The Words They Don't Want You To Use, and Why

If you really want to understand your enemy, know what they fear. I saw a post on the internet today describing the words that our government's computers are searching to find when they scan all those internet messages through the NSA filters.  Some of the words were completely unfamiliar to me, so it made me curious as to why the NSA is concerned about these particular words.  Let's go through just a few of the items on the list of 746 words that will catch the interest of the Federal Government, and more importantly try to figure out WHY those words are of interest:

ARTICHOKE: No, not a reference to the vegetable. This is a reference to Project Artichoke, a CIA project that researched interrogation methods and arose from Project BLUEBIRD on August 20, 1951, run by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence.[1]
BADGER: A secret army task force created during the Desert Shield buildup to surge the production of anthrax and botulinum vaccines; introduced a vaccine adjuvant (toxic substance that boosts a vaccine's efficiency). The adjuvants, in this case squaleene, were tied to thousands of cases of Gulf War Syndrome

CIA: The Central Intelligence Agency doesn't want you watching what they're doing. So stop already.

COCAINE: Just the mention of the drug is apparently enough to get you on their watch list. (Here's an interesting party trick: Google CIA + Cocaine. Truly eye-opening stuff.)

CORNFLOWER: Think you know all about Jonestown? Think again. Jonestown was a CIA run mind-control experiment, and Cornflower was a book used to condition children up to the age of 20 to become programmed government assassins. But don't talk about Cornflower. The government doesn't want you to ask too many questions.

DEFCON: Started in 1992 by the Dark Tangent, DEFCON is the world's longest running and largest underground hacking conference. Given their concern about information terrorism and infosec, it's no surprise that this would make the list.

DOMESTIC DISRUPTION: Very little information or explanation to be found about what this means. I suspect it is a reference to civil war or civil uprising, especially as when searching domestic disruption + civil war or civil unrest, I found references to the military creating a new division to handle civil disruption

ECHELON: A worldwide network of spy stations.

FBI: Don't talk about them, and they promise not to watch you.

FREEDOM: Your discussion about freedom is cause for the government to flag you as a potential terrorist? Really? So much for the land of the free and the home of the brave.

GEODSS: The Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance (GEODSS) system, which can track objects as small as a basketball more than 20,000 miles in space, plays a vital role in tracking space objects, particularly those in deep space.  This seems rather benign, so why is it a trigger for being put in the watchlist?

INFOWAR: Possible reference to Alex Jones' popular radio program known as the info wars http://www.infowars.com/

INGRAM MAC-10: Fully automatic sub-machine gun

INTERNET UNDERGROUND: What sounded like the name of a report or a website turned out to be one of the rare items that might be worth watching. Essentially, only about 20% of the internet is visible to the search engines.  The other 80% is where the real stuff happens - assassinations ordered, child trafficking, sex trafficking, drug orders

MI5: British version of the CIA

MI6: British version of the FBI

SOROS: George Soros, specifically. Another protected citizen. Apparently, any mention of Soros is enough to wind you on their special list.

GSG-9: An elite German counter-terrorism unit formed in 1976. To quote a former member, "We move in as a team of five, we take care of it, and everything is basically over before they even know what happened."

HACKERS: Programmers who specialize in exploring the programming code created by other programmers, usually with the intention of exploiting software or hardware vulnerabilities

ILLUMINATI: A secret society founded in 1776. This group has as its primary objective the creation of a new world order - a single, unified government under the control of elite members where the rest of civilization is enslaved. Many do not believe the Illuminati exists, but if the government is using it as a flag word to mark you as a terrorist, one has to think they take it seriously.

INFOSEC:  Stands for Information Security. Refers to the techniques used to protect information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, perusal, inspection, recording or destruction. It is a general term that can be used regardless of the form the data may take

INFORMATION SECURITY: See Infosec.

INFORMATION TERRORISM: the use of a combination of false and true information combined in such a way as to destroy the reputation, assassinate the character, or undermine the perceived trustworthiness of an individual, corporation, or entity.  

Important note on this: These may be flagged because they are the words used by a group whose business is tracking the activities of the Illuminati and reporting the evidence they have compiled against them.

INFORMATION WARFARE:  "activities undertaken by government, groups, or individuals to gain electronic access to information systems in other countries ... as well as activities undertaken to protect against it." (defined by The Brown Commission)

IW: the use of information or information technology during a time of crisis or conflict to achieve or promote specific objectives over a specific adversary.

