Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS.
Londonstani is off doing his undercover journalism thing and can't blog at the moment but sent this story along, saying it was one of the more insightful articles he had read in some time on Pakistan.
For a long time the Taliban presented themselves as the lost link to a pure past, a conduit to a simple life and eternal salvation.
Only four weeks ago most Urdu television channels were acting as cheerleaders for the Taliban.
Most Urdu columnists in newspapers were presenting the Pakistani Taliban as the reincarnation of early Muslim warriors.
Now in a rare consensus they are all clamouring for an all-out war against them.
Even the people who were sitting on the fence - or considered the Taliban a localised problem - have suddenly realised that actually the Taliban are out to destroy their way of life.
Every single opinion poll carried out in Pakistan has concluded that the country is a hotbed of anti-Americanism.
But now, faced with a war against the Taliban, the nation seems to have united behind the most American of slogans: they are threatening our way of life.
How did we change our minds so quickly?
More than the government or the media, it is the Pakistani Taliban who are responsible.
On the other hand, readers of this blog will not fail to note that the country which perfected advertising still somehow can't craft an effective message -- or media capable of delivering a message -- in Iraq.
If Afghans vote in US elections, you can bet your ass that we will quickly have a 24-hour cycle message team spinning Operation Enduring Freedom.
Jimmy
http://americanmohist.blogspot.com
Watching US propaganda-efforts under Bush was like watching old people having sex.
Yeah well, Hurrah for Pakistan...
ButvWhat Happens When You 'Fumigate' Only One Apartment In A Building? Ask Uzbekistan...
Uzbekistan: the next apartment over
H/t: http://thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2009/06/uzbekistan_the_next_apartment....
http://www.janes.com/news/security/jiwk/jiwk090603_1_n.shtml
Also, one of the *other* "next door neighbors" is seeing the fallout of Western actions in the region:
Dagestan interior minister assassinated (Mob hit no doubt... got the tax fraud chief too.)
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=14019001&PageNum=0
This is all GREAT NEWS... If you make your living by killing or making the stuff that kills.
"According to new Pentagon statistics, in the second quarter of this year, there has been a 23 percent increase in the number of private security contractors working for the Pentagon in Iraq and a 29 percent hike in Afghanistan. In fact, outside contractors now make up approximately half of our forces fighting in the two countries.
.
.
.
"What we have seen happen, as a result of this incredible reliance on private military contractors, is that the United States has created a new system for waging war," he said.
By hiring foreign nationals as mercenaries, "You turn the entire world into your recruiting ground. You intricately link corporate profits to an escalation of warfare and make it profitable for companies to participate in your wars.
"In the process of doing that you undermine US democratic policies. And you also violate the sovereignty of other nations, because you're making their citizens combatants in a war to which their country is not a party."
http://trunc.it/c7nt
You got that AM?
That IS our message to the world... The 'effective message' you're looking for, and it's (of course), unspoken, but semantically correct.
"We'll destabilize your country and region until your allegedly democratic government needs our assistance... violate your sovereignty on behalf of your 'purple thumb' government, and undermine our own democratic principles... and we're doing it ALL for you!"
SICK. ENABLING.
Here's something else you might want to hide in your cubie and peruse:
Map The Fallen US & Coalition Soldiers, Iraq & Afghanistan
http://razedbywolves.blogspot.com/2009/06/notable-web-sites-map-fallen.h...
Meanwhile, thanks to the looting of the US treasury to make these nasty little resource wars, One in Five US Children Sinking Into Poverty. http://trunc.it/c13j
Here are some words from before you were born AM:
"This is a deathly culture.
It beats its children and discards its old people, imprisons its rebels and drinks itself to death. It breeds and educates us to be socially irresponsible, arrogant, ignorant and anti-political. We are the most technologically advanced people in the world and the most politically and socially backward.
The quality of life of a Chinese peasant is better than ours. The Chinese have free and adequate health care, a meaningful political education, productive work, a place to live, something to eat and each has a sense of her or himself as part of a whole people's shared historical purpose.
We may eat more and have more access to gadgets, but we are constantly driven by competition, insecurity, uncertainty and fear. The work is wasteful and meaningless and other people are frightening and hateful.
This is no way to live."
http://www.archive.org/details/sds_papers
...and it's going to be the death of us.
