=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "In Paranoia We Trust" -- Dr. They =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= P-M-S P-M-S P-M-S P-M-S P-M-S P-M-S P-M-S Paranoid Media Scrutinization P-M-S P-M-S P-M-S P-M-S P-M-S P-M-S P-M-S =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Paranoid Media Scrutinization Volume 1, Number 2 April 1992 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= We live in a world that requires us to become numb. If we were not numb we could never read a newspaper, watch TV, listen to the radio or carry on with our daily lives. Cognitive dissonance sets in so that we hardly notice that the White House Spokesman for Physical Fitness is a drug freak who has hyper- extorted his body by using illegal steroids (Can't you just see the People Magazine cover a few years from now with a sagging Arnold Swartzenager and the headlines SUDDENLY announcing his past steroid use). The B.C.C.I. scandal arrives on our doorstep and the world marches on as if our own Justice Department and the Central Intelligence agency were not necessarily indited in this mess. As with Contragate the CIA cannot have it both ways. Either they knew about these illegal activities and did nothing, or they were so inept at gathering intelligence they really had no idea that this was occurring. Not much of a choice is it? Well, that my friend, this is why we provide a public service of Paranoid Media Scrutinization, to pick at this festering ooze that passes as a free press. We (Dr. They) have no choice, we must do it for we are commanded by God. Yes Dr. They is disjointed and hard to follow, this is an inevitable side-effect of his most recent surgery--a surgery that has made his revelations of truth more easily communicated to the teeming masses. Allow me to ramble onward... * * * * Have you ever noticed that anytime the newsmedia reports on ANYTHING that you are closely familiar with that they invariably get some major aspect of the story completely wrong? It can be something as inane as mixing up the date of your Webelos weenie- roast fundraiser, or misspelling your dogs name, or it can be as universal as re-writing the laws of physics or political careers. It took Dr. They a few years to put it together that EVERY story in the news contained some element of these errors, and it took a mind as brilliant as Dr. They's a few more years to recognize that the combined impact of these "little errors" exerts enough inertia (if properly harnaced...) to move one of Neptune's lesser moons outside of its current orbit! If nothing else, let these obvious episodes of the media getting even the most basic of facts all wrong serve as a scale with which to measure its general capacity to correctly relate the facts of stories, both large and small. Some of these errors are simply the result of typical nym-rods taking on a job beyond their reasoning powers (such as understanding global events) while other misrepresentations have a more intentional and sinister source of error. Two of the paranoid giants of our time Alexander Cockburn and Noam Chomsky have long spoken of our country's media as "manufacturing consent". Chomsky's book by this title (co- written with E.S. Herman 1988) thoroughly examines how the media giants of this country shape and maintain public opinion by constricting the "facts" made available to the public. One key element of this involves the selection/creation of "experts": "The relation between power and souring extends beyond official and corporate provision of day-to day news to shaping the supply of experts. The dominance of official sources is weakened by the existence of highly respectable unofficial sources that give dissident views with great authority. This problem is alleviated by "co-opting the experts"--i.e., putting them on the payroll as consultants, funding their research, and organizing think tanks that will hire them directly and help disseminate their messages." (pp 23). Does that sound a little too (paranoidicly) good to be true? Perhaps you've forgotten that "fifteen of ninety-five outside directors of ten of the media giants are former governmental officials.."(Chomsky pp13). It would be a mistake to underestimate the power of (say..) Readers Digest or T.V. Guide those robust features of American society. These two mind-mops are responsible for maintaining a squeeze on the limits of our consciousness. Its a big job, but somebody's got to do it! * * * * Just glimpse at what passes by the eyes of the average American without generating a hint of recognition, or a speck of outrage: The Olympian 2/25/92 A3 BUSH OK'D AID TO IRAQ, REPORT SAYS AP WASHINGTON-President Bush, overriding congressional objections and warnings from his own administration, signed an order allowing continued aid to Iraq less than eight months before it invaded Kuwait, according to documents presented Monday. The order is one of three cases revealed by the House Banking Committee chairman, Rep. Henry Gonzalez, D-Texas, in which Bush intervened to obtain continued U.S. government credit guarantees to Iraq despite its shaky credit rating. "The policy towards Iraq is by far the most tragic foreign policy episode of the Bush and Reagan administrations," Gonzalez said. This eternally recurrent pattern of "revelations" months, years, and decades after decisions are made is enough to make Dr. They puke, gentle reader. Just centimeters from the above story on how King George