence, Jeff Long, discusses several of his many jobs during the Cold War, his own involvement in Operation Mockingbird, the U.S. government's disinformation campaign, and how the government and media create the "official stories" behind events like 9/11." You can click the link to hear the archive from this Oct. 9, 2014 podcast, which is level-headed, smart, direct, and informative, at No Lies Radio.

He was psychologically profiled by taking an aptitude test given by the military that students had to take in order to graduate from High School, from which he was picked to work in Intelligence. He describes being with Joint Military Intelligence -- NSA, DIA, CIA, Air Force Intelligence, FBI, NATO Intelligence. His focus in the 80's was disinformation to throw off the Soviet Union's military during the cold war, keeping them from knowing what was going on with US new advanced technology. 

He worked there for 6 years when he was young until he resigned in disgust. He worked with information from spy satellites and information from espionage airplane flights. He discusses Operation Mockingbird, which was started in 1947 by Frank Wisner, the CIA program of disinformation in the news.

He'd target the government's chosen enemy leader to make him look bad, such as Hussein during the Gulf war, and whip up patriotism for support of the war. The CIA owned thousands of publications, all the important newspapers and magazines that the masses paid attention to. Journalists could easily get into other countries that way. Many employees don't even know they are part of an Intelligence operation, while other reporters, editors, and publishers are knowingly CIA.
He mentions 117 CNN employees being CIA.

Many media employees are paid, trained CIA assets, and others are bought off to compromise their information, or are blackmailed or bribed by sex. He mentions Anderson Vanderbilt Cooper of CNN coming from one of the billionaire families that sets up these programs and claimed to just work in the mail room, yet then was found in the places where CIA coups were happening. . . . The controlling families do what's best for their corporation's interests.

"Leaked sources" are always putting out propaganda targeting the current proposed enemy. Character assassination is a major component of Mockingbird. The newscaster's methods of talking is the same across the board, using a proven speaking method to make people take in the information without question, considering it believable and authoritative.

He points out the newscasters on all networks immediately suggested Osama was behind 911, and assets in the field being interviewed jumping to the conclusion that must have been Osama. Jeff Long said those were red flags that it was Mockingbird. They paint all "conspiracy theorists" as oddballs. That is core to social engineering.

To learn more, listen to the podcast. A few interesting points he makes:

Other people in the media they mention: Julia Child was in the CIA. Chuck Barris of the Newlywed Show and the Gong show claimed to be a CIA assassin in the 60's. When author Philip Agee  withdrew as Station chief in the CIA, he was was then a victim of character assassination.

The Internet was developed by the Department of Defense so military personnel could talk quickly.

He calls our economy a "controlled demolition." Nicely put.

His superiors kept him from boarding a plane that then went down. Why did they know what was going to happen?

While I would have liked to have heard more detail about his time with Operation Mockingbird specifically, maybe his next visit with the show will cover what he is allowed to tell about things that made him leave. I'd like to learn more about the methods of propaganda that make people believe lies, such as what he mentioned with the voice similarity with newscasters. What is it about their voices that convinces? 

While I don't agree with the perspective on all the shows in the series, in general, I feel it is a sincere educational service.