Magical Realism and Information Operations

[Stan]

Hmmm,
This gets more intriguing with each post

I will admit to being an ENTJ on the MBTI. I also have secret fantasies about launching an all-women counter protest group who march down the street of Baghdad in red white and blue bikinis. This would be great psy-ops for disarming those militias.

Sorry Terri, the "boots" issue came up during a soapbox thread. But, I have to admit, the bikini of Baghdad will indeed shake the psyops world. Hell it might even work. You join a distinct group of ENTJs (that would be a compliment).

I agree, Stan. Again, all jokes aside, I'm going to see if I can et any support for setting up an administrative shell for a think tank in my department (Interdisciplinary Studies). A friend, colleague and sometimes student of mine who has been lurking here for a while (and when are you going to post Greg?), also think that it would be a good idea, so I'll be chatting with him as well.

Hello Marc !
You're not talking about stuffed animals again, are you ?
Greg ? He would be ? Is this a mystery

Regards, Stan

[marct]

Hi Stan,

You're not talking about stuffed animals again, are you ?
Greg ? He would be ? Is this a mystery

The stuffed animals have to me to deny any knowledge of their computer activities .

Greg is an friend and colleague who shares your sense of humour (God help us all!) and who has been lurking on the SWC for a couple of months. He is a also a very promising Anthro student of mine who, with the right coercion, errr "inducements" might actually get into boots (Calm down RTK, he's only 1/2 a frozen Canadian!).

Marc

ps. I'm tempted to try and get him to do his Honours Research paper with you, Stan

[Stan]

Marc,
I now somewhat remember

Seriously,
I would be more than happy to assist Greg with his studies. I however would wonder what exactly you expect from all this. Anthro with Stan may not produce the required results (he is afterall only half frozen).

Let the games begin !

Stan

[marct]

Hi Stan,

Seriously,
I would be more than happy to assist Greg with his studies. I however would wonder what exactly you expect from all this. Anthro with Stan may not produce the required results (he is afterall only half frozen).

Let the games begin !

I've emailed him to read this thread <evil grin>. Well, he may only be half frozen, but the other half is from Singapore - he's one of those "Fire and Ice" people .

Marc

[Stan]

Marc,
My mother is from Singapore (and father from Switzerland) !
Cocktails anyone ?

[marct]

I've mentioned Wiccans in a couple of posts in this thread and today I came across an interesting article.

A Witches' Brew of Religious Discrimination
By Steve Chapman

When he was alive, the U.S. government had no trouble finding a place for Patrick Stewart, never mind his unconventional beliefs. It inducted him into the Army National Guard, issued him dog tags giving his religion as "Wiccan," and deployed him to Afghanistan. He died there in 2005 when Taliban forces shot down his helicopter. It was only later that Uncle Sam had second thoughts.

Sgt. Stewart was buried in a veterans cemetery in Nevada, and his widow asked that his memorial plaque include the encircled five-pointed star of Wicca, a religion based on nature worship. But the Department of Veterans Affairs declined, because that emblem is not among the 38 religious symbols it allows.

Eventually, the state of Nevada stepped in and said it was in charge of the cemetery and would provide the plaque, which was finally dedicated in December. But back in Washington, the VA is still treating fallen Wiccan soldiers as a terrible inconvenience.

More...

Marc

[Stan]

Evening Marc !

It doesn't appear his suggestion cost the military any Christian enlistees -- which suggests that soldiers and sailors of many faiths can live, work and fight together despite their religious differences. If Wiccans are good enough to die for their country, they're good enough to be treated with respect afterward.

Hmmm, I have a similar experience from the early 70's

As a Catholic (when they were doing my dog tags), the drill gave me the strangest look (contemptuous pity) and would do the same for the next 12 weeks.

His pathetic ideological views were placed well ahead of our basic principles and laws of a nation, state, or social group. I had no clue, that being Catholic was so bad.