MAYFLY: A reference to Project Mayfly, in which the transnational tobacco companies of British American Tobacco (BAT), Imperial Tobacco, Rothmans Tobacco, Gallaher, R.J. Reynolds,Philip Morris and the German tobacco company Reentsma in 1980 to "influence, modify or change public opinion to the industry, smokers and smoking, to create a more favourable climate [for smoking and the industry], however directly or indirectly." [1]

MSNBC: These 5 letters stand for Microsoft National Broadcasting Company. Or, as some of us like to call them, the lapdog of the liberal elite.  Apparently you shouldn't be talking about them, just listening to their every word. Don't worry. They'll tell you what to think.

NORAD: North American Aerospace Defense Command. Conducts aerospace warning, aerospace control and maritime warning in the defense of North America. Why is someone talking about this agency a concern to the NSA?

NSA: National Security Association. Wow.  Just talking about the NSA is enough to get you watched by the NSA. 

Pink Noise: May be a reference to website www.pinknoize.com/cia which hosts documents on convert CIA operations

PLAYBOY: I am just as concerned about pornography as the next person, but I think it a far stretch for the government to be putting people talking about Playboy on a list of potential terrorists. Makes you think they know something we don't, and makes me curious to find out more.

PRESIDENT: Anytime you mention the president, you clearly must be doing something worth watching.

PRIVACY: Apparently, concern for your privacy is a reason for the government to be concerned about you.

RAND CORPORATION: It boggles the mind to think that talking about a corporation that is "a nonprofit institution that helps to improve policy and decision making through research and analysis" is enough to land you on the terrorist list.  Maybe this article will help you understand why the government doesn't want you discussing them. 

RENO: Don't know if this is for the city or for an undisclosed project, but apparently all citizens of Reno had better watch themselves when speaking or posting online using their city in the title. 

S/KEY: a one-time password system developed for authentication to Unix-like operating systems, especially from dumb terminals or untrusted public computers on which one does not want to type a long-term password.

WACKENHUT: America's largest (and the world's second-largest) private security company. Founded in Miami by four ex-FBI agents in 1954 (one of whom was George Wackenhut, now deceased), under the name Special Agent Investigators Inc. Acquired by a Danish corporation in 2002.

WAIHOPAI: This secretive location is referred to by the New Zealand Government as a "satellite communications monitoring facility" and is officially called GCSB Waihopai. Part of ECHELON.

WILLIAM GATES: You might be interested to know that discussing Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is enough to land you on the terrorist watch list.

From just this small sample, the real concern of the government seems to be less about preventing terrorism and more about ferreting out those who might find ways to prevent them from spying on us, those who might find ways to find out what they are hiding from us, and anyone who actively pays attention to their activities.  It appears to have virtually nothing to do with real terrorism and everything to do with keeping the citizens in our nice, safe little boxes so they can do whatever it is they want to do without having to worry that we'll try to stop them. Another question is why US funds are being spent surveying for information relating to British agencies.

The 20 Craziest Pro-Gun Arguments you'll ever read

Take each of these statements and substitute the word {guns} every time you see {x}.

1. Taking away {x} violates my Constitutional rights.
2. Nobody should have to register {x}. It's a private matter.
3. Allowing access to {x} is necessary to save lives.
4. If someone can't afford {x}, tax payers should help them pay for it, even if they don't agree.
5. The right to {x} is only a problem for religious people. It's nobody's business who buys or sells {x}.
6. Teenagers are old enough to make their own decisions about whether or not they want {x}.
7. Teenagers should be able to get [x}without parental consent or notification.
8. The world would be a better place with less people in it. That's why we need {x} - to help reduce the population.
9. The mentally ill should be given {x} whether they want them or not. After all, if they don't need them, nobody does.
10. People should be able to get {x} whenever they want and as often as they want for any reason or no reason at all. It's a right, and nobody should be able to stop you from exercising your rights.
11. Women need {x} to protect themselves.
12. Women are empowered by the ability to have {x}, and that's why it's important to keep them legal.
13. The government shouldn't have a say in who gets {x}.
14. People who are opposed to {x} are just trying to force their beliefs on other people.
15. Nobody should have to be educated about {x} before being allowed to get one.
16. Anyone who wants {x} should be able to just walk in and get them.
17. So what if {x} do kill people? The world would be better off with fewer people in it, anyway.
18. Making {x} illegal will only result in more deaths.
19. Giving poor people {x} helps them to reduce the number of children they have, and saves the government money.  Poor people need {x}.
20. If you don't like {x}, you just shouldn't get one.

