Blood, Carnage and the Agent Provocateur

"It's a strange world filled with odd-shaped folk."

--Robert Sheckley

Last night, as the National Guard was being deployed near Cryptoscatology Headquarters in Long Beach, California, I searched the words "Long Beach" on Twitter and came across this message. The last sentence stood out to me:

"Long Beach protestors this car is a trap! The p0lice parked the car in front of the convention center bc that’s where they are stationed! Don’t get caught destroying the trap car. Ignore it, walk by it, keep the message going!!! They’ve been planting brick piles on sidewalks too!" 

Then, not long afterwards, I saw this video (from Dallas).  

This video was shot at Ground Zero in Minneapolis. Scroll all the way down to the video entitled "Claims Raised of Cops Provoking Riots" (1:24).

And this video was shot in Seattle.

To put all of this into a historical perspective, I highly recommend reading Alex Constantine's 1993 book entitled Blood, Carnage and the Agent Provocateur: Truth About the Los Angeles Riots and the Secret War Against L.A.'s Minorities.

FEMA and Palantir

From Spencer Ackerman's 5-21-20 Daily Beast article entitled "FEMA Tells States to Hand Public Health Data Over to Palantir":

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency urged health officials in “all states and territories” to provide “daily” updates on ventilator availability for the novel coronavirus directly to the data mining giant Palantir, according to emails shared with The Daily Beast and confirmed by FEMA. 

Palantir, co-founded by key Trump ally Peter Thiel, signed government contracts last month worth approximately $24.8 million to provide the Department of Health and Human Services with data-management software to track health-infrastructure deficiencies and forecast where future needs will emerge, through a platform known as HHS Protect. The company’s tools integrate a staggering 187 data sets containing information on everything from hospital inventories, medical supply chains, diagnostic and geographic testing data, demographic stats and more. 

Those data sets do not include information from identifiable patients, according to HHS, which experts say keeps the arrangement from running afoul of privacy laws. But information on state capacity to meet COVID-19 hospitalization needs, particularly for the predictive purposes the FEMA administrator references and Palantir specializes in, is a potential goldmine for the secretive company. 

“If they’re accessing these rich data sets directly from our public health infrastructure, will they exploit that to add economic value to their core data sets? If their AI learns how to infer and predict the patterns of the disease from our public data, then that becomes a hugely lucrative advantage for a private company, especially now when everyone, in every business sector, wants to know where COVID is going and how hard it’s going to hit,” said Shoshana Zuboff, the author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and a professor emerita at Harvard Business School.

If you want to read Ackerman's entire article, click HERE. 

Previous Cryptoscatology posts about Palantir can be found HERE, HERE, and HERE. A previous Cryptoscatology post about Peter Thiel can be found HERE.

Palantir and Project Maven

From Isabel Asher Hamilton's 5-26-20 Business Insider entitled "'Our Product Is Used on Occasion to Kill People': Palantir's CEO Claims Its Tech Is Used to Target and Kill Terrorists":

Alex Karp, CEO of data analytics firm Palantir, told Axios in an interview broadcast Monday that the company's tech is used to kill people.

Karp was answering a question about the company's involvement with US Immigration and Custom's Enforcement (ICE), a relationship which has provoked protests by human rights activists. 

Karp said he had lost some of his favorite employees who thought the company's work for ICE was unethical.

"I had people protesting me, some of whom I think ask really legitimate questions. I have asked myself if I were younger at college: 'Would I be protesting me?'"

Karp said he sees questions of injustice in every aspect of the company's work. "I see this with our work with clandestine services, I mean our product is used on occasion to kill people," he said.

When pressed by the interviewer on what technology he was referring to and whether this might mean using drones, Karp remained vague.

"If you're looking for a terrorist in the world now you're probably using our government product and you're probably doing the operation that takes out the person in another product we build."

Earlier this year Palantir picked up a Pentagon contract to develop targeting AI for military drones. The contract, called "Project Maven," had previously been Google's but the tech giant abandoned it after employee uproar over the ethics of developing military technology.

If you want to read the entire article, click HERE.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HARLAN ELLISON!

In honor of what would have been the 86th birthday of Harlan Ellison (1934-2018), I suggest reading Ellison's Hugo Award-winning short story "The Paladin of the Lost Hour" and his hilarious piece of creative nonfiction entitled "The Three Most Important Things in Life." The former tale was collected in Ellison's World Fantasy Award-winning 1988 book ANGRY CANDY, and the latter piece was collected in Ellison's 1982 book STALKING THE NIGHTMARE.

(Previous Cryptoscatology posts dealing with Harlan Ellison can be found HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.)

Richard Sharpe Shaver and the Philosophy of Flying Saucers

I recommend listening to the 4-30-20 episode of Bob Carlson's UNFICTIONAL, which airs weekly on KCRW in Los Angeles. This particular episode (entitled "The Philosophy of Flying Saucers") deals with a prime cryptoscatological subject, namely Richard Sharpe Shaver, creator of what has come to be known as "The Shaver Mystery":

The story of the Shaver Mystery began in 1943 when a man named Richard Sharpe Shaver sent a letter to Amazing Stories, an early science fiction magazine. But Shaver said his story was not fiction, it was an incredible thing that had actually happened to him. These are excerpts from Shaver's writing, read by an actor. 

VOICE READING EXCERPT: I myself cannot explain it, I know only that I remember Lemuria! Remember it with the faithfulness that I accept with the absolute conviction of a fanatic. And yet, I am not a fanatic. I am a simple man, a worker in metal employed at a steel mill in Pennsylvania. 

While working in a factory, Shaver said he gained the ability to hear the thoughts of others. He quit his job, he became a hobo for a while, and that led to his discovery of a race of Pre-historical extraterrestrial creatures called the Titans. They were once part of a large civilization here on earth, but most of those had left in spacecraft... while a few were abandoned here on earth. Of those, a small number were the Noble Teros. But unfortunately, a larger number of the ones left behind became mutated by the sun's radiation into sadistic savages. They were called Dero.

VOICE READING EXCERPT: A race of Dero is produced whose every thorough movement is concluded with a decision to kill. They will kill instantly. They will instantly kill or torture anyone who will make contact unless they are extremely familiar with them and fear them. That is why they do not instantly kill each other.

And the reason Richard Shaver knew so much about Deros and the underground caverns, is because he was held prisoner by the Deros in the Cavern World. He saw how they used rays to read and manipulate people's minds. Now he was here to tell readers... they're still doing it.

You can hear the entire episode HERE.

(Previous Cryptoscatology posts dealing with the work of Richard Shaver can be found HERE and HERE.)

We Look Forward To Seeing You Soon

Your Random Jack Kirby Panel of the Day