What's the timeframe on fixing things on the blog?
well, visitor,
The Chinese peasant does NOT have free and adequate health care. If he goes to a village clinic, he has to pay an admissions fee. He also will have to pay for the drugs. If he wants to see traditional medicine, that's completely out of his pocket.
China is actually debating privatizing hospitals right now. They're holding up the American non-profit private hospital as its model.
Americans have the choice to engage the rat race, or drop out. If you can stand being away from NYC or California, the rest of the United States is full of places where you can buy a house, raise a family, go to good public school, and all on a salary of around $40k+. Nobody makes you buy crap if you don't want to.
Jimmy
http://americanmohist.blogspot.com
I need a 'timeframe too... What's the time frame on a complete and total withdrawal from Iraq?
Hometown boy kills self at local surfing hangout spot after two tours in Iraq (and most likely about to being impressed for a third)
I knew this kid... ...and I have an axe to grind into the frontal lobes of the people who planned this travesty of a so-called 'war' based on lies and deception of our own people, the literal MURDER of thousands upon thousands of Iraqis, and the destruction of their society and culture.
Tell your beltway buddies their days are numbered AM.
In a couple of years, if that long, what happened in Washington in the early 70s with millions of people showing up for the Moratoriums, the trashing of the Just-Us department, surrounding of the White House by hundreds of thousands of angry US citizens is going to look like a picnic at the beach.
Soldier who killed himself on West Cliff unable to control his aggression after two tours in Iraq
By Cathy Kelly
Posted: 06/07/2009 01:30:28 AM PDT
SANTA CRUZ -- A solider who shot himself on West Cliff Drive recently had become unable to control the aggression he felt after serving two tours in Iraq, a friend said.
Roy Brooks Mason, Jr., 28, of Fairfield, was an Army infantryman who had received several medals and once planned to be a career Army officer, said Jay Johnson of Rocklin, a friend of Mason's since childhood.
But his combat experiences changed him and his plans.
Johnson said Mason was due to retire in July, after suffering injuries in two explosions and undergoing treatment for post traumatic stress disorder. Military officials, however, would not confirm Mason was to be discharged.
But Mason would not make it to July.
On May 19, he was reported missing from Fort Carson, Colo. Johnson said Mason rented a car and ended up in Capitola two days later, a place he had loved when he spent a vacation there as a child, Johnson said.
The next day, Mason called emergency dispatchers from a call box on West Cliff Drive near Stockton Avenue in Santa Cruz, saying a dead body could be found in a car parked there. He asked that the scene be cleaned before any children saw it, officials said.
In full: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_12538827
R.I.P Roy Brooks Mason
Jimmy: "The Chinese peasant does NOT have free and adequate health care. If he goes to a village clinic, he has to pay an admissions fee. He also will have to pay for the drugs. If he wants to see traditional medicine, that's completely out of his pocket.
China is actually debating privatizing hospitals right now. They're holding up the American non-profit private hospital as its model."
Aint that wunnerful. What's your point? That diatribe about China was written in 1969 at the peak of their 'Cultural Revolution".
Since then China has degenerated to a capitalist-model competitor... NOT to the benefit of it's people. Currently, the governmental form is Secular Oligarchy, with a tendency towards mid/high level corruption, a SEVERE divide between nuevo-riche and the workers, and the concurrent enslavement of their workers in sweatshops pumping out products for Western consumption... Until the West's economies collapse (shortly) leaving the Chinese Oligarchy without a market, and with millions of unemployed workers.
Guess what happens then? It's already starting, with village revolts against property seizures for development and the poisoning of the environment.
J: "Americans have the choice to engage the rat race, or drop out. "
I dropped out a long time ago... and I live in one of the most expensive places in the United States.
J: "If you can stand being away from NYC or California, the rest of the United States is full of places where you can buy a house, raise a family, go to good public school, and all on a salary of around $40k+. "
Good thing I like being in the middle of an American class war, or I might have to go more rural.
J: "Nobody makes you buy crap if you don't want to."
Yes "Somebody" does make us buy that crap in spite of ourselves.
Every magazine you'll ever read (except perhaps Adbusters) and every television station you'll ever watch (now unfortunately including the public broadcast system) indoctrinates us to believe we need that plastic crap, and our children are the most susceptible to that indoctrination. It's very advanced, and subtle, and targeted specifically at the most vulnerable and suggestible members of our society... children.