Sounds totally insane to you, doesn't it? I know. It is.  It would be absolutely insane to pass out guns to people with mental conditions, or to encourage poor people to reduce their family sizes using guns. It would be insane to say that we should use guns to help reduce the world's population, or to say that nobody should have to be educated about guns before buying one.

Yet, these are the 20 most common arguments used to justify abortion - an act that kills a living human being without just cause or provocation and without benefit of a trial by jury solely for the crime of being "unwanted".  If it sounds insane to you to advocate guns because guns kill people, imagine how I feel when you spend your time arguing for abortion.  Abortion kills people. Get it?

Abortion kills more people than guns do every single day. It's not even a close race. almost 55 million deaths in the last 40 years.  It doesn't just kill the babies. It kills the mothers, too. How many more deaths are going to have to take place before you realize that banning guns without teaching people respect for life is a futile exercise?

Obama's Database and You

I read a statement this morning that disturbed me greatly from a conservative newsfeed.  The words were quoted as being from Maxine Waters, the U.S. Representative for California's 43rd District. This is the exact quote I read

"The President has put in place an  organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life," Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday.  "That's going to be very, very powerful," Waters said. "That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that  it's never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They're going to go down with that database and the concerns of those people because they can't get around it. And he's [President Obama] been very smart. It's very powerful what he's leaving in place."

What is the name of the organization she was referring to? Organizing for America, which has now become the nonprofit organization Organizing for Action.   The video on the front page of Organizing for Action has a video of Michelle Obama in which she states Organizing for Action is "the next phase in our movement for change".  What kind of plans do they have that require a massive database of information "about everything on every individual" in America?  Why is it that this database is being held in the hands of a private organization? What right do they have to assemble and keep this information?

Lest this post be mistaken for just unsubstantiated hype, here is the interview Roland Martin conducted with Maxine Waters. You can listen and decide for yourself whether to be concerned.



What kind of information does this database contain? According to a report by NBC News:

"it contains the names of at least 4 million Obama donors – as well as millions of others (the campaign has consistently refused to say how many) compiled from voter registration rolls and other public databases. In addition, the campaign used sophisticated computer programs — with code names like “Narwhal” — to collect information through social media: Anybody who contacted the campaign through Facebook had their friends and “likes” downloaded. If they contacted the campaign website through mobile apps, cellphone numbers and address books were downloaded. Computer “cookies” captured Web browsing and online spending habits."

That's a whole lot of information in the hands of an organization whose intentions aren't all that clear. It isn't just Obama supporters who are in this database, either, and since the database was compiled from public records and voter registrations it could be every adult in America.  Since it's in the hands of a private organization, there's no requirement for them to inform anyone and no way to monitor what they do with this information. It's a fairly effective way to shut down the Freedom of Information Act and ensure that nosy reporters and bloggers can't peek under the hood to see just what's going on.

The Dangers of Underestimating the Opposition

In politics, there is a temptation to apply labels to your opposition.  So strongly held are your own beliefs, and so clear to you is the infallibility of your logic and reason, that you cannot understand how anyone else could possibly see it any other way but yours.  That is, unless the other person were less intelligent than you were, or less educated, or less capable, or totally insane.  It's easier, but incredibly lazy, to apply these labels to those who oppose your political stance and dismiss them out of hand. Then, you don't have to do the work it takes to engage in real dialogue because dialogue is pointless.

However, there is a very real danger when doing this.  The danger is that you could be wrong. They could have a valid argument.  They could have spotted a flaw in your logic, one that needs to be corrected.  They could be the key that you've been missing to unlock some previously hidden truth that might very well change your life.  It's happened to me on more than one occasion that the person I was so sure was wrong proved to be right about something important, some belief that I was holding on to as absolutely true but hadn't examined nearly as closely as I'd thought.