Regards, Stan

[goesh]

I've been thinking about Tokyo Rose lately and I'm wondering if our side has an Irene the Infidel who with her sultry voice in perfect Arabic has been taunting and ridiculing Johnny Jihadi and his small penis and impotence and inability to father children and scare the Americans? Tokyo Rose didn't exactly turn the tide in Japan's favor but she was a source of irritation on occasion and did sow a tad bit of doubt at times. I'm thinking that given the rigid paternalism and the way many muslim men put women in a second class citizen status if such propoganda couldn't from time to time cause a knee-jerk reaction amongst certain elements in the jihadist camp(s)? We ought to be able to borrow some female Mossad employee to cut some CDs of this nature and do some broadcasting. Ridicule/scorn can be a powerful influence and I would imagine any number of female Iraqis would find it very humorous as well. On the other hand, given the fact that putting women's panties on a detainee's head almost warrants a firing squad in retribution, I can hear the PC adherants crying already and wringing their hands and threateing class action human rights lawsuits. I'd cover an Abrams with loud speakers on full blast playing such a CD and idle it through sadr city and mosul. If you can't kill them at least you can provoke them.

[tequila]

I doubt the ones who need to die are that stupid.

Your idea reminded me of this, from a similar scene.

It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker.

"Come on, dogs," the voice booms in Arabic. "Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!"

I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: "Son of a bitch!" "Son of a whore!" "Your mother's cunt!"

The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. Three ambulances line the road below the dunes in anticipation of what is to come.

A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. They descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos.

Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered—death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo—but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.

We approach a Palestinian police post behind a sand hill. The police, in green uniforms, are making tea. They say that they have given up on trying to hold the children back.

"When we tell the boys not to go to the dunes they taunt us as collaborators," Lt. Ayman Ghanm says. "When we approach the fence with our weapons to try and clear the area the Israelis fire on us. We just sit here now and wait for the war."

[goesh]

I suppose from an attrition stand point, what works works and the IDF reference previously cited brings to mind the US frontier adage quoted above. IDF did some broadcasting in their last dust-up and sent some CDs to hizbullah outlets, which of course weren't broadcast south of the Litani or north of it for that matter, not that they were expected to do so. Im' not convinced to the contrary that my idea would prove to be totally inaffective since our point of reference on the matter is anything but paternalistic. We we don't fully understand its cultural dynamics and the implications and potential for exploitation. Call it casting a stone in the pond of ethnocentrism.

[tequila]

Note that the IDF was not exactly fully successful in achieving its objectives in the last fight. Also that one did not see Hizbullah or Amal fighters running out into the open upon having their manhood challenged but rather fought a semisuccessful defense of their fortified villages.

[goesh]

Some on the fringes might act erratically, runners and lookouts and part time combatants to the point of making a mistake and being caught, or for that matter getting killed. You're spot on, Tequila, that no seasoned veteran is going to respond out of character to such provocation but it darn sure would gnaw at them and would do no harm. I really wonder what affect it would have on them knowing their women are hearing said propoganda. It couldn't be enhancing their home life any. They are hypersensative to their manhood and gender roles. I recall another Peace Corps situation in which I participated in some agricultural training that involved women, slotted for secretarial stuff of course, and towards the end of the training the participants were informed they would be issued Honda scooters. When one of the women asked if they would be getting scooters too, the majority of men became enraged and actually started yelling about it. One guy was going to teach a woman to drive a scooter and it got real tense and menacing for him and he backed off. These guys were pretty much the cream of the crop from their culture. I can't be convinced that this type of propoganda would not gnaw at jihadis, even the vets. It darn sure would give our troops a good laugh and any morale boost is good in a combat zone. It seems to me we don't have much of anything 'in the black' when it comes to psyops. I hope I'm wrong on that.

[Bill Meara]

I realize that people are kidding around a bit in this thread, but I think this discussion illustrates one of the big problems faced by those who are tasked with doing PSYOP: Everyone out there thinks they are an expert, everyone thinks they have a great idea about what will affect the enemy. The worst thing is that these armchair/amateur PSYOPers sometimes have stars on their collars, and their "brilliant" ideas actually turn into leaflets, radio broadcasts, etc. This is often disastrous and counterproductive.

When we were training the Salvadorans, we taught them a disciplined, calculated, systematic approach to PSYOP. Start out by determining what you want the target to do. We usually wanted him to surrender or at least just go home. (We were not trying to enrage him, we didn't seek to humiliate him. We didn't talk about his momma or his prowess or his manhood. What good would that do?) Then develop themes, campaigns, and finally products that would fit into those campaigns. Ready to go, right?