It's called "Advertising"... and the advertisers spend more $$$ on their 1 minute production than the network spends on a half hour show.
Just watch the weekend morning kids shows and tell me those advertisements aren't propaganda targeted at children.
I COULD run a diatribe on how that indoctrination turns our children into drug addicts... specifically Methamphetamine addicts... but this isn't the appropriate place for that discussion.
John Robb @ Global Guerrillas published a pdf of the prologue to a friend's book called "Methland" http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/05/journal-met...
It starts to set up that discussion..
You can read my take on how our children become drug addicts due to the media's influence on them to 'buy crap' here:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/05/journal-met...
We did influence this change by staying in the background and showing that the United States isn't at war with the Muslim world. Now we start seeing that the United States isn't the enemy to be feared - the religious nuts are.
Jerry Falwell come to mind.
You KNOW where HE'S going to end up...
Sayyid, I loved the WP article on the Baghdad Now. We must be complete idiots for continuing to produce the paper. Obviously the anecdotal reporting on reader feedback and statistical surveys used to justify the paper's continued existence are wrong. For every professional Iraqi journalist who disparages it, and there's an unbiased party for you, there are Iraqis who read it and ask about it when the production schedule runs behind. Is it perfect, hell no, but it is better than an information vacuum. Has it outlived it's usefulness given the proliferation of media in Iraq, probably, but market penetration by Iraqi papers is still localized to a great extent. Do the ISF use it as fuel in the winter, absolutely, but then so does the populace when they're finished with it. The Baghdad Now is an imperfect, but useful tool, and only part of the overall messaging campaign. We used to pay to put messages in "real" newspapers, but people whined about journalistic integrity in a country where almost every newspaper in Baghdad is aligned with a political party or sect.
We are doing better than people think, but we should be doing better. The US messaging campaign has three things working against it, in my humble opinion. First, the well-intentioned handcuffs put on the themes and media types by higher headquarters to the point that even a message with the standard bismallah was contentious for a long time. Second are commanders without the strategic patience to allow proper product development. The idea of conducting a coherent series development is ludicrous when dealing with commands who cannot see farther than the crisis of the day. Finally, the PSYOP corps itself is woefully under trained for the complexities of operating in a developed media environment.
There is a fourth thing that works against the perception of success or failure in the messaging campaign; people only notice when we screw up or are blatant in the attribution of the message. The merry band of self-righteous authors of the WP piece only reported on the sub-set of messaging they think is American. Our best messages are the ones you don't even notice.
A PSYOP Soldier.
Sayyid, I loved the WP article on the Baghdad Now. We must be complete idiots for continuing to produce the paper. Obviously the anecdotal reporting on reader feedback and statistical surveys used to justify the paper's continued existence are wrong. For every professional Iraqi journalist who disparages it, and there's an unbiased party for you, there are Iraqis who read it and ask about it when the production schedule runs behind. Is it perfect, hell no, but it is better than an information vacuum. Has it outlived it's usefulness given the proliferation of media in Iraq, probably, but market penetration by Iraqi papers is still localized to a great extent. Do the ISF use it as fuel in the winter, absolutely, but then so does the populace when they're finished with it. The Baghdad Now is an imperfect, but useful tool, and only part of the overall messaging campaign. We used to pay to put messages in "real" newspapers, but people whined about journalistic integrity in a country where almost every newspaper in Baghdad is aligned with a political party or sect.
We are doing better than people think, but we should be doing better. The US messaging campaign has three things working against it, in my humble opinion. First, the well-intentioned handcuffs put on the themes and media types by higher headquarters to the point that even a message with the standard bismallah was contentious for a long time. Second are commanders without the strategic patience to allow proper product development. The idea of conducting a coherent series development is ludicrous when dealing with commands who cannot see farther than the crisis of the day. Finally, the PSYOP corps itself is woefully under trained for the complexities of operating in a developed media environment.
There is a fourth thing that works against the perception of success or failure in the messaging campaign; people only notice when we screw up or are blatant in the attribution of the message. The merry band of self-righteous authors of the WP piece only reported on the sub-set of messaging they think is American. Our best messages are the ones you don't even notice.
A PSYOP Soldier.
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