The other danger in underestimating your opposition is that it just makes you look stubborn, unreasonable, and unwilling to listen.  It makes you look like you have a closed mind.  The reality is most people consider themselves open minded individuals, and given the right environment and the right opportunities they are willing to correct their course and change their minds - but first, they have to be given the benefit of the doubt.  They have to be allowed the room they need to make those changes, because a lot of their life's decisions have been made based on their belief and they're pretty heavily invested in it.  The older they are, the more they've invested into this idea, so it isn't easy to change.  It isn't going to happen all at once. It's going to take time.

I have seen both sides of the political spectrum make this mistake. It's damaging, and counter-productive.  Belittling the other side may have the temporary benefit of making you feel superior, but has the overall effect of preventing any real change from happening.  No one gets converted by telling them how horrible or stupid they are.  In fact, these things only serve to raise their defenses and block the possibility of any meaningful dialogue and thus destroys the hopes of ever changing the minds of anyone.

Begin with the assumption of good will.  Begin by assuming your opponent is just as intelligent, just as educated, just as capable of applying logic and reason, and just as eager to do what is right as you are. They just don't share your perspective.  That's why you're engaging in dialogue.  You want to see things from their perspective, so that you can be sure you haven't overlooked anything, and you want to help them see things from your perspective by sharing experiences, knowledge, insights, and evidence.

Democrats, Gays, Minorities, and Women

I want to start this post by letting you know I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I don't vote for parties, I vote for people.  I agree with George Washington who warned this country at its very inception that party politics were an evil to be avoided for it would tear the nation in two, causing people to defend their party rather than put the interests of the nation at the forefront. I have witnessed this first hand, with people throwing support behind a party even when that part is clearly and demonstrably in the wrong on an issue.  

Having said all of that, I have watched and listened to both sides and what I find is that Democrats really don't seem to hold a very high opinion of most of the groups that they claim to support.  While claiming to champion the cause of minorities, women, and those who profess to be homosexual, the underlying messages are actually very condescending and outlandishly insulting to the intelligence, integrity, and worth of those individuals.  I'm picking out three messages I hear consistently from the Democratic party and explain to you why I think these are absolutely appalling:

1. Homosexual marriage should be supported because gays can't help themselves.

This one is by far the most insulting of the arguments used because it implies that it is impossible for people with same sex attraction to exercise self-control.  It seriously reduces them to the level of animals, since this is the reason we do not hold animals accountable to the law.  Is that really the message that homosexuals want people to believe about them? That they are animals incapable of controlling their urges and impulses?

The more dangerous part of this argument is that decades ago it was arguments like these that were used to support the eugenics movement, classifying some people as unable to improve their lot in life because they were simply born that way. Human behavior is not hard wired into our genetic code, although we may have a predisposition toward certain behaviors, we are still free to choose them.  That, more than anything else, is what separates man from animals.

2. Blacks, women, and gays can't compete with white men for jobs without government intervention.

Speaking as a woman, I find this statement to be beyond the pale. I don't need government help to compete in the workplace.  I want to be hired for my qualifications, not for my skin color or my gender or my sexual preferences. If I am qualified, I can prove it. If I am not able to get hired by someone else, I am capable of starting my own business and finding clients who will purchase what I have to offer without the assistance of the government. All I ask is that the government not be an obstacle or an impediment to my efforts to prove myself.

3. Women need birth control because it helps free them to be more like men.

First, why would women need to be more like men in the first place? This implies that there is something inherently wrong with being a woman, that we need to be "fixed" somehow.  There is nothing wrong with being a woman. It's a glorious thing, and no woman should ever feel like she needs to stop being feminine in order to be able to get ahead in life. Yet this is the exact message she receives from the Democratic party.

Second of all I want to ask how, exactly, does birth control help women? By reducing us to sex objects for the pleasure of men? By messing with our hormones so that we are more likely to become depressed, less likely to seek out healthy partners, are more likely to contract diseases because it throws off our immune systems? By pitting us against our children, telling us that we must choose between them and a decent life? By decreasing our sex drives? By encouraging us to be careless in the bedroom so that we end up contracting STD's or facing a pregnancy without a partner to help us?

I just can't see how birth control helps women at all.  It seems to me like the plight of women has gotten worse, not better, since birth control was legalized in the early 1970's.  Rates of divorce are higher, rates of cheating, the numbers of single parents, incidents of domestic violence - and violence specifically targeted to pregnant women - has increased, even child abuse has gone up over the last 40 years.  How is any of this helping women?  

