Humanizing “The Man:” Strengthening Psychological and Information Operations in Afghanistan
by A. Lawrence Chickering

In this paper, I will argue there are three great challenges the coalition forces need to overcome in their search for narratives that resonate with Afghans and that ultimately will promote support for the coalition and for the government. First is the traditional and tribal Afghan antagonism to outsiders. Second is the lack of a stake that ordinary Afghans have in the larger system. And the third involves a conflict in impact of major activities in the country, a conflict between programs that empower Afghans and programs that disempower them.

Download the Full Article: Humanizing the “Man”

Phi Beta Iota: The four levels of war and peace were best explained by Edward N. Luttwak, see Review: Strategy–The Logic of War and Peace, Revised and Enlarged Edition. We raise this point, as we raised it while teaching at a Civil Affairs course at Fort Bragg, because no amount of good intentions at the operational and tactical levels of war can overcome flagrant irresponsibility and immorality at the strategic level, or the lack of anything other than killing tools at the tactical level. War and Peace are a whole. If you cannot start with morality and a just cause, and if you cannot implement a Whole of Government strategy that leads to an outcome of peace and prosperity for those you wish to win over, then everything in the middle is waste–wasted blood, wasted treasure, wasted spirit. And if everything you do on the battlefield and in your supply line is rife with corruption–e.g US funding the Taliban, never mind–then you are thrice cursed and unlikely to prevail.

Review: Modern Strategy

Search: Strategic Analytic Model

Search: four levels intelligence analysis

2010/10/172010/10/17

Journal: Combat Medicine–The Good and the Bad

07 Health, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Officers Call

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

The rapidly emerging/evolving new field medical doctrine is usually termed Tactical Combat Casualty Care. Not sure how fast it will migrate to civilian sector due to litigation risks.

Washington Post October 17, 2010 Pg. 1

The Front Lines Of Saving Lives

By David Brown, at Forward Operating Base Wilson

EXTRACT GOOD: Gone from their repertoire are difficult or time-consuming maneuvers, such as routinely hanging bags of intravenous fluids. On the ground, medics no longer carry stethoscopes or blood pressure cuffs. They are trained instead to evaluate a patient's status by observation and pulse, to tolerate abnormal vital signs such as low blood pressure, to let the patient position himself if he's having trouble breathing – and above all to have a heightened awareness that too much medicine can endanger the mission and still not save the patient.

EXTRACT BAD: But something has happened in the usually smooth communication between dispatch center, aircraft and hospital. No ambulance pulls up to the helicopter. Reece and Helfrich wait. They wait. The pilots radio the dispatcher that they've arrived with a critically injured soldier. Reece and Helfrich, helmeted and inaudible, gesture wildly to people outside the emergency room door to come over. Two other patients have also recently arrived. But that's not the problem. There's an available ambulance 100 yards away. But it doesn't move.

Phi Beta Iota: What has been done in TACTICAL combat medicine in the ten years of constant war has been nothing short of sensational and inspiring. NOTE that it is not just technology, but HUMAN enhancement. This has NOT characterized the rest of the US military nor the rest of the US Government which has the added disadvantage of not having the funding nor the education-intelligence-research mindset needed to enter the 21st Century.

2010/10/172010/10/17

Journal: Death of a Hostage, End of Empire

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Military, Officers Call

Linda Norgrove: how the rescue operation was bungled (Telegraph UK)

U.S. Navy Seal may have killed hostage (Telegraph UK)

British hostage killed during rescue bid (The Hindu)

Aid worker Linda Norgrove was close to freedom, Afghan tribal elders claim (Telegraph UK)

We can’t rely on American intelligence, so why entrust hostages’ lives to U.S. forces? (Tehran Times)

The purveyor of the “suicide vest” story should be named and questioned about what he hoped or expected to achieve by his lie.

Phi Beta Iota: It is with such sadness that we contemplate the demise of the US Government and US Armed Forces as effective vehicles for prosperity at home and peace abroad. A careful reading of all of the stories make it clear that “the system” failed at every level from the utterly stupid operational helicopter raids hampering elder negotiations down to the man that threw the grenade that killed the hostage. The death of Linda Norgrove and the lie that was immediately concocted are a fitting epitaph to Empire. We pray that 2012 brings us a restored US Congress and an honest President who can pick honest Cabinet officials who can actually act in the public interest. This is not about individual honor or intent–INTEGRITY is much more complex than that. This is about restoring the Constitutional integrity of the United STATES of America, and ending the inherent corruption at every level of the US Government (and Wall Street) in which humans don't matter and profits take precedence over potency.

2010/10/16

Journal: Deja Vu on FBI Ignoring Advance Warnings

03 India, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Officers Call

Years before 26/11, Headley wives told US of his LeT links (Indian Express)

FBI ignored Headley wife's warning on LeT (Times of India)

U.S. Had Warnings on Plotter of Mumbai Attack (New York Times)

FBI knew Headley had LeT links in 2005 (Hindustani Times)

Phi Beta Iota: The FBI has two walk-ins on 9/11 in advance of the event, one in Newark, NJ and the other in Orlando, FL. In both instances, because the FBI did not recognize any of the names being reported, it blew off the walk-in. Something similar appears to have happened here, BUT there is also yet another instance of a US person being in the employ of the US Government (similar to the botched car bomb attack on the World Trade Center) and their activities being a) sanctioned by one US agency and b) not being reported to other US agencies or to allies. The US secret world is HOSED strategically, operationally, tactically, and technically….. it is cultural “unfit for duty.” We continue to believe that an Open Source Agency and a Multinational Decision-Support Centre with reach-back to at least 90 countries is the way to kick-off 21st Century Intelligence. See the Virtual Cabinet series at the Huffington Post for the larger context within which we believe US intelligence must be reinvented.

