REALITY BYTES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8y7MBx0WIA

"More and more people put their lives on social media sites worldwide. Globally Facebook and Twitter have been effective tools for organizing major protests and overthrowing governments. Now members of the CIA department are paid to analyze what people are talking about on social media. This leaves many wondering about the intentions behind this practice. Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist, gives us his thoughts on why the CIA is concerned with your tweets."

"...Just when you thought it was safe to post that scurrilous update to your favorite social network. Earlier this year, The Guardian reported that the U.S military awarded a $2.76 million contract to Ntrepid, a California corporation, to develop software that will create fake personas (sock puppets) to try to influence dialogue among online denizens while propagating American propaganda (though after the Guardian’s article published, military officials told them these fake personas will not be on Twitter or Facebook). The program has been described as an “online persona management service,” where a military official can operate up to 10 different identities from all around the globe, infiltrating all sorts of social networks.
As reported by The Guardian, according to Centcom (the division of the military that awarded this project) spokesperson Bill Speaks, “The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the U.S....”

http://current.com/groups/news-blog/93591636_u-s-military-infiltrates-social-media.htm

"CARACAS: Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez speculated on Wednesday that the United States might have developed a way to give Latin American leaders cancer, after Argentina's Cristina Fernandez joined the list of presidents diagnosed with the disease.
It was a typically controversial statement by Venezuela's socialist leader, who underwent surgery in June to remove a tumor from his pelvis. But he stressed that he was not making any accusations, just thinking aloud.
"It would not be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it until now ... I don't know. I'm just reflecting," he said in a televised speech to troops at a military base. "But this is very, very, very strange ... it's a bit difficult to explain this, to reason it, including using the law of probabilities."
Chavez, Fernandez, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, Brazil's Dilma Rousseff and former Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have all been diagnosed recently with cancer. All of them are leftists. Doctors say Fernandez has a very good chance of recovery and will not need chemotherapy or radiotherapy . Chavez said other regional leaders should beware, including his close ally, Bolivian president Evo Morales. "We'll have to take good care of Evo. Take care Evo!" he said.
The leader is Latin America's loudest critic of US foreign policy along with Cuba's ex-leader Fidel Castro. "

PLUS article from the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/29/hugo-chavez-us-cancer-plot