You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. (Colonel Jessep, A Few Good Men)

A thread winding through a number of posts is has been the concept that people within the intelligence community are actively engaged in using the Internet to spread memes (and/or disinfo) and that this might have a long history.

Now, Ed Komarek has published a three part article on Info-War, which admittedly seems to be largely discussing his exopolitical agenda. However, in the final part he gets down to the nitty-gritty and who does he pin as an expert? Almost an old friend around these parts: Colonel John Alexander of the NIDS and The Aviary and doesn't he get a good, if sinister, write-up:

Colonel John Alexander, U.S. Army (retired) has a chapter in his book Future War called Information Warfare. Colonel Alexander is widely considered the Darth Vader of the national security state by leading exopoliticians, one who long ago succumbed to the dark side of the force. One well known individual involved in the UFO/ET field was rumored to have called him the most dangerous man on the planet, an exaggeration of course, but I have and still do consider him a formidable adversary in the ongoing Info-war within and without the UFO/ET community.

One of the main tenets of war is to learn from the adversary, so I consider John a teacher from the dark side.

Well I like him better the more I hear about him!! So what does our Sith Lord have to teach us?

On page 111 John says, "In preparing for conflict, perception management is essential. The adversary should be led to believe that he is vulnerable and will lose if war is initiated." John goes on to say, "To deceive the enemy is a fundamental tenet of war. However, it was not until 1994 that doctrine on deception was published, and that was in response to the burgeoning field of command and control warfare. The target of the deception is the enemy's decision-making process. This may be done by directly influencing the leaders, or by manipulating the beliefs of the people who must support them"

...

John goes on to quote Colonel Richard Szafranski. His considerations for attacking include, "Every means by which an adversary arrives at knowledge or beliefs in that context." "Szafranski carries that argument to a logical conclusion, targeting every element in the epistemology of an adversary. This means attempting to undermine the organization, structure, methods, and validity of knowledge of that adversary. Deprived of valid information, a means to evaluate information properly, or a stable and reliable mechanism for decision-making places the adversary at great risk." John goes on to discuss manipulation of the media, how to do this properly without blowback.

This is, of course, all perfectly consistent with what we've looked at with memetic engineering combined with non-lethal weapons (a field we also know John Alexander is interested in) which may even include the deployment of prophet holograms, for really hammering home the lies.

The main question then is how not just how to fight an Info-War but how to win one. It appears the answer is that there are no winners:

What John and the national insecurity state fail to understand is that the target of deception is the destruction of anybody who uses it!!!! It contaminates the mental battlefield and injures everybody. The true basic tenet is that in a conflict or in any other situation deception will attack and harm anybody who uses it for any reason. In the short term it may win a battle even a war, but in the long run it's corrosive and as a mental poison it will eventually damage and even ruin all those who use it.

So we all get caught in Mutually Assured Destruction as the meme pool turns into a cancerous growth?

Ed's answer is to fight lies with truth but if they've been at this for decades (just shifting media when it suits them) I'm not sure if we can even recognise the truth, let alone be able to handle it.

Hat tip