Мирное время, но Смутное время, какое же? [Time of peace….time of troubles]
Patrice and I are living a near idyllic life in France. However, in late of this my seventh decade, I am concerned . Is much that I value in my western world is under threat or is it my imagination? I have had some little experience with disinformation, deception, maskirovka, outright lies, and these memoirs I shall write some fine day seem to call me to compare and contrast Soviet political disinformation/deceptions (and, of course, self-deception) operations (1960-1989), and likewise, US (and probably European) (2005-2025) operations. Wish I had all the classified stuff I wrote.
I don’t want to be a drama queen, but
I remember the grumpy old men coming to the farm table in the 1950s, taking a shot of Seagram’s 7, then a chaw from a tobacco plug, spitting into a Campbell’s tomato soup can, and saying, “dammit, world’s going to hell in a hand basket” followed by a round of cursing. I long ago read William Butler Yeats’ poem ’The Second Coming and thought, … get a life.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
WILLIAMS BUTLER YEATS
THE SECOND COMING (1919)
Whence today this confusion, this uncertainty, this Смутное время?
In 1495 a Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, invented the printing press. In a short while, this new technology upended the stable medieval world and loosed religious wars across Europe.
Aldus Manutius began using the newly invented printing press to produce small, inexpensive, pocket editions of Greek, Latin, and vernacular literature, making knowledge in all disciplines available for the first time to a wide audience. Cheap pamphlets and broadsides allowed theological and religious ideas to be disseminated at an unprecedented pace.
The printing press brought about the Protestant Reformation (began in 1517), from which ensued the European wars of religion, a series of wars waged in Europe during the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. The wars disrupted the religious and political order in the Catholic countries of Europe. Germany suffered the death of 1/3 of its population. I often take long walks in Burgundian forests, and from time to time stumble upon the remains of once thriving now ruined fortresses, stone walls several feet thick, which protected thriving population destroyed and/or dispersed in France’s Wars of Religion.
The internet
In 1969 the Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA) awarded contracts for the development of the ARPANET project, the year I became an Air Force 2nd Lieutenant. By 1975, by then a Captain, I transferred to the National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Md, and became involved in the technology of ‘packet switching’. And from 1982-1989 I directed millions of your tax dollars into ‘artificial intelligence’ in order to develop working aids to discern Soviet disinformation and deception. In 1989, I left the Air Force, and with the rest of America and humanity, I purchased a Macintosh 512K and signed onto the World Wide Web ( at 75bps).
the counter-reformation…
As did 15th and 16th century popes, Western officials now use fines, prison, and soon enough, if unchecked, methods more permanent to suppress ‘blasphemy’ (now named ‘disinformation).
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton warns Elon Musk against ‘disinformation’ upon the occasion of the Musk interview with US Presidential candidate Donald Trump. “DSA obligations apply without exceptions or discrimination to the moderation of the whole user community and content of X (including yourself as a user with over 190 million followers) which is accessible to EU users and should be fulfilled in line with the risk-based approach of the DSA, which requires greater due diligence in case of a foreseeable increase of the risk profile,”
The Grand Inquisitor warns Jesus Christ against blasphemy on the occasion of his Second Coming. “Thou has been fairly warned of it, but evidently to no use, since Thou hast rejected the only means which could make mankind happy; fortunately at Thy departure Thou hast delivered the task to us…. Thou has promised, ratifying the pledge by Thy own words, in words giving us the right to bind and unbind… and surely, Thou couldst not think of depriving us of it now!’” Dostoevski’s The Grand Inquisitor, a chapter fwithin the novel, The Brothers Karamazox
