I found the above classic film gem last week. It's a U.S. Army training film which was produced in 1968. The film attempts to explain how a psychological operation a.k.a. "PsyOp" is to be conducted in a fictitious country called Hostland. I really encourage you to make some time to watch it.
Nearly 40 years later now, the basic concept is the same. The advancement of communications technology has only caused the method to evolve and the scope of psyop to broaden.
I would also like to point out some very interesting and recent developments about this evolution, specifically concerning the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In the past, "public affairs" and "psyop" activities were seperated. One reason for this seperation is a federal law forbids the military from conducting psyop domestically upon the U.S. citizenry. Of course, in Bushworld, federal laws are only considered to be pesky suggestions.
Required Reading:
Freepress.net has a great section about the billions of dollars Bushworld has illegally spent on propaganda.
Now, psyop is a vital force multiplier in wartime and a very necessary tool to use in counterinsurgency operations. However, Bushworld decided to combine the public affairs and psyop activities. In a world of instant global communications, Bushworld can easily skirt the law.
It's simple. Bushworld plants a fake story in Iraq and within minutes it's being broadcast all over the globe. One example of this is the constant drumbeat to go to war with Iran. The fact that Iran is not being particularly helpful to our occupation of its neighbor, Iraq, is not in question. However, for the last several years, Bushworld has been waging a public relations/propaganda campaign using the departments of state and defense to get domestic public support for the next war.
Bushworld has blurred the activities of psyop and public affairs. The consolidation of corporate media into a handful of multi-national conglomerates just worsens this attack on truth by making it easier to conduct. U.S. media giants often have significant vested financial interests in the so-called military-industrial complex.
Good Reference Reading:
The official U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, written in part by General David Petraeus. His name may sound familiar to you as he is in charge of MNF-Iraq now. When Bush blames Democrats of "micro-managing the war in Iraq," why are U.S. media reporters too timid to ask him why he has hobbled every commander in charge of Operation Iraqi Freedom since day one? One might also note that Petraeus is working with 1/3 of the forces he recommends in this USAR FM and "success" could take a decade.
In 2003, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld ordered the DoD to produce the SECRET / NOFORN classified manual entitled "Information Operations Roadmap." It was de-classified in 2006 and released in redacted form under a FOIA request. The George Washington University's National Security Archive characterized it as "Rumsfeld's Roadmap to Propaganda" and there are links to related material.
The full PDF is only about 2.3 MBs to download and about 80 pages to read. The BBC has a mirrored archive of the PDF file. This GW NSA section also describes similar propaganda actions by former U.S. presidents Clinton and Reagan.
"There is no military solution in Iraq." "Hearts and Minds." J. Michael Waller is a professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC, and directs a graduate program for students coming from U.S. State and Defense departments, as well as the intelligence communities. I want to buy "Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War" and then ask the politicians in charge of the Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Homeland Security congressional committees why they seem to be so schizophrenic with our tax dollars.
My Advice:
Simply be aware that some stories in the news are not true. A great majority of the news has a small kernel of truth wrapped in exaggeration and political spin. Become a smart and critical consumer of media.
If you constantly watch Fox cable TV news because you think it's fair and balanced, you already live in Hostland. Seek psychological de-programming and stop eating McDonalds fast food because you somehow think it's healthy.
As surprised and pleased as I am that Pinky (left) has now lost his brain, Joseph Goebbels (right) couldn't help but to praise the Almighty for one last opportunity to spew some official Orwellian lies from the White House lawn (video).
Here's your homework, kids -- find me one video where Karl Rove was telling the truth in the last 35 years.
While Karl Rove is supposedly going home to Texas "to spend more time with his family," I can only hope that he can keep his mouth shut for a week. Mr. Potato Head, aka Darth Tater, should have a gag order placed on him. If he's not willing to testify in front of the American people, under oath, he certainly should not be allowed to poison and propagandize the American public through right-wingnut-job back-channels in the media.
Wave good-bye and get the frack out of the people's White House, Karl, you troll.