Wrong. Before you pack your leaflets into the O2-B, you need to test those products on what the pollsters call "focus groups." Even when working in your own culture (as our students were) you'll often find that your beautiful, brilliant leaflet will have the opposite effect from the one you desire. If you are working outside your culture, and if you don't speak the language, you will almost certainly get it wrong.

During WWII some of the PSYOP products we launched at the Japanese were actually used by enemy commanders to motivate their troops. Some of the suggestions thrown around in this thread seem likely to become part of this PSYOP Hall of Shame.

[Stan]

Hello Bill !

When we were training the Salvadorans, we taught them a disciplined, calculated, systematic approach to PSYOP. Start out by determining what you want the target to do.

Back in 99 together with our CA folks, we wanted to create products for mine action awareness. Something positive, but not filled with too much gore nor difficult terminology.

Nothing like this had ever been done, yet alone funded (the USG funded ours). The target population was children between the ages of 7 and 15. That target was determined by examining stats on deaths and injuries involving UXO. An intensive survey was performed and pamphlets and leaflets immediately printed.

Even when working in your own culture (as our students were) you'll often find that your beautiful, brilliant leaflet will have the opposite effect from the one you desire.

The first school house we visited would tell the tale. Little to no interest in the pamphlets, and only in the Estonian Language (the Russian kids would be segregated).

3 months later, new pamphlets, leaflets and videos in both languages were produced.

It worked and worked well.

We went from 81 explosions/detonations, 10 deaths and 26 injuries in 1995 to 11 explosions/detonations, 0 deaths and 11 injuries in 2006.

Regards, Stan

[marct]

Hi Bill,

I realize that people are kidding around a bit in this thread, but I think this discussion illustrates one of the big problems faced by those who are tasked with doing PSYOP: Everyone out there thinks they are an expert, everyone thinks they have a great idea about what will affect the enemy.....

Before you pack your leaflets into the O2-B, you need to test those products on what the pollsters call "focus groups." Even when working in your own culture (as our students were) you'll often find that your beautiful, brilliant leaflet will have the opposite effect from the one you desire. If you are working outside your culture, and if you don't speak the language, you will almost certainly get it wrong.

In many ways, you are quite right. One of the difficulties is that the SWC is, primarily, an "idea generator" setting, not a research planning setting. As with any idea generator, you get some really wacky ideas coming out. Some times, they can be brilliant, sometimes they can be potentially disastrous, but always they are grist for the mill in building a research model.

You mentioned focus groups, and they are one component of producing a good IO/PSYOPs (or advertising) product. I was working on one project last year where we used ethnographic research, focus groups and surveys to produce an integrated understanding of the behaviour we were looking at. This produces a much more robust model of the behaviour, since you use each method to refine the succeeding on and guide your questions and interpretations.

Some type of multi-layered research is crucial when you are dealing with other cultures or specialized sub-cultures if for no other reason so that you get a decent map of their language. By that, I don't mean a transliteration but, rather, a map of the symbolic connections and accretions on those symbols. Let me give you an example of this.

A number of years ago when I was a Ph.D. student, I was asked to help an undergrad work on a survey they were trying to do studying modern neo-pagan witchcraft. Now, I had done my MA on this group ad I knew if quite well. One of the questions they had on the survey was "When did you first decide to worship the Devil?". Now, to witches, this question is both meaningless and highly insulting; the closest equivalent for Christians, in terms of a semantic reaction, would be to ask "When did you first decide to become a cannibal?". It took me about 2 weeks to get her head shifted around to the point where she could produce a question that would have any sub-cultural validity.

During WWII some of the PSYOP products we launched at the Japanese were actually used by enemy commanders to motivate their troops. Some of the suggestions thrown around in this thread seem likely to become part of this PSYOP Hall of Shame.

Sure, if they were acted upon. Again, we are looking at this as an idea generation area, and all ideas generate data. Let's look at what is proposed and see what it says both about "them" (actually "our" perceptions of "them") and about "us". Ideas that would not work on the insurgents may well have application for internal campaigns.

Back to Japan and WW II for a minute. The single most effective piece f research ever produced was, probably, Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword which, later, became the plan for occupation. Take a look at the methodology section, and you will see what I mean by an integrated approach.

