The Act of Killing: Perhaps the most chilling, surreal, and important documentaries of the 21st century.
Movie Description: In this chilling and inventive documentary, executive produced by Errol Morris (The Fog Of War) and Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man), the filmmakers examine a country where death squad leaders are celebrated as heroes, challenging them to reenact their real-life mass-killings in the style of the American movies they love. The hallucinatory result is a cinematic fever dream, an unsettling journey deep into the imaginations of mass-murderers and the shockingly banal regime of corruption and impunity they inhabit. Shaking audiences at the 2012 Toronto and Telluride Film Festivals and winning an Audience Award at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival, The Act of Killing is an unprecedented film that, according to The Los Angeles Times, “could well change how you view the documentary form.”
A new generation of cash-strapped ‘millennials' have very different expectations about jobs, credit and money. As Michelle Fleury reports, they are using the internet for a new ‘sharing economy'.
Defeat of the insurgency and terrorism in Iraq requires not only a military approach but also a political component. Although the “surge” may stabilize parts of Iraq and reduce the level of violence while the additional troops remain in place, long-term stability requires a more holistic approach.
Frank Kitson, a retired British military officer whose writings influenced British operations in Northern Ireland,argues that the “main characteristic that distinguishes campaigns of insurgency from other forms of war is that they are primarily concerned with the struggle for men’s minds.”[1] To defeat the insurgency, coalition forces must persuade the Iraqi population to reject extremism and deny safe haven to those fighting the new Iraqi political order. This will require dialogue, inducements, and the proportionate use of force to win the battle for “hearts and minds.”
Effective engagement with key segments of the Iraqi population requires, in turn, a comprehensive information operations campaign. To date, it is this component that is most lacking in coalition strategy. The coalition has failed to counter enemy propaganda either by responding rapidly with effective counter messages or by proactively challenging the messages, methods, and ideology that the insurgents and extremists promote and exploit.
While terminology may vary—some officials refer to information operations as strategic communications, influence operations, psychological operations, perception management, or just propaganda—the intent to influence the hearts and minds of target audiences through the effective use of information remains constant.
In Iraq, while the coalition fumbles its information operations, the insurgents and militia groups are adept at releasing timely messages to undermine support for the Iraqi government and bolster their own perceived potency. They are quick to exploit coalition failures and excesses; they respond rapidly to defend their own actions, often by shifting blame to the authorities; and they hijack coalition successes to argue that change only occurs as a result of their violence. The slow speed of the U.S. military’s clearance process—typically it takes three to five days to approve even a simple information operations product such as a leaflet or billboard—creates an information vacuum that Iraqis fill with conspiracy theories and gossip often reflecting the exaggerations or outright lies of insurgents and extremists.
A registered educational charity. Registered under the Charities Act, 1960 – registration no. 286264.
The oldest and most up-to-date Society
for information and research
into cosmic catastrophes
and ancient chronology revision
Visit home page, many links, index since 1960.
The Society's PRINCIPAL OBJECT is ‘to advance the education of the public and, through the combined use of historical and contemporary evidence of all kinds, to promote a multidisciplinary approach to, and specialised research into, scientific and scholarly problems inherent in the uniformitarian theoriesin astronomy and history, and thus to promote active consideration by scientists, scholars and students of alternatives to those theories.' One of the Society's furtherances of its ‘Principal Object' is ‘to promote co-operation between workers in specialised fields of learning in the belief that isolatedstudy is sterile'.
The SIS is a UK-based, non-profit-making organisation with a worldwide membership, which includes laymen and academics alike. With its publications, Chronology & Catastrophism Reviewand Chronology & Catastrophism Workshop, plus residential weekend conferences and general speaker meetings, it brings together people from a wide-ranging spectrum of backgrounds and beliefs.The Society also:
operates a Book Servicefrom which its journal back issues, a variety of books, plus CD's and videos can be obtained
The US/Israel, Britain, France and Their Arab Puppets Reach “Consensus” on Syria Invasion
Western and Arab military leaders have reached a “consensus” on military intervention in Syria over accusations that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons, a Jordanian security official told German news agency, DPA.
“It was decided that should the international community be forced to act in Syria, the most responsible and sustainable response would be limited missile strikes,” the official said on condition of anonymity on Tuesday following a meeting held in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
The military leaders led by Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey agreed to prepare for the strike as early as this week, the official added.
Meanwhile, the British Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman said UK armed forces are devising contingency plans for military action against the Arab country over the alleged use of chemical weapons.
The UK has been reportedly sending warplanes and military transporters to its airbase in Cyprus, situated near Syria.
US defense officials also say several navy destroyers have been deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean to be used against Syria upon an order of President Barack Obama.
Ansar al-Sharia running training camps in Benghazi and Darnah
U.S. intelligence agencies earlier this month uncovered new evidence that al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Benghazi are training foreign jihadists to fight with Syria’s Islamist rebels, according to U.S. officials.
Ansar al-Sharia, the al Qaeda-affiliated militia that U.S. officials say orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound and a CIA facility in Benghazi, is running several training camps for jihadists in Benghazi and nearby Darnah, another port city further east, said officials who discussed some details of the camps on condition of anonymity.
The officials said the terror training camps have been in operation since at least May and are part of a network that funnels foreign fighters to Syrian rebel groups, including the Al-Nusra Front, the most organized of the Islamist rebel groups fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus.
Translating Lessons Learned in Colombia and Other Wars Among the People: Confronting the Spectrum of 21st Century Conflict
Small Wars Journal, 27 August 2013
Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless global war on terror—but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America. In many cases, this will involve partnerships with other countries…we must help countries modernize economies, upgrade education, and encourage entrepreneurship—because American leadership has always been elevated by our ability to connect with peoples’ hopes, and not simply their fears.
– President Barack Obama, Speech at the National Defense University, 23 May 2013
When we think about the possibilities of conflict, we Americans tend to invent for ourselves a comfortable U.S.-centric vision with an enemy who looks and acts more or less as we do, and a situation in which the fighting is done by conventional military units. We must recognize, however, that in protecting our interests and confronting a hegemonic adversary today, the situation has changed. That change is illustrated in different ways, ranging from the identity of the enemy to the very nature of conflict. General Rupert Smith, (UK, Ret.) reminds us that, “War as cognitively known to most non-combatants, war as a battle in a field between men and machinery, war as a massive deciding event in a dispute in international affairs, such war no longer exists…The old paradigm was that of interstate industrial war. The new one is the paradigm of war amongst peoples.”[[1]] 21st Century reality, then, depicts an ambiguous, complex, and dangerous global security arena. Some of the issues that emerge from an examination of the contemporary conflict arena are briefly outlined in subsequent parts of this article, and are outlined as follows:
Full article with notes below the line — Manwaring is one of America's greatest thinkers on this topic.
