Why False Enemy Propaganda Matters: German Jihadi Motivated by Fake US Soldier Rape V

[Cannoneer No. 4]

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/206637.php


We have got to do better at fighting the propaganda produced by the enemy. Which is why I support YouTube smackdown (http://muninn-quotheraven.blogspot.com/). But we need to do more. We need to organize. And not simply at the individual private level. Fighting enemy propaganda needs to be higher on the priority list of both the CIA and the DOD.

Who in DOD fights enemy propaganda?

Does EUCOM do any kind of counterpropaganda that might mitigate the effect enemy propaganda has on Kosovars in the German domestic target audience?

[anonamatic]

I've read a bunch of stuff about Pakistani attitudes towards America recently, and I've been shocked by the level of lies that people just take for granted there. It's simply amazing to see what people who have what are obviously otherwise fairly decent intentions can be duped into believing. If I had not seen the same type of phenomenon at far lesser levels elsewhere I would have had trouble believing what I've been seeing.

This situation is truly reaching crisis proportions. We have got to do more about it, and enlist our Pakistani allies in the effort as well. The US like every other country in the world isn't perfect, but the truth is so far removed from the fictions the average Pakistani citizen is surrounded by that it's stunning.

The effort has to be one of both civil diplomacy & military diplomacy. At this point there's quite obviously no place for any of the stakeholders to go but up.

[120mm]

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/206637.php



Who in DOD fights enemy propaganda?

Does EUCOM do any kind of counterpropaganda that might mitigate the effect enemy propaganda has on Kosovars in the German domestic target audience?

Who fights enemy propaganda?

The stupidest and the worst.

Anyone who has been around I/O and PAO in ISAF and IJC notes the large amount of relieved and rejected bottom-feeders who inhabit both fields of work.

The Navy sends ship commanders to IJC to be in charge of I/O on 30 day tours. A continuous parade of clueless Naval O-6s, who know how to run an aircraft carrier, or cruiser, but do not even have time to completely inprocess before they are farewelled and replaced by the next 30 day loser.

The people who run ISAF PAO/IO amaze one that they can actually breathe and walk at the same time. Helicopter pilots, Armor officers, Marine field grades and a large proportion of idiotic Air Force and Naval personnel who have zero experience in ground warfare, IO/PAO or in Afghanistan inhabit those billets.

And it only gets worse out in the RCs.

And at best, our PAO/IO is reactive in nature. The recipe is thus: SF morons go out and Hellfire or JDAM some "bad guys" (usually without anyone considering what kind of bad guy they are), TB accuses us of murdering babies, and we deny it ever happened. Then we admit it happened, later, but deny we killed anyone. Then we admit later we killed a bad guy, but deny we killed babies. Then we are forced to apologize for killing babies, whether we did or not, because our PAO/IO morons and or moronic SF idiots failed to have a plan for dealing with the fallout, WHICH HAPPENS EVERY F*CKING TIME!!!!

No wonder the rest of the world believes what the bad guys say and think we are a bunch of liars.

10 years of moronitude, repeated often. How stupid an non-learning can an organization be?

I never thought I was some kind of Wiley Coyote "SUPER-genius", but the solution seems pretty simple and straightforward to me.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

This situation is truly reaching crisis proportions. We have got to do more about it, and enlist our Pakistani allies in the effort as well. The US like every other country in the world isn't perfect, but the truth is so far removed from the fictions the average Pakistani citizen is surrounded by that it's stunning.


Which Pakistanis truly are our allies?

Can Americans really tell allied Pakistanis from Osama-loving, Christian-hating, taqqiyah-spewing, diplomatic immunity-violating, fuel truck-burning lying SOBs pretending to be allies?

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Who fights enemy propaganda?

The stupidest and the worst.


Ouch. Not necessarily taking up for the OEF/ISAF counterpropaganda effort, but the perception of this interested civilian has been managed or mismanaged in such a way as to lead me to question the effectiveness of EUCOM's, Germany's, and America's counterpropaganda effort.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007191.html#007191


The Frankfurt shooter's Facebook page, and a little color commentary

The jihadi who shot four US service members in Frankfurt yesterday, killing two, left behind a Facebook account and 127 friends.