armed Hitler Hussein is a tiny-weeny story on the current Algerian situation that says: "The fundamentalists..claimed that 30,000 people have been arrested and 150 killed during a six week military crackdown on their movement." Strange that this gets so little coverage...must be because these "people" don't believe in GEEEE-SUS (and don't have any oil fields beneath the prisons that hold them). * * * * * * * Have any of you paranoid wacko's out there ever wondered about why there aren't local branches of the C.I.A., N.S.A. or F.B.I. in your home towns, or why these massive employers (estimated employment of NSA/CIA/FBI nationwide is over 2.5 million people) don't advertise in your local newspapers? First off, don't be too sure that there isn't a local F.B.I. office overtly located in your town. Dr. They lives in the small town of Olympia Washington (population 27,000), and we have our own Federal Bureau of Investigation office (714 Capitol Way) and our own Special Agent. Now isn't that SPECIAL! Dr. They is only left to wonder where the covert office of the local C.I.A. and N.S.A. goons are since (unlike the F.B.I.) they don't list their offices in the phonebook. As for advertising in the newspapers each of these covert agencies often supply newspapers with filler stories that little more than advertisements. For example, In The Olympian 2/24/92 pp D2 "Lifestyle" section tucked between the TV section and the local movie listings under the subject heading of "CAREERS": "SPY AGENCY WANTS TO HIRE MATH EXPERTS" A.P. Fort Meade, Md. The unltrasecretive National Security Agency is lifting its veil a bit to recruit mathematics. In the last several years, the agency has invited math experts who are potential employees to its campus for secret meetings. But recently, recruiters went to a meeting of national math groups in Baltimore to look for candidates. And the agency created a mathematics speakers bureau and supports high school education programs. Mathematical minds are prized because they are so versatile, said Richard J. Shaker, the NSA's chief of math research. The agency won't say why it appears to be pressed for brainpower at a time when international tensions have eased. But Cipher Deavours, a cryptographer who publishes the journal Cryptologia, said the agency probably wants mathematicians to work on satellite imaging systems. Before the Soviet Union disintegrated, the NSA's mission included monitoring the Eastern bloc, whose telephone, radio and television transmissions had to be laboriously unscrambled and translated, said Deavours, who teaches at Kean College in New Jersey. In the post-Soviet world, he said, spy satellites may be better suited to gathering intelligence from smaller nations, he said. Young mathematicians may hesitate to work for the NSA because they fear it will isolate them from their peers and prevent their work from making a broad contribution, said David W. Kueker, associate chairman of the University of Maryland at College Park. "Generally speaking, academics are great believers in extreme openness and sharing ideas and results," he said. There are a number of duties and tasks that these recruited employees of the NSA or FBI can do once they are hired. For example the below NY Times article provides us all with a clearer picture of the kinder and gentler nation that President Bush and his staff (infection) has in store for us, courtesy of the FBI and NSA: "AS TECHNOLOGY MAKES WIRETAPS MORE DIFFICULT, FBI SEEKS HELP" Anthony Ramirez, New York Times 3/8/92 PP. 12 "The Department of Justice says that advanced telephone equipment in wide use around the nation is making it difficult for law-enforcement agencies to wiretap the phone calls of suspected criminals. The Government proposed legislation on Friday requiring the nation's telephone companies to give law-enforcement agencies technical help with their eavesdropping. Privacy advocates criticized the proposal as unclear and open to abuse. In the past, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies could simply attach alligator clips and a wiretap device to the line hanging from a telephone pole. Law- enforcement agents could clearly hear the conversations. That is still true of telephone lines carrying analog transmissions, the electronic signals used by the first telephones in which sounds correspond proportionally to voltage. But such telephone lines are being steadily replaced by high-speed, high capacity lines using digital signals. On a digital line, FBI agents would hear only computer code or perhaps nothing at all because some digital transmissions are over fiber-optic lines that convert the signals to pulses of light. In addition, court-authorized wire-taps are narrowly written. They restrict the surveillance to particular parties and particular topics of conversation over a limited time on a specific telephone or a group of telephones. That was relatively easy with analog signals. The FBI either intercepted the call or had the phone company re-route it to an FBI location, said William A. Bayse, the assistant director in the technical services division of the FBI. But tapping a high-capacity line could allow access to thousands of conversations. Finding the conversation of suspected criminals, for example, in a complex "bit stream" would be impossible without the aid of phone company technicians. There are at least 140 million telephone lines in the country and more than half are served in some way