Furthermore, doctors used to actually try to solve women's reproductive health issues.  Now, when a woman complains about some problem with her reproductive system, the first and often only response she gets is a prescription for birth control.  This is INSANE! Birth control doesn't solve any problems. It only masks them, and the real problems get bigger and bigger.  Girls as young as 11 are being prescribed these hormone altering drugs - hormones that impact their growth and development - as a way to "help" solve their menstrual problems or keep their menstrual cycles regular.

What really helps women is to teach them to value themselves enough not to give in to the pressure to sleep with a guy in the hopes that he'll love you. What really helps women is to encourage them to develop self-control and take responsibility for their lives. What really helps women is to teach men not to treat women as objects of pleasure and to help men realize that there is no such thing as consequence-free sex.  If you really want to help women, help them to take control of their lives so they don't have to be the victim all the time.

Homeless in Elko: Andrew Hockenberry

This guy is Andrew Hockenberry.  He is homeless. He lives here in Elko, and his home is his van.  He works a full-time job as a dishwasher at Red Lion. He's 42 years old.  He was born and raised in Salt Lake City, UT.  He came to Elko because his kids needed help.  The housing market is tough here and, between his child support payments and his minimum wage job, he doesn't have enough money to be able to afford a place of his own.

When it gets below freezing, he buys a propane tank and fires up his camp stove so that there is enough heat to catch at least a few hours of sleep. When he isn't working at the Red Lion, he spends time holding a sign at one of Wal-Mart's exits, hoping for a few dollars here and there.

 This isn't his first bout with homelessness, in fact he's spent about 15 to 16 years total being homeless.  He says the hardest thing about being homeless is staying clean - mentally, physically, and with the police. It's easy to get discouraged, to feel like giving up on life.  He says what homeless people need more than anything else is love - to know that someone cares, to know that they matter to someone. His advice to other homeless people is not to give up.  Even if you have to spend a week asking for help, and you get nothing, keep trying.  It will come eventually.

To get a bath, he often slips in to a restroom.  Sometimes, if he can't do that, he buys a jug of water and finds a deserted spot in the woods.  When he gets enough change, he does his laundry at the laundry mat. Food isn't a problem.  He is on food stamps, and there are plenty of places in town that offer food to people in his situation.

He doesn't have a post office box.  He has people send his mail to the Elko post office attention: General Post. He has a cheap, pre-paid cell phone that he uses to make phone calls. Before he had one of those he was able to use the phone at the JOIN office (Job search aid office here in Elko) to make calls to and receive calls from employers. He doesn't belong to a specific church. He says he is non-denominational, although he was raised in the Mormon faith. He doesn't make it to church all that often.

This is Andrew, and this is only part of his story. Like most people, he has way more story than can fit in an hour or two long interview. Like most homeless people, he doesn't fit the stereotype.  He's not a drunkard looking for his next bottle of booze, or a junkie looking for the next score. He's a person who has made his fair share of mistakes along the way but is struggling to make up for those the best way that he knows how. The real difference between those who are homeless and those who aren't isn't the number of mistakes they have made in life, it's the size of the community they have around them who can help pull them back to their feet when they fall.

News that isn't news

Recently, I read an article reported by CBS5AZ about a woman who jumped off the Hoover Dam bridge and died. This article reminded me of things that I find frustrating about our media outlets. They are constantly reporting things as news that ARE NOT NEWS!

Anything that is expected is NOT NEWS.  For example, if the KKK and the Black Panthers say hateful things about one another, or kill one another - that's NOT NEWS. It's the expected result. If someone jumps off a really tall building or structure and dies - that's NOT NEWS. It's the expected result. If a Democratic candidate or party member says something negative about a Republican candidate or party member - that is NOT NEWS.  It's the expected result.

Things that ARE NEWS:
1) KKK and Black Panthers co-host a community picnic and a good time is had by all with no bloodshed.
2) Someone jumps off an extraordinarily tall building or structure and LIVES.
3) Democrat party member of candidate says something positive about, or otherwise agrees with, Republican candidate or party member.
4) Middle Eastern country declares PEACE with Israel.
5) UN does something useful.

These things would be news. Why? Because they are things you DO NOT EVER EXPECT TO SEE!! Truthfully, I feel like I should be given a refund of my money every time I have to read some story about news that isn't news. Come on, media, you have over 7 billion people on this planet. You can find some things to talk about that are real, genuine news.