Early this morning around 5:00am, I cautiously walked through the pre-dawn darkened neighborhood and out into the middle of the nearby golf course. I've always been interested in astronomy, but I've never taken the time to learn very much about it or try any stargazing. In other words, I think it's cool, but I'm completely ignorant.
When I heard the news about the Perseid meteor shower being very visible because of the darkness of a new moon, I thought I should check it out. I didn't need a telescope, I didn't have to know very much about astronomy to see the phenomena. While I only hung out for about 30 minutes, it was pretty cool to watch.
The other cool thing about the meteor shower is that everyone everywhere can see it. Any idiot, even you, should be able to follow these instructions.
1. Tonight, go somewhere as dark and unlit as you can find outside. 2. Face North. 3. Raise up your right arm to your right side. That's East. 4. Now, turn yourself about halfway in between. That's North East. 5. Look up.
Now, I just stood there in the dark watching the half dozen shooting stars that I could see and then grew tired and walked home. I've read some things on the web since then and I'm going to bring a chair with me tonight. Hopefully, the weather will co-operate and keep the clouds away.
I learned a few other things about meteor showers. Basically, the Earth passes through the tail of the comet Swift-Tuttle every year about this time. The icy debris in the comet's tail hits our atmosphere at speeds up to 130,000 mph, burns up, and appears as a shooting star.
The weird visual phenomena in a meteor shower is very similar to driving a car during a snow storm. The snow flakes appear to come at your car's windshield from the center of the road directly in front of you, even though they're falling from above.
Welcome to my mystery lost-and-found grab bag of barely describable stuff containing the things that often bounce around my mind and keep me awake. Dip your hand into the unknown without fear and discover something new. Don't be afraid. Fear is the mind killer. Sweet dreams are made of these.
Frankly, I decided that I need a place to purge lost and unblogged things. I need a better junk drawer of ideas. I hate to leave loose ends lying around. I am compelled to follow-up and even make corrections. Sometimes things will make sense to you and other times an inside joke is going to fly right over your head. I don't care. You'll figure it out sooner or later, or not at all.
I've started a thematic Project Playlist for my Insomniac entries. Listen here.
Yesterday was my nephew's birthday. He was born on 08/08/88. I haven't seen him since he was a toddler and he's a grown man now. I always imagine that fate made him a lucky person.
Someone in Finland @ 192.100.116.142 [saprx01x.nokia.com] methodically scanned my entire blog yesterday as if they were copying the contents of it. It wasn't a denial of service bot requesting the same file repeatedly. I watched as that one IP address seem to spider and then request each successive entry every 2-3 seconds. That single IP caused my page requests to jump about 400% compared to any average day of traffic. Given the topics of my last two entries, the paranoid in me is not that surprised. My frellin' ISP provides satellite systems for the Department of Defense.
Apparently, I'm not alone in my disappointment with the Democratic party legislators concerning the "Protect America Act of 2007 (S. 1927)." A constitutional lawyer and civil rights litigator whose opinion I cited last year about the "Military Commissions Act," Glen Greenwald, has gone from relative blogspot obscurity to a regular columnist at Salon.com. He was on Democracy Now! on Monday and C-Span's Washington Journal on Tuesday talking about the implications of this new law of Bushworld.
Here are some of the links I was too tired and frustrated to put in Sunday's "Protect America Act?" blog entry and some newer related links:
NSA's Echelon program - the SIGINT precursor (wiki)
Also yesterday, the space shuttle Endeavor successfully launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida for mission STS-118. I use the adverb successfully because I think people sometimes forget that two space shuttles have been completely destroyed killing everyone onboard since the start of the shuttle program more than two decades ago. I watched Challenger explode during the launch phase and Columbia disintegrate during the re-entry phase of both of those missions.
I still get nervous watching the launch preparations and the launch itself. Endeavor will dock with the International Space Station on Friday afternoon (eastern). Read about the poignant 21-year-long wait for our teacher-in-space, Mission Specialist Barbara Morgan, onboard Endeavor.