by digital equipment, according to the United States Telephone Association, a trade group. The major arteries and blood vessels of the telecommunications network are already digital. And the greatest part of the system, the capillaries of the network linking central telephone offices to residences and businesses, will be digital by the mid- 1990's. The FBI said there were 1,083 court-authorized wiretaps-- both new and continuing--by Federal, state and local law- enforcement authorities in 1990, the latest year for which data are available. Janlori Goldman, director of the privacy and technology project for the American Civil Liberties Union, said she had been studying the proposal for several months. "We are not saying that this is not a problem that shouldn't be fixed,: she said, "but we are concerned that the proposal may be overboard and runs the risk of more information than is legally authorized will flow to the FBI." In a news conference in Washington on Friday, the FBI said it was seeking only to "preserve the status quo" with its proposal so that it could maintain the surveillance power authorized by a 1968 Federal law, the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. The proposal, which is lacking in many details, is also designed to benefit state and local authorities. Under the proposed law, the Federal Communications Commission would issue regulations to telephone companies like the GTE Corporation and the regional Bell telephone companies requiring the "modification" of phone systems "if those systems impede the Government's ability to conduct lawful electronic surveillance." In particular, the proposal mentions "providers of electronic communication services and private branch exchange operators," potentially meaning all residences and all businesses with telephone equipment. Frocene Adams [yea, all us OLY old timers remember Frocene!], a security official with US West in Denver, is the chairman of Telecommunications Security Association, which served as the liaison between the industry and the FBI "We don't know the extent of the changes required under the proposal," she said, but emphasized that no telephone company would do the actual wiretapping or other surveillance. Computer software and some hardware might have to be changed, Ms Adams said, but this could apply to new equipment and mean relatively few changes for old equipment." Anyone out there who doubts that one of the primary purposes of the current phone system is to allow for governmental monitoring of citizens' private conversations should re-read the sentence that so matter-of-factly stated: "the Federal Communications Commission would issue regulations to telephone companies like the GTE Corporation and the regional Bell telephone companies requiring the "modification" of phone systems "if those systems impede the Government's ability to conduct lawful electronic surveillance." In other words. If the small PBX in Bumble-Fug Wyoming is broke and come up with the bucks for the latest warez, the Feds will force them to buy it just so that the FBI can listen in when ever it wants to! (Its all kinda like telling your neighbor how great HBO and Showtime is so he'll subscribe and you can pirate his cable). An un-named employee of USWEST told Dr. They that the clear purpose of this legislation would be for the FBI and other intelligence agencies to "get their foot in the digital-door so they could have a complete run of the system". There are a number of things that this New York Times article doesn't bother going into. Like, the fact that Attorney General Barr (you remember him, don't chad? He was the CIA's head lawyer for over a decade!) has made this one of his pet projects and that he himself has been talking to Congress to try and tack this onto some DEA related bill. That's right, we can all expect our Big Brothers (and Sisters) in Washington DC to start using their hysterical dribble about the DRUG WAR to further invade our privacy. Dr. They will use his Washington D.C. sources to keep readers up to date on the progress of this proposal as it sneaks around the back corridors of our capital. * * * * * Dr. They recently found himself sitting on the john looking through the day's mail. Not being thrilled with the prospect of confronting the phone bill he perused the pages of an alumni magazine he had just received. Tucked away in yet another boring issue of the University of Chicago Magazine were the seeds of more paranoid diversions. As per usual, the elements of the article in question that ignited Dr. They's paranoia had little to do with the thrust of the piece. Here are the two paragraphs that caught Dr. They's eyes, the overall story concerns the boring (not to mention BALD-HEADED) neutrino-tracking physicist Dr. Anthony Turkevich of the Fermi Institute: "Inside a plastic bag in the sealed box was a sample of pure uranium salt, stored away at the University since 1956. (Turkevich bought it with some leftover grant money, thinking it might come in handy in a future experiment.) Three decades later, Turkevich did find a use for the sample, with help from colleagues Thanasis Economou, a senior research associate at the Fermi Institute, and George Cowan, senior fellow emeritus at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The wanted to see if they could detect whether any of the uranium 238 had decayed into plutonium 238. That would be a milestone: the first evidence for plutonium 238 occurring