The shooter, Arid Uka AKA Abu Rayyan, may have acted alone. He certainly was the only person on the scene with a gun, shooting and killing. His radical associations online should put to rest any thought that he was a genuinely unconnected lone wolf.

Is it possible that Uka had no significant meat space contact with any violent Islamist supremacists?

Could Uka have convinced himself of the righteousness of killing American airmen based solely on what he saw on the internet?

[Fuchs]

I've read a bunch of stuff about Pakistani attitudes towards America recently, and I've been shocked by the level of lies that people just take for granted there. It's simply amazing to see what people who have what are obviously otherwise fairly decent intentions can be duped into believing. If I had not seen the same type of phenomenon at far lesser levels elsewhere I would have had trouble believing what I've been seeing.

This situation is truly reaching crisis proportions. We have got to do more about it, and enlist our Pakistani allies in the effort as well. The US like every other country in the world isn't perfect, but the truth is so far removed from the fictions the average Pakistani citizen is surrounded by that it's stunning.

The effort has to be one of both civil diplomacy & military diplomacy. At this point there's quite obviously no place for any of the stakeholders to go but up.

Considering the permanent peak season for myths, partisan propaganda, tinfoil hats and conspiracy theories in the U.S. itself I'm not sure it's a bug. It might be a feature.

How many Americans believe that Obama is a Kenya-born Muslim again? 30%?
Sounds to me like you need to do homework first and maybe outsource information campaigns in distant places to others.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/261379/arid-uka-s-gratitude-mark-steyn?page=1

Multiculturalism says he’s as German as Helmut and Franz. Except he’s not.


Why isn’t he a fully functioning citizen of the nation he’s spent his entire life in?

[Fuchs]

Today, the Muslim world starts in the suburbs of Frankfurt.

Even if it was true (and don't get me started on where Latin America begins if we use this logic):

Yesterday I walked to a local supermarket for some food. In thoughts I was a bit angry that I wore only a thin leather jacket, for it was already dark and quite cold.


A Turkish-looking ~15 year old guy was in front of me and greeted two girls who just had left a bus. They walked a few metres ahead of me and he offered and gave his jacket to the girl with the thinner clothes. He was down to a T-shirt, close to freezing temperature.

Does this mean the world of brown-looking people gentlemen manners begins in Cologne?


I'm inclined to consider both to be anecdotes in a world of almost seven billion people.

[SteveMetz]

There's a big problem in this sort of thing. Americans, like other cultures that developed out of the European Enlightenment, believe in an objective truth that is separate from whoever is perceiving it. Hence we assume all that we need to do is communicate "ground truth" in order to counter propaganda.

In other cultures, truth has more of an affinity component. In other words, who is telling the story matters greatly. The closer someone is to you, the more validity you ascribe to what they say. Hence a family member has a lot of validity, someone from the same village or clan a little less, then other affinities--tribe, ethnicity, sect, religion, etc.

Neither of these ways of assessing information is inherently right or wrong. But they are different.

This is the reason that U.S. IO in non-Western cultures has limitations. There are thousands of instances where the U.S. blamed for someone by local people and provides physical evidence that it was not responsible, but still is blamed because the person placing the blame on the Americans had some form of affinity with their audience.

What all this means is that the idea that if the US did a better job at IO or was better organized it would be more effective is basically a myth. We are always going to have a serious credibility problem. That is simply part of the psychological terrain we operate in as much as a mountain range is part of the physical terrain. As with a mountain range, we need to focus on work-arounds rather than "solutions."

[anonamatic]

Considering the permanent peak season for myths, partisan propaganda, tinfoil hats and conspiracy theories in the U.S. itself I'm not sure it's a bug. It might be a feature.

How many Americans believe that Obama is a Kenya-born Muslim again? 30%?
Sounds to me like you need to do homework first and maybe outsource information campaigns in distant places to others.

