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

[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/frank...at-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, a relatively small band of bloggers and writer/webmasters 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]

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

[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".

[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 patrol the site constantly, flagging what they consider to be offensive material.

At a site called Jihadi Smackdown of the Day (“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.