Marc

[Tom Odom]

Wrong. Before you pack your leaflets into the O2-B, you need to test those products on what the pollsters call "focus groups." Even when working in your own culture (as our students were) you'll often find that your beautiful, brilliant leaflet will have the opposite effect from the one you desire. If you are working outside your culture, and if you don't speak the language, you will almost certainly get it wrong.

Exactly correct. I ran into this issue on demining ideas for Rwanda; the first proposals were from the Brits and a specific NGO who did mine awareness globally. They got tossed out of the Ministry of Defense and they came to see me because they had heard I had good ties with the RPA. I took one look at their products and keyed on the problem: they were cartoon like depictions of bloodily disentegrating children and women--including pregnant women. I asked them had they never heard of genocide or the Vice President/Minister of Defense MG Kagame ever speak of his countrymen as traumatized? Answer: we used this in the Balkans so it must work here.

We used PSYOP and CA to devise and train our counterparts in the Rwandan-US Demining Office. Our products were simple and to the point without gore and it worked--and still does. Sometimes however even those charged with being culturally savvy can be dense; I had that issue with 2 B-team commanders in succession. Neither lasted the exercise.

Best

Tom

[goesh]

I like that idea of polling to get an idea of what would work in Iraq - it's sort of like the self-actualization therapy modality espoused by Carl Rogers, reflective listening. We would have to dress female pollsters in hijabs to get into the women's quarters in homes and their segregated section in the masjids in order to crunch the numbers. I like the idea of flyers with the message that tells 'em to just say NO to the jihadi that wants to use their home as a safe house and threatens to shoot the kids if they don't comply. I can envision a picture of a woman in a hijab and veil with a pack of kids behind her standing in front of the door of her house with her arm making the classic "STOP" sign with the palm of the hand, confronting a armed, male jihadi. Scene 2 of the flyer shows the jihadi slinking away with his head hanging down, shamed into inaction by a female. Even the Liberals at Berkeley would like that. One good fatwa could end a multi-million dollar flyer campaign, on-the-spot. Jihadis certainly exploit the air waves and print, but they don't control it like in a dictatorship. I would suggest that we don't really have a clue about the dynamics at play with Islamic gender roles, separation and segregation there-in, the mechanisms that define the distinctions and enforce the distinctions. We have even less of a clue as to how they perceive our perceptions of them and thirdly, we have no cultural back-drop of similiarity, no point of equal reference to develop models of exploitation. My theory is that it takes more human energy to sustain distinct and harsh gender separation than it does in cultures with blurred, enmeshed roles, hence anything that requires additional human energy to sustain said distinctions takes that energy away from other enterprises and activities. I doubt this potential has been closely addressed by the psyops community and if anything, the whole 3rd world may well be lumped into one model where-in one approach is expected to work equally well in all cultures simply because they are of the 3rd world. I further suggest that we are dealing with a 4th world, the one of magical realism and our traditional approaches are not working as well as we want them too. The amount of input in this thread bears that out and anything that can alter an enemie's pattern of violent response warrants consideration.

[Stan]

Hi Marc !

Some type of multi-layered research is crucial when you are dealing with other cultures or specialized sub-cultures if for no other reason so that you get a decent map of their language. By that, I don't mean a transliteration but, rather, a map of the symbolic connections and accretions on those symbols. Let me give you an example of this.

As always straight to the point ! Where were you years ago ? Would have been easier, but then, we would not have learned anything

[marct]

Hi Stan,

As always straight to the point ! Where were you years ago ? Would have been easier, but then, we would not have learned anything

Depends on how many years you want to go back .

Honestly, I've seen to much junk produced, and called "research", that I get a little heated about the topic. Then again, my Ph.D. committee thought I went overboard in my theoretical model (what's wrong with 220 pages of dense, complex theory going from individual neurobiology up to global macro-social change?????), so I might just be a bit biased .

Marc

[Stan]

Honestly, I've seen to much junk produced, and called "research", that I get a little heated about the topic.

Marc, those are fine qualities in a person today
I hate the status quo. Why do we insist on believing this Bravo Sierra Bible Study, when we know good and well it's BS ?

Put somebody on the ground (there) and get it right.

Oops, forgot the ending ! 15 years back will do just fine Sir !