Hey I don't pretend for a second that I have a clue about this. Not about fixing it, not about what all the problems are, not about even the potential for it. In fact, part of what got me to this site was that I needed to start learning things to deal with dipwad dilettantes who play at this sort of crap in very destructive ways for personal gain. So don't even start giving me crap about this it's totally uncalled for. Ask me about breaking into computers and freakishly hard technical stuff associated with that, and the stupid crap egoistic hacker wannabes can get into, and I can hold my own with anyone. Ask me about IO & propaganda stuff though dealing with regional concerns & revolutionary sedition in combat zones, and I'll hit a wall pretty quick. I at least know some of where I'm dumb and don't need you getting pissy and pretentious at me to inform me of that.

And yea, there are some real idiots in the US, and other idiots who want to lie to those idiots for craven short term personal gain. That, like every other place in the world though, is not the whole story and you know it. So put a sock in the equivocation.

[Fuchs]

I consulted foreign companies on how to enter the German market a few years ago. A standard advice was to first succeed in the home market before entering a more difficult foreign market.

The U.S. society and government cannot keep a fifth to a third of U.S. adults from misunderstanding very basic political things or even from believing outright lies. The chances of succeeding in the same in a distant place despite the failure at home is 'remote'. It doesn't take any special circumstances in said distant place to ruin the chances.

[anonamatic]

That while sound advice isn't always true either. If it was well China would still be nearly completely agrarian. In the US it would probably be useful if the fairness doctrine for the media was reintroduced.

Throwing stones at the least amongst those in the US is not at all useful in solving problems that are not going to be fixed by dealing with that separate problem.

Coming from someone living in what is perhaps the worlds largest glass house, I'd perhaps be more inclined to entertain witless rock throwing when I stop having to pay for, and be woken up every night by road work that's designed to undo the mess of a major roadway where I live that had to be designed to put a turn at grenade range for it's entire length. Your criticism of me, and of the moronic percentage of the population in the US is not at all appropriate. Unless you want me to start going down a really nasty road of fault finding with modern domestic Germany and whatever shots I decide to entertain myself with taking at you personally, I respectfully suggest you try to speak to the topic of the thread.

I don't think the problem with German jihad is anymore the fault of people in Germany than is the very same issue when it occurs in the US. If you somehow were thinking that I was supporting such a witless notion, you'd be mistaken. The problem with that lies at it's base with the activities of the Taliban & Al-Qaeda. What people in other countries are seeing is a result of those obviously very successful efforts on their part. The rest of us have got to step up our game. My only suggestion beyond that & some demonstrations of alarm over just how awful the situation is have been that it can't be led by just the civil side, or just the military side of the US government.

I don't think for a second that all Pakistanis think that the US & Europe are filled with baby raping monsters, but I am damned concerned about the country falling to extremists. At this point I think it's safe to say that the US would prefer to have had nothing to do with Afghanistan, Pakistan, or much of that region at all. They did pick a fight with us though, and they aren't going to stop either, so no matter how dumb we are as a nation percentage wise, we're stuck dealing with them.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

How many Americans believe that Obama is a Kenya-born Muslim again? 30%?


How many German Interior Ministers believe Islam in Germany is not something substantiated by history at any point? 100%

[omarali50]

My problem with "islamophobia" is that it tends to be too general and ill-informed. There are Islamic groups with extremely violent intentions and then there are dozens of other political causes that make common cause with these groups for various reasons, or that fight against them for various reasons. Islam itself if not a person. Individual persons hold on to one of several versions of Islam and these versions are not set in stone, they are products of history and evolve with time (for better and for worse). Anyway, the simplified approach is simple to remember but not too useful in detail. More nuance may be needed, otherwise you end up with nonsense like "Obama is a secret Muslim Manchurian candidate"...which may be a useful way to get a few votes, but is really unhelpful in identifying real threats or dealing with them...
Just saying.
Btw, you may find my last comments on the Raymond Davis case relevant to this discussion.