2010/10/122010/10/12

Reference: THE WORLD ORDER A Study in the Hegemony of Parasitism with an Emphasis on the Rothschilds and the Central Banks of Europe

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Historic Contributions, History, IO Sense-Making, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Cover World Order Small Footprint — Free Online (282 Pages)

This one book will explain more history than any other I have ever read. South Pole Sends.

Phi Beta Iota: The public is starting to do to the Rothschilds, Central Banks, and the Federal Reserve what plane spotters did to CIA rendition flights. We support truth & reconciliation; we do NOT support revenge or expropriation of illicit assets. The ill-gotten gains of the Rothschilds and the banks that front for them, notably the Federal Reserve, are a drop in the bucket compared to the infinite wealth that the five billion poor can create if these parasitic “elites” will just get out of the way. So that is the deal: stay out of the way and keep what you have. Interfere with the emergence of the global community of informed participatory democracy, and the deal is off.

USA Specific:

Journal: Five Myths Debunked–Treasury Run by Crooks

Journal: Mother of All Frauds AFTER 9-11 Mother of All Atrocities–The Information Canivores Begin Circling Wall Street and the Two-Party Tyranny

Journal: $750 Billion Wall Street Scam, Russian Anger, Chinese Intent, We are NOT Making This Up!

Reference: Alternative Views of 9/11–Massive US Financial & Gold Fraud & 240 Billion Covert Fund Against Russia

Reference: US Intelligence & Global Banking

Review: 9-11 Descent into Tyranny–The New World Order’s Dark Plans to Turn Earth into a Prison Planet

Review: Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids

Review: Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect

Review: The Naked Capitalist

Review: The New Rulers of the World

Review: Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

2010/10/092010/10/09

Journal: Who Controls (and Secures) the Internet?

10 Security, Computer/online security, Cyberscams, malware, spam, IO Secrets, Military, Officers Call

Who controls the internet?

By Misha Glenny

Published: October 8 2010 23:40 | Last updated: October 8 2010 23:40

Squared-jawed, with four stars decorating each shoulder, General Keith Alexander looks like a character straight out of an old American war movie. But his old-fashioned appearance belies the fact that the general has a new job that is so 21st-century it could have been dreamed up by a computer games designer. Alexander is the first boss of USCybercom, the United States Cyber Command, in charge of the Pentagon’s sprawling cyber networks and tasked with battling unknown enemies in a virtual world.

Last year, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared cyberspace to be the “fifth domain” of military operations, alongside land, sea, air and space. It is the first man-made military domain, requiring an entirely new Pentagon command. That went fully operational a week ago, marking a new chapter in the history of both warfare and the world wide web.

In his confirmation hearing, General Alexander sounded the alarm, declaring that the Pentagon’s computer systems “are probed 250,000 times an hour, up to six million per day”, and that among those attempting to break in were “more than 140 foreign spy organisations trying to infiltrate US networks”. Congress was left with a dark prophecy ringing in its ears: “It’s only a small step from disrupting to destroying parts of the network.”

Phi Beta Iota: Of the $12 billion a year to be spent, roughly 90% if not more will be spent on “vapor-ware.” To understand the gap between the 67 people who actually know what needs to be done, and the hundreds of thousands who will be employed in cyber-theater (pun intended), see below. There are multiple sucking chest wounds in this enterprise, the two largest are a) the DoD Grid is a mess with no integrity in the fullest sense of the word, trying to “secure” that mess is next to impossible; and b) the only way to make Pentagon information operations safe is to make ALL operations safe, but this is not how the US Government and especially not how the Pentagon thinks–hence, another decade will be wasted. The upside is that OpenBTS and all sorts of other opens are emergent, and we may all end up going to Web 4.0 while the Pentagon stays at Web 2.0.

See Also:

2010: OPINION–America’s Cyber Scam

1994 Sounding the Alarm on Cyber-Security

Continue reading “Journal: Who Controls (and Secures) the Internet?”

2010/10/082010/10/08

Journal: Nato’s Secret Armies (It’s Not Terror if CIA Pays and Locals Do the Dirty….)

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, IO Sense-Making, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Full Poting Online

Nato's Secret Armies

By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 1 of 7 page(s)

In his book, “NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe,” Daniele Ganser described their clandestine Cold War operations, run by European secret services, collaborating with NATO, the CIA and Britain's MI6 and Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) against a possible Soviet invasion, internal communist takeovers, or others on the political left gaining power.

EXTRACT:

In Italy, against both communist and socialist parties, it was claimed they wanted to weaken NATO “from within,” Italian judge, Felice Casson, learning that right-wing terrorists carried out bombings against civilians, blamed them on the left, neo-fascist Vincenzo Vinciguerra explaining the scheme as follows:

“The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.”

In 2000, the Italian Senate was more explicit, saying:

“Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organized or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as had been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence,” meaning CIA mainly.

Former director William Colby admitted in his memoirs that covert western armies were a major CIA initiative, begun post-WW II, and restricted “to the smallest possible coterie of the most reliable people, in Washington (and) NATO” to keep the initiative secret.

Phi Beta Iota: CIA's importation of 100 Nazis a year after WWII (and probably many more, it has always considered itself above the law, both domestic and foreign) fueled a truly psychopathic perception of communism that led to policies and programs that today are clearly seen to be crimes against humanity, but back in the day were seen as “collateral damage” essential to contain communism while maintaining “control” over key governments.

Category: Officers Call

Reference: Humanizing “The Man”