42 - the answer to everything
I'm really happy that I was able to go grocery shopping today. Honestly. I bought about two dozen packets of Kool-Aid. It's also tedious not having entirely edible food in the house to eat. So, grocery shopping is awesome as an idea.
If I were to complain about it at all, I'd just say that shopping in the middle of the day when it is 95F/35C/308K degrees outside is not the best environment for schlepping Banquet frozen dinners around town.
1. You put the item in your shopping cart, then 2. Out of the cart, onto the cashier's station. 3. Off the station, back into the cart. 4. Out of the cart, into the trunk of a car. 5. Out of the trunk, into the house. 6. Off the counter and into the freezer.
After all of that, both me and my frozen dinners were too wiped out to be of any use.
I did buy several pairs of shorts, a six-pack of socks and some sunglasses from the Dollar store to outfit myself for future forays into the daytime public at large. I was cajoled into buying stuff because of a back-to-school tax-free special sale. I already have a number of really great shirts that the widows have procured for me during their volunteer work at the battered womens' shelter thrift store.
If you want to know how I felt today, watch the movie "Powder." In addition to simple physical pain, I was extremely uncomfortable walking around the crowded stores during the daytime. I was absolutely agoraphobic. The only nice thing was that we (my neighbor and I) spotted Rocky (our pineapple guy) working in the Winn Dixie grocery store and we chatted with him for a few minutes while he stocked produce.
If Rocky can deal with all the Soylent Green people during the daytime, then there may be hope for me yet. I still prefer the night, though.
Late Saturday night, the U.S. Congress decided to enable the Bush Administration to spy on you without a warrant. The president will surely sign the "Protect America Act" into law and everyone in national politics will have an Orwellian good time during their monthlong August vacation.
I have been paying attention to the U.S. intelligence community since I first read James Bamford's "Puzzle Palace" as a teenager. During my military service, I attended U.S. Army Signal Corps schools that required a top secret security clearance in buildings with no windows and was often loaned out to support Special Operations Command during the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations for their many declared and undeclared military interventions.
This personal experience has given me a healthy respect for the people who work in the intelligence business, no matter what their job title happens to be. The majority of these people are true patriots and go to work everyday with the sincere belief that they are protecting the country that they love. Even if one were to exclude military service members, there are thousands of people risking their lives in their endeavors.
Given my respect for the military and civilian personnel, I'm keenly aware how politics seems to have inserted itself into the intelligence process over the years. I'm aware that not everyone believes that the constitution is helpful to their activities. I'm aware that some people in government service will step outside the law because of loyalties to their organization, or political party, or even personal relationships. These people are eventually discovered and held to account.
Since the Bush adminstration has come to power, they have had a quirky way of simply changing the laws to allow previously unnacceptable behavior by government. Torture, and Abu Ghraib, and rendition, and secret detention, and dungeons in the 'Stans, and national security letters, and mass deportations, and spying have all been sold to the American people under the Bush-Cheney bumper sticker slogan of "Fighting the War on Terrorism" but the actual legislation made into law can be applied to any citizen of this country. These laws affect you and your family, here at home, not some bearded ex-CIA asset we call Tim.
For the first six years of the Bush administration, the Republican-controlled legislative branch was labelled the "rubber stamp" Congress. Last night, 41 Democratic representatives wanted to go home more than they wanted to honor their oaths of office to protect and defend the constitution.
The media will sell this as "Bush wins over Democrats to spy on terrorists." However, the so-called "Protect America Act" allows the federal government to read your email, listen to your phone calls, and intercept any of your communications that the government chooses with no judicial predetermination of cause or congressional oversight on these spying activities for at least the next six months.
The intelligence community does need a technology-neutral legal framework to help protect the country against its enemies. However, the legislation (S. 1927) approved last night was lazy, over-reaching, and codifies into law further removal of your civil rights. You should thank the 41 House Democrats who made this possible.
Further reading:
Meh. I was up too late last night to do your work for you. Highlight something and Google it yourself. It's your country too, if you want to keep it.