[omarali50]

Steve, I am not sure I get your point. The European enlightenment (which some Europeans are still fighting against...see Glenn Beck for details) was, in my opinion, a great step forward in human thought, but its a moving target (e.g. the postmodern woo spewing out of European Universities is also a product of that enlightenment, though a mostly undesirable one in my opinion) and just like Europeans adopted some good ideas from elsewhere when needed, others are adopting features (and bugs) of the enlightenment even as we speak.
Anyway, my point is not that all cultures are the same. They are obviously not. But its always worth keeping in mind that all cultures are in motion and features and bugs both exceed the capacity of any simple formulation to sum up. People in the US are not free of bias in favor of authorities they know and trust and people in Afghanistan do have an idea of "objective truth"....

[Pete]

The internet is a free for all and how the U.S. Government or its military services could counteract all of the misinformation on it would be a massive challenge. Hypothetically speaking, though, the worst that appears there might be triaged into a weekly "Dirty Dozen List" of particularly egregious slurs that could be rebutted or proven to be wrong. Perhaps this might be a new mission area for Voice of America.

[Spud]

Who fights enemy propaganda?

The stupidest and the worst.



120mm ... Thank you. Thank you very much ;)
Great post over on the DIME blog as a result of the latest RS shenanigans that I now have printed above my desk in full view of the Combat Engineer and Signaller who run my life. Apparently the theory is that attendance at senior school as a generalist equips them for a posting in my world while my poor-arse mustang specialist career and supporting specialist qualifications means I could not possibly have any idea on how to actually do this. Moreover given my background I obviously cannot write appropriately and therefore everything I do which is designed to be easily understood by most gets 'militarified' in a clearance process that only looks for staff duties. I encourage you all consider Matt's post as well ;)

Lastly, I strongly suspect that one of the primary issues here is that LTG Caldwell’s influence effort was being led by a Marine colonel with zero experience in the field. When it comes to operating in today’s complex environment, you need a leader who truly understands the functional information capabilities, their limitations, and their strengths if he is to be successful in leading their integration. I do not think Col. Breazile was qualified to be in this position – as surely I know I am unqualified to fly an AH-1Z. And that is one of the most important take-aways for leadership: Influence is very, very hard. That random ten-year O-6 that we seem to have in abundance today is invariably not the guy you want running a critical LOO while learning influence OJT.
Meanwhile I'm learning to fly a helicopter gunship on my X-Box.

[Fuchs]

That while sound advice isn't always true either. If it was well China would still be nearly completely agrarian.

Foreign companies who knew how to succeed invested in PRC directly and launched the export boom. At the very least their told their Chinese suppliers how exactly to produce what. The real Chinese business success came later on, and they still export a lot of flawed products when there's no thorough foreign QC.


It's really, really rare that those who fail in a benign environment succeed in a tougher one.
(The German football national team is such an exception; they can easily fail against a Faroer islands "national" team, but are still a top team at every world championship.)

[anonamatic]

Foreign companies who knew how to succeed invested in PRC directly and launched the export boom. At the very least their told their Chinese suppliers how exactly to produce what. The real Chinese business success came later on, and they still export a lot of flawed products when there's no thorough foreign QC.


Oh man that's very true. What's I find interesting is how frequently it has to do with miscommunication too. I think with business if you have deep enough pockets & a willingness to learn it's possible to succeed in new environments.

That example aside, I do think that while it might be important to do things locally to solve conditions that lead to the fulfillment of badly formed ideas by some Islamic immigrants (and I'll point at the US for being a poster child of dysfunction in that respect), the basic problem starts elsewhere. In this case it's Pakistan, and they have *issues*. The GOP based Fox News lie-o-sphere might be filled with deception aimed at their base, but there are fact based informational counters to their propaganda too. So in this instance I think it's not entirely useful to compare nations who find themselves with oppositional problems that occur via propaganda for direct comparison with each other.

Are there good examples of propaganda of comparable types being successfully countered in the Arab world in history by other nations? I'm wondering if there are, and what they did, and how they might be applied to this situation. Any number of European countries have issues with this stuff, so obviously does the US. I'm not sure what might be possible to do either as individual countries, or perhaps preferably as a group.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

http://undhimmi.com/2011/03/06/frankfurt-shooting-when-jihadist-lies-go-unchallenged-its-the-truth-that-gets-raped/


People are being murdered on the pretext of malicious lies and propaganda, circulating like an opportunistic virus around the Islamic world. And make no mistake, it is finding its mark.