in nature. That's why the purity of Turkevich's sample was so vital. Because the uranium sample was stored prior to the introduction of man-made plutonium 238 into the atmosphere by nuclear-powered spacecraft, Turkevich knew that any plutonium he detected in the sample had been produced naturally, and wasn't simply the result of contamination". [University of Chicago Magazine/ February 1992 page 35] Dr. They's mind being the steel-trap for paranoid delusions that it is, it was hard to shake off the sentence: "Because the uranium sample was stored prior to the introduction of man-made plutonium 238 into the atmosphere by nuclear-powered spacecraft".... Does that imply that those of us 20th century lifeforms whose time on this mortal coil over-lapps the era of nuclear-powered spacecraft have been seasoned with enough plutonium that were we uranium rather than HUMANium we'd all have decayed to plutonium? Nobody ever asked me if this was what I wanted! Get paranoid, and get there fast! * * * * Newspapers are able to present themselves as even-handed, open-minded and open to criticism by the existence of the "Editorial Page" and (that scheme of schemes...) the "Letters to the Editor" section. The existence of an editorial page strengthens the notion of an "objective" (that is: editorial- free) reporting base, which is of course the furthest thing from the truth. Editorials allow newspapers to simply drop their guard and state plainly the noxious message they have been preaching inside the types of stories they choose to print, and the angles they use to pursue stories. It is the page where Editors and columnists can come right out with it and tell us that its O.K. (even good for us!) to strap black men into metal chairs and fill their bodies with electricity, they don't have to beat around the (President) bush and quote some White House front man from the Brookings Institute, they can just say it in plain old English. The "letters to the editor" section largely serves the purpose of falsely demonstrating to a newspapers readership that they COULD (if they wanted to, or were capable of spelling their own name correctly...) write and object to anything they read in the paper. And indeed, a reading of a week's worth of letters in any American newspapers would find a variety or readers writing to complain about aspects of newspaper coverage. But what about all the letters we never see? This last year Dr. They attended a public meeting called by a local newspaper for readers to critique newscoverage. Almost everyone who bothered to show up complained that they had written letters to the editor that the newspaper had not bothered to publish. Andy-the-Editor (with his ever so casual well trimmed beard) smiled (like an evil robot) and said that there were only four reasons that the newspaper would not run a letter: (1) Unsigned letters, or those without returned addresses, (2) Letters containing obscenities (3) Obvious form-letters, signed but not written by local individuals, or (4) Letters with points of view already covered by previous letter writers. Dr. They has no problem with three out of four of these reasons because Dr. They is a SCIENTIST. As a SCIENTIST, Dr. They likes objective, definable variables, and he dislikes wishy- washy definitions that can be abused by the forces of evil. Yes, you guessed it, it is variable number four (4) that Dr. They objects to (and for that matter so did the rest of the angry mob at the above mentioned local meeting--though this may have also been due to a bad batch of Geritol). The common newspaper practice of "presenting both sides of every issue" is closely related to Dr. They's objection with practice number four. If a newspaper writes a story advocating the sexual molestation gophers, an increase in the powers of the police state, or the election of George Bush to the Presidency, they are happy to publish letters from individuals on both sides of this issue. But, they are most likely to do so on (what the consider) an "even-handed" basis. And just what does that mean dear readers? It means that they will publish (approximately) one pro-gopher-molestation letter for every anti-gopher-molestation letter they print, REGARDLESS OF THE TOTAL NUMBER OF LETTERS RECEIVED ON ANY SIDE OF AN ISSUE. Because newspapers usually only print about a maximum of four letters on any given topic, you the reader would never know if 6,528 letters had been written condemning gopher molestation and only 2 were ever written in support of the topic from reading the four letters published in their paper. Again, the SCIENTIST in Dr. They cringes at this abomination of justice, and egregious offence to standards of statistical sampling and decency! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Do you have a favorite news item that you would like to see covered in future P-M-S issues? You can reach Dr. They at the Acid Bath BBS (206) 456-2725, where the allwise Sysop Techno Punk lets us rest our name. We (that is, THEY) appreciate any re- typed or scanned news story complete with a citation telling where the story is from. If you are too lazy to do that, then send us the reference and our research staff will hunt it down. If you send a news contribution and want a copy of the issue it appears in, then include you name/nym and a BBS where we can leave you a copy. If we pissed you off then call and flame us. -------Dr. They =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=