Apart from some concerned interest groups (http://undhimmi.com/iranium-the-movie/), a relatively small band of blogger (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/)s and writer/webmasters (http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/TheList.htm) who do get it – no one, it seems, is fighting the civilised world’s corner in this information war.

It is truly chilling to think that the Frankfurt shooting may have been assisted by our seemingly chronic inability to challenge the Islamist narrative.

[Pete]

Cannoneer, what do you propose as a solution to this situation?

[Cannoneer No. 4]

“YouTube has become a major alternative distribution point for jihadi propaganda, especially for homegrown militants who may not have the pedigree to gain access to the classic password-protected jihadi chat forums,” Mr. Kohlmann said, referring to militant sites that restrict access. “If you don’t have online friends who can sneak you in, and if you don’t speak Arabic, then YouTube may be the best available option.” - Evan F. Kohlmann


It may be that the crowdsourcing that drives YouTube, its reliance on the masses, becomes the ultimate answer to violent messages on the site, more than company censors. Anti-jihad activists with names like the YouTube Smackdown Corps (http://www.smackdowncorps.com/) patrol the site constantly, flagging what they consider to be offensive material.

At a site called Jihadi Smackdown of the Day (http://smackdownoftheday.blogspot.com/) (“Countering the cyber-jihad one video at a time”), the links for past YouTube videos of Mr. Awlaki now usually lead to a standard message: “This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy.”

Anti-Islamic Supremacist Virtual Militias attempting Restrictive Measures are available should any .gov or .mil types care to work with, through or by them.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

There is no one single Final Solution to the propaganda problem. There are many steps that could be taken that would help mitigate the problem. Hackers for good could take down YouTube, for a few hours, just to let them know that there are consequences for their action or inaction. Social media analysts could research friends and followers of the most troublesome enemy propagandists, who would then receive the attentions of Black Hat hackers. There are virtual militias on the web united around various aspects of counterpropaganda, many of whom would be overjoyed to find out that Cyber Command has been paying attention to them and wants their help.

Virtual militias can do things that .gov/.mil are lawfared out of. Autodefensas Unidas de Ciberespacio

[Brett Patron]

How many Americans believe that Obama is a Kenya-born Muslim again? 30%?
Sounds to me like you need to do homework first and maybe outsource information campaigns in distant places to others.

I am a reasonably intelligent man and not easily swayed by hyperbole. I had a great deal of difficulty believing the claim. But two plus years later, it's still hanging out there. So it makes reasonable people wonder...Can YOU refute this with facts? The reason this has lasted as long as it has is because it is never definitively refuted. Then when the guy makes a bone-headed move, the number who wonder increases.

(I'm serious about your dismissal of the birther question - it's easy to say it's ridiculous. But if it's ridiculous, you should be able to prove the point.)

Much like this claim, the US does a poor job of telling the facts, but rather spends way more time backbending and contorting themselves to explain or excuse someone else's claims. We let the bad news languish since we use the reasonable person's standard. What is unreasonable to Americans is not necessarily so for others. We never get that. And that's why we look like "Clowns In Action" regarding IO and information "warfare".

[Fuchs]

It's been refuted by the relevant Hawaii official, showing a copy was deemed sufficient by officials and last but not least an internet wisdom:

At some point you need to stop feeding the trolls.


Let's assume he had showed the original. That wouldn't have kept the trolls from claiming that it's a forgery (something they had much experience with, considering the fake Kenyan birth certificates).

[120mm]

Cannoneer, what do you propose as a solution to this situation?

I'm not Cannoneer, but I have a couple of suggestions.

First, let's have I/O and PAO run by some folks who aren't the rejects from every other branch of the service.

Second, they could be... well... I don't know... PROACTIVE!?!? for once in their lives? Seriously. I/O and PAO are inhabited by a bunch of lazy SOBs who evidently spend their careers surfing porn on the internet and waiting to react to something someone else is doing. What is wrong with identifying the extremely few insurgent themes (there are only a few) and pre-loading the "system" with a canned reaction? Then, aggressively and creatively look for counterthemes to push not only when the insurgents push their narrative, but when the insurgent isn't pushing a narrative at all.

Third, the US, whether DoS or DoD doesn't do ANYTHING without an I/O PAO campaign that doesn't consist of a dry press release that noone reads for fear of dying from boredom. Hire some freaking writers or something. It's not that tough to predict the ways in which US activities can be attacked from an I/O standpoint. And it's stone-cold stupid to understand that they WILL be attacked.

And fourth, the next I/O person who suggests a "leaflet drop" should be dropped with the f*cking leaflets. And anyone who briefs XXX tons of leaflets were dropped during the last 24 hours should be executed with a spork.

[davidbfpo]

In my reading of the Frankfurt attack the reported fact that stood out and which does not feature on SWC is that the attacker self-radicalised so quickly, allegedly after watching one Jihadist film report.

The Madrid mass transit bombers took sixty days to go from radicalised to attack and that was then considered fast.

I await the arrival of a fuller analysis on the Frankfurt attack background, which appears to be that of a "lone wolf".

[Brett Patron]

It's been refuted by the relevant Hawaii official, showing a copy was deemed sufficient by officials and last but not least an internet wisdom...snipLet's assume he had showed the original. That wouldn't have kept the trolls from claiming that it's a forgery (something they had much experience with, considering the fake Kenyan birth certificates).

I'm not going to fight the birther fight here. The response does amplify my larger point. It is not settled satisfactorily; instead it is festering. Some surmise that it serves a political purpose by being a distraction. Others think there view is valid because it is not able to be proved. Regardless, the kerfuffle serves to illustrate the problem this thread addresses.

This is indicative of the US's way of waging info war. These days, it seems, it is more a matter of ridiculing message deliverers than it is providing a solid, uniform, believable message. In the quote above, there is no recognition of a reasonable person's view, merely a smug dismissal that the readers must accept. The writer must be believed simply because he says so. The zealots from the other side, of course think the worst. It serves their purpose to do so.

However, consider also that for every dismissive reply like the one quoted above, there's an equal response from reasonable, curious people that says "ok, I believe you, so show me" and the hard copy proof never materializes. At some point, a claim by a few zealots could easily bloom into a belief, real or perceived, by a larger percentage of a population writ large.

And this is in a country that is thoroughly modern. Imagine in a place where word of mouth is a primary means of communicating...a

PS: Even the current Governor can't provide it, and he said he would so as to put the issue to rest...So if the Governor can't, is that "feeding the trolls"? :)

[tequila]

Ridiculous beliefs do not only spread because of "lack of proof" - they spread because they justify, confirm, or feed preexisting prejudices. For instance:

Growing Number of Americans Say Obama is a Muslim (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1701/poll-obama-muslim-christian-church-out-of-politics-political-leaders-religious)

[Ken White]

Ridiculous beliefs do not only spread because of "lack of proof" - they spread because they justify, confirm, or feed preexisting prejudices. For instance:

Growing Number of Americans Say Obama is a Muslim (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1701/poll-obama-muslim-christian-church-out-of-politics-political-leaders-religious)There's little doubt the forces you cite are a part of the problem. Yet, from the article you linked come these items:
"When asked how they learned about Obama's religion in an open-ended question, 60% of those who say Obama is a Muslim cite the media. Among specific media sources, television (at 16%) is mentioned most frequently..."So. Prejudice, etc. or sloppy and pathetic media? The reporting on the topic has not been incisive, to say the least...
About one-in-ten (11%) of those who say Obama is a Muslim say they learned of this through Obama's own words and behavior.Proving yet again that the infamous 'Ten percent' are always with us... :D

Probably far more pertinent and indicative of not preexisting predjudices but of how insidious ideology and politics can be:
Beliefs about Obama's religion are closely linked to political judgments about him. Those who say he is a Muslim overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance, while a majority of those who think he is a Christian approve of the job Obama is doing. Those who are unsure about Obama's religion are about evenly divided in their views of his performance.Thus one could wonder just how many of those surveyed actually believe him to be a Muslim and how many say they do just for grins -- or other reasons to include both the prejudice you cite and the politics of the moment... :wry: